perfidy

This lyric, from the track, "Killed by Death":

"If you squeeze my lizard, I'll put my snake right on you"

I have spent most of my life among the Yankee nekulturny. I know my way around a trailer park. I've made art...of a sort...out of carefully peeled beer bottle labels. I am as defensive about being uncultured as I am ashamed of it.

And yet, I can't imagine there are enough tacky people in all of America to buy enough of these to show a profit.

Still not entirely clear what it is that the roughly gazillion people taking to the streets in our major cities are taking to the streets about. From what I've read so far about all this protest and march and waving of national symbols, the word "illegal" has not yet appeared.

I've read alot about "immigrants' rights", but I'm not sure what that means. I'm willing to bet that if I asked 10 random people what the term "immigrants' rights" means, I'd hear 10 different answers. Or more.

I have a couple of major bighuge problems with illegal immigration, but that's a specific problem: illegal immigration. There are solutions that might fix it. I'm not sure if that has anything to do with "immigrants' rights", but it does have to do with solving a stated, specific problem. I don't believe though that has anything to do with the current demonstrations. Besides, I feel that any event that includes the ANSWER people entering the lists on your side pretty much shuts down the possibility that I'll take you seriously.

If at its core we equate "rights" with "fairness", and by that we mean that illegal immigrants are treated like citizens, it also means that citizens be treated like illegals. Now that might have some merit. Free health care, for starters; if I don't pay medical bills now, I get a lien on my house. Working tax free might be nice, too; I am willing to wager that an illegal working under the table somewhere has a helluva lot more disposable income that myself, who as of this writing, has precisely $54 to my name and by the way it has to last until Friday.

But look, don't get hung up on that rant- I'm more concerned about the future. As best I understand it, the last amnesty ca 1986 gave legal work documents to something like 3-7 million illegals. THAT was supposed to fix the problem, because after that one-time event, we'd get serious about enforcing our immigration policies and border security. So 20 years later we have something like 3-4 times as many, and face the same problem, with the same language being used to offer a fix. And I believe that what will ultimately come down is amnesty by another name. I think it's a slam dunk.

OK, fine. Everyone who came by legal means, ridiculous expense, and interminable paper drill was a sucker. Lady Lethal and I and a whole lot of others will have to live with that.

But what happens in 2026?

I wonder whether it might just be easier, for everybody, to just dispense with the American border altogether. Anyone who wants to live here can just arrive, by whatever means it takes; no pesky checks to see whether the person's a felon in his home country, or infected with a communicable disease; and work. Or not. The legions of bureaucrats who run immigration could be fired and thereby save a ton of dough, which would definitely be a net plus. And it's not like America's market for unskilled- or nominally skilled- labor is going to dry up.

So open it up, dispense with the red tape and the lines on the map, and come what may. I think the cultural, language, and class problems that would be created or intensified by the sudden influx of a billion or so new citizens might not be nearly as bad to contend with as the mush-mouthed verbiage that political leaders and demonstration organizers try to make me believe these days.

Ministry minions will no doubt recall that Lady Lethal, the lady who was kind enough both to marry me and be present at the creation of our offspring- the Li'lest Lethal- is from Poland.

One day over the course of casual discussion, I was talking about the lame places I went on school field trips as a kid. The places that a third rate city whose glory days- if ever there were any- died before Truman did. Places like the aquarium 100 miles away. The lame local museums. The big library. The park. And the "living history"-type faux town with the re-enactors who play colonial characters like tinsmiths and constables and milkmaids, the last of whom always seemed to be churning butter. I remember being there at 8 years old, and instead of being curious about the extraordinary cleverness of a water-powered log skinner was more curious about who ate all the flippin' butter they made.

So after rambling for awhile, I asked her where they went as kids in Poland. The lame museum? The big park? The aquarium 100 miles- whoops, kilomters- away?

"Mmm, not really", she answered, "We go to Auschwitz."

Uh-HUH.

Now it seems perhaps more yoots from outside Poland ought to make the trip or, failing that, pay more attention in school. It seems the gubmint is getting a little irritated about furriners seeing the words "concentration camp" with the word "Polish", and assuming ownership, not merely geography.

The Irish Examiner has a bit about efforts to change the formal name to The Former Nazi German Concentration Camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. If that's what it takes to educate people about it, well then that's what has to be done.

But isn't it sad that enough people were confused about the blackest patch on Earth that this move was even warranted?

