perfidy

From time to time (as often as our stomachs will allow us to manage it) we at the Ministry will look closely into the depths of human depravity both comical and twisted, and drag up whatever we find there for consideration. The general hope is that by bringing these stories into the light of day we can make them rarer. The usual effect is, instead, we end up sad and depressed about the future of the species.

So, onward!

Dateline: Washington, DC

The Washington Madam scandal has claimed its first victim: The State Department's senior diplomat in charge of USAID, which is devoted to stamping out sex trafficking, human exploitation, and AIDS, has resigned, having copped to using a perfectly innocent telephone service to hire nice Latin American women to come to his house and give him nice therapeutic "massages" in exchange for some untraceable cash money. Nice!!

Dateline: Crazytown

Newsflash: Michelle Malkin has finally completely lost her shit.

Dateline: The Congo and elsewhere

The New York Times has a heartwarmer on the rising use of child soldiers in the pointless conflicts of Africa, because they are loyal, pliable, and uncomplicated by higher philosophical thinking (plus they're easy to make more of). The article also notes that, in a cunning twist, the strongmen who hire them have at this point given up even the thinniest pretenses of a "cause," preferring to cut right to the basic raping, killing, and stealing as their main kinks.

... aaand that's enough for this week. I think I'm going to curl up in my bed under the covers for a while and wish real hard.

In a Huffington Post blog entry (via the last item in today's WSJ Best of the Web, after a bit of work, because BOTW referred to it, in error, I'm certain, as the "Puffington Host"), we find this dispatch from the cultural battleground, describing an encounter at the White House Correspondent's Dinner:

In his attempt to dismiss us, Mr. Rove turned to head toward his table, but as soon as he did so, Sheryl reached out to touch his arm. Karl swung around and spat, "Don't touch me." How hardened and removed from reality must a person be to refuse to be touched by Sheryl Crow? Unfazed, Sheryl abruptly responded, "You can't speak to us like that, you work for us." Karl then quipped, "I don't work for you, I work for the American people." To which Sheryl promptly reminded him, "We are the American people."

While I don't doubt for a second that Karl Rove is capable of random rudeness to songstresses and Hollywood types who make fake documentaries, I figured there had to be a better reason, and that James Taranto, of Opinion Journal, was too polite to tell the rest of the story. It turns out that there's an excellent chance Rove just doesn't know where Sheryl Crow's hand had recently been.

The answer was found in another entry at the Huffington Post site, Sheryl Crow's wisdom on how to help stop the ravages of our future global warming overlords. This excerpt summarizes both her deep, deep thinking on the matter and the reason for Rove's apprehension at her attempted laying on of hands:

I have spent the better part of this tour trying to come up with easy ways for us all to become a part of the solution to global warming.

Although my ideas are in the earliest stages of development, they are, in my mind, worth investigating. One of my favorites is in the area of forest conservation which we heavily rely on for oxygen. I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting. Now, I don't want to rob any law-abiding American of his or her God-given rights, but I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where 2 to 3 could be required. When presenting this idea to my younger brother, whose judgment I trust implicitly, he proposed taking it one step further. I believe his quote was, "how bout just washing the one square out."

See also (first four found via links from Huffington Post):

• Rosie O'Donnell Mocks Sheryl Crow's War on Toilet Paper
• Sheryl Crow Cast as Bond Girl in Next 007 Film, "Stinkfinger"
• Sheryl Crow Saving the World One Toilet Paper Square at a Time
• Stinky Finger Crow Attacks
• And last but not least, this post, plus comments, at Ace of Spades

[wik] Possibly related, regarding Sheryl Crow: She’s well intended, and I don’t mean this with any disrespect, but she’s dumber than a road lizard.

First it was the Irish, with their mining and their farming. Then it was the Slavs, those factory-dwelling scum. Then it was the Latinos with their ambition and willingness to spread mulch and cook your steak frites for little pay. Then it was the Indonesians with their endless garment factories. Then it was the Indians, who have apparently limitless capacity to take shit from irate helpline callers while producing flawless C++ code. And now it's the damn Chinese, taking the job of insane mass murderer away from the white, Christian American males to whom it is their birthright.

