perfidy

I rock.
And my silhouette looks suspiciously mouse-like. And some of those sentences cry out to be edited. Cool music though. Brazenly stolen from Rocket Jones.

Somewhat belatedly, a link to Ministry Crony Mapgirl, who hosted the 51st Carnival of Personal Finance during Perfidy's recent interregnum. Since she asked nicely, go, read, and become wise in the ways of personal finance.

[wik] Also, wish her well in her budding romance with her new, fancy youngin'.

From the 'Dredge Report, who was once but is now no longer a DC area blogger, we find this utterly fascinating, nay consuming tutorial.

Dredge also points out an Onion bit I missed somehow:

“If we don’t protect freedom of speech, how will we know who the assholes are?”

On average, the production of each fourteen square feet of tinfoil requires the destruction of the habitat of one unfortunate spider monkey.

Apparently, Buddhists are also subject to the temptations that the flesh doth surely hold. A Japanese Buddhist priest was arrested for schtuping a teenage prostitute. But we should go easy on him, because he was under a lot of stress.

Well, at least it was a girl he went after.

From my Mom, another Dick joke:

My esteemed coperfidian Buckethead recently reprinted a couple of the most tasteless Norwegian slanderings of the Prophet that have the least hingeful elements of the Muslim world feeling all smashy and burny of late. While the images in question are terribly offensive - a fact which ought to be obvious to anyone who wasn't raised by wolves - I feel I must point out that smashing and burning are not the solution. This goes double if your grievance is partly that Islam is frequently depicted as a violent and xenophobic belief system.

However. If you must burn our embassy in redress for our crimes against your (curiously delicate) way of life (if cartoons are a dire threat and all), our embassy is conveniently located at 161st Street and River Avenue, Bronx, NY, just steps from the 4, B, or D subway lines.

[wik] Link changed and made less funny because Google Maps is teh suck.

I know it's surely in poor taste, but this ifilm video clip from the Late Late Show allegedly showing the President deep in his (fictional) cups (which he hasn't done in years, Mr. TIA/Carnivore/Sekrit NSA Person) made me laugh so hard some pee almost came out. My nose. Some slowed-down-type video footage is all it is, and yet here I am wiping what I hope are tears out of my eyes.

Many thanks to new unfogged coblogger apostropher.

There's an old joke I used to hear in the music bidness, one you'd pull out when bitching about artist managers, A&R, (especially) booking agents, concert promoters, radio promo guys, anyone really.

And since it's Friday, my inbound commute this morning took 135 very cold and standy minutes, and I'm feeling petty, I whip it out once again for your... enjoyment...? That's not the word I want.

Q: Is it possible to get pregnant via anal intercourse?
A: Of course! Where do you think lobbyists come from!?

[wik] Be sure to watch Ed Helms' piece on searching for the taint in Washington on the Daily Show. It's a real... shocker.

Juxtaposed headlines from the Drudge Report:

PAT ROBERTSON: STROKE MAY BE GOD'S PUNISHMENT...

IRAN PRESIDENT HOPES FOR SHARON'S DEATH

I didn't have the heart to read either article. It is a cruel fate indeed that strikes down every peacemaker that Israel makes Prime Minister, while loathsome criminals survive for decades living off the fear, credulity and hatred they inculcate in their nations.

Of the President of Iran, I expected no more - for someone who has both denied and praised the holocaust, wishing for the death of a single Jew (however prominent) ranks almost as loving kindness.

But I dearly wish to travel to wherever Pat Robertson is lurking, and beat the ever-loving crap out of his sorry, putrid carcass. Either everything is God's punishment - everything - or else it is the ineffable work of a loving God who wishes nothing but our salvation through means that we will by no means comprehend fully. Robertson is either hopelessly banal or tragically wrong.

Or knowing him and his works, he has managed to be both.

Christmas Cheer; and of course the traditional Christmas assault and battery:

The Ontario County Sheriff's Department says the shopper flew into a rage after another woman bumped into her while waiting in line at a cash register.

Deputies say she grabbed a tape dispenser and hit a 63-year-old woman in the face, then kicked her several times. She's also accused of punching the woman's daughter when she tried to break up the fight, then hitting her in the face with a cell phone.

Then the woman reportedly screamed obscenities and fought with the deputy who arrested her.

In what has become a holiday tradition, the unhappy hordes of clenched-lip grinches have released their lists of toys and games deemed unsuitable for the fragile minds of our youth. Unable or unwilling to feel joy, they seek to deny any glimmer of happiness in others. Thanks to their never-flagging and unholy efforts BB guns, cap guns, action figures with spring-loaded projectiles and riding bicycles without helmets are now part of the dead past. Challenging puzzles with small pieces were next. A vast array of inherently fun toys have been banished, tarred and feathered with the labels 'unsafe' and 'violent.'