Ministry readers are no doubt familiar with Yale's recent exercise in diversity admissions by enrolling former Taliban official Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi. Yes, it is in a non-degree program for non-traditional students, which some folks might feel makes it not so bad. But yes, he served the Taliban in an executive capacity and remains largely unrepentant of his earlier career in oppression, which rather trumps the details of whatever program he's in.

Yale continues to stonewall, issuing only a 100-odd-word statement to inquirers. The fallout over that extraordinarily poor decision, and the lack of response to critics of it, is like stepping in a big pile of poop. Then pretending that you don't smell it. Then when someone asks why you smell like that, you ask, "like what?"

There are some folks out there that have moved beyond shock and horror at this decision, and have gone straight into retribution. I don't know the stats, but certainly alumni giving will be down this year. It will have no effect on Yale's larger economic picture, given it's wealthier by far than a significant portion of the nations of the world. But at least by not giving to Yale this year you're not supporting an institution that rewards terrorists.

Others have been considering who better might be worthy of a free education at Yale, non-degree or otherwise. If someone were to ask me, "GL, who better to go to Yale for free than a former Taliban quasi-ambassador?", my first thought might be, "Um, everybody else other than that guy." After some thought, I was leaning toward my cat, Marco, who as half-Siamese and half-Burmese gets the South Asian tip, is neutered so in a sense transgendered, and is, I must emphasize, a cat- a trifecta of diversity goodness. He would be the only cat enrolled in the institution's history, would surely represent the feline perspective in campus life, and could work toward exposing the intolerance and ending the hate. Toward cats. And I should add that the Taliban in question has only slightly more formal education than my cat, so there's that too.

Upon more serious reflection though, I would answer General Khatol Mohammad Zai. General Zai is the only female general in the country, the only airborne soldier in the country (she's made 500-some jumps which is, in military jargon, nuts), and a single mom to boot. She does not command any men, and probably never will. But she has been a military officer for decades, and is certainly a symbol, perhaps an example for young women to emulate. Not sure about her earlier days as an officer at least nominally supporting the Russians in their fight against the mujaheddin, but hey, what's the worst that could happen- she's an old communist? Lord knows she wouldn't be the first of those running around New Haven.

Yale, give her a call. Invite her over. Give her an honorary degree or something. Just make some sort of effort to recognize that it's not OK to give free educations to people complicit in mass murder.

[wik]You know what, screw the honorary degree. Upon further reflection it would be much more valuable, both to broader society and Yale specifically, for General Zai to come to campus not to receive her Doctorate of Humane Letters, but to parachute in and just kick the shit out of Yale's precious Taliban man. I mean, to have a female Afghani paratrooper tear the ass out of the guy...well, that just makes sense to me.

The Ministry is all about sharing.

We share so much with each other- our knowledge; our wisdom; our decades of experience with fighting robots, prostitutes, fart jokes, industrial construction, rhetoric, and prostitutes- that as a unit we are better equipped to bring enlightenment to the world than any other random sampling of five men.

Our long term goal is, at its core, quite simple: to bring our love of sharing to the scattered, feral remnants of humanity still stubbornly clinging to life after the Ragnarok, and generously share our whips and bullets with them.

But aside from cruel leather, cold steel, and the hard heart to wield them both, we want to ensure that the arts survive as well. Toward that end, we are going to write a story. We wanted to store fine literature, paintings, and sculpture in the Ministry Culture Bunker and Catastratorium, but after making a go of it found that that stuff takes up too much space. We are putting some Grecian and Chinese pottery to use, storing Kool Aid and pencils and whatnot, but anything without an apparent utilitarian application was left outside.

We felt it was up to us to do someting to ensure the written word would survive beyond the Apocalypse.

We are now crafting the literature that the mutated inheritors of the cursed Earth might care to read sometime, maybe between avoiding deathbot patrols or after outrunning a zombie horde. It's the first fiction piece co-written and serialized by participating Ministers and, although the planned release date is sometime after Doomsday, we will share drafts with our loyal reader.

Readers. Loyal readers.

Forthwith, the first installment of our first stab at serial writing:

Part 1: Diesel Angst

Alexei Weber detested the bus.

