perfidy

Just when I thought I'd seen it all, I realize that I'm a world-baby.

Yesterday the House of Representatives passed the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act, which basically makes it illegal to transport a minor across state lines for the purpose of having an abortion if the minor's home state requires parental notification prior to the procedure. That, I only have *some* trouble with on the usual Federalist grounds and because although I don't much care for Roe v. Wade, I also would like states that (at some point in a theoretical future) legalize abortion to not have the legality of the practice stepped upon by other states' laws that prohibit same. Slippery slopes, all that.

But that's not what cheeses me off. What does cheese me off are the infantile hijinks of the Republicans in Congress. (Honestly, these days I could start every single post that way and not once would it be less true.) Hilzoy of Obsidian Wings (who I do not want to marry despite here many charms and virtues, being already happily wed (never mind, folks! (that's an inside-baseball(well, blogball (how many nested clauses can I achieve? (Five!)))) comment) read the bill closely and observed a fascinating phenomenon. The Democrats offered a number of amendements to the bill which would have, for example, exempted Greyhound drivers from prosecution if one of their passengers was a fifteen year old crossing state lines for an abortion. The original text and vote count read:

DEMS: a Scott amendment to exempt cab drivers, bus drivers and others in the business transportation profession from the criminal provisions in the bill (no 13-17):

The revised text in the Congressional Record now reads:

GOP REWRITE. Mr. Scott offered an amendment that would have exempted sexual predators from prosecution if they are taxicab drivers, bus drivers, or others in the business of professional transport. By a roll call vote of 13 yeas to 17 nays, the amendment was defeated.

Wha? That's gotta be a mistake, right? In my best John McLaughlin voice, "WRONG!" See this amendment,

DEMS: a Nadler amendment to exempt a grandparent or adult sibling from the criminal and civil provisions in the bill (no 12-19)

... which somehow ended up as this amendment:

GOP REWRITE: . Mr. Nadler offered an amendment that would have exempted sexual predators from prosecution under the bill if they were grandparents or adult siblings of a minor. By a roll call vote of 12 yeas to 19 nays, the amendment was defeated.

So not only are Greyhound drivers not exempted from this law, but in the GOP revisions, it somehow it all suddenly became about child molesters. In the words of Phil Dennison in the comments, "This is almost literally the equivalent of a high school student grabbing someone's textbooks or homework, crossing out that person's name in them, and writing "Fag" over and over."

He's right. The Republican party, who I used to from time to time make common cause on issues like government spending, taxes, minimally intrusive regulation, and the like, have never gotten over the smarmy prep-school smugness that marred the Gingrich years. You'd think that being in power would finally assuage their victim complex, but nooooo! It's "the liberals" this and "godless" that and "we're under attack on every front!" when the Presidency, both houses of Congress and at least 5/9ths of the Supreme Court are their folks. I mean, shit. At least we Red Sox fans had the good graces to shed the whole Our Lady Of Perpetual Angst schtick once we won the Series. But the Republican Party can't seem to stop. Bill Frist fulminates against the Godless. Tom DeLay plays funny with ethics rules. Rick Santorum... well, the less said about Dim Bulb Ricky, the better.

What's more is while changing the wording in every amendment on a bill is wildly funny in some locker-room contexts in high school, and might even arguably be construed as the feisty jabs of an underdog minority (see 1994), when you're the party in power, that kind of move means you're a prick and a bully. Power doesn't make you a prick; pricks prove themselves through power. Newt Gingrich: Prick. When he was in charge of the House, that was dazzingly obvious he was a giant prick. He even shut down the government by way of proving his prick credentials. Now that he's faded into the background, he might still be a prick but he's at least 50% less of a prick about it.

That such adolescent, disrespectful behavior ends up in the Congressional Record, entered there by the Committee Chairman (Sensenbrenner, in this case, not some no-name looking for street cred (or prick cred)) rather than being left among the table scraps of a hi-larious three martini lunch at the Hotel George means you're bordering on insane. So I don't give away the whole game, I urge you to go read Hilzoy's post to find out why Sensenbrenner felt it so important that the amendements be revised to read they way they do. It's a larf riot.

"We're trying to get a permit from the city," he says. "Because you know, you can't secede from the union without getting a permit from the city."

I ardently wish this weren't a joke, but we're all perfectly safe regardless.

Is underemployment the scourge of the meth-ing classes? Or is the other way around? Read the rather long linked article; it's really goddamn good.

[wik] Oh hell. It looks like I'm not going to have the time today to post all the priceless pearls of wisdom I've got queued up, so I'll turn this jackass post into a minilinkfest instead.
English Cut: the blog of a Savile Road bespoke tailor.
Obsidian Wings plumb the depths of animal-sex fixated Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum's feckless corruption. Check it out: the National Weather Service must stop making their weather data public because it'd be yadda yadda yabba daaba yah fum fum boo bah. We should all use Accu-Weather instead. Guess where they're based?
Scott Kirwin calls for a revolution in education of boys: to wit, let them be boys!
If you haven't downloaded Firefox to use as your primary browser, why not? Where else can you download a tiny applet that will keep you constantly updated as to the mortal status of Abe Vigoda? (A tiny pane in my browser taskbar currently tells me he's "alive."

Part XXVII in the recurring series, “Periodic Bread-blogging With Johno!”

Most folks who know me know I love to bake. Get your mind out of the gravity bong; I mean bake bread. What only a few people know is the degree to which baking has become an obsession. For example, since January 1, I have spent about $200 on clothing, including a new pair of good hiking boots. In that same time, I have spent closer to $300 on baking supplies and related materials; classroom time, regular and specialty flours, specialty equipment, etc.

My wife recently had to talk me down from taking all my baking gear with us on vacation. I am now limited to the essentials: small vial of sourdough culture, digital scale, linen couche for rising baguettes, the Austrian brotforms for rising round loaves, the silicone baking mats, and the special curved razor for slashing loaves. Whereas my ostensible reason for baking at home is that the unit cost of home-baked bread is lower than that of store-bought bread not to mention that home-baked bread is simply always better, my actual reason is… well, never you mind that. Just know that I could stop if I wanted to. It’s just I don’t want to, okay?

At this point our small freezer is crammed to bursting with surplus product. I still have two or three loaves left over from last week’s wild yeast sourdough bake (It's ALIVE!), and there are now three loaves in there of bread made with strong ale and spent brewing grains. I believe there’s also a loaf of Alsatian walnut-onion bread somewhere deep in there; if not, I better get cracking.

