perfidy

The sickest celebration in our civilization has just begun, an annual get-down so intense, so loud, so full of people, fluids, and animatronic lions, one must surely weep or, if you're not the weepin' kind, urinate. New Year's Eve in Time's Square, your wanna-be Animal House frat brothers, and surely your jerkoff cousins' lame parties are all eye candy by comparison.

It's September, people. September in Bavaria.

And that means Oktoberfest.

Oktober-fucking-fest.

At no time is the scent of beer stronger than the Munich autumn. The fest beer flows like water...who am I kidding?...it flows better than water. The Theresienwiese will be thronged with visitors, so many that they will quaff 1/3 of the annual production of Munich's six big brewers. There are also plenty of other brews from around Germany (myself, I'll take a nice Werner hefe-weissen wherever I can find one, although those are better with food, I find, and not conducive to the burly 1-liter mugs ubiquitous under the fest tents). Plenty of spirits are readily available of course, as are carnival rides for the kiddies. As are adults who went on those rides after they washed down their 4th stein of lager with a nice smooth Ratzeputz shot and end up vomiting in shady corners, contributing their own personal and intimate colors and bits of stomach lining to the already festive blues, whites, and yellows of the tents.

Ah...Oktoberfest. Ahhhhktoberfest.

I am not there, so I am wrong.

But at the very least, maybe I can talk Lady Lethal into a dirndl. She'd make St. Pauli's girl look like a tired Bremen sea-hag.

To be honest, I didn't even know she was here.

If Google happens to be broken and you're curious (Google's already got 30 hits for that quote), I'll make the topic even more obvious with another:

If I was her adviser, I would tell her to go kick all the ladies' tails around for about four years and if she wants to try again when she's 20, 21 and grown up more, and maybe a better player, come on back.

(emphasis mine) Not a good week for the girl who claims to want to beat the men at the mens' game. I wonder how much of this silliness is driven by her sponsors?

So, there I was - sitting in my home office, taking care of a few things that need to be taken care of, and listening to the radio broadcast of the Sunday night NFL game between Dallas & Washington.

Having given the 7 point spread and chosen Dallas in the pool I've joined, and with Dallas in control, but not running away with it, I've been paying a bit more attention to the action than I otherwise would.

Including, apparently, the commercials. I just heard one for a company/product called "See More Bucks". I'm guessing it was a locally broadcast commercial, though with AM radio shows, it's hard to predict what sort of marketing you'll be exposed to. Anyhow, hearing the word "Bucks" must have piqued my interest, thinking they were talking about the Ohio State Buckeyes. And as I listened, I found it had nothing to do with OSU football.

Seems they were offering a product that, if sprinkled on the foliage near one's "deer blind" (whatever - I'm not a deer hunter, so if I fuck up the special verbiage of the brotherhood, please forgive me), causes the bucks to just hang out and gnosh until you get a chance to put a slug between their eyes.

Again, I'm forced to say "whatever...". Perhaps that's normal in deer hunting, but it brought a memory of a friend from my youth, Jimmy, who fished in Southern Ohio and regularly took his houseboat out on one of the large man-made lakes of the area. His first action was to ensure the beer was cold. Next, he took a bushel basket of ears of corn and scattered it in the water around the boat. Several beers later, he'd drop a line in the water, and pull out fish as fast as he could cast.

I wonder how that's different than using "foliage perfume" from a company called See More Bucks. Oh, and Jimmy used to call it "chumming".

Doesn't seem very sporting, but I'm not that type of sportsman, so I could be wrong.

[wik] Oh, and when Jimmy got into the second six pack, he might occasionally stop casting, and just grab his net before dropping a few lit M-80s into the water. Even I know that's not sporting.

For your Sunday reading pleasure, we bring you a plethora of mildly to seriously derisive mottoes for the State of Nevada. Enjoy!

