perfidy

In regard to today's news story about the Savannah, Georgia resident who awoke from a cocaine and alcohol induced slumber in his trailer to find that his two erstwhile female companions of the previous evening had stuck cooking tongs in his ass, I have one question:

Just what the hell were they looking for up there?

Merry Christmas

...and a happy new year!

When he wasn't looking, I snapped this picture of my son John:

Hopefully, when the giant space robots take over, my quisling son will have enough pull to keep me out of the camps. Click for a closeup:

The end of the year is typically a summing-up time, a time to take stock of what you have done and where to go next. For bloggers, it's a time to expound windily about the best this and the worst of that, and what album really made the grade.

Well eff all that. Maybe I'll get to it later. It's December 22, I'm tired, I'm busy, and I got no time to weigh Kanye West off versus Loretta Lynn for my choice for record of the year (ok... it's Kanye West. No!... Loretta.)

Instead, here is a quick list of things I did this year for the first time. Onanism!

• Turned 30. Hopefully this has happened for the last time.
• Ran a mile without having to lie down afterward.
• Ran three miles, period.
• Bench pressed my body weight. This was the year Johno got fit. Turning 30 puts a scare inta ya.
• Baked French-style baguettes successfully. Nummies.
• Figured out what an index fund is and how it works.
• Moved without having been evicted or otherwise encourage to leave first.
• Tasted a wine that finally made me understand why some people get obsessed and spend fortunes acquiring the stuff. (Can I remember which wine?... well... it's written down somewhere, I'm sure of it.)
• Got my writing published in the online version of the Cleveland Scene, a paper I always dreamed of writing for growing up.
• Became a paid, published writer. Paid! For writing!
• Read and enjoyed military history. ... well, I see that's about it. Pretty thin actually. 

Compared to Buckethead's list, it's downright pathetic. With two items ("Heard son's first word," "Watched son take first step") his list blows mine away. Within the next eighteen hours you shall see a cessation in blogging from me as I head west to the Johno Homeland for Christmas. Have a pleasant holiday.

[wik] Since comments are turned off, I will use my powers as a Minister to insert my question here: what military history did you enjoy?

Gather 'round, children as the New York Times covers the true history of Festivus.

I'll go get the pole out of the crawlspace.

and I piss on his grave. Not regular piss, either. Bad beer piss. Milwaukee's Best piss. Black Label piss. Coors piss.

Thanks to Gawker I find the late unlamented terror kingpin owned a piece of East Village (that's Manhattan, in New York City) landmark Bowl-Mor Lanes. Never you mind that Bowl-Mor is a hellhole for real bowlers, favoring flashing neon day-glo crud-ola over niceties like a pleasant environment in which to roll. Never you mind that the serious bowling crowd at Bowl-Mor is outnumbered about six to one by goofing hipsters.

Never mind any of that. Bowling is the one sport closer to my heart than any other (Mrs. Johno in fact was a state champion bowler in her youth, and you better believe that only endears her to me all the more), indeed it is the only sport I own the equipment to play. That's right. A fourteen pound, custom drilled purple Columbia White Dot named Loretta. And Yasser Arafat used the money of people like me to increase the misery of the world.

It's bad enough-- in fact it's evil-- to fund terrorism. It's a special kind of sick and twisted evil to fund terrorism with money made off Manhattan hipsters and off-duty garbage men.

F**ker.

Through which the Ministers warmly remember our mothers pinning our mittens not to our coat sleeves, but straight through our tender little wrists.

For the week....er, or thereabouts...ending 22DEC04

Spotlight Turkey: A USAF Maj General serving in Turkey was almost offed by a member of his Turkish security detail. The General is America's highest-ranking officer in country and senior advisor to the US embassy in Turkey on martial matters. One of his guard's weapons misfired, so the official story goes, and the General was hit by tiny bits of shrapnel from the bullet that impacted at his feet.