No. Seriously. Check this amazing shit out! Media whore Debbie Schlussel is an early frontrunner in the contest to say the least appropriate, most reprehensible thing possible about yesterday's shootings at Virginia Tech, and she's come up with a doozy. Wow!

So, the perpetrator of the Virginia Tech massacre is a Chinese national here on a student visa. And, today, this alien did “the job that Americans just won’t do.”

If you really want to be put off your lunch, kite over to her site and check out all the people who somehow agree that yesterday's tragedy is somehow an argument for tighter immigration laws (or evidence of a Great Yellow Conspiracy of unexplained provenance or purpose). Also go to her site if you somehow think I'm taking her out of context or misrepresenting the thrust of her argument. 'Cos I ain't.

Hat tip to Outside the Beltway

[wik]... and check up the to this post, which I found via qando. Just awesome!

**** UPDATE #3, 04/17/07: The shooter has now been identified as a South Korean national.****

**** UPDATE #2: The shooter has now been identified as a Chinese national here on a student visa. Lovely. Yet another reason to stop letting in so many foreign students.****

**** UPDATE: Shootings appear professional, says expert; VTU Alum on school's "Asian" Population; 2nd Amendment-Free Campus/VTU lobbied against students having guns on campus for personal protection ****

Here's what we know about the murderer of at least 32 students and maimer of at least 28 more at Virginia Tech, today:

• The murderer has been identified by law enforcement and media reports as "a young Asian male."
• The Virginia Tech campus has a very large Muslim community, many of which are from Pakistan (per terrorism investigator Bill Warner).
• Pakis are considered "Asian."
• There were 2 attacks at least half a mile apart.
• There have been at least two bomb threats to this campus in the last two weeks.

And dig her rebuttals to the comments:

Posted by: Old Atlantic [TypeKey Profile Page] at April 16, 2007 04:48 PM

Pakis are considered "Asian."

I believe the correct term is "Pakistani".

YOUR BELIEF SYSTEM IS FLAWED. EITHER TERM IS CORRECT. WHAT IS THIS--THE IMUS THOUGHT POLICE? DEBBIE SCHLUSSEL

Twenty one people have been killed and at least another 21 injured at Virginia Tech. Details are scant, but apparently the shootings took place at two separate locations on the campus - in a residence hall and in an engineering building. I recognize that this is a minor note amidst a lot of much greater suffering, but reading the coverage available so far I imagine that Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker is going to feel like a complete shit for saying this probably as the shootings were happening:

A bill that would have given college students and employees the right to carry handguns on campus died with nary a shot being fired in the General Assembly.

House Bill 1572 didn't get through the House Committee on Militia, Police and Public Safety. It died Monday in the subcommittee stage, the first of several hurdles bills must overcome before becoming laws.

The bill was proposed by Del. Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah County, on behalf of the Virginia Citizens Defense League. Gilbert was unavailable Monday and spokesman Gary Frink would not comment on the bill's defeat other than to say the issue was dead for this General Assembly session.

Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker was happy to hear the bill was defeated. "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus."

[wik] Update: Tuesday - In the comments, the Astronomicon informs us that the bill mentioned above died in committee back at the end of January, not yesterday as I had mistakenly assumed from the dateline on the article I linked. Thanks for the correction. Astro has a informative post about the bill, and goes into more detail than the article I found. It can be read here.

I'm sure that the rest of the Ministers got theirs, but I must have missed the memo on the start of the Canadian seal-clubbing season. Dang.

Via an article in the April 4 2007 Economist (subscription required) entitled "On thin ice", I've learned that global warming has impacted Southern Canada's ability to provide fodder for the particpants in its seal-clubbing industry. Clearly, the government needs to do something to avoid disenfranchisement of the affected group.

