perfidy

Voting on Round Three is now closed, with Johno the victor. Here is the first round of the final deathmatch between Johno and Buckethead.

The contest now stands at one-all. The fate of the world teeters on a knife's edge. Having conceded the second round to GeekLethal's diaper rash and frozen pants, I now offer the first salvo in the third and last round between myself and GeekLethal. Who is the bigger dork? You decide!

(Round 1, Round 2.)

My Space Camp stories (in which I prove to be the dork among dorks) may have to wait until the next round, assuming that with the story you are about to read I beat my esteemed rival into a fine dork-paste I can then smear all over my body. Even if I lose this round, I may write them up just for kicks. But now I am going to share with you a piquant delight from my musical past. Hopefully this amuse-bouche, this appetizer of shame, will please you.

THE RECITAL

Those who know me well know that I’m a music fiend. Before I could read, I would "play" my grandparents' Chickering baby grand. I would pretend two long Lincoln Logs were drumsticks and pound on any available surface. When I was seven and my parents bought us our own piano, I declared after a brief investigation that the triad E-G#-B was the “Spanish chord” because it sounded like Flamenco music.

I began taking piano lessons when I was about eight years old from a woman who taught piano out of her home. Every six months she would hold a recital for all her students. For a few years this was no problem: I’d learn “Red River Valley” or “Ode to Joy” or whatever other dead easy piece I’d been given by Mrs. Kowalski, waltz in there, and play the living shit out of it to rapturous applause from the assembled parents and students. I was a god.

About the time I turned eleven, everything changed. The pieces got harder; my Dungeons and Dragons addiction began to cut into my practice time; and I came down with a debilitating case of stage fright. I began breaking out in flop sweat hours before the recital time and made sure to shower just before getting in the car to go because, you know, audiences can smell fear.

Things only got worse. The flop sweat was joined by butterflies in the stomach, making it impossible for me to eat anything after breakfast on recital day. The pieces were getting harder, and when my turn came to play, the notes would sometimes swim in front of my eyes as my fingers forgot every move and turn they had practiced to perfection hundreds of times before. I would start and stop and start and stop before pulling myself together and playing the piece to the end.

The recital was on a Saturday. I woke up and did what I always did. I ate a shaky breakfast of cereal. I watched cartoons without joy as my younger sister – always the quicker study but lacking (I felt) in a sense of musical touch – briskly ran through her recital piece a few times. Then I tried my own piece: at home, on my own piano, everything was fine, except for the slight cramping in my gut.

It was a pain that only got worse as I showered off the flop sweat, changed into my white shirt and wool pants, and gathered my sheet music. The ride to Mrs. Kowalski’s house was an uncomfortable battle between my mind and intestines, and I writhed in my seat as suddenly my insides roiled and shifted. Things were moving.

The younger students always went first. The six year olds picked their way through “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” and the ten year olds did their own Odes to Joy. Parents looked on raptly as students waiting to play studied their music, mentally preparing for their turn at the keyboard. Karen was there; she didn't know I liked her. She was absorbed in her sheet music - she was an excellent pianist - and the warm afternoon sun on her brown skin and hair awoke new and fervent emotions within my pubescent heart. But I cared less and less about that as the pressure in my gut grew and grew. I crossed my legs. I clenched my cheeks. But just before it was time for me to play, I realized it was to no avail. I could not wait. My stage fright, always my bane and nemesis, had given me one final gift: diarrhea.

Mrs. Kowalski’s house was arranged so that the bed and bath were set just off the large living room in which she kept her grand piano. Chairs for parents and students fanned out toward them. Consequently, anyone using the bathroom during recitals had to be very careful, as every move was potentially audible to the people outside.

At first the bathroom was a cool, dark respite from the crowd. I began to relax slightly, a feeling which dissipated the moment I sat down on the bowl. The cramps were furious, bending me over, and then it started, waves of pain, waves of relief, and an astounding amount of noise. I tried to be quiet - and it's so hard to be quiet! - but there was no piano sound to provide cover. It was my turn to play and everyone was waiting for me.

Then came the snickers. As I sat there, every painful squirt and groan made it more obvious that I had a captive audience just outside the bathroom door, all of whom were doing their best to be polite and all of whom were failing horribly in spite of themselves. Every fresh body-wracking spasm elicited a new ripple of muffled hilarity from outside the door until the laughter reached critical mass and the chuckles continued quietly on their own regardless of the pace of my performance.

The house fell silent. I sat there in the dark. My heartbeat grew fainter in my ears. It was time to sit down at the piano and pretend I still knew how to play. So I finished up, carefully washed my hands, let out a deep breath, and emerged to greet my adoring fans.

[wik] And so it’s come to this. Two fighters, each now understanding his opponent’s strengths. I know that I can never overcome Johno’s gamedorkery; he, no match for my deepest, darkest schoolyard horrors. Each of us continually rolling polyhedral dice in our heads as we attempt to land imaginary hits on the other.

Going into this final round, my opponent leads with another nasty 1-2 punch: music wanker and public evacuation. Such a combo might be deadly to those of lesser constitution, but I wield…

The Hammer of the Grods

There is a lot about high school I wish I could lobotomize away and never be allowed to remember. Most of the people; all of the smells; even the look of the place, which was as if Foucault designed and built it himself with his own two Crisco-slathered hands, to prove his ideas about what such structures did to people’s minds. But the regional slang and stupid adolescent patois from that era still make me laugh sometimes, and I’d rather keep them.

One word in particular was used as a noun, to name anyone with whom the speaker wished to express distaste: “grod”. The instances whereby proper usage of “grod” might be explained are far too numerous to cover in this forum. It was pretty much anyone at any time for any reason, but always bad, and used interchangeably with “nerd”. I’d been a grod more times than I can remember, and figured after graduation that was the end of my grodhood.

And I was right… for about 5 years, until my band played out for the first time.

The hell of it was, there were all the ingredients to being cool. I was just out of the Army, energetic and cocky; the band was tight; high school seemed a nightmare I’d had when I was a kid when I thought of it at all; shit, I even had a girlfriend who was way hotter than I thought I deserved. Things had come together not so pretty bad, thank you very much. But it wasn’t gonna be enough.

I won’t share the name of the band; you could Google it, find it, and laugh even harder at me. It was a local metal-type outfit, is all I’ll say, and we kinda sucked. But we all knew our parts, and wanted to get out there and play. First gig: the high school where the lead player went.

None of us really knew what the event was and the singer, who had set up the gig, was being a little evasive. I couldn’t understand any conceivable scenario of what a semi-metal act with 20 minutes of material was supposed to do in a high-school setting, but I was jazzed to be playing out and it didn’t gnaw at me. We humped our gear and set up in the dark, musty auditorium. I tried not to dwell on the ugly memories that the sights of forlorn, endless rows of sheetmetal lockers brought, and ignored the ball of tension forming in my gut.

As I recall we were supposed to go on at 7, and we had about an hour to kill so we ate a bit and hung around backstage. By then I’d seen some friends and their girlfriends, and heard some rustling and voices drifting backstage from the seats. I figured there’d be alot of people judging from the sounds, but I couldn’t be sure with the curtain down. I was getting pumped as we closed in on 7, and starting to get a little anxious about my backup scenarios: what do I do if I break a string (on my bass with brand new strings); how will I look if I fall (ridiculous, that’s how); if I really flub my parts, will I be able to recover (likely not); will I throw up the McNuggets I just ate (no, as it turned out)…and a thousand other stupid situations I was by that time dwelling on JUST to freak myself out.