Not sure if it was an accident by an inept guard who can't control his weapon, or an assassination attempt by an inept guard who can't control his weapon:

"Death to America! ALLAHUUUU AKBAA...rrr..oooohhh...I mean... how you say, the 'oops'?"

Spotlight Costa Rica: In other gun-related shenanigans, a Costa Rican cab driver shot some guy running around the neighborhood wearing an Osama mask and carrying a pellet gun. The man said he was jumping out and scaring drivers on a narrow street, you know, for fun.

Long regarded as the Central Americans with no sense of humor, a frosty attitude toward foreigners, and morose outlook on a grim life of senseless surf gamboling, sun worship, and hemp cultivation, it should shock no one that this solitary man who tried to inject a little levity into the otherwise colorless void masquerading as life in Costa Rica would get capped. Such is the twisted world in which we live.

Spotlight Londinium: An 18-year-old kid killed his friend because he wouldn't get out of his dog's favorite chair. As is so often the case when planning seating arrangements, words were exchanged, dogs became agitated, bats were brought out, 5.5 centimeter skull fractures were inflicted, and someone succumbed to brain damage.

This is precisely why I participated NOT AT ALL in the seating arrangements at my own wedding- just this sort of thing, because if I was going to hear one more time that Uncle A couldn't be within 3 tables of the bar but no closer than 4 tables of cousin B, someone was gonna get a bat in the head.

Spotlight Noo Yawk: A NYC landlord hired a pair of hitmen to kill 2 of his tenants, brothers who shared a rent-controlled apartment, so he could then free up the place and triple the rent. In another example America's declining work ethic, the hitmen didn't kill the brothers, but DID manage to inflict "disfiguring injuries". At trial the landlord said he didn't hire the men to kill, but to scare, which sounds like the "I tried pot but didn't inhale" defense. It didn't wash with the jury; sentencing in January.

Spotlight Wiscaahnsin: Truck driver Jeff Lafferty was shot by a second man who claimed Mr. Lafferty had damaged the man's mailbox. This particular story does not verify whether events unfolded the way the gunman thinks, but what is undeniable is that he put 4 rounds into this guy and didn't kill him. Obviously the product of a kum-ba-ya, touchy-feely public school that taught guns are bad.

This sort of event shows why this country needs more and better gun education programs. Somewhere along the line the NRA failed this man, who couldn't kill with at least 4 opportunities to do so and after his property was threatened by an interloper. We need to refocus on the fundamentals here, people: readin', writin', 'rithmetic, and riflery. We owe it to our children. American children.

Spotlight Nuevo Mexico: In the most brazen case ever recorded of institutionalized theft, an Albuquerque woman took $20,000 in child support payments from her ex-husband for a daughter that never existed and with the full cooperation of the judicial system. The fact that the "father" had a vasectomy a year prior to the supposed birth, that on no prior occasion had the woman ever produced said daughter, and that DNA tests proving the paternity were blatantly forged were entirely overlooked and indeed, refocused the blame and difficulty back on this man for being so ridiculously obstinate in the whole affair.

I'm sure this chick is a hero in the Wymyn's Studies, Herstory, Womanist set, and could have a bright future in academia when all this furor is passed. But she turns my fucking stomach. The man here made a huge mistake even getting involved with such a psychopath, but at least got out before there were real children involved or he got an icepick in the neck while sleeping.

Spotlight Missourah: But that chick from New Mexico is a fucking saint compared to this sick specimen. Lisa Montgomery has been charged with murdering a woman 8 months pregnant, cutting the unborn baby from the womb, and then, in a final homage to the macabre, passing the baby off as her own.

This story covers what is possibly the most reprehensible set of behaviors ever chronicled in the brief history of this feature. I had to reach for the eye soap after I first read about it and nearly called out sick from my real job- not because the story made me ill necessarily, but because I just couldn't go out into normal, functioning society knowing that such people really existed. Out there. Among us. Maybe next door. Not that I have neighbors here on the Frontier, I'm just sayin'.