The one he waited for every morning was enough to loathe, just on its own. The engine’s rushing roar hurt his ears, and sometimes the hurt migrated between them and became a headache. The mephitic stench of burning diesel fuel singed his nostrils and made him nauseous. He didn’t like the tint on the windows, allowing those inside to see out- and in all probability laugh at him, he felt- yet preventing outsiders from seeing in. He never was quite sure what he’d find inside, hiding behind those opaque windows. Even the scale of the thing: too long, too high, with too-big tires, unsettled him.

The bus stop nearest his apartment was shabby and dark. Litter tended to accumulate there, blown on winds that in other parts were pleasant, but by the time they reached his shabby end of this shabby city were hostile. Regardless of the season and time of day, the bus stop was always in deep shadow. The old office buildings and millworks that dominated those dozen forlorn blocks of the North End weren’t good for much else now than as obstacles. The economy was long gone, leaving only huge brick husks that blocked the most direct route to somewhere else. It made grim sense to Alexei that the ones on his street would block the sun, too.

And beyond hating the bus just for being a bus, he resented it. He resented that he was reduced to riding it. He resented that the city was so broke it only ran twice a day. He resented that the only job he could land was downtown and much too far to walk, and beneath him. He resented having to live in his tiny walk-up apartment. He resented the dumb luck that put him there, and the poor decisions that kept him there.

Everything that Alexei Weber had ever done wrong was made manifest in the bus, and it came to remind him every morning.

Last week it came to light that Yale had admitted a former quasi-ambassador of the Taliban. The Wall Street Journal was on it from the get-go, and new media outlets and bloggers are getting more heated about it. Jim Kouri at Sierra Times has a good summary of the issues and arguments at play here.

The chain of events seems to have gone that two apparently influential alumni talked a Dean into admitting the guy, despite his rather obvious connection to the Taliban, his lack of formal education, no visible means of support, and total unwillingness to divorce himself from Taliban-ic philosophy. A Yale rep later explained that they had already lost “one” (terrorist? jihadi?) to Harvard, and were eager to get one of their own.

We’ve all played the admissions game, and we’ve all lost it somewhere along the line. Aside from being the wrong race, and a veteran- already two tremendous hurdles to overcome- I always felt that I didn’t have the extracurriculars to really stand out in my applications. No captain of the football team, never started a homeless shelter, not once did I even help an old lady cross the street. Never in a million lifetimes though would I have thought that collapsing walls on homos and executing women for being slatternly would have put me on the fast track in the admissions office. Well it’s too late now.

What really got up my ass about it though was that he’s going for free. He must be. There is simply no way that this man has the economic resources to float any amount of time at Yale. Period. He’s not a citizen, so he isn’t borrowing from the gubmint; no Staffords for him, or Pells. I am highly skeptical that any private monies from a foundation or other grant-issuing organization would have anything to do with him. So there is no doubt that at least the huge majority of the cost of his attendance at Yale is being paid for by Yale.

But big privates like Yale get their money from private contributions, primarily from generous alumni giving. Shrewd investing of huge gifts grows the school’s endowment, which at the end of FY04 was closing in on $13 billion. That kind of bread means Yale can afford to put anyone it wants through for free, should the administration wish.

In essence, Yale’s own alumni are paying for this terrorist to go to Yale.

At this point in the discussion, it’s probably best to sit back and let things stew for a bit. Reflect on the links, the arguments, the themes and meta-themes at work, and then in a mellow and rational manner, quietly contemplate how best to exact vengeance.

Clinton Taylor at Townhall is on the right track, equating punishing the university with denying it donations. He recommends sending fake red fingernails to the Development Office, in recognition of the Taliban’s persecution of women who wore nail polish. The only very obvious problem is that he wants people to send these things to Development, which doesn't admit students. Admissions does. You’d be better off getting them to the President, or better yet, the Trustees, to send the message you want to send. And I can tell you what Yale is going to do about the uproar regarding this clown:

Nothing.

The university is sticking with its original story, that having an executive-level member of the most reprehensible government in recent memory attending is good. We can learn from him, you see. And the administration will wait for it to go away. Eventually attention will be diverted, things will calm down, and it’ll all be forgotten. The guy’s going to finish what he started, the Dean’s going to keep his job, no one’s going to look bad, and the world will continue to turn.

But Development is the right path to take to voice your displeasure. Fake nails aside, withholding donations is pretty much the only thing that gets a school’s attention in a serious and meaningful way. Money talks, people, and higher ed is a business. The problem with that tactic is that Yale is filthy stinking rich, and unless you’re prepared to mobilize thousands of wealthy alumni to withhold future giving, or renege on pledges already given, you’re not going to do much real damage.