Just this Saturday I was sitting at my local brewpub enjoying a fine cask ale and alternating my attention between the NFL draft and a mid-period Evelyn Waugh novel (the foregoing clause, I might add, has never before been written in the history of all mankind) when it occurred to me that, my being in a brewery, I might well be within spitting distance of literally tons of grains that the brewers have no need for. Sure enough, I asked my friendly brewer and was sent on my way with six pounds of spent barley and wheat fresh from the kettle, for free. (Six pounds, by the way, is enough for about fifteen loaves of bread, assuming that 6.4 oz of grains added to the mix equals about 20% by weight of the finished loaf. I don’t want to go much higher for fear that the yeast won’t be able to lift the grains and I would be baking a delicious brick.)

The next step is seeing how well spent brewing grains work in some of my favorite recipes. I make a white bread with wheat germ and a quick sponge starter that’s really great; I bet adding some texture and crunch will really bring that together. And my pain levain could really use a pick-me-up! Not to mention the aforementioned Alsatian walnut-onion bread, though for that recipe I’ll have to cut down the walnut oil so the texture is more chewy and less delicate, without destroying the character of the loaf. A-and, pancakes! Beer grain pancakes! Waffles? Waffles! Blintzes, bagels and bialys!

Why am I even at work today? I clearly have stuff to do!

[wik] A warning. If you’re in the market for a bread machine, you can do better than the Zojirushi X-20. Even though that particular model is way more versatile than most bread machines, in that it has a sourdough cycle for keeping starters warm, has customizable and programmable mix, rise, and bake cycles, and can bake cakes and meatloaf and stews, jam, and soups besides, well… let me put it this way: you’re gonna need your warranty. Repeatedly. And for what it costs to ship the damn thing to California, you could buy a new Black & Decker and have enough left over for a latte. End of rant.

It's Not Easy Living On Dork Street.

(Wha? See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

Loyal Reader #0017, EDog, lives in a really messed up place.

Uegene Safken says one of his chickens in his young flock had gotten into a tub of water in the yard last week and appeared to have died. Safken said he swung the chicken by the feet in his attempt to revive it and when that failed, continued swinging and blowing into its beak. "Then one eye opened. I thought it was an involuntary response," Safken said. The chicken's beak opened a little wider and Safken started yelling at it: "You're too young to die!

That's priceless. Imagine the tableau. The barnyard. The milling fowl. The one little yellow puff floating in a tub. The farmer, walking by on his way to feed the hogs, sees the tiny dot of yellow bobbing in the brackish pool and freezes, stricken. He drops his hoe. He gawps. With a yell he sprints with loose limbs toward the unfortunate chick. He lifts it gingerly from the water and begins SHAKING IT BY THE FEET SHOUTING "LIVE, DAMN YOU, LIVE!!!"

Jeezus. What's more, Colorado seems to have a thing for post-tragedian chickens. From the same story comes this heartwarming and gutwrenching tale of headless love:

About 50 miles west of Collbran, residents in Fruita each year celebrate the life of Mike the Headless Chicken, who survived a beheading in 1945. Afterward, Mike could go through the motions of pecking for food, and when he tried to crow, a gurgle came out. His owner put feed and water directly into Mike's gullet with an eyedropper.

University of Utah scientists examined the chicken and theorized Mike had enough of a brain stem left to live headless.

He was a popular attraction until he choked to death on a corn kernel in an Arizona motel.

It's so sad when an artist goes like that, sad and nearly forgotten, hanging onto the tattered shreds of a once-great career. Alone in a dingy motel room, killed by his own success and a wayward kernel of Kansas' best.

Hats off to you, brave chickens!

How many black rock musicians can you name? Although rock and roll and all the genres that it begat were undoubtedly invented by black musicians (As Little Richard observed, "Rock & Roll is R&B uptempo! It’s R&B uptempo!!"), you can count the legendary black artists of rock music on one hand. Once you get out of the early days, when Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and converted soul men like Chubby Checker had hit after hit after hit, the pickings do get pretty thin as far as straight rock music is concerned. Jimi Hendrix is the exception that proves the rule. Remember: when Jimi first came up, he was marketed in Britain as a curiosity - the African Mau-Mau Guitar Man Straight From Darkest Africa With The Wildest Show On Earth! – not as a musician. Part of his enduring legend in the US is that he had the biggest penis the Plaster Casters ever saw. My thinly argued and tissue-thin thesis: no matter who invented rock music, rock music grew up anything but well-adjusted about race. If you disagree, perhaps you could tell me why nobody ever mythologizes about the size of Jim Morrison’s schlong.

Moreover, since Hendrix, black musicians in rock have remained so rare as to nearly be individually nameable. Is this a problem? Is it an issue? If so, does it result from latent prejudice or racism in the recording industry and American public, and can it be addressed? Or is it just one of those… things?

I only raise the question because Living Colour did first, and it got me to thinking. From their name down to their lyrics, Living Colour were a self-consciously political group, walking refutations of the notion that black musicians don’t (can’t?) play rock. (Whether this a notion in need of refutation in the first place was settled to the affirmative by Funkadelic. Look it up.) Their career was about racism in rock and outside, social justice, and addressing the inequities the group perceived in the mostly-white rock world and the world at large.

To aid in this, Living Colour members Vernon Reid and Will Calhoun started a group called the Black Rock Coalition, aiming to promote the careers of themselves and other black musicians working in rock through grassroots action. Unfortunately, the broader aims of both Living Colour and the BRC are mostly notable for their lack of enduring successes (Living Colour broke up after three albums and other members of the BRC never really broke big), and the brevity of the band’s career make it easy to forget how amazingly good they were. In the wake of Living Colour's recent reunion, Columbia Legacy has released from their vaults the live Living Colour Live at CBGB 1989 This is a good excuse to talk about what made them great, and to ask whether they were effective in getting their points across. (You can’t separate Living Colour’s politics from their music any more than you could with Phil Ochs, Fela Kuti, or Bruce Springsteen.)

The show captured on Live at CBGB was a sort of homecoming for the band. Their debut album, Vivid, had sold very well, they had had radio hits, and they were coming off an opening slot for the Rolling Stones. CBGB was where the band got their start, and they considered the legendary Bowery hellhole their home. Thanks to this, the group is captured here at their loosest and most relaxed. (When I saw them a few years later touring behind their third album, Stain, there was a minimum of stage patter and although they rocked savagely they weren’t really that much fun. The band broke up not long after.)

Living Colour were always bold, musically speaking. Guitarist Vernon Reid was a veteran of various free- and post-jazz units, and drummer Will Calhoun was a Berklee-trained musician with a penchant for furious swinging. With singer Corey Glover, whose pipes were among the best rock has seen, and bassist Muzz Skillings, the group could seemingly do anything – rock, metal, punk, jazz, funk, whatever. This boldness was on full display the night they recorded Live at CBGB. The band start off the night with their signature "Cult of Personality," and immediately follow it up with seven brand-new songs, including a cover of Bad Brains’ “Sailin’ On.” Who does that, play seven songs in a row the audience hasn’t heard?