If anyone else needs to sleep with the light on for a few nights, the Ministry understands. We will open the Ministry amphitheater/cafeteria/zombie-proof bunker, the Catastratorium, to loyal readers until we all feel a little better.

[wik] The above story is eerily similar to events that happened back in September 2003, very near to the college Johno and Buckethead attended. If anything, this story is a fraction of a bit creepier, because the murderer knew the mother, and had to change her story when her original target had a miscarriage. Check here and here for sickening details.

Spotlight Julian Sanchez' scary brain: Sanchez chronicles the relentless assault on Christmas by the evil forces of secularism here. Judging by his reasoned and persuasive essay, Sanchez is clearly one of them. The attack on Christmas is really just a feint, as true believers know; the real target is Christianity itself, and by criminalizing its holidays, maleficent liberals come one step closer to their ultimate goal of mandatory gay marriage for all, 100% gun confiscation, and Stalin worship.

The Ministry of course encourages these conflicts, as they provide just that much more lubrication for our tentacles to slither into the orifices of power.

Orifices!

For no good reason I am reminded of two quotes today.

The first is from New York politician (and later US Senator and founding member of the GOP) William H. Seward. After a dinner party in the late 1840s at which he locked horns with Elizabeth Cady Stanton over the vexed questions of women's suffrage and women's rights, Mr. Seward admitted to Stanton:

You have the argument, but custom and prejudice are against you, and they are stronger than truth and logic.

The next comes from everyone's favorite humanist misanthrope, H.L. Mencken.

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard."

In other news, I think it's kind of funny that certain parties are doing their yearly Dance of Vexation over the greeting "Merry Christmas." Leaving aside the delicious ironies inherent in Protestants of any stripe defending a Mass, a pox on all y'all's houses for bringing this up in the first place. 80 percent of the country is Christian. That's no beleaguered minority. And, hearing a few "Merry Christmases" isn't going to blacken anyone's soul within their bodies (or burn the ears out of their heads). Tolerance isn't about making everyone feel comfortable at every turn. It's about tolerating shit that makes you crazy. Your shit is making me crazy; this is me tolerating you with all my feeble might and precious good will. So, to those making noise: Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, kiss my ass, kiss my ass, kiss your ass, kiss his ass, Happy Hannukah.

Happy Festivus, everyone.

21DEC04: There are 10 days left in the year.

There are 4 shopping days 'til Christmas.

There are 2,354 days until the end of mankind and the rise of the Perfidious New Order.

Today in Ministry History:

1999: Johno offered MA in History but declines; feels he hasn't read enough yet. Considers pimping as a career alternative, but is concerned about the strength of his pimp hand.

1980: GeekLethal can't decide between Pat Benetar or Debby Harry for dream girlfriend.

1976: Ross refuses to enjoy American Bicentennial, even a little bit and vicariously through American relatives, on principal.

ca 3,000 BC: Malevolent aliens unleash the first fighting robot on an unsuspecting and primitive humanity; a scribe in the court of Sargon records the robot's name as "akkadinakidinu", or "Bucket-headed one". 

Shaun Carter has 99 problems but a career ain't one.

Jay-Z has been named new head of Def Jam Recordings. This is only interesting if you find the music industry interesting. I do. This is an intriguing move for Def Jam, and one that points up both the strength of the brand and the dangers of having a founder as important as the company itself.

Just look at the chain of stewardship for Def Jam, one of the first-- and arguably the most important-- label in all of hip hop music and culture: Russell Simmons, 1984-1999. Lyor Cohen, 1999-2002, Simmons' longtime right-hand man all the way from the 1980s and now part of the Universal corporate ladder. LA Reid, 2002-2004, hitmaker, songwriter and Russell Simmons Disciple. And now Shaun Jay-Z Carter, the most successful Simmons-style businessman in the industry today (save perhaps Puffy), merging music, fashion, style and business into one irreducible whole.

