perfidy

In the absence of any real ideas, penetrating insights on the events of the day, or for that matter, even any good dick jokes, I am reduced to my penultimate resort. Answering questions posed by other blogs. (My ultimate resort is reviving the state motto or actual facts series.)

The Maximum Leader is a good source of questions. With his aid, I can make pretend that I am a real blogger. For example, just today, ML posed this existential quandary:

Your Maximum Leader riddles you this: Suppose you are a native Northeasterner who has retired to South Florida, you scrimp and save and buy a trailer on the shore to live our your days in heaven's waiting room. Then one day a developer comes and offers you (cue Dr. Evil voice) One Million Dollars to sell your trailer on the shore. What do you do?

This hypothetical situation is counter to my nature in several ways. First, I hate Florida. I would never in a million years move there willingly. Unless of course, sometime in the next million years there was an ice age, or Florida detached itself from Georgia and moved northwards a good bit; and ceased to be a pestilential, overly-humid, bug and lizard infested hellhole. Second, that a lifetime of saving and planning would provide me with only enough resources to buy a trailer, or, having that much cash, that I would buy a trailer anyway, rather than a honest shotgun shack. Third, that I am a native Northeasterner. I am a Midwesterner, and fiercely proud of it. Or at least, not afraid of mentioning it.

But, let us for the sake of argument and this post, assume that a retiring Buckethead, with all the little bucketheads out on their own, has cashed in his savings and bought a trailer (gasp!) in Florida (double plus gasp!). This plan has the one saving grace of locating Mr. and Mrs. Buckethead by the ocean, where at least we can smell dead fish.

The evil developer arrives to save the day, I mean, cheat me of my lifelong dream of sandy senescence. Would I succumb to the tentacles of his greedy plan? In the context of the hypothetical, that’s a tough one. If, by chance and cruel fate I ended up living in a trailer in Florida and someone offered me one meelion dollars, I’d take it in a hot minute and kiss the guy’s feet. Then I’d move somewhere cooler and less susceptible to coriolis storms.

But, again, assuming that this was my dream destination, I’d offer a qualified yes. I’d take the money, and use it to buy another trailer further down the coast. A nicer trailer, a doublewide; and get me a nice 4x4; and mebbe an RV so’s me and the missus can travel around the country and complain at people. The sea looks the same pretty much from any vantage point in Florida, so I can’t imagine that I’d be that attached to any one spot.

I have relatives that moved to the Florida Panhandle, near Pensacola. The bubbas in that region have been slowly moving inland, thanks to over generous offers from developers. The builders give the bubbas large amounts of cash, the bubbas move their trailers inland and buy new trucks. So long as they’re still on water – lagoon, river, whatnot, they seem to be happy.

With careful planning, even, you could get bought out multiple times.

Now, to turn this question around. If I were living in my dream house, and someone offered me a million dollars to move, the answer would in all likelihood be no. My dream house is in the mountains – or hills, at least – a forested wonderland of fifty or more acres, with a beautifully sited stone house overlooking a pleasant and undeveloped valley. This house might even have been built with my own hands. It will be custom designed, with secret passages, lots of built in bookshelves, and a turret. It would be my paradise.

If a developer tried to get me out of that, I’d fight tooth and nail. I’d not only turn down his offer, but get all grassroots on his ass and make sure he didn’t build anywhere near me.

Interestingly, ML mentions Carl Hiassen, whose book Basket Case I just started reading yesterday afternoon. I’d never heard of the guy before Friday, when my mom recommended him. So off I went to my local used book store and found one. Good so far.

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

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

"Flatulence Forces Plane to Land"

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

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

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

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

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

Flatulence Forces Plane to Land

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures

Unpacking is, I now believe, more draining than packing. When you're packing, things go in boxes. While you can make some effort to ensure that like things end up in the same box, the end result is a constant and familiar. Fill a box til it's full, tape it shut, repeat. There is also the reassuring feeling of progress as you see the ever larger pile of boxes. You can look at the pile of boxes and say, "Look at all that shit I packed!"