But at the very least, by not giving your few dollars, you guarantee that no more of your own donations will go toward putting terrorists through your alma mater.

...should you swallow anything evil, of course.

Hi.

I've been gone awhile, concentrating on working. And earning. You know, get the money, dolla dolla bill y'all. I just haven't been able to contribute anything here, mainly because of the job(s) schedule(s) but also because the precious few non-working moments were spent talking myself out of taking the ol' .38 taste test.

But I have been watching. And lurking. Mostly watching though, with a little lurking. Watching and/or lurking, light on the lurk.

I figure it's been about two months since I posted anything. Much longer than that since I posted anything good. I've had lyrics on my mind alot though, if you couldn't tell, and here's what I've come up with after 2 months of careful consideration:

Proposed lyrics for the A-Team theme:

Ahem.

"We're the A-Team,

the A-Team,

We're the A-Team,

the A-a-a-ay Team..."

I don't have a second verse yet, but that's where I'm at so far.

A thousand and one (or so) free Chuck Norris fun facts here. The Top 30 Norris facts at the originating site are here.

Were the "submit" thingy working, my contribution might be:

"Chuck Norris doesn't need you to submit facts about him. Your women-folk already know everything about him they need to."

Today's Stars and Stripes includes coverage of hangover treatments sworn to by soldiers, men, women, and Germans.

Note that the first coupla people the article speaks to (and the only ones pictured if you're reading the electronic edition) are from intelligence units. Also note that they were found at a local bar. This ought not surprise anyone. Not at all. Ah, memories.

For my part, I don't get hangovers. Even when I drank to excess on a regular basis, I was never hung over. I woke up bone tired, achey, and feeling half starved, sure, but that was more likely due to the astonishing volumes of vomit, and concomitant effort to hurl same, than purely the spirits themselves. Never a headache. Unless I'd been cracked in the head.

Tell you what though, that one young stud swearing by a raw egg in a Bloody Mary or some such- geh. Imaginative, but much too gross in the application. What I have seen is medics drink all night, then instead of just crashing for an hour or two before PT, would give themselves IVs of vitamin C and sugar solutions. They were right as rain, in a clear example of nutrition science trumping alchemy.

Does anyone else dabble in the alchemical pursuit of hangover remedy?

Me! I'm fascinating and lazy!

Bears are strong and independent creatures who roam in the forest in search of food. Bears are usually gentle, but anger one and be prepared for their full fury! You're big, you won't back down from a fight, you have a bit of a temper -- classic attributes of a bear. Intelligent and resourceful, though lazy at times, you are a fascinating creature of the wild.

You were almost a: Turtle or a Groundhog
You are least like a: Squirrel or a MouseWhat Cute Animal Are You?

Thanks to Princess Cat for linkage to the Cute Animal Quiz.

Because you can starve, you slacker.

The US Supreme Court has ruled that the gubmint can seize a person's social security benefits to pay off defaulted federal student loans. Sorry, brother- it's dog food and the Goodwill dumpster for you until those loans are settled.*

There is no mention though of being able to opt in to a social security payoff plan. I figure it like this: I don't believe I'm getting one red centavo of social security to begin with. Either the whole program will be defunct, or the retirement age will be like 104 before I can apply. So I would welcome an opportunity to affirm, today, that I authorize the US Department of Education to take the x-thousand I owe you out of my social security benefits.

Please?

Let me keep the coupla hundred I pay you monthly and you can have everything I've paid in so far. That'll about even us right up, and if it doesn't, help yourself to the difference when it's my time to collect.

*Apropos of an earlier post, the man in this suit worked at the post office yet was carrying $77k in student loans. To paraphrase Bluto Blutarski, "Seven years of college down the drain. Might as well join the fucking post office."

As the other Ministers are aware, I'm running about 0-30 on trying to get a new, better job. A job so new and better it would allow me to leave both my crappy part-time gig and my somewhat OK full-time position far, far behind.

But after so many interviews, so many resumes, and so much bullshit all 'round I'm just tired. Bone tired. I'm tired of working so much, I'm tired of getting nowhere, and I'm tired of being desperate for something to shake loose. I'm of a mindset now such that when the ad for the New England Tractor Trailer School comes on tv, and the burly fella asks, "How do 18 wheels of adventure sound?", I say to myself, "Wwwwelll...he's probably asking rhetorically, but still...not so very bad, maybe."