The thing to notice about this chain is that Def Jam still gets most of its strength and momentum from moves originally made by Russell Simmons, who was never a musician but rather the greatest cool-hunter and trendsetter around. The label's late-90s turnaround with the signings of Ludacris, DMX, and Ja Rule took place under Simmons' auspices even though by that time he was mostly out of the label's picture.

Lyor Cohen was Simmons' chosen apprentice and stalwart company man, and his time in charge amounts to Bush I after Reagan. The strategic distribution deals with labels like Roc-A-Fella and Tha Inc. (formerly Murder Inc.) were done on the strength of Simmons' name and brand. LA Reid-- a once-time Simmons disciple-- had a fabulous run at LaFace and a rocky time in charge of Arista as temporary replacement for Clive Davis, and it's not clear what value he added to Def Jam in his time as label head.

Jay-Z is a natural choice to take the Def Jam helm, since his Roc-a-Fella empire was modelled consciously on Russell Simmons' business strategy (Simmons had/has advertising agencies, management companies, the Phat Farm clothing label, and a galaxy of strategic licensing/branding deals to prop up his brands). Moreover, Jay-Z knows the ropes since his label has been part of the Def Jam family for several years. However, his skill as a corporate warrior remains unproven. As head of Roc-a-Fella he was totally in charge of his own label even as that label reported through Def Jam to the rest of the Universal conglomerate. Now that buffer is gone and he needs to learn how to speak directly to that conglomerate, in a language they can understand.

He takes charge of a label family that, though it is the biggest name in hip-hop, is still one tiny column of figures on the quarterly balance sheet of a gigantic international colossus. For all the Kanye Wests, Ashantis, and Beanie Sigals he has, it is still a small roster in a volatile industry, and a label getting farther every day from the firsthand guidance of the man who founded, grew, and guided it to unparalleled success.

Jay-Z already has the skills. Can he pay Universal's bills?

[wik] A scratched copy of Europe's "The Final Countdown" to the first person to email with the correct answer to this question: What does "Jay-Z" the nickname refer to?

***Must Credit Dr. Rusty Shackleford*** Rusty asked me (and others, I hope) to guest blog on the Jawa Report (formerly hot lesbo star wars chick pundit) in his absence. I threw a little something up over there, so check it out. I will endeavor to increase the volume of posting both here, and there.

Also, if Minister Ross will actually send the software for expression engine to me, the site migration will go much faster. Infinitely faster, in fact.

Fool:

Fool:

Fool:

I've been posting a few music reviews over at blogcritics.org that I haven't put up here assuming that you wouldn't care.

Ha! Of course you care!!

DVD- Poncho Sanchez: Live at Montreux

CD- Poncho Sanchez: Instant Party!

Trifecta- The Prestige Recordings Best of Coleman Hawkins, Sonny Rollins, and Red Garland.

CD- Antler

Play safe, kids! The Ministry homunculi are hard at work converting ones into zeroes and zeroes into nullsets in preparation for the Great Software Migration. The trek will be long and arduous. Morale would be lower but for the regular electric shocks administered to each minion. We cannot fail.

In the meantime children, be good to each other.

[wik] A word on onanism. One of my projects in graduate school was researching the intellectual history of Mason Locke Weems' Life of Washington, the book in which the whole cherry tree/cannot tell a lie thingy got started. It's a worthy project that touches on the very origins of what it means to be a citizen of the United States; indeed Weems' Washington was more than anything else a Primer For The Young American With Attention To The Virtues, Duties, and Benefits Which Are His To Bear. Weems was also a huckster, an itinerant bookseller whose livelihood pre-Washington (which was the number two bestseller in the nation after the Bible from about 1800 to 1850) who wrote a great many other books aimed at a mass market. Among these titles were: Hymen's Recruiting Sergeant (1799); God's Revenge Against Murder (1807); God's Revenge Against Gambling (1810); The Drunkard's Looking Glass (1812); God's Revenge Against Adultery (1815); The Bad Wife's Looking Glass (1823), and The Sin Of Onan (~1795), the last of which I desperately want to read though no copies are known to have survived. Onan!