The reverse is more daunting. You might think it'd be something like a grand scale Christmas, but you'd be wrong. You open a box. What's in this one? Kitchen stuff. But you opened it in the wrong place. Move the box to the kitchen. Then you've got a pile of boxes and you have to figure out where that stuff goes. You get more boxes, and despite all the stuff you've put away, there are still boxes. And since you've put all the other stuff away, you can't see it and you don't feel like you (or in my case, your wife) have accomplished anything at all.

Then there's the stuff that breaks in the move. I have a nifty correspondance desk that was hand made by my step-grandfather. It is, I discovered, rather fragile, as one of the feet broke when it was unloaded. So, I went to my local hardware store, and got the 4" screws I needed to reattach the foot more strongly than the original wood glue. I got out the drill, drilled the pilot holes, and reattached the foot. I felt all handy and competent. So, I flipped the desk so that the weight of the desk would help the wood glue I also applied set better.

And the leg snapped.

Tonight I get to attach new hoses to the washing machine, and reassemble the table that didn't have any nuts or washers. It didn't have nuts or washers because in an apparent fit of insanity, I did not screw them back onto the table legs after I disassembled it. Instead, I carefully packed them into a ziploc bag, and then lost the bag.

At least I've got high speed internet.

JohnL, from TexasBestGrok, pings me with a meme. He thought he was being all sneaky by doing that after not posting for weeks. However, I read that post on the day he posted it, and the only thing I missed was the fact that he tagged others, including me, for his meme.

So, here is my Christmas Questions post:

1. Egg nog or hot chocolate? Whiskey
2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree? Why bother wrapping coal? Seriously though, Santa wraps presents in attractive post consumer recycled gift bags and places them gently under the tree for the cats to knock over.
3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? I don’t, or at least, haven’t, decorated the outside of my house. Someday, perhaps.
4. Do you hang mistletoe? Never. Kisses are icky, so my son tells me.
5. When do you put your decorations up? Usually somewhere around the first weekend in December. Typically, we are traveling in Ohio over the T-day weekend. This year, decorations will go up this weekend, the delay thanks to an inconveniently timed move.
6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)? Stuffing, the way my Grandmother did, and now my mom and favorite aunt do it.
7. Favorite holiday memory as a child: Depends on what you mean by favorite. Most cherished memory is all the Christmases I spent at my grandparent’s 150 year old farmhouse in the country. There are many others, too numerous to mention. Some are favorite in that they make good stories, but weren't particularly pleasant at the time.
8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? Somewhere around age five, I deduced that Santa was fake. I have hated the world ever since.
9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? Sometimes
10. How do you decorate your Christmas tree? I am a firm believer in the eclectic school of tree decorating. I was given some ornaments by my mom – seed ornaments like John mentioned, and slowly added to that stockpile over the years. When my grandmother died, I also got a bag of ornaments from that tree. Since I’ve been married, my wife and I buy a couple ornaments a year. We did buy a bin of red glass ornaments one year. So first, put on multiple strings of colored lights, then hang about 200 ornaments, then put up the ugly angel on the top. It has a rubberband to hold the wings on, but I wouldn’t trade it for nothing.
11. Snow! Love it or dread it? Love it. Christmas just ain’t right without snow. In Columbus, Ohio, where we usually spend Christmas, it’s about 50-50 chances.
12. Can you ice skate? Barely.
13. Do you remember your favorite gift? I don't know what my favorite gift is. I loved them all, and thank all the people who got them for me. I never did get a BB gun, though.
14. What's the most important thing about the holidays for you? Grandma’s sugar cookies, made by me. Seeing the fam. Ruthless competition in the five dollar gift exchange. Watching my son go totally bug eyed at the gifts.
15. What is your favorite holiday dessert? Sugar cookies, made by me. Pumpkin pie, made first by granny, and now by my cousin Marianne. Though the wife's pies are getting better.
16. What is your favorite holiday tradition? Pulling out one of my Nat King Cole Christmas albums (I have backups) and starting to decorate. Baking the cookies. Making the beans. The five dollar gift exchange. I can’t decide.
17. What tops your tree? A hideously ugly half century old plastic angel with a funky hairdo. It was once electric, with lights and shit. Now, its broken and has a fat rubberband holding it together. One year, the ugly angel got impaled a little too much by the top of the tree, and split her up the sides.
18. Which do you prefer, giving or receiving? Getting. Though I don’t mine giving. This question reminds me of Rainbow Randolph’s song in Death to Smoochy.
19. What is your favorite Christmas song? Any of the songs on Nat King Cole’s Christmas album. Probably O Tannenbaum, because it's so funky listening to Nat sing German. I’ve also become partial to the Squirrel Nut Zippers Christmas Album, Django Bells, and a couple Aimee Mann Christmas tracks we have on a compilation.
20. Candy canes: Candy sucks.
21. Favorite Christmas movie? Without question, The Christmas Story. You’ll put your eye out, kid. Although Bad Santa left a powerful impression last year. Not good for the kids, though I wouldn’t mind meeting Mrs. Santa’s sister.
22. What do you leave for Santa? Sugar cookies and a glass of milk.