Seven hits, we fire up and start our little intro piece, feeling for the groove, the pocket; things start to come together, and everybody’s feeling and feeding off each other’s energy; I see the lights hit the curtain and am so amped I’m on stage I've wanted it for years and doing the thing and all the stupid shit I was thinking about was stupid and we’re gonna kill because we’ve been rehearsing so long and doing it and when this curtain goes up I’m gonna be looking at a packed house of 200 hot chicks and dudes who want to be me…

…and that’s a shame, because if I had instead been excited at the thought of playing live for two dozen retarded kids and their parents, I’d have been in Nirvana.

Turned out there was a late after-school program for all the special ed/special needs students. We got this big room at this big school basically to amuse these kids. And when the curtain went up, that’s who was there. All of two rows’ worth. Oh, and the friends who had come to support us had left as soon as they figured out what was going on; it took days to get them to even return phone calls.

So it all kind of crashed in on me, on stage, at once. I’m in a high school again. I’m trying so hard to be cool but failing again. I have only the lame kids for company again.

And instead of rock God, rock grod. Again.

Voting on Round 2 is now closed: GeekLethal wins with his saga of shame and teenaged diaper-rash. Round 3 between Johno and Geeklethal is now open for voting and mockery. See also Round 1.

To stay in this fight, I need to take round 2. I wasn’t prepared for Johno’s freight-train dork attack last time, and it cost me the round. This time, I’m going to have to unload my reserve, the reserve I was saving to take me through later bouts: my 11 lightning jabs of school dork. Sound effects of my crushing blows added for atmosphere:

-I was always the fat kid (thwock)

-Had glasses since I’m 8 (pow)

-When my mother would throw me out on nice days, to be where she felt normal boys should be, I would take a book and read outside somewhere until I felt I’d been in the sun long enough (whack-whack); best one I read in this manner was “Elfstones of Shannara” (ZONK)

-Failed gym on more than one occasion; faked maladies to avoid gym more times than I can remember (pif-pif)

-7th grade swimming: was so embarrassed to be naked in locker room, would put my pants on over my wet shorts afterward and wear the rest of the day; borderline diaper rash; mile-walk home during winter and pants would freeze (thwack-thwack-CRACK)

-8th grade lunch/recess: Was genuinely sad that I couldn’t break-dance like my friends; tried it at home in kitchen and only managed to hurt myself (bam-SOCK); also, crushed that I couldn’t find parachute pants for fat kids (toff)

-Freshman year, high school: went to get something from my locker during class and was mugged in hall, but asked that they leave me enough money for lunch (splort-BANG)
-Sophomore year: Girl on school bus almost kicked my ass, but she left me alone after I spit my lollipop at her (CRUNCH-ZAM)

-1986-89: Played wargames by myself because no one I knew would play them right; in essence spent days playing with myself (smack)

- Owned, enjoyed, and utilized Star Wars and GI Joe figures until I was about 13; Looked forward to building them new forts and vehicles out of legos, Contrux, Lincoln Logs, et al; flunked honors Spanish because I was sketching said structures (ZAM-ZOCKO-ZONG)

-By the time I was 12, had escape routes and (admittedly rough) ambush plans to arm myself in the event of Soviet conquest (KERPOW)

Johno, if you can take this kind of beating and survive, I have grossly underestimated your dorktitude.

[wik] You Forget My Secret Weapon: The Screaming Fist of Humilating Prolixity!

It is time now for me to counter GeekLethal's attack with one of my own.

Does anybody else get the feeling that this contest is like a terrible bonfire of the vanities? Or a potlach of cool? In order to prove our status we are making a towering inferno of our cool. Biggest fire wins!

Now, by starting out with yet another story about gaming in a foreign country, you might think I’m going to ground, hunkering down under the flurry of butterfly punches sent my way by Mr. GeekLethal. Indeed, the idea of him sitting half a school day in squelchy trousers and then walking home crying in the snow while his pants freeze is a dork story of unmeasurable grace and pathos.
However, I can't resist sharing this vignette of dorkiness abroad before offering my own list of dork issues in order to underscore just how g-d d-mn dorky I is. Was. Was. One might argue that yet another gaming abroad story is repeating myself. I would argue that instead, it's proof that I fail to learn from my own mistakes.

The year: 1991. The place: the plateaus of Central Mexico, in a rural area in central Guanajuato. I had gone to Mexico as part of an organization called Amigos de las Americas, a wonderful group whose mission is to send American volunteers to Latin American nations for 4- 6- or 8-week stints of latrine building, human and canine vaccination, school building, dental hygiene, Oral Rehydration Therapy packet distribution coupled with basic hygiene, and other projects. I was there building latrines, planting fruit trees, handing out ORT packets, and doing in-home dental hygiene lessons for children.

One rule of Amigos de las Americas is that once in country, volunteers may not leave the town to which they are assigned. This is to cut down on various risks, as our only supervision was a route leader who came around once a week or so to check up on me and my partner.

For a sixteen-year-old kid from Ohio who had never been further from home than Cleveland (twice), the countryside of Central Mexico was to put it mildly a bit of a shock. I was stationed in a town of some fourteen houses and fewer families, all so poor that they took turns feeding us our diet of beans, rice, and eggs. The electricity that had been wired in just a year before worked intermittently, allowing us to watch Knight Rider (“El Auto Increíble”) and the cartoon version of “Dungeons and Dragons” dubbed into Spanish.

The profound sense of dislocation that resulted was my first encounter with adult choices- doing things you don’t want to do, coping with unfamiliar and daunting situations with no recourse or help available. The people of the village were extremely friendly, but of course the cultural barriers were high and therefore little solace could be found.

So I did what came naturally. To pass the time and to provide a sense of home, I drew up a splendid map, made up character sheets, tore off and numbered small pieces of paper 1 to 20, and taught my route partner to play Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. That we had no rulebooks was not a problem- I had all of that in my head. The armor class of a goblin. The THAC0 of a second-level cleric. The damage dice for a longsword. The attributes and characteristics of The Iron Bands of Billaro,” all ready at hand.

By the end of our eight weeks, I had a fantastically detailed world at hand peopled with nations complete with histories, catastrophies, and mythologies. Yeah sure, we got all our latrines built, taught all the kids how to brush their teeth with a twig, maybe saved a child or two from eventually dying of dysentery, dodged subtle offers of daughter-marriage and more. But a few years ago while packing my stuff up after college, I didn’t find any photos from Mexico. I think my parents had them somewhere. I didn’t find an effaced one-peso piece that at the time was worth 1/3300th of a dollar. I found the one memento from Mexico that had stayed with me for years-- the campaign map that I had labored over while the rainy season came and the valleys of Mexico turned green.

Now, let’s get to it.

