perfidy

... for Christmas, but I ran across this over at NRO and found it irresistable:

Shi’ites Roasting in a Mosque on Fire
(To the tune “The Christmas Song ”)

Shi’ites roasting in a mosque on fire,
Sunnis bombed in their bazaar.
The U.S. cursed as an occupier
And oil flows still not up to par.

Everybody knows a firefight and an IED
Help make the streets of Baghdad bright.
Suicide fiends with their eyes all aglow
Think victory for them’s in sight.

They know that Baker’s had his say.
His ISG report said we don’t want to stay.
And our Iraqi friends rush to apply
For seats on any airplane that will fly.

And so I'm offering this simple phrase
For Cheney, Bush, and Condi too.
Although its been said many times many ways:
Nation building, we can’t do.

God bless the Derb

It is natural for us to assume that the attractive and wealthy are actually stupid. This is a face saving gesture, for otherwise, how are we to accept the fact that we, with our much greater intelligence and savvy, are not rolling in bling and surrounded by attractive and loose-moralled members of the opposite sex? In at least once case, however, this is not the truth. Witness, Britney Spears' Guide to Semiconductor Physics.

[wik] I have been warned that the above-referenced website may, in places, be unsafe for work. Meaning, there may be tits and whatnot in plain view. I have not perused the entire site, as my interest in semi-conductor physics is only slightly higher than my interest in Ms. Spears. So, take whatever measures you feel are appropriate for your continued safe employment.

When I first saw the headline, my initial thought was "Farts - is there anything they can't do?", but it turns out that the story's far more involved than that.

I'm apparently the last to hear about this miscarriage of justice, on Dec 6th, but I pass it along, nonetheless:

"Flatulence Forces Plane to Land"

This story merits an entry partially to preserve the hysterical record, but primarily so that I can prove to my wife that the story she heard in the Cincinnati airport on Christmas day was in fact true. Many planes, particularly those that are full, smell to some degree or another like ass, and it's no real mystery why. Bless this poor woman for trying at least to get the plane to smell like sulphuric ass.

As for additional, enlightening commentary, I've got nothin', so I'll include this, from Kent Ward of the Bangor Daily News:

Reader and columnist reaction to a third story in this newspaper within the past couple of weeks likely varied widely. Datelined Nashville, the article was headlined "Woman lights match on plane to cover gas.''

"An American Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing Monday morning after a passenger lit a match to disguise the scent of flatulence,'' the story reported, an attention-grabbing paragraph if ever I've read one. The FBI was called in, the plane was searched, passengers interviewed, baggage screened. The whole nine yards. Raise your hand if it occurred to you, as it did to me, to speculate that the entire sorry episode may have been put in motion when the woman said to the guy seated next to her, "Pull my finger.''

(text copied here, just in case of link rot)

Flatulence Forces Plane to Land

Plane Forced to Land After Passenger Passes Gas, Lights Match to Cover Scent
The Associated Press

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - An American Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing Monday morning after a passenger lit a match to disguise the scent of flatulence, authorities said.

The Dallas-bound flight was diverted to Nashville after several passengers reported smelling burning sulfur from the matches, said Lynne Lowrance, spokeswoman for the Nashville International Airport Authority. All 99 passengers and five crew members were taken off and screened while the plane was searched and luggage was screened.

The FBI questioned a passenger who admitted she struck the matches in an attempt to conceal a "body odor," Lowrance said. She had an unspecified medical condition, authorities said.

"It's humorous in a way but you feel sorry for the individual, as well," she said. "It's unusual that someone would go to those measures to cover it up."

The flight took off again, but the woman was not allowed back on the plane. The woman, who was not identified, was not charged in the incident.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures

The Ministry wishes to extend to all a very Merry Christmas, and best wishes for a happy New Year.

[wik] And thanks to a kindly extension of our bandwidth by our webmistress Kathy, you will even be able to read this.

[alsø wik] If you happen to be Orthodox Christian, Merry Christmas for next week.

[alsø alsø wik] If you do not happen to be Christian, Merry Christmas anyway.

[wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?] And be careful around the Mistletoe, it could lead you into heresy or awkward social interactions.

[see the løveli lakes...] Nog! Loot! Lots of colorful scraps of paper! A Jedi craves not these things!

[the wøndërful telephøne system...] And maybe we'll get a little of peace on Earth, and goodwill toward men this year.

As shadowed (whined about, really) in a comment to an earlier post by Minister Buckethead, I don't see much intelligent political discourse these days. Which is a shame, really - I've always enjoyed reading it and have, at times enjoyed writing it or attempting to.

But these days, political discussions tend to appear most often from mouth-breathers with no critical thinking skills or rank partisans pushing buttons on a presumed-ignorant voting populace. The ratio must be somewhere around 90% today, unlike back in the "old days", where it was only, oh, 75%-80%.

As an example of the former, I'd give Debbie Schlussel's recent rant on Barack Obama ("Barack Hussein Obama: Once a Muslim, Always A Muslim") and some of the comments (not the post by the estimable Allahpundit, but some of the comments) in the story at Hot Air, "Schlussel: Is Obama a Muslim manchurian candidate?". Anyone who feels compelled to use Sen. Obama's middle name, other than perhaps his mother, is an unserious rabble-rouser and should be vigorously ignored. Anyone who thinks he's DQ'd from further political office solely due to his Muslim heritage is no different, and has the added disadvantage of being incapable of forming a coherent thought in support of an argument they're incapable of considering. Rubes, the lot of them.