THE activists have armed themselves with helicopters, video cameras and outrage. The hunters have their sharp hooks and blunt clubs, often combined into a single sinister-looking instrument of Norwegian design known as a hakapik. Canada's seal-hunting season officially began on April 2nd along with the usual row between those who denounce it as senseless cruelty and those who defend it as a traditional and necessary part of local livelihoods. Thanks to global warming, however, the argument might soon become redundant.

So it seems that the protesters are impaired in their ability to effectively protest. Global warming - Is there anything it can't do? Admittedly, not everyone can muster much sympathy for the perpetually outraged pretend-protectors of the cute little seals.

The problem?

This year there has been less of the usual footage of burly men bashing small furry skulls and of blood smeared across the ice floes. That is not because the hunters have become less aggressive, but because suitable seals have become scarcer. Thanks to an unusually warm winter, the ice is melting early in the southern Gulf of Saint Lawrence, where hunting began this week. The seal pups on which the hunt preys are reared on the ice until they are old enough to swim. So the premature thaw has drowned them—before the hunters had the chance to kill many.

Less seal-cranium-crushing= less for PETA, or whomever, to kvetch about. In a nod to realities of the matter, the Canadian government points out that seal hunting "brings income to struggling fishing communities", which I'd guess is a good thing.

Not surprisingly, the protesters don't care, and want to protest, regardless of any benefits to the communities in which the hunting occurs. However...

... campaigners against seal hunting are not wholly beyond reproach either. Few bother to make it clear that the killing of the youngest pups with fluffy white pelts has been banned for 20 years. They also make it sound as if the seals are endangered. In fact, the seal population has tripled since the 1970s.

In another bow to reality, and due to warm conditions in the South, the government has reduced the quota for seal hunters from 335,000 to only 270,000. The practical effect is to have shifted seal-hunting to the colder northern climes.

The sealers in those areas tend to hunt with rifles, and so do not provide such good fodder for media campaigns.

You'd think, reading it, that both the hunters and the complainers are equally wrong-footed by the weather, but that's not the case - the hunters can always head north. There's not enough outrage available up there for the complainers, however, and therefore I stand by my assertion that they're the ones most unfairly affected.

Oh, and yes, the new word learned is hakapik. Help me out here - the name of that tool isn't onomatopoeic, since it surely doesn't make a sound like its name. What's the description of a word which (in its English incarnation, at least) has a name that sounds as though it's describing what you can do with it?

[wik] Technically, if the protesters actually cared about the seals, wouldn't they try to save them from drowning, as well as from the evil hunters?

I just don't know. So let me put it plainly.

If you want to hit on a girl, don't spit on her. If you want to try and get a girl interested in what you have to say, don't punctuate your diction with spittle.

I went out last night and there's always that overeager guy. He's dominating the dancefloor and thinks he's just a funboy extraordinaire. He IS the party.

He is THAT guy too. You all know him. He knows all the words. He can tell you what albums they're from. He knows what year they were released and the who was TIME's Man of the Year cover that year.

Well sweaty, nasty, Mr. Life of the Party, I just had effing surgery. I don't really feeling like throwing down, so please don't try to talk to me and get me to shake my moneymaker on the dancefloor. Take a hint. I didn't take to your invitation the first time. Did you have to come back for a second and third? Did you have to get to the point where a bouncer had to ask me if you were being creepy? Just quit being creepy the first time. Nothing has changed in 3 minutes, no matter if Sisters of Mercy just started playing and that's THE shirt I'm wearing.

Yes, you almost drove me out of the club, while one of my DJ acquaintances was in the middle of an amazing set. If I was interested in the power trip of having you tossed out, I would have done it. But in my mellow old age, I just run from you, the walking biohazard.

Yesterday I ordered some books from an online purveyor of used books. Normally, nothing about this process is worthy of comment. But this store, the one that had the three books I wanted at the lowest price, is a little too concerned about doing good.

It’s primary purpose, apparently, is to collect books by donation, and use the profits of selling some of them to fund literacy operations and ship books to places that are not well supplied with books. Like the whole of Africa, for example. All to the good. More power to them. If certain people spent more time reading Sense and Sensibility, Somalia would not be the dog’s breakfast that it is.