This kind of thing sort of belongs better over at vodkapundit, but those dudes have been pretty weak recently so I shall pick up the slack.

ABC news is reporting on an Ohio company marketing a recipe for a sauerkraut martini. Ohhhh...kaaaaay. In truth, I'm sure that a K-Tini, as they have dubbed the concoction, is delicious. Good sauerkraut is phenomenal. But to think that anyone-- anyone-- is going to hit it big hawking partially digested cabbage as a suitable garnish for an ice-cold jigger of Hangar One or Belvedere is just dumb.

Personally I prefer my own recipe for the Filthy Martini. No sauerkraut, but plenty of bacteria. And it kind of looks like what the Department of Public Works calls "brown water":

5:1 excellent vodka
2:1 pepper vodka
1:1 dry vermouth
1:1 green olive juice
1:1 pickle brine from kosher-style lactose-fermented half-sours, lactobacilli alive and well.
Garnish with two green olives and a black olive and a teeny shot of pepper sauce.

Nummies!!

The best music game ever. Type in the name of an artist and see if you can name them there ten songs based on 30-second clips.

I have gone 29 of 30 on Tom Waits, 17 of 20 on the Flaming Lips, and 29 of 30 on Frank Zappa so far (damn you, Rubber Shirt!!). So addictive. So horribly addictive.

[wik] Go ahead... type in anybody. I just played name that song with Reid Paley (who?), Josh Rouse (who!?), the Willard Grant Conspiracy (who?!?!) and Monty Python skits. What a silly bunt.

Two items of note about the death of Dimebag Darrell (and Thanks, Minister Geeklethal, for that copy of Pantera's greatest you sent. They were hard as f***, yea verily.)

• There is a crazed fan aspect to Darrell's death that remains unexplored Although it likely means nothing at all, just the week before the shooting former Pantera frontman Phil Anselmo told a British metal magazine, "He deserves to be beaten severely." More to the point, a longstanding and bitter feud between the former bandmates is a not-implausible contributing factor to the tragedy. Some fans really take that "fanatic" thing to heart.
• At the request of his family, Dimebag Darrell Abbot will be buried in a Kiss Kasket, donated by Gene Simmons. Check that shit out! I want one! The price is right for a casket, and as the website helpfully points out, " 'KISS® Kasket' can also be used as a Giant KISS® Cooler, enabling fans and their friends to enjoy ice-cold sodas and beer served directly from the ice-filled, completely waterproof "KISS® Kasket.' "
   

This week, the Ministry was presented with one example of heartless circumstantial cruelty so profound, so overweeningly monstrous and yet so typical of the dim candles that humanity proudly calls their minds, that it takes center stage in a solo version of our celebrated series, "This Week in Exemplary Human Behavior."

Spotlight Iran: She is a woman severe mental handicaps. She has a mental age of eight. As a girl, she was sold into sex slavery by her mother and passed from pimp to pimp, bearing her first child at age nine and enduring repeated rapes and abuses in the years since. She is now nineteen years old and will bear the emotional and physical scars of her horrible ordeal for life.

In their infinite mercy, the mullahs controlling Iran have looked into their hearts and consulted their Korans and concluded that the only balm for this poor girl's tortured life is to sentence her to death for the crime of prostitution.

We of the Ministry, our hearts hardened and our faces perpetually ensneered, like sometimes to think we have plumbed the very limits of the chthonian depths of the perversity of the human spirit. It is stories like this, fresh outrages every week, that remind us that in truth we know jack shit.

The society that basically invented the giant fighting robot for amusement is now leading the R&D effort to combat them for real. Should they ever come. Which they will.

BBC reports that Toyota is perfecting wearable robotic vehicles. The systems move about on wheels or legs and can operate over different terrain with astonishing agility. Well, for 7' exoskeletons. No word yet on how the electromagnetic weaponry is coming along.