Aside from a couple unreleased numbers that aren’t very strong (“Little Lies” and a by-the-numbers shuffle, “Soldier’s Blues”), Living Colour tear through their set with incredible energy and skill. The opening run-through of “Cult of Personality” sets the tone. Although not all that different from the (perfect) album version, Reid, Skillings and especially Calhoun stretch, compress, and flip the groove around at will, switching from double-time to wrongfooted half-time at the drop of a hat. Zappa fans will recognize this level of musicianship. Throughout, Vernon Reid unfurls jaw-dropping guitar lines at the drop of a hat and the Calhoun-Wimbish rhythm section create chewy, thick, heavy grooves that allow Reid and Corey Glover to orbit Saturn if they so desire.

Although the performance on disc is white hot, the band’s political side was at center stage that night. After all, Living Colour made message music. Even though it’s hard to name more than a couple Living Colour songs that aren’t explicity political to begin with, the set list from Live at CBGB trends heavily toward the militant, the angry, and the cutting. High points include “Pride,” Love Rears Up Its Ugly Head” and “Someone Like You” from their then--unrecorded second album Time’s Up,and “Cult of Personality,” “Funny Vibe” and a gorgeously deconstructed “Open Letter To A Landlord” from Vivid. Recurring themes of black pride, support for community structures, opposition to gentrification, and a preoccupation with The Man run through most of the songs here.

I’ve always been a fan of Living Colour, but having all their politics concentrated here in one place leaves a bad taste. How many songs about The Man can you stomach from a band whose operating principles amount to a bold “screw you; we’ll do it ourselves?” The group aspired to make complex arguments about ownership of history, the power structures hidden in society, and the need for intelligent and constructive resistance. However, as with a lot of political music, those arguments often turned into slogans.

This tendency is especially disappointing when the band often manage to actually make it work. Songs like “Middle Man” and “Funny Vibe,” not to mention “Cult of Personality” and the later “Auslander” cut deep. But others just don’t make it. The chorus to “Pride,” for example, goes

History’s a lie that they teach you in school / a fraudulent view of the golden rule / a peaceful land that was born civilized / was robbed of its riches, its freedom, its pride.

Whether Corey Glover is singing about Africa or the Americas, there’s a hard kernel of truth in there, but what is to be gained by harking back to a non-existent golden era of world peace and civilization? That’s not what happened either. I will grant that “I know what to do with someone like you” (from the song “Someone Like You”) sings better than “Police power must meet the needs of the community being policed, rather than acting as a paramilitary group exerting external force on that community; the latter is a recipe for riots, distrust, shot cops, and social breakdown, and that was my brother you shot last night” but the vague polemics in Living Colour’s lyrics too often undermine their very intentions – especially unfortunate when their targets were so big and important and their explicit agenda was so clear.

I realize I am setting myself up for attack on a number of fronts: he’s a racist; he’s a jerk; he’s willfully obtuse. I’m only picking on Living Colour because I like them so much. For all the endless rivers of words printed about the revolutionary potential of rock and roll, as an actual tool of revolution it’s pretty piss poor. With a few notable exceptions, like Neil Young’s heat-of-the-moment “Ohio,” rock does better when it’s accidentally political. (Take, for instance, the Beatles’ popularity in pre-Glasnost Russia, or Vaclav Havel’s idolization of The Mothers of Invention’s first few records in the dark days of the Iron Curtain). The Clash might rock like all hell, but their politics were pat and a pose besides. Rage Against The Machine suffer even worse if you look closely at their lyrics; do Americans really need guerilla radio? Or to rally ‘round the family with a pocket fulla shells? Getting teenagers to yell “&*#! you, I won’t do what you told me” is easy like falling off a log. And don’t get me started on Public Enemy or the Dead Kennedys.

But you know what? Forget all that. Living Colour’s performance on Live at CBGB will tear the head clean off your body. It’s hard rock, very good hard rock, and the lyrics are several orders of magnitude more thoughtful than Rage’s or Public Enemy’s, even if they don’t always make the grade as well-argued theses of dissent. Take my advice and check this disc out.

....my guitar wants to burn your dad. But this time it's not a funny Zappa song. It's for real. Yeesh. (Thanks to Michelle, the best Yankee fan I know, for the tip.)

(I really gotta take off the skirt (ahorribly sexist phrase, that (I shouldn't be such a pussy about being P.C. (do two wrongs make a right?)) and get back on the regular posting thing. New stories of robot terror appear every day, and here I am with my brain wired into the Perfidious Brainwave Magnifier trying to fight back a cruel and oppressinve assault on the Perfidy Compound by the forces of pushin-paper. Soon, soon.)

In the meantime, I would just like to thank my competitors in the Great Ministry "Who's The Biggest Dork" contest for being so well-adjusted and normal, allowing me to reign victorious as the biggest dork on the Ministry roster. And to think! I didn't even have to share my belching contest stories! Or mention the phrase "kinky sex with a mushroom!" Anybody want to try to take me again? I got more photos, like the one of me from Marching Band.

Or perhaps I should just be done with that.

Thought for the day: Greil Marcus, an infuriatingly pompous music writer who I would drive any distance to hunt and kill if only he weren't so goddamn right all the time, has a piece in an old issue of Granta in which he observes that sometimes you have to be ready to hear a song; much like born-again Christians maintain that the time has to be right for the Spirit to move you, the same goes for songs. One day it's just an album cut you didn't think much of; you've heard it a thousand times without giving a second thought, and surface is all that's there for you. And then the next day the same song comes by, the clouds part, an invisible choir sings, some alcoholic songwriter in Birmingham who died of liver failure in 1934 opens a hole in time and space and pours his heart into yours, and you're changed a little forever after.

Discuss.

The people have spoken. By a vote of eight to three, Johno was voted winner of the game, match and tournament. Johno is the Lord High King of the Dorks, and all should avert their eyes from his painful awkwardness.

Johno should be given special credit, as he defeated two fresh opponents in his path to victory. (Frankly, he deserves this victory, as if I had had to go up against Ross, I would have had nothing - nothing - to use against Johno.) I would also like to extend a personal, huge, thank you to Johno for making me feel so much better about myself. I never spent $500 on magic cards while on an exciting European adventure.

Thanks also to everyone who shared our pain and voted in our pathetic little contest. Except for those of you who shared your own dork stories, you get anti-dork points for laughing at the dorks.

While this has been fun in an odd and vaguely cathartic way, I don't think we'll ever do this again.