But as I went to check out, I noticed a small extra charge. It was only $.12, but being the frugal person that I am, I clicked the little “What the fuck is this?” link. It turns out that I was being charged for Carbonfree™ Shipping.

What, you may well ask, is Carbonfree™ Shipping? Well, let me quote the helpful popup window:

Until Willie Nelson's Biodiesel bus does deliveries, we've got no choice but to send your book on normal planes, trains and automobiles. They all deliver your book considerably faster than we could on our bikes, but they belch carbon dioxide into the air the whole time. In case Al Gore hasn't stopped by your house, sat you down, and given you his slideshow yet, we've got some news for you. These carbon dioxide emissions are overheating our planet, causing a "climate crisis". Carbon Offsets are a way that we can "offset" these emissions through the purchase of clean energy credits and reversing deforestation. It is only a few pennies per book, but when thousands of people do it every day it adds up.

We looked at our shipments and used Carbonfund.org’s Carbonfree™ Shipping application to estimate the average offset needed for our packages and we always round up. 100% of the funds charged as Carbon Offsets WILL be used to purchase carbon offsets. Once Better World Books is 100% carbon neutral, we'll start to offset the carbon emissions of our non-profit partners. After that, we'll offset Exxon's emissions. They'll never know what hit 'em.

We work with Carbonfund.org to make this possible. If you like it, demand Carbonfree™ Shipping wherever you shop online.

Thank god Al Gore has not stopped by my house. And thank god you aren’t so doctrinaire that you do deliver my books by bicycle. I’d like to read them.

I know they’re trying to help. They think that the sky is falling, and they’re trying to do their part. And it’s only twelve cents. I can afford it, I hope. But inflicting their environmental pieties on me, at my cost, just irritates me. I don’t think that the world is coming to an end. And if the climate is changing for the warmer, I don’t think that what they’re doing, or the whole damn Kyoto accord will make a lick of difference. Even the people who put it together don’t think it will make a lick of difference. Carbon dioxide is not the most powerful greenhouse gas. And of all the CO2, the bit produced by us is a very small percentage. And greenhouse warming might not even be the reason we are seeing warming. And, for the last couple years, it hasn’t been warming.

Maybe I’m just being curmudgeonly, but I want my damn twelve cents back. And if I can’t get it, I’m going to light a plastic fire in my back yard, and cause at least twelve cents of environmental damage. Maybe even fifteen cents worth, because I’m pissed.

Minnesota has already had its turn in the barrel, and it's far enough in the past (Aug 2006) that simply appending this item to it would consign the appendage to obscurity, and spare the Gopher State the additional ridicule that it so richly deserves.

So, Minnesota gets to be our first multi-part state smackdown recipient, all for a single news story from today:

Minn. lawmaker lobbies for Tilt-A-Whirl

Fri Mar 30, 5:38 AM ET

ST. PAUL - State Rep. Patti Fritz, DFL-Faribault, has introduced a bill designating the Tilt-A-Whirl the official amusement ride in Minnesota.

Fritz said she's taking up the cause of 52 kindergarten students from her district who say it deserves special attention because it was invented in their town.

"I represent children too," Fritz said, adding, "Minnesotans like to have fun, and it's a fun thing to do."

The Tilt-A-Whirl is a platform-type ride consisting of seven freely spinning cars holding up to four riders apiece.

Herbert Sellner invented it in 1926 and the first one debuted at the Minnesota State Fair a year later. Sellner Manufacturing in Faribault still makes it.

Minnesota already has a state muffin (blueberry), a state gemstone (the Lake Superior agate), a state drink (milk), a state butterfly (monarch) and seven other official symbols.

Sorry - it's short, so I just included it all. Well, that, plus it's a Yahoo story, so it'll eventually disappear from the web on its own if I don't snatch it. Can't have the Ministry archives filled with dead links, now can we? Of course, the story itself is a bit short on important details, such as surprise vomiting attacks suffered by tilt-a-whirlers and indirectly by those to their left and right.