And besides the technology's immediate applications in defending humanity from the mechanized menace, we also get yet another example of life:

Imitating art:

... comments have been turned off. But fear not! The pasty troglodytes with big foreheads, laboring away in the dim recesses of the Ministry's poorly funded and unheated research labs have come up with what they promise is a solution. Over the next couple days, the Ministry will be abandoning the battered and defenseless castle that is pMachine (which replaced the leaky and utterly defenseless shelter half that was blogger) and moving to the high-tech, art deco furnished, impregnable and ne plus ultra of security that is the Expression Engine underground bunker.

Until the move is complete, and the ministers are enjoying cosmopolitans, rob roys, and manhattans (or in Minister GeekLethal's case, Budweiser) in the air conditioned elegance of the new Ministry underground lair; comments will remain painfully absent. To you, our loyal readers, we apologize. But think of the joy that awaits, when you will be able to comment without fear of inducements to offshore online gambling, interweb porn, or penis enlargement.

When the migration is complete, there will be announcements, mandatory celebrations and all the pomp and ceremony that typically attend great events in Ministry history. So, have patience, and remember that we do it all for the children. Somebody has to to.

There's a post I was going to write about the murder of "Dimebag" Darryl, but didn't.

I had a little intro about the first time I heard Pantera, in a barracks in 1992. I tied that experience into broader themes in my life at that time and, after a re-read, had to cop that the intro was really just a vehicle to talk about myself and therefore highly inappropriate.

I planned to touch on the music, but had to be careful not to come across as a wanna-be. I have some Pantera records, but to me Far Beyond Driven is still their new record; I don't know anything about Damageplan. Still there were some half-decent turns of phrase: Dimebag could "bring the sweet but never sacrifice the sledge" with his playing; or, how his sense of harmony and melody was never drowned by his heavy riffs- anything he wrote would never be confused for something by those two cute lesbos from Nelson. I was even going to title the piece something like "Sure, the Vibe Awards but a metal show?!" to prompt an initial cynical snicker.

But I realized a couple things, and they were enough to derail the initial post.

I realized that there will be no shortage of half-assed tributes in the coming days: from your local rock station that likes to think it really rocks and maybe played a couple Pantera singles in 1993 and now broke out the black scrim in the studio to be in mourning over the terrific loss of this guitar player that those jocks sort of heard of once and that their 14-year-old sons explained that they should express feeling loss over; to MTV, which will likely have some sort of extended commentary about Pantera or Damageplan and we're all supposed to forget that MTV became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hip-Hop Marketing, Inc many years ago and couldn't pick Darryl out of a lineup where the other suspects resembled NBA players. There was other coverage as well, from Howard Stern, the most influential man in broadcast radio who didn't even now who the guy was and made no apologies for it; and Howie Carr, right-wing Boston blowhard who spent an hour referring to the victim as "Dirtbag" and to Pantera as "Pantload". Carr's a real hoot.

So I think I did the world a favor by sparing it one more opinion, one more explanation of his contributions, one more defense of his existence, one more half-assed tribute.

And I realized something else. As of this writing, three other people were killed by the gunman, and the shooter himself was killed by police. But most of us were really only interested, beyond that initial five minutes, because we lost Dimebag. That's a goddamned shame, because it's not about one picker from one metal band; another overdosed junky or ugly plane crash or singer who drank himself to death. It was no accident. It's also about three dead fans, all gone for nothing and forever. Because of one goofy fucker with a gun. And who in one final "fuck you" moment to the world didn't surrender to police but let himself be killed, denying us the satisfaction of his becoming some thug's wife in prison.

I'm upset that we normals have to share the planet with the unpredicatble and dangerous goofy fuckers. And I'm disappointed that the kid just didn't off himself, instead of all these other people.

And I'm sorry.

And I guess that's all.

In which attention is paid to the stupid, and makes the petty feel better about themselves.

For the week ending 7DEC04

Spotlight Bangladesh: In the face of threats from an Islamic group, Bangladesh cancelled its national women's swimming competition. The group, which carries the unintentionally hilarious moniker "Anti-Islamic Activities Prevention Committee" decided the event was un-Islamic. And it wasn't the first time; last year the same group shut down the women's wrestling event as well. Because God HATES wet women and chick fights.