• I was never quite the fat kid, but in my third grade open soccer league, they invented the position of referee just for me.
• I too had glasses when I was 8. Big deal.
• There was a cabal of bullies in my small school and I was their favorite thin-skinned target. I have been in probably a hundred fights or more, and lost every single one.
• Two words: Space Camp. I’m saving the rest of my Space Camp story for later rounds if I make it.
• Wore the same blue Space Camp hooded sweatshirt to school every day for a year.
• The next year, aware if the wardrobe gaffe embodied in the sweatshirt, I bought ten IZOD polo shirts in different colors and wore them every day of that year.
• GI Joe and Transformers mania lasted for me as well. Used to stage elaborate war games with one friend in his family’s living room, until about age 13. I have to admit, though, I never sketched structures. Instead I covered every notebook through high school with sketches of firearms. Today, this would get me expelled and arrested.
• In seventh grade was kicked out of Advanced English quiet reading time for continuously laughing out loud at the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Dug hole deeper by attempting to explain to class and teacher why it was funny.
• In seventh grade got into a geek-fight with another kid. He gave me floppy discs that self-erased when put in my computer. I returned the favor in the band room before concert band by giving him back all the software I’d borrowed from him, first making sure I was in sight of everyone, and then crumpling the 5 1/4 inch floppies into a ball. It was very important to me that everyone see me take righteous geek vengeance.
• I spent Sunday afternoons during middle and high school in my room, running solo campaigns of AD&D.
• I spent Friday nights—nearly every Friday night—during middle and high school roleplaying. I mastered the rules for D&D, AD&D, various GURPS systems, Warhammer, Paranoia!, The (ultra-lame) Marvel Comics Superhero system, and a short dozen other gaming systems.
• I never failed gym- it was impossible to fail gym when Crazy Ray Murray already set the bar so low- but I did manage to get through exactly one pushup in our eighth grade fitness test.
• Marching band, four years.
• In 11th grade, helped found a student group, SAFE (Students Acting for the Environment) and participated in a special before-school assembly in which SAFE members performed a pantomime with ecologically-themed props while dressed all in green before giving a speech on the planet’s pain.
• (FINISH HIM!!!) One last vignette, presented out of chronological order. When I was a kid I wanted to play Little League. After tryouts I ended up being placed on and playing four years as the oldest kid on a team of kids a grade behind me many of whom were that year's crop of dorks. Even among dorks a year younger and therefore smaller and less developed than myself, I once rode the bench for every inning of twelve straight games. My specialty was taking my glove off while in right field and zoning out. I spent a lot of time teaching myself to break dance by doing the moves and watching my shadow on the ground in front of me, in full sight of my team, the other team, and all the coaches and parents.

And perhaps the piece de resistance…

• I wore my hair in a mullet until I was a sophomore in college.

Early this morning as I was (ma)lingering in bed trying to banish a night of dyspeptic dreams and turbulent slumber with fond anticipation of the CAT Scan I had scheduled for this afternoon, I was jerked to full awareness by the nasally voice of Alan Dershowitz on NPR talking about torture and asking what Kriston of Begging to Differ calls "the stupidest question ever asked."

When you torture somebody to death … everybody would acknowledge that’s torture. But placing a sterilized needle under somebody’s fingernails for fifteen minutes, causing excruciating pain but no permanent physical damage—is that torture?

First of all, unless it's part of some freaky sex thing you really better keep to yourself, the answer to that question is yes.

But you know what? The problem with Dershowitz' question, as with every time the cut-and-dried etudes of the so-called terror "debate" are trotted out on broken legs for one more sad routine, isn't that the "ticking time bomb" thing and the "needle in fingernail" thing are stupid, so much, but that they're useless. Dershowitz framed the question poorly, as often happens, and it cripples the debate before it can even get started. Either, as in Dershowitz' case, you start from the minimal assertion that "needle => fingernail => not torture" or you start from impossible "terrorist => nucular bomb => only you can help!!" principles. Neither is illustrative, and neither breeds actual debate. In either case, absent any other information, people quickly end up either arguing that sleep-deprivation is *never* nice to spring on a person, or attacking "The Left" for their limp-wristed inability to acknowledge that sometimes one must roll up their sleeves and get their hands slick with someone else's blood. Useless.

The question is uninteresting because it's a script, not real life.

To illustrate what I mean, I will pose an equally stupid counter-question regarding the abortion debate the content of which is also torn from the movies:

"You say abortion is always wrong. Well, consider a woman who has been drugged and raped by the devil, and the child growing inside her is a devil-baby. The only way to save the world is to abort the fetus. What do you do? What do you do?

It kind of seems to me that the time-bomb-thingy is exactly as helpful in the torture debate as Rosemary's Baby is in the abortion debate. I hereby decree that hereafter, any mention in an online debate of the "ticking time bomb scenario" shall be dubbed "Oppenheimer's Corollary," and the first party to invoke such shall automatically be considered as forfeiting the debate.

Voting on Round 1 is now closed: Johno wins with his freight-train attack of pathetic dorkery abroad. Round 3 between Johno and Geeklethal is now open. See also Round 2.

One might see my invocation of a Funkadelic album cut in the title to this post as an attempt to hedge my bets and have it both ways: Johno - simultaneously dork/not dork. Unfortunately, I am indisputably a dork. A couple friends of mine in Pittsburgh, Helen and Jill (and you would always call them "HelenandJill," like "Hey, I'm Helen and this is my hetero life partner Silent Jill.") had an extensive alternate vocabulary (as if they were twins with their own language) that they would use in general conversation. For example, their word for the process by which you kill a few hours by maybe getting a cup of coffee then dropping in on the bookstore, then maybe heading down to see if anybody you know is at the Murray Avenue Grill, was "[to] der-de-der." As in, "I didn't do much today, just der-de-dered around before coming over here." Perhaps their best and most useful coinage was "The Dorking."

"The Dorking" is to be understood as a temporary condition something like "The Shining" except when you become afflicted with "The Dorking" you don't see dead sisters and rivers of blood. Instead, an otherwise well adjusted person does something incredibly dorky right on cue for a maximum number of people to be witness, preferably with an outcome of social disaster. Unreconstructed dorks are immune to "The Dorking," as to Be Dorked a person has to have developed a sense of social propriety and its attendant sense of shame. Say for example upon going to someone's house for the first time, you look through their CD collection only to find extensive holdings of Alanis Morrisette, Ace of Base and Shania Twain. A regular person might purse their lips and mentally catalog these people as deficient though well-meaning. That same person afflicted with The Dorking might start bitching audibly to his wife about how the producer-Svengali has completely ruined pop music, and why would anyone buy this crap and keep it in their house when those whores Glen Ballard and Mutt Lange already sleep on big piles of money, and what is with people anyway and the puppets that fart out crap music they seem to like? When will people get some damn taste? And then, of course, you turn around to find your former friend and soon-to-be former host standing there with a frozen smile as he or she tries to gauge just how big a dickhead you actually are. A total dork would not notice the frozen smile or the giant bruise on his arm where his wife pinched him numb, and blithely ask the host for a beer; someone afflicted with The Dorking would however have a moment of clarity in which they would have the urge to flee the room forever.

However, the line between Dork and The Dorking is not always clear. Take, for example someone on the way to a party with tons of hot weeeemin and a 50-gallon drum of highly alcoholic punch with the earnest intention of enjoying some time with one of said weeeemin and a good gallon of said punch. If they instead drink their allotted gallon only to spend the entire night shouting in a close friend's ear about Magic:The Gathering cards within easy earshot of many of the aforementioned hot weeeemin, are they a dork, or just afflicted with The Dorking?

Some cases, however, are beyond the pale. The foregoing incidents, though loosely autobiographical, have been modified for illustrative purposes. The following story, however, is true.