Other Christmas thoughts? It's really all about the food. Most of my fondest memories, and most of the current family traditions, center on food rather than gifts. One of the greatest controversies in my family was over whether it was appropriate to introduce new recipes for traditional dishes. After some acrimony, the traditionalists won out. If you're going to change something, it has to be an addition rather than a replacement, because everyone wants what they expect - something else might be a nice bonus, but there damn well better be the right kinds of stuffing, gravy, rolls, green beans, cookies and pies.

As much as I like, and indeed treasure, the Christmas music that I listen to at home, I despise and detest the never ending crappy Christmas music that everyone else plays.

Sometimes it's hard to find good gifts - and while it is considered a cop out in my family to get gift cards, it is awfully nice to get them.

Having kids makes up for the fact that you're too grown up to get cool toys much anymore.

Traveling over Christmas is too damn expensive, but worth it. This year I won't be travelling, but I am going to really miss the rest of my family that I won't see as a result.

I'm not going to nominate anyone to participate, because that's not my idiom. But feel free to participate.

[wik] Another of JohnL's nominations has put one up.

[alsø wik] Ministry Crony and filthy Druid Rocket Jones has weighed in.

Sometime ago, a long time resident of the Ministry Cronies list apparently dropped off the map. Phil, he of the myriad blog names, was no longer responding to the happy clicky. Now, he had expressed, on his blog, some growing distaste for the whole blogging thing. Sure, and that is to be expected. I feel that about every afternoon around 3:00. But weeks, months, past, and still I was not finding www.phildennison.net. Had he canceled his domain altogether, I wondered? I had, and have, no way of knowing, seeing as how the only email address I had for him used that domain.

So, Phil, drop me a line. If you can - hopefully you've not been trapped under something large and immovable for the last several months, surviving on cat food and just out of reach of the keyboard.

Casa de Buckethead, our place in the suburbs, has now been replaced by Festung Buckethead, our fastness in the wilderness of Warren County, Virginia. I would like to make special mention of those brave, nay, foolhardy souls who assisted us in loading, carting and unloading our myriad possessions. Jeff, who despite years of captaining a chair for NASA, showed commendable fortitude in the face of very large boxes. Mike, who maintained a cheerful good humor even when forbidden to play any instruments. Mike’s two sons Paul and Andrew, who, for teenagers, were able to focus on the task at hand and not ask for beer or electronics more than every ten minutes or so. Christian, who, having known me for less than a year, still pitched in with admirable vigor. Marcy, who despite being the littlest helper, hardly complained at all. And Gavin, who’s skills at driving a large U-Haul truck left me amazed, but only after being paralyzed with fear. And of course, Mrs. Buckethead, who did most of the packing, and will be doing most of the unpacking. Thanks also to mom, who kept the junior-grade Bucketheads occupied and largely out of the way.