• Two words: Celine Fucking Dion
• Tip #1: Whores, then gambling
• We are to the United States what Mariah Carey is to music
• And to think, we used to be part of Utah
• We’ve been nuked more than 464 times as much as Japan
• More fun than Sodom, less disease than Gomorrah
• Topless and Poker!
• Prostitutes and Poker!
• Hookers and Poker!
• Drugs and Poker!
• Ho's, Drugs and Poker!
• Poker and Poker!
• Poker, Canasta and Poker!
• We’ve got Vegas and normal people.
• Tip #2: Nickel Slots = Free Beer
• Nevada, where you can pay for sex and not get arrested!
• Come for the tasteless glitz, stay for the soulless debauchery
• More weirdos than Alaska (warmer too)
• Location, Location, Location!
• Tastes Great, Less Filling
• 3:5 you'll leave broke
• The pointy state
• We purely love your lack of knowledge of the laws of probability
• Waiting for California to Fall Into the Ocean
• Home of the Bambi Hunters
• Our strippers are almost as good as Canada’s
• The New Jersey of the West
• You Bet!
• Tip #3: Yes, Siegfried and Roy are really gay
• Big Dams, Big Losers
• Atlantic City? Where’s that?
• Our pyramid is so much more durable and classy than the original
• We put roller coasters on the tops of buildings. Because we can!
• The wedding and divorce capital of the world. We’ve got you covered.
• Babylon Mystery, Mother of Harlots and all these abominations of the earth

[wik] With a little help from Blackfive

[alsø wik] Bonus slogans!

• Your ignorance of probability means no state income taxes for us
• Holy fucking shit it's hot!

Allegedly, the past several years have seen great advances in the ability to correctly identify junk e-mail. In fact, I'm one of the people who would make this allegation, since I almost never see actual spam in my inbox any more, and I'm not aware of having lost any legitimate mail as a result of measures currently in place.

However, there's an odd side effect of the increasing power to automatically flush spam. Sometimes, the email message obfuscation used by the dung-brained losers who send such messages causes them to get past my spam protection. When they do, these days, they seem to result in largely unintelligible gibberish. To wit:

According to the most recent news,
they verbalized that most American's
are really moved in maintaning their wad
That is why they uncovered last night this place

http://www.*********.org/aj/
They hit upon it after happening around the net.
The things of the net.

looked on and listened in artificial a sort of
"You see," I lizard smell
noticed Monkey King among their other

letitia watson

I've redacted the name of some dumb-ass web site from the message above and will be reporting it to one of the central repositories of other such dumb-ass websites, the better to ensure that, no matter what form of Ebonics future authors of such crap use, the presence of that website address alone is enough to get the message shit-listed.

But here's the thing - if I were to suffer a momentary lapse of IQ and decided to pay close attention to my spam, looking for ways to radically improve my life, it's not crystal clear to me what part of my life letitia (not his real name) is offering to help me with.

An infinite number of monkeys in front of an infinite number of keyboards, indeed.

[wik] Someone beat me to the punch in reporting these assholes. I'm OK with that, and it's why I almost never see spam these days.

It was only a rumor. A legend.

Spanish cured ham so silky, so toothsome as to practically defy description. And one terrible side effect of our nation's rules and import barriers was that the Food and Drug Administration prohibited its import. Like many raw-milk French cheeses, the unfettered and wild processes of bacteria, enzymes, and sheer time presented a horrible spectre of infestation to the crabbed pencil pushers who thronged its halls.

Like, come on! The whole point of curing meat or milk is to render it impervious to rot or infestation. Why the hell can't it come into the country? It's only been three thousand years since mankind perfected the process!! Am I to believe that a raw-milk Camembert is, on the face of it, more harmful to the good of America than Mohammed Fucking Atta? Who they let in the country?? JESUS CHRIST!!!!

Shit.

Where was I?

Right. So there's this ham they make in Spain, from pigs from Castille that are fattened on acorns and whose loin is rubbed with a combination of herbs and spiced before being painstakingly cured with great love and care in the gentle Spanish breezes. Salt and bacteria do their thing. The enzymes in the cells of the loin of pork do their thing. The spectacular alchemy of man and nature coalesce in a transcendent display of pinnacle of the art of charcuterie. And you couldn't usedta get it here.

But not no more. It's here. Yesterday when I bought some it was $99.95 a pound. Today it's $199.95. A pound.

Some dudes eat a pounda steak as an appetizer.