In 1995 I took a semester's trip to Cambridge, Enga-lind with two professors from the college I attended. The intention was to live in and study in Cambridge with other students from my school, and do as many cool things as possible within the larger sphere of Europe. While other students took long weekend trips to London, France, Scotland, Ireland, Italy, Switzerland, Germany and Greece, I spent nearly $500 on Magic:The Gathering cards at a Cambridge game shop and chose to forego all the aforementioned trips (save one to Paris) because it was more important to me to try out my flashy new black-blue-white "Xerox" deck in a succession of Magic:The Gathering tournaments held at a Cambridge pub. Besides two days in Paris, the farthest I made it afield was a jaunt to an apartment on the outskirts of Cambridge to hang out with... you guessed it! A bunch of English Magic:The Gathering players! I missed out on a lot of stuff but, I gotta say. That deck of mine kicked hella ass.

Out-dork THAT, GeekLethal.

[wik]
Johno attacked with a classic 1-2 combo, a twofer that includes both gaming dork AND American dork abroad. This combination is potent, no question, and demonstrates that this opponent is serious and committed to this fight.

But any aggressive course of action assumes a level of risk for the attacker. By attacking along 2 axes, my opponent has effectively doubled the battlespace, and given me double the room to maneuver. Instead of trying to thwart both advances, I can concentrate my forces where I think they can prevail: American dork abroad. Here's a little something I call:

Remembrance of Ass Past

The Munich of 1992 was, so far as I was concerned, famous for 4 things: beer, big tents in which to drink beer, robust fraus to bring beer within the tents, and something about Nazis. Well, Nazis with beer.

Three friends and I had gone down Munich way to see one fella’s girlfriend. I don’t remember her name; I just remember her being astonishingly ugly and the rest of us referring to her as “the troll” behind his back and later, in front of him. Which was pretty far off the mark, to be fair, because she wasn’t at all large or scary or smelly. She was quite petite really, and acquainted with enough hygienic practices to pass as human in broader society. So not a troll for all that. More a sort of semi-goblin.

At any rate, we went down there for Oktoberfest and the troll was going to put us up in her flat in the city. Or so we thought. We made a day of partying at the fest and had a blast. That night, we decided we’d had enough when imitating the huge animatronic lion that had been erected near the entrance and mimicked drinking a mug of beer with a deep, growling “Loooowwwwenbrau” every 2 minutes was no longer as funny as it had been the previous 7,000 times. And we’d pretty much thrown up everywhere we cared to, so it was time to pack it in.

But, ol’ trolly didn’t really want us hanging around her flat after all- she wanted to be alone with Ed. She took us to a nearby hotel, a huge modern tower-type place, and introduced Phil and me to these friends of hers: um, whose names I don’t remember either. Turned out they were a couple of nice Scottish lasses, making a Deutschmark or two as chambermaids. Troll left us with them in the hotel lobby, and took Ed back to her lair. I don’t remember what became of our other friend Jose at that point; I believe he was passed out back at troll’s flat ‘cuz he wasn’t with Phil and me.

These chicks were fairly cute, one more so than the other, and they brought us back to their place, just a few subway stops away. As we walked into their apartment, I allowed myself to believe that maybe, just maybe, I’d get some ass. Play my cards right, put out my vibe, game, whatever-sure, this just might be my lucky night, heh heh heh. Then Phil passed out promptly upon arrival, leaving me with two heath honeys and a snowballing sense of greatness to come from the next few hours.

So we sat down to talk, we three, after a few snorts of whatever filthy rotgut they had close at hand: me on a bed, the two girls on kitchen chairs sort of facing me. Then I said something like, “So…two Scotch girls in Munich…” and didn’t get any more out than that. Now, I don’t even remember what I was going to say next. And it wouldn’t have mattered. Turns out they took umbrage with being referred to as “Scotch”- “SCOTCH YA DRINK!!” it was explained, rather too menacingly for my taste.

After that furor, I figured OK, let’s start again. Don’t blow this, this is a Penthouse letter waiting to happen. I asked something about what they missed about Scotland, and within the minute both of them were telling me what a “bloodthirsty bleeding fucking cunt” Margaret Thatcher was, and this person’s a fucking wanker, this one’s a fucking…I don’t know what, they had a town slang they used a lot which, coupled with their thick accents, allowed pretty much only variations of “fuck” to make it to my brain. This tirade lasted roughly 90 minutes.

By that point, I was past believing a Penthouse letter was in my future. I was thinking more about whether if these chicks killed me, it would be in the line of duty and my mom would get the insurance. I was looking toward the door and wondering whether I could make it out before these hags could catch me. Thing is, Phil was shorter than me but thicker, and it would take time to get him into a fireman’s carry and get him out. No way I’d make it out, and I couldn’t just leave him.

To buy time, I opted for the only topic I could think of that might be of interest to these ladies: weaponry. And boy, was it a hit. They wanted to know all about firing machine guns, and how heavy grenades are, and an M16’s recoil, and a thousand other things concerning the minutiae of deadly tools. It wasn’t Penthouse at all; it was somewhere between Soldier of Fortune and the Michelin Guide to Bavaria. With dawn, they rousted Phil and threw us out to get some sleep.

In short, gentle reader, I had two chicks to myself all night, all of us far from home in a foreign city, energetic, lonely, and young. And instead of being the king pimp rock star of the universe, I talked to them about guns all night.

Hunter S. Thompson died yesterday of a bullet through the head. Gonzo journalism is dead, because nobody, nobody did it like Hunter. It's a damn shame, if for no other reason than that I would have loved to play shotgun golf.

I am back from the dead.

Over the weekend I spent some time under the care of the Ministry's crack team of gnostic chirurgeons. Most of them are refugees from our now-defunct Babylon office, and others are... well... let's just say they don't get out much and that's lucky for us all. After exhausting all the powers of modern medical science to no avail, the Ministry's medical staff went to work. Twenty-four hours later, I was miraculously on the mend. Though not without a fight, our in-house healers were able to draw a quantity of fluid from my chest cavity (not without a fight... Linda Blair vomited less than I did... the powers of the old ones are strong... I wonder if this was all to do with that aging invoice I hoped they'd forget...), and I am feeling stronger by the day. Soon, once again, you shall all cower before me.

In my absence, I am both gratified and saddened to see that the innate pettiness of the human spirt has rolled on unabated. In this week's quickie edition of This Week in Exemplary Human Behavior, we focus on the unremarkable: those stories that we could recycle at least twice a year without even trying. Perhaps next week we will see humankind aspire to greater heights of creative cruelty. Or perhaps we will not have to write this feature at all for want of suitably exemplary material. Suit yourself; I know which one I'd put money on.

Spotlight: Massachusetts- Defrocked priest Paul Shanley will die in prison after being convicted of repeatedly raping a young parishoner in the 1980s. Despite the ultimate thinness of the prosecution's case (only one of four victims made it to the trial phase without either being dropped from the case or going into hiding), a jury convicted Shanley on the strength of reportedly repressed memories recovered by the plaintiff. The Boston Phoenix has spent a good amount of time documenting Shanley's deep, deep weirdness-- including, for example, his perplexingly thumbs-up attitude toward bestiality and pedophilia-- which makes a good circumstantial case that the former "street priest" is at least a hobby-level sicko, but one witness' recovered memories do not a case make.