Don't misunderstand: I have nothing against people who actually work for a living. Truck drivers, heavy equipment operators, soldiers, and anyone else who has a bona fide reason to be tired at the end of the day has my respect. But what I'm thinking now is that it's utterly contrary to everything I was taught: the less capable took the vocational courses, went to the voke high school, and ended up driving trucks all their lives. The talented kids took the college prep curriculum, with advanced-placement everything, and went to "college". That was when "college" meant a single, mysterious place of enlightenment and fun and learning, not at all what it actually was. Is.

The college bound were to look forward to big salaries doing...something, presumably garnering absurd salaries simply by virtue of being educated, while the vocationally-minded could look forward to soulless drudgery, finally ending up as morsels for Moloch. And every person, written tract, or other signal from broader society reinforced that attitude. Shit, even the stupid board game Life, remember that? Remember how you had very little hope of making the big $$ and "winning" unless you went to college? Even the little kids playing that game got it.

Only problem is that none of it is true.

Do you know who, in your neighborhood- yes *your* neighborhood- is most likely to have a net worth of $1 million? It's the plumber. Do you know how much CDL drivers are making? About 1/3 less than I do, but I've been in my current position for five years, and I was in school for six before that. CDL drivers have been earning in that 11(!) year span.

So with all this stuff floating around in my head- the sense of failure, the frustration of not being able to improve my lot- I also ran headlong into the deeply rooted idea that I'm supposed to be rewarded with the big money and fabulous prizes by virtue of my education. Real life since commencement, however, ought to have dug up, peeled, boiled, and devoured that deeply rooted idea by now, but there it was.

And that got me thinking, again, for the thousandth time, whether all that education was really worth it. Yes it was cool to learn and all, but I could have read all those books for nothing had I been that eager to learn. And what did I really learn? In all that time, I could have been earning. At the very least, I could've cut my losses with a BA and found work; as it was, I had to have a master's, so started my working life at the age of 28(!) with decent student loans.

So I want to ask you, all seven Ministry readers: was college, either undergraduate or grad school, worth it for you? Do you regret going? Would you have been better off now if you had then been earning instead of learning?

A coupla days ago the lovely and talented Murdoc called out Dean for peculiar remarks he made on Meet the Press.

What had me keyed up was a minor bit of Dean's larger rant, something he said along the lines of "The Republicans are out to exclude black applicants from law school". I commented on that post, but there was a hang somewhere and it wouldn't take. I cut and kept that response with the thought of posting it here. I thought the idea was, in a word, asinine, that black applicants are excluded from law schools. In two words, absurdly asinine.

In three words, wiggedy wiggedy wack.

So I included some more links, expanded my thoughts, and about 700 words in I began to realize that I'm not the one to write the book about the inequities of law school admissions, that the law schools operate like a cartel, that the ABA is the ultimate source of price-fixing at those schools, and the like. There is an inverse relationship between how hard the establishment claims to wish to include everybody, to how excluded more people are in reality.

I just got so frustrated with it all, it occurred to me that words were not going to convey my feelings. My vocabulary is fair, but it's not going to be enough. And like I said, I'm not going to write a book about it.

Instead, I can only express myself musically. Straight from my guitar to your bones. Soul to soul. Neil Young's lead style seemed the best fit to really communicate my thoughts on this issue, and to convey my final message.

Here goes:

SKREEK.

...

Skronk skronk skronk skronk skronk skronk skronk skronk skronk skronk skronk skronk skronk skronk skronk skronk

BOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGG

...

WEEEEeeeeeeEEEEeeeep. Weep. Weep weepy weep weepity weep weep

skritch-scratch-skritch-scratch-skritch-screech-skritch-scratch-screechy-scratch-skritch-skritch

sritchitchyitchysritchscatchyscreeeeechy...............

boop. boop. boop boop boop boop boop boop booooiiiiiip boop bop bp b p p p p p p p p p p

BOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

....
Tic tacky tacky tic toc toc toc tacky blang blam bong bong bong weeeeoooop weee skrank NAHuhuhNahuhuhuh NAH uh uh NAAAAAH uh uh NAAAAAAAAAAHHH uh uh uh uh uh tic

NOW do you get it?!