Another thought occurs to me, now that I've gone to all the trouble to lift that entire news story - we could just start another semi-regular series here at the Ministry, one devoted to ridiculing individual legislators also richly in need of such ridicule. The potential downside, of course, is that given the size of the list of valid editorial targets, we're woefully understaffed for such an enterprise.

The Palestinians, infamously, are a people that bad things happen to. Whether from the perfidy of others (Jews), natural causes (Jews) or their own tragic flaws (planted there by Jews) calamity seems to stalk the Palestinian people like some loathsome stalking thing. Latest in a long line of humiliations and embarrassments is this: "Five dead in Gaza 'sewage tsunami'". Many people get hit by tsunamis. But only the Palestinians would get hit by a sewage tsunami.

[wik] I am truly sorry for those who perished, and for their families. But I can't help seeing this as one admittedly noisome piece of a larger picture.

What does it say about me that my initial reaction to an email from the Humane Society titled "Cruel seal hunt just a week away" is "Huh. Wonder if I can get some time off from work?"

Despite being nearly two years out from the next presidential election, the shenanigans are in full swing. Fucking shenanigans. The Democratic Party candidates are already attacking each other, and the Republicans are doing their traditional Sloth and Emu imitations. I've seen reports of candidates withdrawing from the race that I not only did not know were running, but in fact had never heard of. As the campaign rhetoric heats up, the electorate will play its role in the quadrennial morality play - that of the Greek chorus. That is, if you imagine the Chorus from Aristophanes' The Clouds repeatedly muttering to itself, "Who the fuck are these people, and why can't we get someone cool to run for President, like John Wayne? Someone who won't bother to understand all that economics crap, but will put the fear of Jebus into the furriners?" When they're not muttering that, the mutters will center on the fact that despite the claims of diametrical oppositeness, the two parties seem to be strikingly similar in every important aspect - seriously considering as candidates people we would never allow alone with our children, pompous self righteousness, and shrill condemnation of anything or anyone that stands in the way of attaining, holding, and cashing in on power.

It is at times like these that the more thoughtful of the sheople will think, maybe another party will make a difference. Aside from the fact that the last time this was successfully tried, the new party ended being merely a slightly newer version of one of the original parties, which then gracefully (and miraculously) expired. The people will think to themselves, "Hey, that paranoid big eared guy did pretty well." If they are of a leftward tilt, they'll fantasize about a Green party victory. If they list to starboard, they might imagine a Libertarian triumph. Of course, any sane person would run screaming from the country if either of those things happened.

What is needed is a true alternative. One that has been slumbering for nearly a decade could be our savior. It is,

The Scorched Earth Party

WHY THE FOOLS MUST DIE

It's happened to you, no doubt.

You are somewhere public, trying to complete a simple task. Perhaps you are eating in a Dennys. Perhaps you are buying something at Costco. Perhaps you are just driving along on the highway. Then it happens:

Some stupid moron causes a problem. They put their trivial life ahead of your own existence, and as a result they move, however briefly, from the position of 'faceless drone' to 'obstacle'.

The waiter messes up your order. You can't get a refill of coffee because they're "too busy", despite the fact that the restaurant is empty. Some jerk cuts you off with their cart and there's no way around them now. That asshole who is coming up on your tail, flashing his brights, decides to cut around you on the right at about 90 mph just as you start signaling to get out of his way, and he honks wildly as though you're the one endangering everyone on the road.

And you think to yourself: This person must die.

The Scorched Earth Party is here to tell you: Yeah. Go for it.

The basics

Here at the Scorched Earth Party, we are dedicated to a few simple principles:

• that the concept of "life is sacred" is the best joke we've heard this year.
• that nothing satisfies like clubbing some moron to death with a lead pipe.
• that you can never get laid enough.
• that the world will continue to deteriorate until 90% of its population is eliminated.

True happiness will never be yours unless you rise up with us. Join the 10% with the lead pipes. Help save the world through random, messy violence, and then wallow in carnal pleasure among the ruins.