There's so much here to love: a creepshow priest; a jury willing to accept "memory recovery" as ironclad evidence; a diocese who, regardless of this one priest's record, aided and abetted a casual kiddie-toucher ring for decades, privileging their own institutional comfort over the anguish of generations of helpless victims. Nice.

Spotlight: Los Angeles- Home of The the Angels Angels of Anaheim. What is it this time? Natural disaster? Mouthy limo-lib celebrity? Dead rap star?

Nope! It's that old chestnut, appalling police brutality! In a story that will be no surprise to anyone who has ever driven I-5 at rush hour (or seen the Steve Martin classic, "LA Story"), the LAPD ended the stolen-car joyride of thirteen-year-old Devon Brown by shooting him. The Department's defense is that Brown, at the end of the chase, backed his car into a police cruiser in a maneuver that we in Boston like to call "parking a little close." The police chose to signal their displeasure at Brown's novice attempt at full-contact driving by shooting into his car ten times, thereby stopping the car. Oh right-- and killing Brown too.

Like Uncle Jimbo said, "it's all right to shoot anything, as long as you make sure to yell, 'oh God, it's coming right for us!' first."

Spotlight: Iraq- Suicide bomber kills 21. Nothing to say that wasn't said the first 200 times.

Spotlight: Saudi Arabia- Security officials from 50 countries elected to put the fox in charge of the henhouse this week, with the establishment of an international counterterrorism center to be based in Saudi Arabia. Now, I understand that the Royal House of Saud 'n' Waffles has a vested interest in quashing terrorism in their country because all those grassroots terrorist groups kind of suck the wind out of their own state-sponsered terrorist groups but really... do you put the fat guy in charge of the buffet?

Spotlight: Sudan- The UN continues to waggle the Giant Finger Of Blame at Sudan, charging that the Sudanese government really doesn't give a shit about the ongoing genocide within its borders. If the Sudan does not respond to waggling, the organization is expected to move on to Sighing Aggressively. In other news, a new study by the United Nations Commission on Self-Justification shows that sighing saves, on average, 300,000 children a year from dying by machete or Kalashnikhov.

[wik] Did I really say we might never have to do this again? What was I drinking?! Here's some more for you.

Spotlight: Florida- Via Julian Sanchez at Reason.com comes a chilling story of a Tampa couple who systematically tortured their seven adopted children. The official reports cite that the children were, among other things, were "subjected to electric shocks, beatings with hammers and having their toenails yanked out with pliers." One set of 14-year-old twins weighted 36 and 38 pounds respectively, or about a third the normal weight of boys that age.

This height of depravity against children strikes me as a strong argument against God (what God would let this happen?), against evolution (what process of evolution would retain this impulse?), and in favor of enforced eugenics. But ultimately, I think this episode sits alongside many, many others of various stripes, flavors, and varieties as an incontrovertable, ironclad, and urgent argument against Florida.

(A fun final note: According to Florida law, the real threat to adopted children comes from the queers.)

We might bicker and cavil and argue about whether or not it's "torture," but can we please agree that regardless of whatever else you may call it, it's cruel and sadistic behavior?

Brad over at Pool of Thought brings us this story from the land of gloom and coffee.

Here's the short version: the "celebrate diversity" set formed themselves a good ol' fashioned mob and forced an Army recruiting team from their campus last week, a gesture they somehow linked to the president's inaugural. Brad does a great essay on it, which I can't improve upon.

At least though the filthy protestors were of all stripes, so they sort of practice what they preach. Black and white, man and woman standing together, free from the baggage of their parents' bigotries, and united in spitting in the face of someone else entirely.

Thanks to SMASH also; wouldn't have found the post without his link.

Sometime Jefferson Airplane drummer Spencer Dryden is dead. I don't have much in the way of a fond farewell for Dryden, mainly because the Airplane never were that big with me and Dryden was always "the other guy" to Skip Spence. I mainly bring up this sad news to point out what it really means to have crappy luck.

A benefit concert last year featuring Bob Weir (news) of the Grateful Dead and Warren Haynes of Gov't Mule and raised $36,000 for Dryden, who was in the middle of two hip replacement surgeries and was facing heart surgery at the time. His Petaluma home and all his possessions had been destroyed in a fire in September 2003. He also had been diagnosed with stomach cancer.

"Arkansas Cops use Taser to Subdue Nude Jogger".

Go watch this video instantly.

and I piss on his grave. Not regular piss, either. Bad beer piss. Milwaukee's Best piss. Black Label piss. Coors piss.

Thanks to Gawker I find the late unlamented terror kingpin owned a piece of East Village (that's Manhattan, in New York City) landmark Bowl-Mor Lanes. Never you mind that Bowl-Mor is a hellhole for real bowlers, favoring flashing neon day-glo crud-ola over niceties like a pleasant environment in which to roll. Never you mind that the serious bowling crowd at Bowl-Mor is outnumbered about six to one by goofing hipsters.

Never mind any of that. Bowling is the one sport closer to my heart than any other (Mrs. Johno in fact was a state champion bowler in her youth, and you better believe that only endears her to me all the more), indeed it is the only sport I own the equipment to play. That's right. A fourteen pound, custom drilled purple Columbia White Dot named Loretta. And Yasser Arafat used the money of people like me to increase the misery of the world.

It's bad enough-- in fact it's evil-- to fund terrorism. It's a special kind of sick and twisted evil to fund terrorism with money made off Manhattan hipsters and off-duty garbage men.

F**ker.

Through which the Ministers warmly remember our mothers pinning our mittens not to our coat sleeves, but straight through our tender little wrists.

For the week....er, or thereabouts...ending 22DEC04

Spotlight Turkey: A USAF Maj General serving in Turkey was almost offed by a member of his Turkish security detail. The General is America's highest-ranking officer in country and senior advisor to the US embassy in Turkey on martial matters. One of his guard's weapons misfired, so the official story goes, and the General was hit by tiny bits of shrapnel from the bullet that impacted at his feet.

Not sure if it was an accident by an inept guard who can't control his weapon, or an assassination attempt by an inept guard who can't control his weapon:

"Death to America! ALLAHUUUU AKBAA...rrr..oooohhh...I mean... how you say, the 'oops'?"

Spotlight Costa Rica: In other gun-related shenanigans, a Costa Rican cab driver shot some guy running around the neighborhood wearing an Osama mask and carrying a pellet gun. The man said he was jumping out and scaring drivers on a narrow street, you know, for fun.

Long regarded as the Central Americans with no sense of humor, a frosty attitude toward foreigners, and morose outlook on a grim life of senseless surf gamboling, sun worship, and hemp cultivation, it should shock no one that this solitary man who tried to inject a little levity into the otherwise colorless void masquerading as life in Costa Rica would get capped. Such is the twisted world in which we live.

Spotlight Londinium: An 18-year-old kid killed his friend because he wouldn't get out of his dog's favorite chair. As is so often the case when planning seating arrangements, words were exchanged, dogs became agitated, bats were brought out, 5.5 centimeter skull fractures were inflicted, and someone succumbed to brain damage.

This is precisely why I participated NOT AT ALL in the seating arrangements at my own wedding- just this sort of thing, because if I was going to hear one more time that Uncle A couldn't be within 3 tables of the bar but no closer than 4 tables of cousin B, someone was gonna get a bat in the head.