I would also like to express my admiration for the wisdom of all those who did not help us move, even while begrudging their lack of generosity of spirit.

All things considered, the move went surprisingly well. The missus and I had actually packed damn near everything before moving day. I have found from painful personal experience that failure to pack is a serious impediment to efficient moving.

The new place is out in the back of beyond, relative to our nation’s capitol and my workplace. It’s even on a dirt road. And the last turn to get down to our driveway is a little tight. I thought that, with some careful driving, I could get the 26’ U-Haul down the drive. But I decided to consult with Gavin, to see if he had any useful suggestions. He merely replied, “Mind if I drive?” In the face of that sort of certainty, I had no real objection. Gavin hopped in the truck, and without hesitation, barreled down the driveway. He turned left, into the little turnaround, and then proceeded to back the truck around the hairpin turn.

At that moment, Christian had asked for a cigarette. I was unable to comply, because just then Gavin touched the edge of the driveway with the left rear tire and tipped the top-heavy truck noticeably out of vertical. Still he didn’t hesitate, and in seconds had the truck down by the house. Chris asked again for a cigarette. I handed one over, and said, “Sorry, I was paralyzed by fear.”

Gavin said that he was trying to avoid the trees. But then, he also said later that evening that, “If I can’t see it, it doesn’t exist,” so I can only conclude that he was just having fun at my expense.

Other memorable events: Jeff breaking my rake while, to all appearances, trying to use it like a snowboard. Me, twisting my ankle on perfectly level ground. Everyone asking repeatedly, “You say you purged your books before you packed?” after seeing the 60+ boxes. Hey, at least I had the foresight to pack them in little boxes…

Thanks again to everyone who helped, you have dibs on all the goodies when we have the housewarming party.

[wik] A special tiny thanks to GL for coming up with a new name for the Buckethead residence.

"Yes, You Can Surf In Cleveland", I was informed in an article from today's New York Times, forwarded by my friend Bill.

In December, as temperatures dip into the 20s, Cleveland surfers have Lake Erie almost entirely to themselves.

No shit? ([wik] technically, not an appropriate exclamation on my part - see below)

I didn't initially know how to take this article - it could have come out of the Onion, for crying out loud. The only difference, of course, is that, emanating from the NY Times, it's all true.

“Surfing Lake Erie is basically disgusting,” said Bill Weeber, known as Mongo, 44.

Almost everything in Lake Erie is basically disgusting, but it's all made palatable by the fact that today's Lake Erie is like bottled water compared to what it used to be. Also, I wonder if Mr. Weeber got his nickname from Mongo the Retard, in Blazing Saddles, but that's really a side issue.

“I was so excited I could barely sleep last night,” said Mr. Ditzenberger, 35, who quit his job as a lawyer in August to spend more time surfing and to film a documentary about Cleveland’s surf community.

Being a lawyer must really suck, if one could quit doing it in favor of filming a documentary about Cleveland surfing. Or "Cleveland's surf community", whatever the hell that is.

To reach the lake, surfers drag their boards across snowdrifts and beaches littered with used condoms and syringes, Mr. Ditzenberger said. The most popular surf spot is Edgewater State Park. It is nicknamed Sewer Pipe because, after heavy rains, a nearby water treatment plant regularly discharges untreated waste into Lake Erie.

Used condoms and syringes? That's the Cleveland beachfront I remember. Intentionally surfing through untreated sewage? Even the couple of mildly moronic Clevelanders with whom I went to college weren't that goofy. And the many more normal Clevelanders of my acquaintance would think this story's focus as silly as I do.

“Everybody surfs in California, which waters down the experience,” said Mr. Rooney, who grew up surfing in Orange County, Calif., before moving to Cleveland three years ago to work in his family’s real estate business. “Being here takes me back to that feeling of discovery that the founding fathers of surfing experienced.”

Yeah, dude, surfing in Orange County, I'd bet it was really hard to find bowling-ball sized ice chunks, condoms, syringes, poo, and pee to surf through.