I'm way behind on my book reports. I am supposed to read fifty books in 2005 and blog about each one. So far, perceptive readers will note that I'm up to book number three, which means I will finish my fiftieth book sometime in 2009. In truth, that number is actually somewhat misleading; I've read more like twenty books so far thanks to that whole being sick and housebound for two months thing I did earlier this year. I just haven't had the time or desire to write about them.

But that's too bad. Back when I did construction, we had a phrase for people who were pissing and moaning around and not keeping up their end: "wearing the skirt." As in, "Hey Johno, take off the skirt and get on the goddamn ladder! We gotta get this done!" And so.

The Fitty Book Challenge, Book 4 and Book 5

George Plimpton: Open Net
George Plimpton: Paper Lion

When Hunter Thompson died, the obits mourned the passing of the Great Gonzo Journalist dedicated to translating the brainstem to the page. When George Plimpton died last year, the obits mourned the passing of a Great Man of Letters and Patron of Literatoor. But they didn’t make too much of Plimpton’s own contributions to the cause of experiential journalism, contributions that have doubtless been more widely read than Thompson ever was.

Earlier this year when I was in my second month of The Great Unexplained Sickness Event of 2005 I decided to get a couple George Plimpton books out in the hopes that his gentle wit and avuncular, intelligent writing would be as a balm to my tortured suffering self. Since the hockey season was nixed, I chose “Open Net,” in which Plimpton spends a few months training to be a goalie with the Boston Bruins. And since I like football, I picked up “Paper Lion,” in which Plimpton trained as a backup quarterback for the Detroit Lions.

Damn. I always knew that George Plimpton could write, but I never really grasped the level of his craft. Both these books were so-called “observational journalism,” and his aim in each case was to approach the sports as a fan and as a novice, trying to give other fans a vivid sense of what it’s like. But Plimpton is a master both of the tossed-off observation and the closely analyzed situation, both a top-notch journalist and a novelist at once.

Early in “Paper Lion” there’s a bit where Plimpton is reporting to training camp for the Lions at a small private boy’s school in upstate Michigan. In a few deft lines, Plimpton sets the soporific scene, with buzzing flies, whirring lawn mowers and empty classrooms smelling of varnish, heat, and chalk. The faculty secretary is identified by her hornrims and efficient manner; a group of Catholic priests on campus for a convention stroll in cossack and collar. That’s all we get of the priests at that point, but from time to time they come up in an aside and immediately we think of a pair of friars walking and counting angels looking startled as a gawky Yankee (or a group of drunken linebackers) stumbles into their path.

When Plimpton finally gets into a scrimmage, that same economy takes you from “Blue eight right, Hut, Hut, HUT!” to “OOOOOOOF” in a few words perfectly chosen to convey the impact of nine 250-lb gentlemen trying to kill you with their hands at high speed. That he spends hundreds of pages talking about drills, scrimmages, the sacredness of the playbook, team sociology and the risk of injuries sets all this up so he can execute the play and his paragraph in no time flat.

I consider myself a good writer; some other people experiencing lapses in taste have also said so. But next to Plimpton’s eye for detail and way with a good story, I’m a four-year-old with a whiffle bat pretending to be Barry Bonds. One running theme in “Empty Net” is the smells of hockey, especially the locker rooms. Since he is playing with used equipment, there’s a sort of funk on his pads that he comes to accept as part of the world of hockey. He sometimes gets a whiff of the funk from his closet even months after he has quit the team. Finally, long after his hilariously unsuccessful stint as goalie for the Bruins, Plimpton is talking with one of the Bruins about his equipment-funk. He is wistfully reminiscing about how the smell was part of his experience and how he still imagines he smells it when his companion breaks out laughing. As it turns out, the team pranksters doused Plimpton’s pads with a gag item called “U-Stink” before he got to camp, and he had been walking around in a cloud of funk the entire time, his literary mind thinking now this is the real deal! when in reality he just smelled bad. Plimpton stretches the setup for this punchline out over 200 pages perfectly; we’re right there with him getting misty over mildewing locker rooms and the smell of foot rot when BAM! and suddenly it’s funny.

Of course, “Open Net” and “Paper Lion” are sort of the same story twice. The main difference is of course that hockey players are by nature different from football players, and your enjoyment of each book will be dictated in part by how much you care about kids in northern Alberta. Then again, the same thing could be said about Hunter Thompson. Either you are willing to accept that Ibogaine is a metaphor and read on, or you aren’t. Either you are willing to read a witty and urbane middle-aged man trying to block a slapshot or complete a naked bootleg or you are not. I think my days of wishing I could decamp for Las Vegas with a convertible and a Samoan attorney are past but I’m fairly certain I will never get over wanting to learn to hit a Randy Johnson curveball.

I, The Shotgun of Compassion, do politely exhort all and sundry to read the first communication from the group calling itself Unitarian Jihad. If you don't want to, that's all right too. It's also fine if you read it and think we're full of beans; we accept and celebrate your right to disagree with us. You're probably still a good person. We can talk about that if you like.

Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States. We are Unitarian Jihad. There is only God, unless there is more than one God. The vote of our God subcommittee is 10-8 in favor of one God, with two abstentions. Brother Flaming Sword of Moderation noted the possibility of there being no God at all, and his objection was noted with love by the secretary.

Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States! Too long has your attention been waylaid by the bright baubles of extremist thought. Too long have fundamentalist yahoos of all religions (except Buddhism -- 14-5 vote, no abstentions, fundamentalism subcommittee) made your head hurt. Too long have you been buffeted by angry people who think that God talks to them. You have a right to your moderation! You have the power to be calm! We will use the IED of truth to explode the SUV of dogmatic expression!

People of the United States, why is everyone yelling at you??? Whatever happened to ... you know, everything? Why is the news dominated by nutballs saying that the Ten Commandments have to be tattooed inside the eyelids of every American, or that Allah has told them to kill Americans in order to rid the world of Satan, or that Yahweh has instructed them to go live wherever they feel like, or that Shiva thinks bombing mosques is a great idea? Sister Immaculate Dagger of Peace notes for the record that we mean no disrespect to Jews, Muslims, Christians or Hindus. Referred back to the committee of the whole for further discussion.

We are Unitarian Jihad. We are everywhere. We have not been born again, nor have we sworn a blood oath. We do not think that God cares what we read, what we eat or whom we sleep with. Brother Neutron Bomb of Serenity notes for the record that he does not have a moral code but is nevertheless a good person, and Unexalted Leader Garrote of Forgiveness stipulates that Brother Neutron Bomb of Serenity is a good person, and this is to be reflected in the minutes.

Beware! Unless you people shut up and begin acting like grown-ups with brains enough to understand the difference between political belief and personal faith, the Unitarian Jihad will begin a series of terrorist-like actions. We will take over television studios, kidnap so-called commentators and broadcast calm, well-reasoned discussions of the issues of the day. We will not try for "balance" by hiring fruitcakes; we will try for balance by hiring non-ideologues who have carefully thought through the issues.