Spotlight Noo Yawk: A NYC landlord hired a pair of hitmen to kill 2 of his tenants, brothers who shared a rent-controlled apartment, so he could then free up the place and triple the rent. In another example America's declining work ethic, the hitmen didn't kill the brothers, but DID manage to inflict "disfiguring injuries". At trial the landlord said he didn't hire the men to kill, but to scare, which sounds like the "I tried pot but didn't inhale" defense. It didn't wash with the jury; sentencing in January.

Spotlight Wiscaahnsin: Truck driver Jeff Lafferty was shot by a second man who claimed Mr. Lafferty had damaged the man's mailbox. This particular story does not verify whether events unfolded the way the gunman thinks, but what is undeniable is that he put 4 rounds into this guy and didn't kill him. Obviously the product of a kum-ba-ya, touchy-feely public school that taught guns are bad.

This sort of event shows why this country needs more and better gun education programs. Somewhere along the line the NRA failed this man, who couldn't kill with at least 4 opportunities to do so and after his property was threatened by an interloper. We need to refocus on the fundamentals here, people: readin', writin', 'rithmetic, and riflery. We owe it to our children. American children.

Spotlight Nuevo Mexico: In the most brazen case ever recorded of institutionalized theft, an Albuquerque woman took $20,000 in child support payments from her ex-husband for a daughter that never existed and with the full cooperation of the judicial system. The fact that the "father" had a vasectomy a year prior to the supposed birth, that on no prior occasion had the woman ever produced said daughter, and that DNA tests proving the paternity were blatantly forged were entirely overlooked and indeed, refocused the blame and difficulty back on this man for being so ridiculously obstinate in the whole affair.

I'm sure this chick is a hero in the Wymyn's Studies, Herstory, Womanist set, and could have a bright future in academia when all this furor is passed. But she turns my fucking stomach. The man here made a huge mistake even getting involved with such a psychopath, but at least got out before there were real children involved or he got an icepick in the neck while sleeping.

Spotlight Missourah: But that chick from New Mexico is a fucking saint compared to this sick specimen. Lisa Montgomery has been charged with murdering a woman 8 months pregnant, cutting the unborn baby from the womb, and then, in a final homage to the macabre, passing the baby off as her own.

This story covers what is possibly the most reprehensible set of behaviors ever chronicled in the brief history of this feature. I had to reach for the eye soap after I first read about it and nearly called out sick from my real job- not because the story made me ill necessarily, but because I just couldn't go out into normal, functioning society knowing that such people really existed. Out there. Among us. Maybe next door. Not that I have neighbors here on the Frontier, I'm just sayin'.

If anyone else needs to sleep with the light on for a few nights, the Ministry understands. We will open the Ministry amphitheater/cafeteria/zombie-proof bunker, the Catastratorium, to loyal readers until we all feel a little better.

[wik] The above story is eerily similar to events that happened back in September 2003, very near to the college Johno and Buckethead attended. If anything, this story is a fraction of a bit creepier, because the murderer knew the mother, and had to change her story when her original target had a miscarriage. Check here and here for sickening details.

Spotlight Julian Sanchez' scary brain: Sanchez chronicles the relentless assault on Christmas by the evil forces of secularism here. Judging by his reasoned and persuasive essay, Sanchez is clearly one of them. The attack on Christmas is really just a feint, as true believers know; the real target is Christianity itself, and by criminalizing its holidays, maleficent liberals come one step closer to their ultimate goal of mandatory gay marriage for all, 100% gun confiscation, and Stalin worship.

The Ministry of course encourages these conflicts, as they provide just that much more lubrication for our tentacles to slither into the orifices of power.

Orifices!

Fool:

Fool:

Fool:

This week, the Ministry was presented with one example of heartless circumstantial cruelty so profound, so overweeningly monstrous and yet so typical of the dim candles that humanity proudly calls their minds, that it takes center stage in a solo version of our celebrated series, "This Week in Exemplary Human Behavior."

Spotlight Iran: She is a woman severe mental handicaps. She has a mental age of eight. As a girl, she was sold into sex slavery by her mother and passed from pimp to pimp, bearing her first child at age nine and enduring repeated rapes and abuses in the years since. She is now nineteen years old and will bear the emotional and physical scars of her horrible ordeal for life.

In their infinite mercy, the mullahs controlling Iran have looked into their hearts and consulted their Korans and concluded that the only balm for this poor girl's tortured life is to sentence her to death for the crime of prostitution.

We of the Ministry, our hearts hardened and our faces perpetually ensneered, like sometimes to think we have plumbed the very limits of the chthonian depths of the perversity of the human spirit. It is stories like this, fresh outrages every week, that remind us that in truth we know jack shit.

In which attention is paid to the stupid, and makes the petty feel better about themselves.

For the week ending 7DEC04

Spotlight Bangladesh: In the face of threats from an Islamic group, Bangladesh cancelled its national women's swimming competition. The group, which carries the unintentionally hilarious moniker "Anti-Islamic Activities Prevention Committee" decided the event was un-Islamic. And it wasn't the first time; last year the same group shut down the women's wrestling event as well. Because God HATES wet women and chick fights.

People's Theocratic Revolutionary whatever of Iran: Iran's supreme court upheld an adultery conviction and approved the death penalty be applied in the case, but in a fit of conscience did commute an associated prison term for the defendant AND disallow she be hanged. So she could be stoned instead. The noose does still await the other defendant, a 17 year old boy. When remarking on the recent spate of lady executions in Iran, a female parliamentarian made some sort of weird remark about killing prostitutes that didn't make alot of sense, so won't repeat.

Spotlight Thailand: In an effort to defuse simmering inter-religious tension, Thai PM Thaksin Shiawatra approved airdropping 100 million origami birds across the largely Muslim south as a message of peace. Officials, volunteers, and schoolchildren folded each of the tiny cranes. And within hours of the gesture,

"the owner of a tea shop in Pattani was slain by gunmen, grenades were thrown at the homes of two policemen in the same province and arsonists set fire to a state school in Yala and a teacher's house in Narathiwat."

Gestures really only work if all parties understand the symbols at play. Lovingly crafted paper cranes might mean peace and reconciliation to me, but there's no reason why I should assume they WOULDN'T mean "react with arson and explosives" when others were faced with origami.

Spotlight every frat stereotype: A frathouse at the University of Georgia was the venue for a "Revenge of the Nerds" reenactment, when Ogre burns the frat house down. Except instead of the whole house, some dupe burned himself badly enough to wind up in the hospital after an accident with open flame, an oil lamp, and 190-proof alcohol. There was also a nod to "Dr Strangelove" ("Mandrake, have you never wondered why I drink only distilled water, or rain water, and only pure-grain alcohol?"), every zombie flick ever (the burned victim's "skin was hanging off his fingers, chest, abdomen, side and back"), "Animal House", and every school principal you ever heard ("to make sure these types of accidents don't happen again.")

Spotlight Massachussetts' fat ex-wife: Police and workers at an Auburn, Maine food bank are trying to figure out how a 20-pound bale of weed got into their shipment of watermellons. The most puzzling part of course is the choice of venue. Sure, you'd expect a 20-pound bale of weed in a big shipment of cookies, say, or Cheez-its, but watermellons? The cops and DEA exhibited exemplary behavior by harshing everyone's mellow and confiscating the bale, in clear and blatant violation of both the Constitution's Finders Keepers clause AND common goddamned decency. C'mon guys...if a fella has to get his food from the food bank, at Christmas even, you can't let him have a little extra in his stocking this year?