We live in an unsafe and violent world. Evolutionary psychologists have learned that (as common sense had long held) that play is just nature's way of preparing our young for the vicitudes of adult life. What better education is there than a childhood filled with guns, knives and imaginary bloodshed?

But now, the grim advocates of pacificism and perfect safety have gone too far. They are even now attacking a time-hallowed and beloved, nay, essential part of American childhood. They are insisting that cannibalism has no place in the life of a mentally healthy child. Who among us has not joyfully and creatively relived in play the tragic story of the Donner party? And who has not played explorers and headhunters? Even small girls with their easy-bake ovens have traditionally joined in this wholesome fun, pretending to bake elaborate long pig quiches or presiding over tea and fingerbone parties with her dolls.

We need to preserve the last vestiges of this sacred tradition. The only place that cannibalism now remains, the only place that children can partake of this feast of joy is in modern console games like "F.E.A.R." and "Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse." These soul-sucking killjoys partake of ritual and symbolic cannibalism on a weekly basis. Don't let them take this from us. We must fight these hypocrites, fight them, tooth and nail so that we may enjoy our virtual cannibalism in peace.

Why do they hate our freedom?

This just amuses the hell out of me. Professional angstmonger and shrill leftwing nutjob Cindy Sheehan is seen here overwhelmed by her legions of fans.

Via the 'Dredge Report, we find a story that tracks down the truth, corners it, and has it cowering in fear before skewering it with something pointy. We've run out of names on the hurricane list. The next named storm will have the awe-inspiring moniker "Alpha," and given that we have more than a month left in the season, we might be confronted by the terrifying spectre of hurricane Delta rampaging through the Gulf of Mexico like a sorority chick on spring break going through sissy drinks. (Maybe hurricane Phi Mu (a fat but slow category three) would be lingering off to the side, not really hitting anything but seeming vaguely embarrassed to be there, yet determined to stick it out and make sure that Delta gets home without too much vomit or roof fragments in her hair.)

The DCeiver has some thoughts for how the National Weather Service could improve matters by changing its system of nomenclature:

We want to fear these storms. We really do. But I'll be damned if I run from Hurricane Florence. I already have had the experience of being in a mandatory evacuation over a Hurricane named Bob. I didn't want to evacuate. I felt like a grade-A pussy running from someone named Bob. I still feel that way.

... If the National Weather Service wants to get serious about protecting people, they have got to rethink this name thing. They need to start giving these storms some names that absolutely leave NO doubt that they are going to seriously FUCK US UP. Names like Hurricane Deathbroth or the Kneecapper or Margaret Thatcher. Something that's going to inspire the average person to fear for their lives.

Look at the names they're getting into next year. Hurricane Beryl? Hurricane Ernesto? I can see a little germ of fear growing in the face of a hurricane named Oscar, maybe. I knew a thorough-going bitch named Joyce once. But most of these names are just no good! Nadine is the cute barista at the coffeeshop across the street. Tony is the lead in West Side Story. Isaac is the Love Boat bartender. No, no, no. These are mixed messages!

What we need is a hurricane named, let's say, The Penetrator. You tell me that The Penetrator is coming ashore in 24 hours and I am gone like Keyser Soze. Use the names of famous human predators, like Adolph or Idi Amin or Attilla or Affleck, and people will break out in a mad dash for higher ground. Think about it--when the media reports on the "aftermath of Leslie", how worked up do you expect the Federal responders to get? But if you have reporters beaming out picture live from the devastation wrought by The Defecator--then we'll see some motherfuckers rolling out to save some people on roofs!

Amen.

Ted at Rocket Jones nearly made me aspirate my coffee with this:

Too bad the name eHarmony is already taken

Australia launches world's largest sheep database.

Nothing will ever (in my mind, for that is what we are discussing) match the majesty and towering crudity of this sentence, drawn from the sad but proud ranks of the runners-up of the never to be sufficiently praised and damned Bulwer-Lytton contest:

Andre, a simple peasant, had only one thing on his mind as he crept along the East wall: "Andre creep... Andre creep... Andre creep."

But some of these come pretty damn close:

"A few hours had passed since they had been pulled away from the moon. A few hours and millions of miles. The moon was no longer visible, not even as a star. The whole thing was so crazy, weird and far-out. It was as though they were floating in a giant vacuum." -- Sara Cavanaugh, A Woman in Space

Ya think?

"They shook hands, and Jason set about retrieving his balls." -- Peter Heath, The Mind Brothers

That's some kind of handshake.

