perfidy

From Michelle, I discover that Lawrence Simon's brief career as a illegal Mexican narcoterrorist gunrunner is over, thanks to the dilligent and effective police work of the ATF and the Houston PD.

Once again, Instapundit can suck it:

Thus speaks a true Minnesotan [Lileks]. It's unseasonably cool here, too. But that means 70 degrees.

Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing.

Last night I slept (failed to sleep) in a breeze for the third straight night as a nor'easter pounded our house (situated on the north face of the second highest hill in town) with 60-mph winds and horizontal rain. The wind came straight through the window and into the room, the backyard fence blew down, and I can't get the storm windows back down since all the windows on one side of the house are swollen shut thanks to rain. And yet they let the air right in. Go figure. Since Monday, every night has been like trying to sleep in the baggage hold of a passenger jet, it has rained every day for eight days and four successive weekends, and it is expected to rain for another week straight. Massachusetts has been setting record lows this week. It's Memorial Day and this week the temperatures have been 45, 48, 50, and 52. If we could some how get rid of every last person in Florida I'll move there in a second, at least until it stops threating to snow in June.

You know, sometimes the snow comes down in June. Sometimes the sun goes 'round the moon. And sometimes you want to gouge your eyes out with a spoon.

Cause Lord knows, they need the help.

From Rocket Jones.

[wik] Note from the Ministry of Future Perfidy ca 2025: Rocket Jones' site is long dead, and for all we know so is Ted since we haven't heard from him in over a decade. So we've replaced the dead image link with this cute kitten.

I can't believe I missed this! (And I can't believe our compatriot and die-hard Madchester fan NDR of Rhine River did too!!) Wednesday marked the 25th anniversary of the suicide of Joy Division lead singer and eternal downer Ian Curtis. Although one of the most appropriate rock-star deaths in history, it still instills regret to think of what he could have done if he'd had more time and a less dogged devotion to dying young.

I can't tell you how many times I've asked myself, "Man! Isn't there a way I could act out the final battle, the Ragnarok, the death of the Gods and Earth, AND indulge my sweet tooth at the same time?"

Salvation, as it were, is at hand.

Thanks to Chocolate Deities, I need wait no longer to play Heimdall and devour my ancient, toothsome nemesis, chocolate Loki.

From Oxford Russian scholar Ronald Hingley:

"For it is surely true, if not generally recognized, that real prowess in wrong-headedness, as in most other fields of human endeavor, presupposes considerable education, character, sophistication, knowledge, and will to succeed."

As quoted in Robert Conquest's Reflections on a Ravaged Century.

The Volokh Conspiracy have a link to a new chess resource, The Chess Predator, which to my admittedly untrained eye looks to be very handy indeed. I'm not much of a chess player. I have never had the wherewithal to play moot games against myself to refine my tactics and strategic thought, and any success I may have had has been thanks to my ability to once in a while pull off a spectacular feat of half-accidental derring-do. However, Goodwyfe Johno periodically reiterates her intention to learn chess, and I periodically get talked into it. Next time, maybe it will stick.

One thing I never understood... when your horsey jumps your castle thingy, does it have to stay all on the black squares?

The other night as I was falling asleep, I had what I believe to be two very good ideas for pinatas. (How the heck to you make an en-tilde in this freaky software? Do I need to spell it "Pinyata?")

First: the Adult PinYATA. A normal burro or other shape, but filled with plastic nips of liquor, condoms, and "toys." Hell, packs of cards and poker chips, too. Wouldn't that be a hoot for bachelor parties, birthday parties, or Wednesdays?

Next, the idea that made me laugh myself to sleep: the Revenge PinYATTA. On the outside, a normal grey papier-mache orb. Or why not gaily striped? That's the ticket. On the inside: shards of broken glass, twisted bits of rusty metal, filings, and used hydroponics. Take it to a party filled with people whose lives you wouldn't mind ruining, leave a Louisville Slugger leaning on the tree (for extra PiNNEYATTA Power!!), and make sure you have said your gracious goodbyes before the Revenge starts. The Revenge PINYAHTA: another fine product from the fine people at Mainway Toys.

If you'd have told me five years ago that when I was 30 I would be running a quick 5K at lunch and following it up with more than 300 abdomen-and-back-shapey moves, I'd have laughed you out of the room. Before last July, I had run a full mile exactly two times in my entire life. Now that's my warmup on heavy lifting days.

It is good to hate the French be in shape.

Is there a difference-- any difference-- between "writer's block" and "not having anything to say?"

Darth Vader has a blog. And you know what? It's actually really frigging good. Whoever the author is, he's into his work.

It is a reassuring thing for the newly re-employed to perform some (to him) absolutely simple, nearly automatic rote task and receive gushing, heartfelt praise for the sterling quality, integrity (nay, authenticity) and aesthetic verve of a 30-page security checklist composed almost solely of repeating table entries with check boxes for yes, no and N/A.

If I can keep this up, my long term employment prospect is looking rosy. Maybe tomorrow I can sweep them off their feet with a nifty template that saves them the trouble of formatting each document from scratch.

I hope you all subscribe to the Atlantic, which is still the best magazine in the USA (with the possible exception of Cook's Illustrated, but that's not quite as general interest, y'see.). If you do, you can access this link. In the most recent issue of the Atlantic, Christopher Hitchens reviews a new biography of John Brown that argues that Brown was more important than previously thought in the struggle for abolition. Rather than being a crazy outlier, he and his band of dedicated fanatics were the ones who convinced the South that not all Yankees were effete jellyfish unwilling to fight for their principles. An interesting and intriguing thesis, but one I will need to read the book (soon!) to really pass judgement on.

But the internet being the internet, opportunities for greater things abound. The Atlantic was founded as a Progressive magazine in the Antebellum era and as a consequence have a rich trove of important and groundbreaking stories to share. (If you didn't know, Julia Ward Howe first published the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" in its pages.) What the Atlantic have done is to tie Hitchens' review of the John Brown biography to several pieces published in the magazine over the past 150 years, giving us sort of a capsule Atlantic-style historiography of John Brown's legacy.

The Atlantic helpfully supply links to two articles from their 1872 issues by Franklin Sanborn, a Massachusetts businessman who was one of a half dozen secret financiers of John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry. From 1879 come three interviews of Brown by William Addison Phillip, who met Brown in Kansas in the 1850s. Finally, from 1922 comes Gamaliel Bradford's piece, "John Brown," which attempted to cut through the myth and expose the man there behind. Taken together, subscribers can get a detailed view of how John Brown's legend and legacy has been preserved in the pages of one of the country's oldest and most staunchly progressive (in the old, good sense) magazines.

This is what the internet is for. Holy crap.

The road I grew up on is a beaut to drive, the two well paved lanes running alongside a lovely lake in sweeping curves and gently undulating hills through the backcountry of Nutsack Township, Ohio. It also happens to be the best route from Stinktown to Nutsack Township if you don't want to take the highway. The result: speedway. Every summer you can sit on the porch and watch the cars shooting past at 60, 70, 80 miles per hour. Every winter you can sit indoors and listen for the crunch of metal on tree. The brother of a friend of mine once got busted by his parents as they passed him doing 110 the other way on the long slow curve past the lake; knowing that the police never patrolled that particular stretch of Ohio roadway, he asked them later, "Well who's gonna catch me... the squirrel patrol?"

Turns out we should all watch our backs. Loyal reader #0017/EDog sent me this link, a story of fear and squirrelling on the back of a high-horsepower Valkyrie hog that made me laugh so hard pizza came out my nose. Which hurt a lot.

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."

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!

....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.

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.