People's Theocratic Revolutionary whatever of Iran: Iran's supreme court upheld an adultery conviction and approved the death penalty be applied in the case, but in a fit of conscience did commute an associated prison term for the defendant AND disallow she be hanged. So she could be stoned instead. The noose does still await the other defendant, a 17 year old boy. When remarking on the recent spate of lady executions in Iran, a female parliamentarian made some sort of weird remark about killing prostitutes that didn't make alot of sense, so won't repeat.

Spotlight Thailand: In an effort to defuse simmering inter-religious tension, Thai PM Thaksin Shiawatra approved airdropping 100 million origami birds across the largely Muslim south as a message of peace. Officials, volunteers, and schoolchildren folded each of the tiny cranes. And within hours of the gesture,

"the owner of a tea shop in Pattani was slain by gunmen, grenades were thrown at the homes of two policemen in the same province and arsonists set fire to a state school in Yala and a teacher's house in Narathiwat."

Gestures really only work if all parties understand the symbols at play. Lovingly crafted paper cranes might mean peace and reconciliation to me, but there's no reason why I should assume they WOULDN'T mean "react with arson and explosives" when others were faced with origami.

Spotlight every frat stereotype: A frathouse at the University of Georgia was the venue for a "Revenge of the Nerds" reenactment, when Ogre burns the frat house down. Except instead of the whole house, some dupe burned himself badly enough to wind up in the hospital after an accident with open flame, an oil lamp, and 190-proof alcohol. There was also a nod to "Dr Strangelove" ("Mandrake, have you never wondered why I drink only distilled water, or rain water, and only pure-grain alcohol?"), every zombie flick ever (the burned victim's "skin was hanging off his fingers, chest, abdomen, side and back"), "Animal House", and every school principal you ever heard ("to make sure these types of accidents don't happen again.")

Spotlight Massachussetts' fat ex-wife: Police and workers at an Auburn, Maine food bank are trying to figure out how a 20-pound bale of weed got into their shipment of watermellons. The most puzzling part of course is the choice of venue. Sure, you'd expect a 20-pound bale of weed in a big shipment of cookies, say, or Cheez-its, but watermellons? The cops and DEA exhibited exemplary behavior by harshing everyone's mellow and confiscating the bale, in clear and blatant violation of both the Constitution's Finders Keepers clause AND common goddamned decency. C'mon guys...if a fella has to get his food from the food bank, at Christmas even, you can't let him have a little extra in his stocking this year?

Sick and tired of guns in our streets, performing horrible crimes and threatening the children, a group of concerned volunteers has formed the Coalition to Prevent Assault Weapon Violence.

Their site includes an informative FAQ and, most importantly, a bona-fide assault weapon monitor. With vigilance, we'll be able to see the warning signs in advance, before these instruments of slaughter can create more mayhem.

Doubleplus bonus points if someone can explain what an "assault weapon" is.

For centuries, before gunpowder dominated the battlefield, the trebuchet was the most powerful siege weapon known to man. Essentially, the trebuchet is a gigantic seesaw. A 250 pound rock projectile sits on one end, and on the other, an immense counterweight. The longer, missile end of the trebuchet is winched down; and just like when you were sitting on the seesaw and the fat kid jumped on the other end, when it is released, the counterweight flips the missile hundreds of yards to (hopefully) hit the target.

A group of enterprising engineering geeks have endeavored to create a trebuchet simulator. With this nifty timewaster, you can adjust the mass of the projectile and the counterweight; and change the launch angle, counterweight height, wind and even gravity. Test your engineering and medieval geekiness against the distance, power and accuracy challenges.

I had the opportunity to play with a very small but nevertheless very real trebuchet a while back, and this is almost as fun. Though it doesn't throw watermelons or footballs. Thanks to A Voyage to Arcturus for the link.