Now that would make the '08 elections more interesting.

Crazy Person or Bluetooth Headset? The Home Game.

In today's Washington Post, this story: "FBI Reports Duct-Taping, 'Baptizing' at Guantanamo"

Duct-taping a guy's head? That's kind of harsh.

In another incident that month, interrogators wrapped a bearded prisoner's head in duct tape "because he would not stop quoting the Koran," according to an FBI agent, the documents show. The agent, whose account was corroborated by a colleague, said that a civilian contractor laughed about the treatment and was eager to show it off.

The "civilian contractor" sounds like an asshole, and a mildly sadistic one, to boot. I'd bet it hurt like a bitch when the tape was taken off. At least they didn't cut his head off with a dull hacksaw. But if he wouldn't stop quoting the Koran (which I'm sure got quite old & tiresome for the interrogators to hear), why didn't they just spray alum in his mouth? That's seemed to work in the Looney Toons episodes I've seen where it's been used.

The parts of the story that make me scratch my head, however, are those where the circumstances are more comical.

FBI agents witnessed possible mistreatment of the Koran at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, including at least one instance in which an interrogator squatted over Islam's holy text in an apparent attempt to offend a captive, according to bureau documents released yesterday.

In October 2002, a Marine captain allegedly squatted over a copy of the Koran during intensive questioning of a Muslim prisoner, who was "incensed" by the tactic, according to an FBI agent. A second agent described similar events, but it is unclear from the documents whether it was a separate case.

Sounds to me like the Marine captain can claim his mission accomplished, and good for him. At least he didn't cut his subject's head off with a dull hacksaw.

The "baptism" sounds like comedy gold to me.

In a previously unreported allegation, one interrogator bragged to an FBI agent that he had forced a prisoner to listen to "Satanic black metal music for hours," then dressed as a Catholic priest before "baptizing" him.

The "Satanic black metal music", like the duct tape, seems a bit much, and bragging about it is bush-league, but putting your collar on backwards and spraying a guy with water that, by that guy's belief system, is just water, while telling him he's been put through a ritual he clearly believes has no meaning, and having this amount to some sort of an outrage is cartoonish. At least they didn't baptize him with pig's blood. Or cut his head off with a dull hacksaw.

This story is a continuation of an older theme, of course:

The reports amount to new and separate allegations of religiously oriented tactics used against Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. After an erroneous report of Koran abuse prompted deadly protests overseas in 2005, the U.S. military conducted an investigation that confirmed five incidents of intentional and unintentional mishandling the book at the detention facility. They acknowledged that soldiers and interrogators had kicked the Koran, had stood on it and, in one case, had inadvertently sprayed urine on a copy.

Poor bunnies! These incidents, along with those in earlier reports of "sexually suggestive" interrogation techniques, help me to better understand some of the concern about more physically coercive methods of questioning that have been used.

If all it takes to get these detainees to go off the rails is to fake dropping a deuce on their "holy book", or to violate the "three foot rule" one might find in a low-grade Atlanta gentlemen's club, then of course one could question physical coercion - who needs such extreme tactics in the face of detainees with severe critical thinking deficits and unresolved "mommie issues"?

The fact that such things, particularly the absurd veneration of copies of the Koran, (copies, mind you - I'd cut them some slack for their outrage if someone took a leak on the original) can so easily trigger "deadly protests" is by itself an indication of a belief system that's seriously askew. For clarification, I'd point the interested reader to a scholarly essay from September 2001, "God Angrily Clarifies 'Don't Kill' Rule".

I question, pretty aggressively, the perceived need to apologize for, or to even explain, any of the reported incidents. And, on the bright side, I remind myself again that in each case, at least nobody got his head cut off with a dull hacksaw.

... for Christmas, but I ran across this over at NRO and found it irresistable:

Shi’ites Roasting in a Mosque on Fire
(To the tune “The Christmas Song ”)

Shi’ites roasting in a mosque on fire,
Sunnis bombed in their bazaar.
The U.S. cursed as an occupier
And oil flows still not up to par.