Me, I love a Jihad that doesn't even care if I believe in God. Or Gods, if the notion of one God offends you. Or should that be god with a small "g?" Well, take it how you want it (or not at all).

If you too wish to participate (or not!!), you can get your own Unitarian Jihad name (or not!!) here. Trans/post-gendered individuals are of course welcome, and if you don't like your name you may of course appeal to committee. We respect your difference of opinion.

WHAT'S OUR NAME?!
*Unitarian Jihad!*
AND WHAT DO WE WANT?!?
*Reasonably nuanaced moderation and frank and open discussion of means, ends, and philosophies!*
AND WHEN DO WE WANT IT!?!?!?
*Erm...any time is fine, we suppose!*

(A genial and open-minded tip of the hat to Wizbang.)

Loyal reader EDog sent me this absolutely riotous link to a page of bunny suicides. Other Loyal Reader NDR would do well to perform a gut-check before clicking; though whimsical and hand-drawn, the suicides are depicted in grisly detail that bunny lovers may or may not vibe with.

Dave at Garfield Ridge links to an internet classic that I had somehow missed: the Evil Overlord To-Do-List.

My personal favorites:

4. Shooting is not too good for my enemies.
12. One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.
29. I will dress in bright and cheery colors, and so throw my enemies into confusion.
53. If the beautiful princess that I capture says "I'll never marry you! Never, do you hear me, NEVER!!!", I will say "Oh well" and kill her.

As a technical writer by trade, I cannot help but appreciate this one:

57. Before employing any captured artifacts or machinery, I will carefully read the owner's manual.

While we're on the subject of internet classics, one of the best is the 213 things Skippy is no longer allowed to do in the US Army. There are also some other submissions by skippy's fans here. A sample of Skippy's list:

7. Not allowed to add “In accordance with the prophesy” to the end of answers I give to a question an officer asks me.
35. Not allowed to sing “High Speed Dirt” by Megadeth during airborne operations. (“See the earth below/Soon to make a crater/Blue sky, black death, I'm off to meet my maker”)
54. “Napalm sticks to kids” is *not* a motivational phrase.
58. The following words and phrases may not be used in a cadence- Budding sexuality, necrophilia, I hate everyone in this formation and wish they were dead, sexual lubrication, black earth mother, all Marines are latent homosexuals, Tantric yoga, Gotterdammerung, Korean hooker, Eskimo Nell, we've all got jackboots now, slut puppy, or any references to squid.
60. “The Giant Space Ants” are not at the top of my chain of command.
66. There is no “Anti-Mime” campaign in Bosnia.
83. Must not start any SITREP (Situation Report) with "I recently had an experience I just had to write you about...."
84. Must not use military vehicles to “Squish” things.
137. Should not show up at the front gate wearing part of a Russian uniform, messily drunk.
138. Even if my commander did it.
167. Not allowed to operate a business out of the barracks.
168. Especially not a pornographic movie studio.
169. Not even if they *are* “especially patriotic films”
177. I am not to refer to a formation as “the boxy rectangle thingie”.
181. Pokémon® trainer is not an MOS.
191. Our Humvees cannot be assembled into a giant battle-robot.
202. Despite the confusing similarity in the names, the "Safety Dance" and the "Safety Briefing" are never to be combined.

Pedro Martinez has told the Boston Herald that the Red Sox can keep his ring. His World Series ring, that is, the one that he helped us win. According to Pedro,

"I can live with the business part of it, not being able to afford me, or thinking I'm not that good, but I cannot understand the part where you mistreat my name, or mistreat what I did for the city of Boston because they have to build another image of me....

Oh, boo hoo you whiny little bitch. What part hurt worse? The adulation, or the idolatry? I dunno... was it being the sworn hero of Massachusetts' (surprisingly large and vibrant) Dominican population that got to you? Was it having a ballpark sell out every single start you made, rain or shine? Was it an entire region hanging breathless on every cut fastball as you set up and knocked down the best batters in the game? Was it an entire region's outcry at Grady Little -- not you -- Grady Little, when he kept you in too long? You're a little guy, you get tired. We get that. Or was it waking up one morning a World Series winner, checking your pants, and finding that despite doing everything you could, you still don't crap gold nuggets?

Or was it finding out that business is business? Je-sus. For a dude who has no problem throwing a 95-mph fastball at huge dudes' heads, he sure is a Polly Pissypants. New York can have his prima donna act.

[wik] The original Herald article (rather than the Post excerpt linked above) makes it more clear that Pedro was being baited into badmouthing Boston, and that much of his ire is reserved for the Boston sports press. That's fair; they suck. But Pedro doesn't stop there, and lets himself get goaded into saying how much the fans suck too. Not cool, dude. Not cool like jheri-curl is not cool.

And so it comes to an end. Weeks of bloody and humiliating combat culminating in this, the final round. Much like actual war, this has been a painful and harrowing experience, fought for dubious purposes and to uncertain ends. Unlike actual war, no one gets killed and bystanders are rarely bombed. But like war, it is not without moments surreal and grim humor.

The true dork nature has many aspects. Ineptness, lack of social graces, monomania, unjustified arrogance, obsessive pursuit of minutia, vainglory, well-timed bad luck, and fear are the names we give them. No dorkish pursuit affords so many opportunities to indulge in so many of these facets of the dork nature as role playing games. And so I return to the rpg for the final round with two soul-searing tales of role playing madness.

[See the earlier rounds here and here. ]

Blackballed by God

Those who have been following this competition closely will remember my nemesis the fundamentalist Bill. This is the story of why he was my nemesis.

In the dark days at the end of the Carter administration, I was a young boy of eleven years. I had finished with cub scouts and webelos, and had moved on to the big leagues, the Boy Scouts. I went on camp outs, learned to make fire by rubbing matches together, and observed some of the older scouts playing a mysterious game late at night. That game was Dungeons and Dragons. My dork mind was afire with the concept. You could be a wizard, or knight, or elf! How fricken’ cool is that? Of course, I was as low on the dork feeding chain as you can be and still live. I didn’t know how to play the game, had no one to play it with, and didn’t even have the rule books. I burned to play. I found out that my best friend in the whole world, Jeff, (now a rocket scientist at NASA) had a rule book. And was playing with some other kids – some I knew, some I didn’t.