Murdoc Online has some discussion and links regarding a WaPo article that makes the astonishing claim that poor kids enlist because- hold onto your hats- it's the best opportunity for them. The article reports that 44% of enlistees- presumably across all service branches- are from rural areas and also reside in zip codes where incomes are below the national average.

The firm that did the zip code study, comparing residency data to economic data to enlistment data, was conducted by the National Priorities Project, a "nonpartisan research group" in Northampton, MA. For readers unfamiliar with the area, Northampton is a town that celebrates diversity by stifling or ridiculing any thought to the right of Karl Marx. Everything that happens there is charged with politics and opinion; nothing is "nonpartisan"; you're lucky to get a meal there without being exposed to another fuckwitted conspiracy theory, or walk down the street without having to dodge protestors of some sort. You could always go to the NPP site and see the groups it links to (Greenpeace, moveon.org) if you think I'm making it up. I find the concept of their project fairly clever, and that's enough; don't blow smoke up my ass by telling me it's non-partisan.

So between this clearly partisan organization and the crack, fair-minded journalists at the Post, we get the vibe that the military exists as a vehicle to kill off poor people in a perpetual class war. Yawn.

Now, everyone associated with the Ministry knows I was active duty Army from 1989-1993. When I enlisted I was living in rural Massachusetts, so far culturally and geographically from true opportunity I might as well have lived on the Moon. It's a place where when the Wal Mart finally came, it was the biggest employment opportunity in the area since the paper mills closed in the '60s. It's a place where a good job is $12 an hour on first shift, with mandatory witholding of 1% of pay for a company retirement plan that the company doesn't contribute to. I know what it means to buy food at the corner convenience store with food stamps. I know what "welfare cheese" looks, tastes, and feels like. And even though I'm 1,000 miles away from the places in the WaPo article, culturally I'm their neighbor.

I know firsthand why young poor people enlist. It's the only way out.

Thinking back, of the hundreds of soldiers I was privileged to meet, and the dozens I was lucky enough to serve directly with, I think 44% of them being from rural nowheres was low. The list of servicemembers from Manhattan or Chicago's gold coast is pretty short, and even in my era I remember thinking that if we plotted all our hometowns on a map, and connected the points, that they would sketch borders around properous parts of the country. Most of the men I served with were from towns I never heard of in states I never really believed existed: Dullard, NY. Shitheel, MI. Huyuk, WV. Nowhere, NM. Las Vegas, NV.

It's too bad that the Post chose this moment to report this astonishing fact, that poor people compose a large portion of the services. If more of their writers had ever served in uniform, instead of jerking off at Columbia's journalism school for a couple years, they might have found out long ago that for alot of people in this country, the military is a viable, acceptable, even -gasp- honorable way to get where they want to be in life.

Over at FARK, folks are working on a series of Magic: the Gathering cards devoted to political and cultural issues.

Some are better than others of course, but a few really shine for me:

Personal fave below the fold:

OK folks, I need a ruling on something.

As my fellow Ministers and a few readers are aware, I have a second regular job at night at a certain armed courier company. Let's call it "ArmCo". I work with a few young men who are smart, funny, and have much more on the ball than a pitiless, soulless career at ArmCo might suggest. They know it too, but are still a little too unseasoned to understand how little time they have left before they're out of better job options and ArmCo is the best of the bad ones. We have alot of laughs though, and get along great.

At night we usually get everything done early, and have alot of time to gab. Despite whatever meandering twists and turns the conversations might take, astute observers will realize there are really only two topics: chicks, and zombies.

So.

Until last night, those two themes were separated by a vast and yawning gulf. Until last night, they were safely kept far apart. Until last night, there was absolutely no consideration of the unholy and just deeply weird repercussions that might arise from carnal relations with the undead. Until last night, when sort of mostly out of the blue, Dan asked,

"Say I'm tappin' a zombie chick, right? A chick who used to be hot and maybe still looked mostly normal. And say she doesn't bite me or anything. Would I then become a zombie?"

...

Huh.

...

Huh.

...

Here's my reasoning thus far (accept the premise as is. Dan is a former Marine who was wounded and medically discharged. He doesn't have a plate in his head or anything, but he sometimes lets you think he does. Just roll with it):

One the one hand, it would seem that fluid exchange is the essence (to reference both comically brilliant mathematician John Nash AND comically brilliant fictional character General Jack T. Ripper) of zombie creation. That is, some fluid from an existing zombie enters the body of normal human, typically by way of open wound, and presto-changeo the human becomes a zombie in some certain time.