Examples of the latter abound; far too many to list, but they include the hubbub about Harold Ford Jr. and his taste for white women and the creepy predilections of Mark Foley. In the comments to a story (linked to the story) that Buckethead provided below (referenced above), about a congressional aide named Shriber who solicited help from hackers in adjusting his undergraduate GPA, most of the noise wasn't focused on the fact that Shriber had attempted to violate a federal law, nor that he'd been played so majestically by the supposed hackers he thought he'd found to help with his nefarious plot.

No, the comments went straight to the heart of the matter - that he was an aide to a Republican. The first of these stories flatly didn't matter, not a bit, the second was interesting primarily due to Foley's immediate resignation but not at all due to his party affiliation, and the third indicated that the commenters were humorless drones, politically tin-eared morons without meaningful lives, beating on a drum that people with IQs over 100 wouldn't even hear.

Those pushing stories like these either don't know or wilfully ignore how low-budget and minimally meaningful their rants are, to thinking adults. Yet they continue; they happened throughout the 2004 presidential campaign, throughout the most recent mid-term elections, and are sure to play a part in the 2008 federal elections as well. Truly a shame, and a waste of opportunity to have an intelligent discussion about what we really want our legislative overlords and masters to do on our behalf.

But enough of my setup - as you all know, Scott Adams' Dilbert speaks for the common man, and hasn't let us down in our hour of need. Witness:

Dec 22, 2006:

(click for original @ Dilbert.com)

Dec 23, 2006:

(click for original @ Dilbert.com)

They pretty much summarize my view of the landscape as it sits today. We, as an electorate have to get smarter, and while we're working on that, we have to reject the button pushers and the slobbering retards. Yeah, that's a plan.

The Economist has an interesting bit on Free Will, or the ever decreasing residuum that is all that remains after modern neuroscience has had its way. I've often wondered when drunk whether we really had that much free will. I like the idea of free will, but it seems to me that there is a lot less of it than most people suppose. To the extent that I can look inside my head and determine what goes on, often it seems that consciousness is less a matter of choice, but rather one of explanation. It is a part of my mind that explains or offers a narrative of decisions, impulses or reactions that were happening elsewhere. Not that I ever bought into any sort of Calvinist predestination - I think that's a load of crap. Really, I'm just a self-propelled meat puppet.

For you, dear reader, a Christmas present. Thanks to the ever-watchful eye of Slashdot, we have this heartwarming story of cruelty, cupidity and shortsightedness. A textbook example of how not to attempt to get people to commit crimes for you. If this had resulted in death or sterility rather than embarrassment, this guy would be a shoe-in for a Darwin Award. Sheer, perverse, anti-genius.

And they've been shot down.

Wine maker's mass nude run promotion scrapped

BEIJING, Dec 21 (Reuters Life!) - Police in central China have scotched a wine maker's plans for a mass Christmas Eve "nude run" which the company said was a public interest event to discourage the use of "excessive packaging" in the industry.

Jixiang Ruyi Tobacco and Alcohol Company offered 284 people 10,000 yuan ($1,280) in cash and prizes to participate in a naked dash through Zhengzhou, capital of Henan province, the People's Daily reported on its Web site on Thursday.

The company's advertisement called for "auspicious" men and women under the age of 30 with "healthy bodies" and "regular features" to apply.

"The goal of this streaking event is to raise consumer awareness and declare war on the excessive packaging of 'baijiu' through the language of the body," the report quoted a manager surnamed Ma as saying.

The police "scotched" the PR trick for pretty understandable reasons:

Zhengzhou police rejected the company's application for a permit to hold the run.

"Public commercial events ... must meet moral standards," CCTV quoted a police official as saying. "Such mass streakings do not."

But oddly enough (no surprise, in an article from Reuters' "Oddly Enough" series), the Jixiang Ruyi Tobacco and Alcohol Company was apparently going to have several sorts of trouble filling the field, anyway:

Over 1,700 people had applied in four days, China Central Television (CCTV) reported on its Web site, the overwhelming majority of them men.

Well, that would clearly have been a problem - who the hell wants to watch a bunch of hotdogs flopping through the streets of Zhengzhou? And then there was this:

"We have already invited experts from the beauty industry to conduct physical checks on the applicants. Their mental condition must also be sound. According to the tests, there are only 30 or so that qualify," CCTV quoted a company official surnamed Cao, as saying.

Whoops. But it is refreshing to see a case where efforts to uphold moral standards, whether that works or doesn't, indirectly uphold some basic standard of good taste.

[wik] Hmmm. I wonder which hurdle most rejects failed to cross, mental or physical?

Admittedly, it's not as good as Daffy Duck's classic "Pronoun trouble", and I don't want to seem to be picking on the witness in the video below, but some folks aren't as good with a camera in their face as others:

(Incompletely attributed video, by the way, but apparently from a TV broadcast somewhere in Eastern FL, via Kenny) [wik] WTF? Aphasia? [alsø wik] Friggin' Firefox. Suddenly, it doesn't seem to want to work, though I tested it in both originally. I don't care enough to fuss with it further, but perhaps clicking here will work for those of you mistreated by my sloth on the matter?

Hardly.

"Not much can stop football in this town, where the pride runs deep."

At the link above, should you care to, you can read a story that might make you think high-school football's sometimes taken just a bit more seriously than perhaps it oughta be.