Jeff was a peculiar kid – and kept his friends strictly sorted by venue. There were church friends, school friends, camp friends and as far as he was concerned, there was no need for friends in one set to even know of the existence of the others. As we moved toward junior high, this segregation began to break down. I met Rance in art class in the seventh grade, and we were shocked to discover that we had both known Jeff since we were three – but had never heard of each other since we went to different elementary schools. Similarly, I met my future nemesis for the first time in Boy Scouts. Future Fundamentalist Asshole Bill was a long time friend of Jeff (FoJ) from church – and the troop I had joined was sponsored by Bill and Jeff’s Methodist church. (I was there because it met on my mom’s night off.)

Despite the fact that our group of friends was growing tighter as we all met in the great melting pot of Medina Junior High, and despite the fact that we were all interested in this magical game, somehow I remained on the outside. I never found out about when they were playing until afterwards. My inquiries received vague and increasingly strained excuses and evasions.

So, I convinced my mom to buy me the rule books. I studied them. Well, damn near memorized them. I made characters. Designed worlds. But I was excluded from the only game I new of. I would occasionally catch them talking about their campaign, and there’d be an embarrassed silence when they noticed me.

What I didn’t know, and wouldn’t know until my Junior year, was that Bill was plotting against me in secret. Whenever someone brought up the subject of my joining the game, Bill would blackball me. He’d say that I wasn’t right for the game, that I’d mess it up, or any number of excuses. And the rest would went along, since Bill seemed so committed to the idea of keeping me out.

Meanwhile, to my face, Bill was he soul of amity and comradeship. While I trusted him, asked him to speak for me so that I could gain entry to the forbidden garden, he jealously kept me out because he believed I was a dire threat to his friendship with Jeff. For two years while we went on campouts, school activities and even when he invited me over to his house, he kept me out of the game.

In my dorkish lack of insight into interpersonal relationships, I was blind to what was happening right in front of my nose. I was rejected even by my friends from the one thing in the world that I most wanted.

Ten-Second Ted

Years later, I had eventually worn down the resistance of the others, and was admitted to the game. We gathered in Jeff’s basement and geeked out on Mountain Dew, Cheetos and D&D. There was one other group of D&D players at our school, people we knew and liked. Some of them were even in our boy scout troop, but somehow we never played D&D together. One member of the other group decided that time had come for a D&D tournament, to decide who was the best of the best.

This tournament was simple in outline. Every player would receive a large amount of gold pieces and experience points with which to create and equip their entry. Let your imagination run wild, subject only to the basic rules of character creation. Also, every player would get several random magical items – and if you received something that was completely unusable by your character due to your choice of character class, you could roll again for a different magical item. Everyone was to contribute ten dollars for the winner-take-all prize.

I labored for almost a month preparing for the tournament. I considered and discarded hundreds of different ways of spending those experience points. Fighter/Mage? Assassin/Illusionist? Straight-up Paladin? Druid? Elf, Dwarf or Hobbit? I ignored sleep, schoolwork and meals as I pored over the manuals looking for the perfect combination, and for loopholes to exploit. I pondered what equipment to take. I added and crossed off items from my panoply, honing and perfecting the list. Can’t take too much, or you’ll be too slow. Do I get a pack horse? Hirelings? What kind of armor, what weapons to take? Will I need rations?

Finally, I settled on a stealth approach. A human illusionist-assassin. A couple levels of Illusionist for some useful concealing spells, and all the rest on assassin – because a simple dice roll can kill even the most powerful character, and if I botched it, my stealthiness would allow me to beat a quick retreat. Sneakiness was to be the order of the day.

Once everyone had created their entry, and tossed ten dollars into the pot, we were ready to go. Everyone materialized in a giant hall. I had my plan of action set – immediately run for the nearest exit and begin my hunt. We rolled for initiative, and I would be going third! Excellent! Maybe I could even get in a hit before I split.

The Steve N. went first. He disappeared. Ah! somebody thinking like me – I’ll have to be wary of him. Then Thad was up. A donkey over toward the side of the hall sprouted a five foot long rod on its back. From the rod’s tip shot immense balls of magical fire. Lots of them, right into the center of the rest of us. The DM, Brian, called out, “everyone save vs. magic.” I missed my roll. I was hit by three different fireballs. I took seventy points of damage. I was crispy before I could even move.

Ten seconds into the tournament and months of labor was wasted, along with my ten bucks. An Illusionist/Assassin has about the lowest average hit points (ability to take damage) of any possible character class except for a pure mage. And I hadn’t rolled well. The only ones who survived that initial holocaust were a couple fighters and one cleric. Who were all killed the next round by the invisible mage behind the donkey. Who was eventually killed by the Assassin who disappeared. The final battle apparently took seven hours, but I was long gone by then, having left with my tail between my legs shortly after having been carbonized.

[wik]

Buckethead has spoken; Johno must now rebut. The war of ages careens toward its grim end. This is our Pelennor Fields, our forest moon of Endor. Our Aigincourt, our Yorktown, our Flanders, our Carthage, our Waterloo.

Two dorks dug into their metaphorical trenches. Two dorks, exhausted, dirty, and suffering from encroaching swamp-ass. Enervated, disheartened, and completely out of ammo they hunker in the rain, scrabbling in the mud for sharp rocks to hurl at the enemy in lieu of the lethal measures that so far failed to strike true. Everyone else went home for supper long since; they remain, though whether out of dedication, petulance, or sheer bloody-mindedness it is hard to tell. Two dorks, hands red and chapped from slap-fighting and bleeding from innumerable paper cuts (those rule books, you know!), panting toward the finish.

Hopefully I will finish my final tale of dorkdom sometime early tomorrow morning for you to enjoy. In the meantime, I will repeat here what I told Buckethead at the end of last round: "Bring that weak shit again and I will beat you so hard you'll be crapping twenty-sided dice for a week."

Stay tuned to see if my threat of dodecahedral excrementia comes to pass.

Pass. Get it? "Pass?"

[alsø wik] Having used all my good gaming ammo on prior rounds, I am left with nothing in that genre except dull and pathetic little vignettes which would gain me nothing to tell here. Buckethead has agreed that I don't have to parry with gaming stories, and to be perfectly honest I have already shared my best dork-in-groups stories (viz. Penguin Patrol and Space Camp, and I suppose my Magical Mystery Tour of England would qualify). The Space Camp story was my nuclear option; I needed it just to stay alive to get this far, having also used up a lot of ammo putting GeekLethal down. So, in a final attempt to "win" this competetion, I need to fechez le vache, load up the catapult with whatever will fit, and fling it in the direction of my elderberrically paternoscented opponent.

Buckethead wrote,

The true dork nature has many aspects. Ineptness, lack of social graces, monomania, unjustified arrogance, obsessive pursuit of minutia, vainglory, well-timed bad luck, and fear are the names we give them.

In this, he is dead right. However, he is wrong that role playing games in and of themselves are where dorkiness achieves its apex. I would argue that truly dorky behavior - ur-dorkiness - is carried out in public, outside of the circle of your dork friends, as a result of striving for greatness and failing thanks to the staggering limitations you didn't even know you had. With that counter-argument in mind, I offer the following.