Loyal reader Mapgirl submits us this tale of righteous and accidental vengeance. It's not that SUVs are evil, per se. No-ne-no-no-no! But they can be tools of evil when their drivers barrel through red lights while talking on a cell phone. As a pedestrian who daily takes his life in his hands, whose least favorite sound is the screeching rasp of lock-braked tires losing their grip on pavement and whose least-favorite sight is the stricken rictus on the face of the driver of the vehicle attached to the foregoing sound as they look up from reading the paper/gabbing on the phone/changing the radio/eating Chinese food, notice they are about to end the life of yrs truly, and stand on the brakes in an effort to stop two tons of SUV in twelve feet of space thereby hopefully sparing the aforementioned life, I relish this tale of accidental retribution.

(And as a writer, I summarily renounce the foregoing sentence as a hopeless run-on.)

In which the Ministry rewards its loyal readers with a seat on the Group W Bench, next to the father-rapers and mother-stabbers:
For the week ending 29NOV04

Spotlight Thailand: This land, once known for exotic scents, fantastical landscapes, and an elaborate boy-buggering sex trade, can now add school burning as a claim to fame. Southern *ahem* "militants" are blamed for burning five schools, the latest in a series of attacks against institutions and officials. In recent days government ministers or police have been shot, shot at (and missed), or been the victim of a drive-by (by motorcycle. With an axe.) Although as a child I often wished for something catastrophic and permanent to reduce my school to ash, I never actually did it. Of course, it never occurred to me to cloak my sloth and boredom with a political struggle either.

Spotlight "Palestine": The Middle East Media Research Institute features ongoing monitoring and translation of Arabic television and other media. One recent piece featured an homage to what the Arab press calls "martyrdom operations" and I call "twisted fuckers who kill as many people as they can as they snuff themselves". One mother claims she is proud of her martyred son, a son who had everything but wanted no wife. He wanted to be dead, actually, more than he wanted a wife. It's a sick, sick world when blowing yourself up is really the best alternative for the gay youth of Palestine.

Spotlight Congo: Reports have surfaced of some 150 instances of sexual abuse by UN staff members and soldiers in Congo. Reuters had little details at the time of this report, but the words "pedophilia", "rape", and "prostitution" do appear in the same sentence. Thus far only a handful of UN staff have been suspended, while one French and two Tunisian soldiers have been sent home. Characteristic of most things the UN has ever attempted, a half-dozen or so UN officials voiced outrage while admitting their influence was limited, and the Secretary General himself declared that he would implement a new policy.

Spotlight San Diego: A pastor of an unspecified CA church used fear of the devil to lure gullible congregants into having sex with him. He basically had three pickup lines: the devil has already attacked them in some way, and the cure was sex with him; the devil will at some point attempt to harm them, and the prevention was sex with him; or, he threatens to kill you unless you have sex with him. Not sure which is creepier, the sick pastor or the freaky church chicks who fell for his lines. All examples of exemplary human behavior, I daresay.

Spotlight Pennsylvania: A PA woman surrendered to police after admitting she fatally shot her husband for threatening the family pets. She tried to cover her tracks by throwing him in the well and explaining his absence to a hunting trip but confessed to her daughter, who ultimately called police. Apparently there was an argument and a bit of a shoving match, itself more than enough for a Lifetime movie of the moment, but by then threatening the pets he got himself a trip to the coroner.

Spotlight Wiscahnsin: Truck driver and Hmong refugee Chai Vang went buck nutty in the WI woods, offing six hunters and wounding two others. The survivors' stories and Vang's agree as far as what brought them into contact in the first place, but start to diverge at the point where people start getting killed. Vang claims he was called ethnic slurs (I've never heard a Hmong joke in my life, or what I'd call a Hmong if I wanted to insult him...anyone know?) and shot at as he was told to vacate private property. One survivor says he started shooting for no reason. Personally, I'm leaning toward Vang's version. Not that I think it's OK, I just think it's more plausible that in the heat of a tense moment, scared and outnumbered, the guy opened up. Now if it were a white dude, I might believe he started blasting for no reason, same way we do schools, daycares, and company HR offices.

This week is a double issue of our review of exemplary behavior, in which the Ministry offers eleven stories of people who, by their very existence, prove that it is in fact possible to get pregnant via anal intercourse.

(Dateline: London) The Ministry has been tracking the ups and downs of international relations for many, many years (we were in the tracking business long before the first Mongol horde came roaring down the steppes in a cloud of rancid horsefat and lethally sharp arrows and made it interesting for us), and we have found one thing to be incontrovertably true: nothing is more satisfying than an impotent hissy fit. From Sir Cletus Coke (created Baron of Upper Lower Nutsack in 1713 by Queen Anne) whose legendary vituperation in his dotage against the colonials did more than anything else to sour Benjamin Franklin forever on his now near-forgotten Nutsack Strategem for peace between Crown and Colonies in the tense days of 1775, to Dick Cheney's famous f-bomb on the floor of the US Congress, we at the Ministry have found that the the truth lies in the little things.

What truth can we glean from this? Merely that Canadian MP Carolyn Parrish is a petty harridan who has a grossly inflated sense of her own worth. In addition to making a "smoosh" video of herself stomping on a George W. Bush doll to her assurances that Americans are all "bastards," Parrish has done more to destroy US-Canadian relations than any force since the Half-Afternoon War of 1956. (In which four Quebecois farmers, drunk on Canadian Club, drove halfway to Burlington, VT with the intention of capturing the State capital and toppling the Green Mountain State from within. After engaging in light deer-rifle gunplay with certain Vermonters, it was expressed to them that the capital was in fact in Montpelier, forty miles away. As it was getting dark and they were low on supplies, the Canucks returned home shamefaced to the cold reaches of their homeland.)

Currently, MP Parrish is threating to ruin an upcoming speech by George W. to the Canadian Parliament.

Ms. Parrish said Wednesday she will not tone down her criticisms of U.S. President George W. Bush when he visits Ottawa this month, and Prime Minister Paul Martin's team can "go to hell" if they don't like it.

Ms. Parrish, an outspoken MP who has called Americans "bastards" and Mr. Bush "warlike," fired several broadsides at her own party leader, saying she won't cry if he loses the next election and is forced out of the leadership.

Most Liberals lined up yesterday to insist they would be on their best behaviour during the visit, and Ms. Parrish insisted that she would not heckle the President if he addresses Parliament. But as she prepared to meet Mr. Martin later Wednesday, she gave an interview saying she won't silence her criticism outside the Commons, or toe Mr. Martin's line.

"And if he wants to know why he can't control me, I have absolutely no loyalty to this team. None," she said in an interview with The Canadian Press. "After what they've put me through and lots of my colleagues, they can all go to hell. But he's not going to control me, so all he's going to do is end up looking weak."

Or, she is going to end up looking like an ass, but that doesn't seem to have been a deterrent thus far.

(Dateline: Moscow) Russia has made great strides of late in making a mockery of Western civilization's values, mores, and institutions. From banking to government powers, the Bear is leading the charge to wherever it's charging to; probably some sort of monstrous gulag.

Further progress was made recently when a Russian jury found a scientist guilty of spying for China, despite a) no spying was proven b) it's not clear that the information he sold to China was ever secret or classified but rather was public domain, and c) he had previously been acquitted of the same charges by another jury. But no worry! The train of justice rolls on!!