So I bought some. I'm a big fan of European cured meats. There's this French stuff they make out of pork that sort of smells like a urinal but tastes like God himself came down and put the taste of manna on your tongue. The Poles make dry kielbasas that don't so much fill the stomach as feed the soul (many props to Mrs. GeekLethal!). And I'm the kind of asshole who, when staring face to face with a piece of a dead animal that has been through a process and a series of trade barriers that renders it as costly and valuable as good-ass weed, I have to try some.

I say again: I like meat that smells like bum piss. That's some amazing stuff. Silky, smooth, sweet, salty, subtle, astonishingly good. That stuff is about $15 a pound. Is meat that today goes for ten times that price ten times as good? Can anything that eventually becomes shit possibly be worth that much money?

I'll tell you.

I bought twelve paper-thin and translucent slices of fine Spanish ham. Just north of one ounce for $7. Took it home. Laid it out on a plate. Absorbed its aroma. Savored its flavor. I ate twelve paper-thin slices of fine Spanish ham all on their lonesome, and I'll tell you.

Ehh, it's pretty good.

Ministry readers are familiar with our ongoing concern for surviving the onslaught of any number of real or ethereal enemies: the robots, the zombies, the aliens, the Dark Ones, the Atlanteans- the list is long and dread. Those readers also understand that we are, to put a fine sharp point on things, concerned with our survival.

But we recognize that in order to rule the stooped, half-mad survivors of the smoldering afterworld, there will have to be stooped, half-mad survivors. With that in mind, we do have to maintain some concern over the wellbeing of the balance of our species, and it is in that spirit that I share this link and discussion with you now.

Slate has some thoughts regarding a short-term, family-scale survival kit. Alot of the products make sense- particularly regarding the storage, transportation, and treatment of water. The collapsible water cans are a great idea. Also, anything that can function without a wall socket or batteries, like hand-crank flashlights and radios would be terrific.

A couple things though have been overlooked. A decent multitool, for example. A small portable Gerber or Leatherman ought to be handy anyway, in your usual life, and one certainly belongs in a survival kit. And they don't break the bank, either- I got a good Gerber for like $50, but it pays to shop around. Other tools should be included as well, like a decent knife. Sharp things have been fundamental to the success of the human species thus far; why would it not be so after the Poppyclips?

Another item that's overlooked in these discussions is dry bags. That is, nylon (or other non-naturally occurring material) duffel-type bags. I think people tend to underestimate how fast water can fuck up everything, even just being in the rain for a couple hours. You can buy these in any camping supply store or online, and they're not expensive, either. They come in all sizes, so can keep food, documents, or delicate equipment dry, besides clothes or blankets. When empty of course they can wad up to nothing, so there's no space constraint. More of these is better, I feel.

And it goes without saying that no survival plan is complete without considering personal safety. It is surely inadvisable to keep loaded firearms in a duffel bag in your closet with your hazmat suit and respirator, but that doesn't mean you ought to eschew them entirely. Seriously, what in your personal life experience with other homo sapiens leads you to conclude that, in the absence of governmental authority -even if only briefly- people would not hesitate to take from you what they need to live another day? Are you willing to put your own survival- and we are talking survival here, not comfort and convenience-in the hands of strangers? For your family's sake, I hope not.

All of these things though are only things. Valuable and important things, but tangible objects. People also need intangibles, like a plan for how to get to where they feel safe, or training to build a fire, erect a shelter, apply first aid, or use a weapon.

Apply these ideas to your actual survival plan, and you will be in a much better position to be ruled by us later.

Amusing.

This advice comes too late for me, but maybe some pour soul can be saved from the fires of perdition.

Hadn't seen coverage of this elsewhere, but Stars and Stripes is reporting that a female USAF officer reported missing, then abducted, last week has been found and is on her way back to the Land of the Round Doorknob.

Major Jill Metzger was in Kyrgyzstan, with her unit nearing the end of its tour, when she was taken from a shopping mall in Bishkek. The article states that Major Metzger escaped her captors and was subsequently found by police, but is otherwise lean on detail. Well, it's enough to know that they didn't have her long.

I like to think though that her being a competetive marathon runner was helpful in her escape:

"Achmed! She's making a break for it! Drop the hookah! After her!"

500 meters later:

"Achmed! She's...getting...away...gasp...Quickly!"

Two kilometers later:

"Achmed...gasp...we...wheeze...will...speak...of...this...to...no one...gasp...*hurl*"