If You Want To See Me Pull It Out, Just Wear Your Cub Scout Suit With The Butt Cut Out (with apologies to Mr. Chuck E. Weiss)

I wasn't always the snazzy dresser I am now. Today, for example, I'm sporting charcoal grey Italian wool slacks with a richly colored red shirt and a dark tie with red and grey stripes (and blue and bronze and black and brown) that is juuust this side of ugly. My hoofs sport Italian leather monkstraps. It might sound fey and overdone on the page, but people, I gotta tell you... I look good today. Not GQ good (too broke for that!), but good. I've come far.

For years - in fact until I was well into my twenties, I dressed like a colorblind retard. This in itself is not so remarkable, and many potential voters will already be scrolling to the end to cast their votes for Buckethead. Not so fast. What makes this saga dork-tragic is the inordinate pride I took in trying very hard to dress in a clever, cool, and generally awesome way for much longer than common sense and abundant evidence to the contrary would suggest - all the way through college, in fact.

In a previous round, I alluded to some of the various wardrobian missteps that mar my personal past. In and of themselves, they are not so bad. Plenty of people have agonized over what to wear only to make bad decisions. But I remind you of these incidents here to set the table for a rich tale or two about managing to publicly, even enthusiastically make a big dork of myself thanks to what I was wearing, once over a period of years.

Scene The First: Crass Times At Ridgemont High

The year: 1988. George Bush was challenging Michael Dukakis for the Presidency. Me, I was in the ninth grade and my nascent political views were shaped entirely by Time Magazine and Bloom County, both of which I read religiously. God, I loved Bloom County. I used to read Bloom County compilation books in the lunchroom and laugh out loud at the timely antics of Portnoy, Milo, Steve Dallas and that crazy, lovable lug Opus. Sometimes people would ask me what my problem was, at which time I shut up. Other times, they would ask me what was so funny, at which time I showed them a couple strips and then they shut up and went away.

At some point during Reagan's second term, I had obtained a t-shirt with a picture of the Bloom County character Bill The Cat, an American flag, and a slogan that read, "Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Bill The Cat!" I treasured this shirt dearly. By the time the '88 elections rolled around, it had seen better days. It was now a size or three too small, the fabric had worn thin (did my nipples show?), the graphic was starting to wear off, and since it was white my 30-year-old mind is sure that there must have been visible pit and food stains. Nevertheless, with this clever garment I was determined to make my wit and savvy known to all when Election Day rolled around.

On the appointed November day, I crammed my pudge into the prized shirt and set out for school. All day, I made a point of walking around with my chest out, saying to teachers and students, "Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Bill The Cat!," assuming that since most of the teachers and Seniors would be voting, this would go over as a trenchant yet wacky commentary on the ludicrousness of our modern American political system. To my great consternation, nobody seemed to think this was half as funny as I did, and I in fact got a lot of perplexed and irritated responses. Never one to let a good joke die young, I persisted. Toward the end of the day, I did the whole routine for my friend Kevin and, trying to stay cool about my incredible sense of topical humor, let it drop that, yeah, I'm wearing this shirt because it's election day and I think it's a riot. Don't blame me!I voted for Bill The Cat! Kevin gave me a... look... and changed the subject.

Later that afternoon I got home from school eager to spring my jollies on the easiest of audiences, my parents. I set it up by 'casually' asking my dad who he'd voted for. He paused, cocked his head, and said "John, the election's next week."

Scene The Second: "False Consciousness, Punk Mock, and the Semiotics of Green Tape: Johno's College Years, 1992-1996."

Lest you think the Bill The Cat incident was my nadir as fashion plate I hasten to assure you that my aggressive wrongheadedness continued on into college. Toward the end of high school I grew my hair into a mullet and shellacked the top down good with generous squirts of "The Dry Look" hairspray. It was only halfway through my freshman year at college that I came to understand that this hairstyle, which was de rigeur where I grew up, was considered in college an act of tonsorial gaucherie. Clearly, if I was to become a Kool Kollege Kat I was going to have to make some big changes.

I first compensated by clipping the back and growing all my hair out into a sort of helmet-mushroom-shag shape that became greasy about an hour after washing and which absorbed ambient static electricy at a furious clip.

I then made some changes in the way I dressed. Grunge was big then, and indie/skate punk was making a big resurgence on college campuses. Out went my treasured university sweatshirts, acid-washed jeans and white K-Swiss. In came very baggy jeans, gigantic t-shirts, several red plaid flannel shirts, a leather biker jacket, a pair of black 10-eyelet Doc Martens, and a baseball cap from the Alien Workshop skate company. The plastic size tab thingy at the back of the cap quickly broke: I repaired it with a few turns of green electrical tape. I insisted on always wearing the hat backwards in the theory that wearing caps the right way around brought the hick-ness latent in my facial structure right to the surface, so the whimsical accent of green tape was ever-present in the middle of my forehead.

All these efforts, plus a summer spent wrangling 300-lb railroad ties, combined with the midnight pizzas of the mythic "freshman fifteen," transformed my appearance from "pudgy high school dork" to "hulking punk rock fashion plate." My metamorphosis was complete! Goodbye small town, hello college cool! Dork no more! I was most pleased.

The cap became my especial friend after I tried to change my haircut again. A girl in my dorm had cut my hair at the end of my freshman year into a sort of skater-boy shag that made me look even younger than I was but was, it was generally agreed, pretty darned cute. That summer, I mentioned to a (former) friend of mine that my hair wanted cutting, and she volunteered to do it, assuring me that she had cut plenty of hair. Did I mention that this person was later revealed to be an actual for-real pathological liar? My first sign that things would not go well was when she made her first cut and said "oops." My sign that I should have heeded the first sign came when I felt the cold steel of scissors against my skin as she cut a line all the way across the back of my head down to the bare scalp. My stylist/liar paused, took a deep breath, and in a more definitive tone said again, "Oops."

Rather than do the smart thing and go to a professional to salvage what remained of my crop of hair, I chose to wear my Alien Workshop cap backwards every single day for one year. I didn't cut my hair once in the entire time. Meanwhile, I wore my updated cool wardrobe religiously, joined a punk band, wrote the music column for the school paper, and generally considered myself quite the Big Man On Campus In A Punk Rock And Certainly Cool As Hell Way. I was in my element! I was awesome! Look at this jacket! These boots! This hat! Punk Fucking Rock, Baby!