A jury in Siberia convicted a physicist today of spying for China, overturning a previous jury's acquittal after a closed trial that highlighted flaws in Russia's judicial system.

The jury rendered its verdict on the central espionage charge against the physicist, Valentin V. Danilov, even though the court's judges have yet to hold a hearing to decide whether the information he is accused of passing along is even secret, his lawyer said. That hearing is now scheduled for Nov. 10.

"This has no legal or logical justification," the lawyer, Yelena V. Yevlinova, said in a telephone interview from Krasnoyarsk, the regional capital in central Siberia where the trial was held.

Mr. Danilov, a researcher at Krasnoyarsk State University who was first charged in 2001, has acknowledged selling information about satellite technology to a Chinese company but argued that all of it was readily available from public sources.

Mr. Danilov was initially acquitted last December. His trial was the first of a recent flurry of espionage cases against scientists and researchers to be decided by a jury. Jury trials are still a relative novelty in Russia, having become an option for defendants in some serious cases only in 2002.

Although a new criminal code adopted that year was supposed to end double jeopardy except in extreme cases of judicial misconduct, prosecutors appealed his acquittal, citing "significant procedural violations" during his first trial. Among them was the fact that Mr. Danilov's lawyers discussed material in front of jurors that had not been accepted as evidence.

In June, the Supreme Court ordered a new trial, which began in September and was closed to the media and the public. Ms. Yevlinova said that the court's chief judge refused to let her present evidence showing that the information Mr. Danilov showed was not classified as secret. She said that, in effect, the jury's 12 members found that he signed a contract with the Chinese company, known as the Export and Import Company of Precise Machine Building.

"It is not clear what crime he was convicted of," she said.

Mr. Danilov, in a telephone interview, questioned the selection of the jury and the fact a list of the jurors was never published. He said he suspected they acted under pressure. "Not one of the jurors looked me in the face when the verdict was read," he said. "When someone does not look you in the eyes, it means that they have problems with their conscience."

Mr. Danilov's case - like the more prominent trial of Russia's richest man, Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky - has dashed the hopes of some that the legal reforms adopted in 2002 would give the judiciary greater independence. In practice, courts remain subject to the powerful influence of prosecutors and agencies like the Federal Security Service, the successor of the Soviet K.G.B.

(Dateline: Toronto) He was a quiet child, kind, courteous and willing to please. When he killed granny we thought the nightmare was over. And when he wrote "Kill all Women" on a blackboard, we're sure he's serious when he says it was just "art".

(Dateline: Orange County) Ahhh.. the OC. Home of comfortable conservatism, setting for inane teen drama television, and site of appalling abuses of power:

Many of you might not recognize the name Greg Haidl if you don’t happen to live in Southern California, but for Scott Peterson, Beretta, Courtney Love, and other high profile malcontents you would. Haidl, a corporately sponsored skateboarder, is the 19 year old son of wealthy Orange County Assistant Sheriff Don Haidl, and he is a piece of ... work shall we say. Greg and a couple of the OC’s finest took advantage of an opportunity to gangrape a 16 year old female classmate who had become very intoxicated. To add insult to injury (this is not a figure of speech in this case) these fine young men of the OC memorialized the events on videotape for their future enjoyment. Not content to merely film your standard every day gangrape, the boys decided to spice things up by inserting various foreign objects into the young lady while taking turns having their way with her. You may be assuming that these young cretins are at this time languishing in prison for their exertions, but you would be wrong, quite wrong indeed.

You see, Greg Haidl’s daddy is worth approximately $91Million give or take, and as I mentioned, he is a former Assistant Sheriff for the OC. Greg’s legal team was spared no expense as you might imagine, and if you combine that with a scenario tailor made for influence peddling of the worse sort, you get a hung jury and a mistrial.

Truly a model citizen, but lest you think California holds the monopoly on amoral teenaged suburban cretins, let's pay a visit to

(Dateline: Minnesoter) ... where we find three youths charged with beating another student with a baseball bat. The bright side? They were arguing about politics. The beatee held that "only fags would vote for Bush," and the beaters evidently took great exception to such sentiment. Sez Dakota County, MN, Attorney James Backstrom: "It's a good thing to see young people interested and excited about politics, [but] it's obviously very disturbing to see this kind of violence over it." Too true, counsel, and spoken like a true ambulance-chaser!

(Dateline: Oregon) But lest we think that America's youth are only concerned with gang rape and politics (similitudes at this point would be beyond tasteless), the Ministry offers assurances that some of them still like to film themselves beating someone to a pulp and sell the DVD in school complete with a pumpin' soundtrack. (Quick registration required in link; someone will pay for that inconvenience.) Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Harvard Business School class of 2016!!

(Dateline: Georgia)Quick: what loves Justin Timberlake, is charged with twelve counts of attempted murder, and fits into a training bra?

Two seventh-grade girls were arrested on charges that they served poisoned cake at their middle school cafeteria to about a dozen students who became ill and had to be taken to the hospital.

Lawyers for the girls said the cake was a prank, and that they had no intention to harm anyone. Lab tests showed the icing on the cornbread cake contained an expired prescription drug, bleach, clay and tabasco sauce.

The Ministry is pleased to note that thanks to the feminist movement, Title IX, and the endless perversity of the human spirit, the girls are doing it for themselves for a change.

(Dateline: Tennessee) At the crossroads of Office Space and Butt Bandits III is this guy.

The owner of a shaved ice business was arrested after two employees claimed he spanked them for making mistakes at work. Paul Eugene Levengood, 57, was charged with two counts of sexual battery after the 19-year-old women complained.

One of the women told police that on her first day at the Tasty Flavors Sno Biz, Levengood made her sign a statement that said: "I give Gene permission to bust my behind any way he sees fit."

(Dateline: Washington) But sometimes sexual assault just isn't funny. Anthony Whitfield will be in prison for 137 years or until he dies of AIDS, whichever comes first, for knowingly having unprotected sex with 17 women after being diagnosed with HIV. Five of the women have in turn contracted the disease. A witness at his trial recalled that he once said "that if he had HIV, he would give it to as many people as he could."

(Dateline: New York) On the next Mythbusters: Do people really throw frozen turkeys through car
windshields? Yup. And if it puts someone in a coma, you get to do jail time, too!

(Dateline: Wisconsin) Incensed at other hunters who apparently told him to get the hell out of their deer blind, St. Paul MN resident Chai Vang shot and killed five people and wounded three more with a deer rifle on Sunday, sniping at his confronters and anyone else in sight from his perch in a tree in the wilds of Western Wisconsin.

Note that according to the news, the malefactor had "an assault-type weapon", the scourge of our times. A regular "defense-type weapon" would of course have killed no-one.

Sometimes the machinery of Determinist Darwinism (others call it "just desserts," "fate," or "gettin' what's coming to you") goes horribly awry. Vang was scheduled years ago to asphyxiate underneath the weight of a car he had jacked up with a couple beer bottles while he worked on the oil pan with an arc welder, but unfortunately for eight hunters in Wisconsin, he escaped unscathed from that meeting with mortality. Not to worry: his day too will come.

Q: Match the following counterfactual statement with the appropriate picture below:

"“The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved...”

A:

B:

C:

D:

You want the truth!? Well... here.