But upon reflection, I'm not sure we ever clearly understand which fluid is the medium for infection: saliva? Blood? Bile? Um, other..? To be sure it depends on the zombies we're talking about: Romero zombies are pretty unambiguously bite/saliva driven, as 28 Days Later zombies (arguably not zombies, but leave it alone for now) were clearly the blood-spewing-and-sharing variety.

As Dan didn't specify which universe his hot zombie chick came from, I focused instead on what I was given: one female zombie. No open wounds. No blood. No other possibility for fluid exchange outside the naughty bits. Would Dan then become an undead Dan? What about with a condom?

I went round and round with this, but just couldn't come down definitively on one side or the other.

Living the rough and tumble, high adventure lifestyle I do, it's very dfficult for me to sit and watch a little TV at night. I catch a show now and then, but I increasingly rely on DVR to bank what I care to see. Which, alas, isn't as much as I feared it might be- mainly because most of TV sucks so mightily.

So OK, I sit and spend 10 minutes a week scrolling through the menu, finding shows and movies Lady Lethal or I might care about, and set them up to record. It's in that way that it really hits home how just criminally poor television programming is, and the amount of garbage viewers will tolerate.

Case in point: several days ago I was home in the pm, flipping around, and there was Superfly on Cinemax. How I missed it in previous scan/record sessions I don't know, but there it was. Once. One time only, on a random Saturday or Sunday afternoon. I was pissed because I missed it, and an opportunity to conduct a side project I've been considering for awhile now (viewing with a stopwatch to record how much of the film is devoted to showing the front end of Priest's car as he drives around. Seriously.)

What really gets under my skin is that I can catch Top Gun, Major League, and A League of Their Own in any language seemingly at any moment on about any movie channel. Look, we've all seen them. Many, many, many times. And I think each brings their own value or insight to the medium, particularly Top Gun's exploration of gay military aviators. That's super.

But why do choice flicks like Superfly have to get the Shaft every time?

Today's Herald examines Boston's plans for a mass evacuation event. The article is titled pithily, but helpfully:

Hub evac plan useless: Traffic jams mean `you're dead'.

Boston's reputation for horrible driving conditions- and horrible drivers- is nationally renowned. Before the Big Dig, getting in and out of the city was, depending on the time of day, either moderately dangerous or fecklessly lethal. Since the Dig was sort of mostly completed (only a few more billion to go- thanks every taxpayer in America!), the major arteries now are only extended clusterfucks.

Everyone who's been there has a tale to tell about their scrape with danger in Hub traffic. Many have been scraped by Hub traffic. It once took me 6 hours to get from Logan Airport to Northampton, which ought to be 2 hours even with a piss stop on the Turnpike. As it was, I spent about 4 hours just in a fucking tunnel trying to get away from the airport. Oh, and PS my wife was almost in Paris before I'd gone 100 miles. And that was after Bechtel was supposed to have made everyting all better.

As things stand now, one accident or a clutch of knuckleheads with picket signs can shut down traffic effectively. With a million knuckleheads clamoring to escape...well yeah, getting them out of town in a timely manner isn't going to happen.

Some of the excerpts from the plan though were pretty interesting, as vague as they are ambitious; read the whole article for those. Mayor Menino's spokesperson added, "an evacuation plan is a fluid entity'', which could only have been more unhelpful had Hizzoner said it for himself (in which case it would have come out as: "An evacalation plansa floo-oodatitty").

But like I said, the piece is helpful because it tells you plainly what's at stake. In the event of catastrophe, don't expect to drive out, and don't wait for the feds, the schoolbus fleet, or the municipal constabulary to pop in and pick you up.

If you want to live, you're going to have to ruck up and hump out.

This week marks the 55th anniversary of the amphibious operations at Incheon/Inchon.

Stars and Stripes covered ceremonies held mid-week at the memorial in Incheon. I learned that the monuments and statuary of soldiers at the memorial is a cause of tremendous grief to Korean lefties, which is probably an excellent reason on its own to fight savagely to keep them there. They forget that if not for us, they'd all be speaking Korean now.

The US Navy has alot of cool maps, photos, and detailed exposition discussing the preparation and execution of the attack here.

Here's the short version: The hammer was the attack north out of the beleaguered Pusan Perimeter. The anvil was 70,000 soldiers and Marines put ashore at Incheon. The walnut was the North Korean army in the field.