It was in my senior year that a new term was introduced into my vocabulary: "The Uniform." "The Uniform" came up one day when most of my clothes were dirty and I was late for class. I picked out some random items from the back of the closet, threw them on, put a hat over my dirty hair, and went out the door. Later, at lunch, someone commented to me that today was the first time in a while that they'd seen me wear the uniform. The what? "The Uniform. Jeans, red flannel, giant t-shirt, Docs, and that gross hat with the green tape on it. What you're wearing. Everyone always called that 'The Johno Uniform.' Why'd you used to do that, anyway?"

As the United States plumbs its collective auras and penumbras in search of the magic point where tactful yet topical humor intersects with a disgusting fascination for the filthy, someone has gone and cut right to the chase.

The craziest part? There's comments on that blog. Discussions. What the hell is wrong with people?

(I actually just had my auras plumbed last week by the way, and let me tell you! I'm walking taller, sleeping through the night, and - wouldn't you know it - my pants fit better! Make sure to have them warm the plumbing thingy first, is my advice.)

In a move likely to crush the grandest aspirations of PETA agents, vegan crystal-grippers, gun-banners, and hippies of every age and stripe, Ted Nugent is about to get $100,000 richer. That kinda scratch buys alot of arrows.

The long-time purveyor of red-meat rock-n-roll has had his day in court. In what I hope is not an April Fool's joke, A MI jury (and, I like to believe, Double Live Gonzo fans) found for the Nuge in a suit brought against promoters who, in essence, fired him for making racist remarks.

As the trial room emptied following the decision, Mr. Nugent was overheard to say, "Yank me, crank me" to the defendants.*

*Ted Nugent was not overheard to say, "Yank me, crank me" to the defendants.

These flying robots are great! What? More missiles? Fan-tastic!

[This message brought to you by the Ministry of Minor Perfidy Special Subcommittee on Traitors to Humanity]

NASA is going to start training astronauts in Labrador in preparation for a return to the moon. It seems that Labrador contains a lot of the common moon rock (and uncommon Earth rock) anorthosite. And nothing else.

My father in law was stationed in Labrador during Vietnam, an assignment which though blessedly short on black-pajamaed guerrillas bent on killing him, was also blessedly short on warm weather, sunlight, entertainment, or distractions of any kind. As he says: "In Labrador, there's a good looking woman behind every tree.... Trouble is, there ain't no trees in Labrador."

On her way to the hospital to have a baby, Debbie Coleman of Kettering, Ohio had to stop at a filling station to, um, deliver the child. She then sped toward the hospital to recieve whatever care she could at that late hour.

The Dayton police received a call about the incident and somehow concluded that "squirting forth her issue upon this earth" meant "she stole a van." Later, a driver called 911 to report a woman trying to throw a baby out a van window. The Dayton police, seeing "commendation" and "this gonna be on COPS" written all over the incident, made sure to have their guns drawn when they pulled Coleman over.

Then everyone had a laugh over the misunderstanding and the cops went back to their cars and escorted her to the hospital while the credits rolled and the theme played. You can't make this shit up. Ohio: I love you.

Hat tip to Edog, who also notes the sad passing of comedian/junkie Mitch Hedberg.

I got an ant farm. Them fellas didn't grow shit.

Last week I helped my friend stay put. It's a lot easier than helping someone move. I just went over to his house and made sure that he did not start to load shit into a truck.

I got my hair highlighted, because I felt some strands were more important than others.

I had a stick of Carefree gum, but it didn't work. I felt pretty good while I was blowing that bubble, but as soon as the gum lost its flavor, I was back to pondering my mortality.

I want to be a race car passenger: just a guy who bugs the driver. "Say man, can I turn on the radio? You should slow down. Why do we gotta keep going in circles? Can I put my feet out the window? Boy, you really like Tide."

I got in an argument with a girlfriend inside of a tent. That's a bad place for an argument, because I tried to walk out, and had to slam the flap.

I type a 101 words a minute. But it's in my own language.

I don't have a girlfriend. But I do know a woman who'd be mad at me for saying that.

I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.

I was walking down the street with my friend and he said "I hear music." As if there's any other way to take it in.

At my hotel room, my friend came over and asked to use the phone. I said "Certainly." He said "Do I need to dial 9?" I say "Yeah. Especially if it's in the number. You can try four and five back to back real quick."

My lucky number is four billion. That doesn't come in real handy when you're gambling. "Come on, four billion! Fuck. Seven. I need more dice."

I love blackjack. But I'm not addicted to gambling. I'm addicted to sitting in a semi circle.

I don't own a cell phone or a pager. I just hang around everyone I know, all the time.

I used to do drugs. I still do drugs. But I used to, too.

The thing about tennis is: no matter how much I play, I'll never be as good as a wall. I played a wall once. They're fucking relentless.

I would imagine if you could understand Morse Code, a tap dancer would drive you crazy.

I went to the park and saw this kid flying a kite. The kid was really excited. I don't know why, that's what they're supposed to do. Now if he had had a chair on the other end of that string, I would have been impressed.

I'm not talking about Terri Schiavo, nor am I talking about the Pope (who, being Polish and therefore tougher than leather probably has a good twenty years left in him no matter how grim things seem now). I'm talking about the passing of sometime Ministry commentor Patton of Opinion8.net from blogging. Disgusted by the dorky slap-fights generated by the Schiavo affair (about which he posted in typically thoughtful manner), he's done.

But like Mr. Lileks, I've grown weary of it. Always one to check the pulse of his audience and act on it, Ace (also linked to your right) created "The Flame War Thread". The purely made-up invective slung about on that thread was cathartic enough (though I didn't participate) to distract me from the sinking feeling that, for some time to come, commentary on the internet is going to be dominated by precisely the form of crap of which Lileks despairs.

I'm with Lileks. Watching otherwise agreeable folks arguing as though they know the answer to an utterly unanswerable question has convinced me that it's not worth waiting for the invective to quit flowing. A bunch of folks whom I thought could rationally discuss their way to agreement, or at least to a polite consensus on how to avoid unpleasantness, have proven to me that my judgment was flawed. Too many folks, though thankfully still a minority, are taking this "new medium" thing way too seriously, becoming pompous and pronunciatory, and seem actually to believe their own shit.

While Lileks will be back sometime later in April, I won't, other than as a reader of the excellent sites listed to the right. Mr. Lileks' piece triggered the realization for me: I just don't care to add to the chum already in the water. I've never had pretense to knowing it all. Damned if that doesn't put me out of place in the slice of the 'sphere I've been hanging around. Some other day, in some different forum, about different subject matter, perhaps, but no more for me in this one. The internet will soldier on just fine, even absent my sporadic commentary, just as the creators intended.

Many thanks to those of you who've been kind enough to read, comment, and link.

I hope he decides at some point in the future to return. He doesn't write much, but he writes so well. Good luck to ya, you Ohiotexan jerkwad.

With affection,
The Ministry