"Wearing an aura of rugged-intellectual charm like a plastic raincoat ..." -- Sam Merwin Jr, The Time Shifters

He knows me! Except I would have said rain slicker...

"Her very existence made his forebrain swell until it threatened to leak out his sinuses." -- Nancy A. Collins, Sunglasses After Dark

Speaking of Hilary...

"He lifted her tee-shirt over her head. Her silk panties followed." -- Peter F. Hamilton, Mindstar Rising

That's gotta sting. Atomic wedgie from hell.

Thanks to Cassandra Villainous Company for finding this painful compendium of science-fictional excrescences. All of these (I think) are taken from the middle of books. On the whole, though, it strikes me that most sf novels generally have good first sentences.

Again via the Onion, some so-wrong-it's-right non-reportage.

I realized something today; there's a reason that people in New York and LA think everyone in the middle is crazy. It's because the only time that Beaufort, Montana or Monkeybutt Township, Tennessee makes the news, it's over something really messed up. Flood, famine, fire, bizarre hunting accident, massive KKK rally, or lurid murder plot. Usually the last of those.

Case in point: the place I'm from has made the news exactly once in the past decade, when a woman drowned her kids in a bathtub and maintained that the Lord commanded her to do it. In the past twenty-five years that count bumps to twice, when a budding serial killer was nabbed and identified as a resident. Also, two members of 80s hair-metal also-rans Warrant are from the next town over, so it might just be that I am from a cursed place.

An now my wife's hometown makes its own sad debut on the national stage. The very small, quiet, and lovely river town of Ford City, Pennsylvania is now in the news because some crazy evil woman tried to murder her neighbor and cut her unborn child out of her abdomen to keep as her own. And THIS after pretending to be pregnant right along with her neighbor for eight-odd months. The DA of Armstrong County, Pennsylvania was on the news this AM, and my wife upon seeing him said... "Holy crap... I went to school with his brother!"

And of course, since this story ended up on the national news, the damn fool crazy woman (who of course lives in a double-wide trailer) had to drive her unconscious prey all the way out to Rural Valley to do the baby-extraction part, and then managed to be discovered in flagrante by a kid out tooling around on his four-wheeler. There's a town out there called Rural Valley! Go a little way down 66 and US-422 and you'll also find Oil City, Coaltown, and Distant, Pennsylvania. This area is country.

S. We've got trailers, Rural Valley, a kid on his ATV. and a sensational murder plot that is like stinkbait for the rabid wombats of the national press. That's like some hideous perfect storm of unfortunate stereotypes to make it even easier for the stringers from the AP, Reuters, and CNN to play up (quite unfairly) just how gomerish the place is. Just Ford City's luck that it didn't make the news because the toilet factory opened back up, or for the fine exploits of NFL quarterback Gus Frerotte (who's from the neigboring Kittanning, but that's academic), but because some idiot damn-fool woman thought she could fool the world into thinking that it would be mere coincidence that her neighbor has disappeared and her new baby looks a lot like her.

But all's well that ends without disaster. The victim is alive and in the hospital and the baby is fine, and the crazy lady's husband is shocked and bewildered rather than complicit or room-temperature himself. I just wish for once places like where I'm from would make the news for good reasons. Puppies. Cotton candy. Children getting together and singing in a spirit of love and harmony. Something.

Jesus.

I found this slightly disturbing image over at Rocket Jones. It's funny to a cold hearted conservative like me. But what really made me snort my soda was this sequence in the comments:

Has the five second rule lapsed on this one yet? I mean, if you guys aren't going to eat it, I got a woman to feed over here.

---Posted by shank at October 11, 2005 06:27 PM

I have one of a similar style at home. I like them. They're very simple, yet visually powerful, the more you look at them, the stronger their pull gets.

---Posted by shank at October 11, 2005 06:35 PM

Oh jesus. I just posted on the wrong thread. That second post was for your "Answer" thread.

---Posted by shank at October 11, 2005 06:36 PM

To which I replied,

Shank, your second comment makes you look impressively sick if you're like me and didn't follow the link until after I read the third comment. Though I did wonder why, if you have one at home, you hadn't fed it to your woman.

People of Mars, you say we are brutes and savages. But let me tell you one thing: if I could get loose from this cage you have me in, I would tear you guys a new Martian asshole.

...You claim there are other intelligent beings in the galaxy besides earthlings and Martians. Good, then we can attack them together. And after we’re through attacking them we’ll attack you.

...You keep my body imprisoned in this cage. But I am able to transport my mind to a place far away, a happier place, where I use Martian heads for batting practice.

...You may kill me, either on purpose or by not making sure that all the surfaces in my cage are safe to lick. But you can’t kill an idea. And that idea is: me chasing you with a big wooden mallet.