The founding fathers of surfing would be so proud.

Oh, and in case you can't make yourself click on the NYT link, because you don't want to register at the site, here's the picture that accompanied the article:

To their credit, they do look like surfing ninjas. And no syringes, condoms, or bodily waste appears to have gotten stuck to them, at least not at the time the picture was taken.

[wik] Someone needs to contact the guys who do those Bud Light "Real Men of Genius" radio spots, eh?

Using brand new lip-reading software that can decode what someone's saying from practically the side of their head, they ("they" being a deaf German speech-recognition expert named Frank Heubner) have succeeded in putting sound to some of Hitler's home movies. That's right, der wixer himself recorded lots of nice color film of himself, Eva, and assorted friends hanging out at Berchtesgaden. None of this, of couse, was ever meant for public consumption, and none of it was considered relevant to the postwar intelligence/trial efforts. Also, all of it is perfectly silent.

Now the BBC has put together a fairly awesome documentary about Hitler's private life at Berchtesgaden from these movies, and hired an actor to do voice-over on those portions of the film which Heubner could decode using his own expertise and the software he designed. Check THAT out. The meaty parts of Hitler speaking start at about 24:30.

Well, not really. Mostly I feel... very nice. I do however feel a sort of mild, but by no means overwhelming guilt. I haven't been posting much. That's it, really. I have my reasons of course. Foremost among them is the staggering amount of packing that I have had to undertake over the last couple weeks. So far, fifty three boxes of books. And not done yet! Granted, that is most of the books. My wife says I should get rid of some of them, and use the library. But the librarians insist that I bring the books back, and, well, I just don't dig that. Then there's all the clothes, and the kitchen stuff, and the random knicknacks. We filled up my son's bedroom with all that. And of course you've got all the stuff in the garage. Camping gear. Zombie preparedness kit. Tools. More tools. Pizza boxes. Then, lurking like a dark lurking thing, is the basement. Filled with things that I am sure I got rid of and am certain I never bought. It's the dark subconscious of the house.

But all of this, like good things except for the "good" part, will come to an end. We hope to close on the new Casa de Buckethead a week from tomorrow, and move the following day. Posting will remain a furtive thing as I duck my heavy packing responsibilities.

This, I must admit, is not a question that has been keeping me up late at night. I am aware that I come from rednecks, and I will return to the rednecks in about two weeks.

You Are 50% Redneck

You're just about as welcome up in town as a hair in a biscuit.
Ain't no hidin' your redneck roots!

I fudged slightly on some of the questions. For example, I do not at this moment have a refrigerator on my porch. But last week I had a refrigerator, a freezer and a gas range. I think I qualify. 

My stepmom sent me this, in what I hope was not some sort of comment on my activities here:

There are many for whom this cartoon represents an uncomfortable truth. But not us. No, not us.
 

We here at the Ministry are always alert to the danger of Giant Fighting Robots. We realize, as few do, the threat that these inhuman machines pose to our species. However, until this very moment, we were unaware of the extent, depth and mind-destroying horror of that threat. Thanks to watchful ministry crony MapGirl for raising the hue and cry.

Finally someone puts all that nifty information visualization stuff to a use we can all understand. Even if maybe we really didn't want to. Check out the spiffy graph of "who did who". The sheer number of stories amazes me. It's a red pixel/blue pixel soap opera, complete with tragedy (slept with one hot guy and never recovered), opportunistic men, settlers, searchers, and bona-fide hoochie-mommas. Ah, the human condition.

At least not in the "classic" sense, as if there even were such a thing as a "classic" blogging ethos. It's just a test of the Onion's "blog this" function, on a story I found funny, and I wanted to see if its cut-and-paste had as much of a diarrhea-like effect on the blog as those fucking Quizilla snippets do.

[wik] Nope, it doesn't. 

[alsø wik] But yet it also does, two decades and several migrations through various CMS platforms later. I believe I'll just leave this as it is. [-buckethead, writing on 22 Oct 2025]

Like Ash from the Evil Dead trilogy, you are the hero. Congratulations. As the chainsaw toting king of witty one-liners, you certainly know how to handle any of those undead nasties heading your way, don't you?