...which is a sorry excuse for a headline for an otherwise mundane and purposeless post. Wish me luck: tomorrow Mrs. Johno and I move into a new apartment. Only in New England can you move into a building almost two centuries newer than the one you vacate and still have the new one be nearly a century old. Well, in the US that is. Not much of a feat in Ing-a-lind.

Not much posting for the next short while. Not that you care. Buckethead, GeekLethal, and the infrequent but potent Ross will (will!) take up the slack, so in sum you will all get a few days without the weakest link. Advantage: readership!

Tonight is the big Target trip to stock up on shower curtain; waste basket; first aid supplies for tomorrow; etc. While I'm there, maybe I'll pick up one of these. I love Target, and evidently Target loves me back. Hat tip to Loyal Reader #0017 (EDog).

I am put in mind of Alan Rickman looking bemusedly at a dead comrade in a Santa outfit, reading Bruce Willis' note in that weird stentorian Generic European voice of his: "Now I have a machine gun. Ho, ho, ho."

Why?

Because of this article: "Army To Deploy Robots That Shoot." The headline alone should be enough to strike dread terror into the hearts of all good (read:"evil") Perfidians, but the real kick in the all-too-human nuts is the article's blithe assertion that the robots in question, Foster Miller's "Talon" machines, "also can be mounted with a rocket launcher." Oh, very nice. Why not arm them with meatsaws and pain rays too, network them all, and call it Skynet just for shits and giggles?

Moreover, CNet clearly lacks a keen sense of karmic retribution, because the header chosen for the article reads "Next year, the U.S. Army will give robots machine guns, although humans will firmly be in control of them."

The fools! Don't they know the first rule of Robo-Semantic Eschatologoly? To wit: "Any assurances that a given robot is in the control of humans will sooner or later be tragically invalidated by the advent of a superintelligent evil robot made so by one of the following: freak lightning strike; sponaneous software upgrade; sunspots; or co-option by secret robotic overlords."

Just like you never say "so far, so good" in some situations, and absolutely never say "naw, she won't get pregnant" in others, all humans must live their lives by this code or suffer the consequences: never say that the humans are in charge.

Can you ever imagine a lard shortage happening in the good old US of A? Fie on thee, Poland and Hungary, and your hog fat hogging lard lusting ways! Fie! England wants its figgy pudding!! Britannia wants its figgy pudding!!!

(Hat tip to loyal reader EDog)

Loyal reader Mapgirl submits us this tale of righteous and accidental vengeance. It's not that SUVs are evil, per se. No-ne-no-no-no! But they can be tools of evil when their drivers barrel through red lights while talking on a cell phone. As a pedestrian who daily takes his life in his hands, whose least favorite sound is the screeching rasp of lock-braked tires losing their grip on pavement and whose least-favorite sight is the stricken rictus on the face of the driver of the vehicle attached to the foregoing sound as they look up from reading the paper/gabbing on the phone/changing the radio/eating Chinese food, notice they are about to end the life of yrs truly, and stand on the brakes in an effort to stop two tons of SUV in twelve feet of space thereby hopefully sparing the aforementioned life, I relish this tale of accidental retribution.

(And as a writer, I summarily renounce the foregoing sentence as a hopeless run-on.)

As Charles Bukowski once wrote, "One tends not to think clearly when one has been drinking." A regrettably common manifestation of this tendency is the "drunk dial." Ever done that? Ever consumed, say, three pint glasses (pint glasses) from a gallon jug of Carlo Rossi "Paisano" wine and picked up the phone? Ever called the last person in the world you should be calling, drunk or sober? Ever regretted being born afterward? Nothing just makes the hangover experience like trying to remember who you called, what you might have said, and how much you must now suffer in consequence.

Leave it to our good friends and andipodal neighbors the Aussies to come up with a solution to this serious and potentially humiliating problem. Virgin Mobile in Australia is now letting customers black out specific numbers from their phone before going out for the night as a guard against waking up single, fired or miserable. If I could give Australia a medal, I would. Nice one, mates!