Everybody knows a firefight and an IED
Help make the streets of Baghdad bright.
Suicide fiends with their eyes all aglow
Think victory for them’s in sight.

They know that Baker’s had his say.
His ISG report said we don’t want to stay.
And our Iraqi friends rush to apply
For seats on any airplane that will fly.

And so I'm offering this simple phrase
For Cheney, Bush, and Condi too.
Although its been said many times many ways:
Nation building, we can’t do.

God bless the Derb

Admittedly, it's not as good as Daffy Duck's classic "Pronoun trouble", and I don't want to seem to be picking on the witness in the video below, but some folks aren't as good with a camera in their face as others:

(Incompletely attributed video, by the way, but apparently from a TV broadcast somewhere in Eastern FL, via Kenny) [wik] WTF? Aphasia? [alsø wik] Friggin' Firefox. Suddenly, it doesn't seem to want to work, though I tested it in both originally. I don't care enough to fuss with it further, but perhaps clicking here will work for those of you mistreated by my sloth on the matter?

It took me several hours to finally assemble the table, and to repair the desk. After that intensely annoying labor, my office was looking nice. I was feeling good. So, I took a break from work to go hook up the washer and drier. Turned on the washer, and it leaked through what is apparently a huge hole in the bottom of the washer. It must have broke in the move. And there's no drain in the basement. I am pissed. Mrs. Buckethead is pissed, because she's going to have to go to a laundromat to wash the clothes.

But hey, at least I've got high speed internet.

For thinking this was quite witty:

As attentive readers will be aware, I am about to buy a house. I suppose it was to be expected that nothing would go smoothly, and more to the point it would not go smoothly at the last moment. I was informed earlier this morning that the down payment was not, as estimated, less than the amount in my bank account. Instead, as a personal consideration to me, it was more. Contemplating this turn of events, I felt the familiar stab of anxiety, that little gremlin grabbing my heart and twisting that I have come to associate with the entire home buying experience. To this feeling was added a small frisson of urgency to give it a little extra punch, since I am closing tomorrow morning.

If this was happening next week, it wouldn't be an issue as I get another paycheck Tuesday. Of course, if it was next week, I'd have to cancel all my moving plans and probably end up with no one to help me move instead of a dozen people helping me move. Happily, dear old mom was there to chip in at the last moment, and wired enough money to cover our sudden short fall. Now, I will spend the balance of the afternoon emulating a crack addicted lab monkey, clicking the refresh button and hoping for a little of what I need.

What particularly galls me is, why the hell didn't the loan people detect this mysterious nearly a grand difference in estimated payments until less than 24 hours before closing?

Everything seemed to be going so smoothly. That should have been my clue that everything was about to go balls up. Either that, or I should have known better than to post about something that hadn't happened yet, and was thus subject to the jinx. I am now informed that the land contract issue might be a killer, and that we might not be able to get that property. Land contracts are standard when the acreage involved is more than about ten acres. Land contracts as a rule require 20% down payments. We don't have 20% of $350k. Fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck.

But, I tell myself, all is not lost. First, we are approved for a mortgage - all we need to do is find a place that is less than ten acres. We can use my wife's idea for the addition to increase the value of the house we buy, sell it in a year, and have enough cash once we sell to put a down payment on a 20 acre plot like the one we want to get now. The plan is not necessarily derailed, and we won't even necessarily lose time. We would, though, have to go through the hassle of buying, selling and moving again.

Also, I have moved into a quick reaction mode in regard to the 20 acre plot - I've talked to the boss of my current lender to see if something might be done. He informs me that it is remotely possible that, by offering more documentation of my resources and history, and writing several begging letters, the underwriter might offer a waiver on some of the restrictions that normally apply. So we'll do that. I've called three other lenders to see if they perhaps might offer something more congenial, and hopefully by later today they will have some positive news.

Having made the decision that we want that particular land, it's a true pisser that we might not get it. And all this additional hassle is to say the least unwelcome. We'll see what happens.