From today's "What's News" column teaser-page (on-line; item didn't appear in today's Texas print edition):

The U.S. scrambled fighters over several cities after a small plane hit a 50-story residential building in New York, but it proved to be an accident. Two on board died, one of them Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle, who is a pilot.

Ahem. "...who was a pilot." Or "...a former pilot, now taking a nap of indeterminate length."

[wik] Alternate possibility: "...a former pilot, who has now assumed ambient temperature."

[alsø wik] No, I have no idea why I'm in such a disrespectful mood today, but thanks for asking.

After a spate of thinkful posts on policy and world events, the tone has drifted a little away from our standard fair of dick jokes, zombies and giant fighting robots. To rectify that, a selection of "Yo Mama" jokes:

• Yo momma so ugly she made an onion cry.
• Yo momma so ugly, she was a guard for Castle Greyskull.
• Yo momma so ugly, she looks like she got hit with a bag of "What the fuck?!?!"
• Yo momma so ugly, she looks like she's been in a dryer filled with rocks.
• Yo momma so ugly when she joined an ugly contest, they said "Sorry, no professionals."
• Yo momma so ugly they push her face into dough to make monster cookies.
• Yo momma so ugly your grandma had to be drunk to breast feed her
• Yo momma so ugly they pay her to put her clothes on in strip joints.
• Yo momma so ugly she tried to take a bath the water jumped out!
• Yo momma so ugly, when two guys broke into her apartment, she yelled "rape" and they yelled "NO!"
• Yo momma so ugly even Rice Krispies won't talk to her!
• Yo momma so ugly The NHL banned her for life
• Yo momma so ugly that when she sits in the sand on the beach, cats try to bury her.
• Yo momma so ugly, her birth certificate was an apology letter from the condom factory.
• Yo momma so ugly, it looks like she's been bobbing for french fries.
• Yo momma so ugly, even the elephant man paid to see her.
• Yo momma so ugly, people at the circus pay money not to see her.
• Yo momma so ugly, she hurt my feelings.
• Yo momma so ugly, her pillow cries at night.
• Yo momma so ugly, they rub tree branches on her face to make ugly sticks.
• Yo momma so ugly, she tied a pork chop around her neck and the dog still wouldn't play with her.
• Yo momma so ugly, she makes blind children cry.
• Yo momma so ugly, she can look up a camel's butt and scare the hump off of it.
• Yo momma so ugly, it looks like she ran the 100 yard dash in a 90 yard gym.
• Yo momma so ugly, when she cries, tears run down the back of her neck.
• Yo momma so ugly, she could scare Cujo off a meat truck.
• Yo momma so ugly, it looks like she got hit with a hot sack of nickels.
• Yo momma so ugly, when she masturbates she gets arrested for cruelty to animals.
• Yo momma so ugly, when she was born, they named her "Damn!"
• Yo momma so ugly, the last time she heard a whistle was when she got hit by a train.
• Yo momma so ugly, when she passes by a bathroom, the toilet flushes.
• Yo momma so ugly, she has to creep up on water to get a drink.
• Yo momma so ugly, if she was a scarecrow, the corn would run away.
• Yo momma so ugly, when she walks in the kitchen, the rats jump on the table and start screaming.
• Yo momma so ugly, when she was born she was put in an incubator with tinted windows.
• Yo momma so ugly, when I last saw a mouth like hers, it had a hook in it.

Ministry Crony and knitter Mapgirl has been interviewed. Go, and listen as Mapgirl opines on the war on terror, re-gifting, the little nubbly things that appear on sweaters, spiders, and the plight of the nearly extinct tawny-beaked mudnesting terflickewee bird.

From an item in today's inbox, repeat after me:

Quote Of The Day:

"Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth."

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

Ministry Crony EDog insists that Cinnamon Toast Crunch is the best cereal in the universe. He is wrong. It is Cocoa Crispies.