perfidy

Down to your right (no, your other right), you'll note that several new sites have been added to the list of places you might enjoy knowing about.

Well, you would have noted if you happened to have memorized the Ministry Legion of Merit as it stood yesterday, and were able to perform a quick alphabetic matrix subtraction in your head.

Since not everyone has those skills, the new additions are also listed directly below. Each of these sites is characterized as much by being well-written as by its heterotopicality. In random order:

Velociworld
Fine, Why Fine?
TigerHawk
Garfield Ridge

Thank you for your cooperation.

The Ministry has a funny feeling in its tummy as it announces the assimilation of yet another Minister. Patton, until his recent meltdown, was a prolific and insightful blogger at Opinion 8. But a crack Ministry team of commando psychotherapists, sufis, herbal nutritionists and daytime TV life coaches were (at great personal risk) able to pull him back from the brink. A refreshed, restored, loofahed, and shinily optimistic Patton is now ready to flaunt his unique blogging idiom under the banner of the all conquering Ministry.

To make Patton welcome in his new home, all readers are commanded to think of clever and mildly (mildly!) deprecating snippets to include in the random list of capsule bios that appear under every minister's name in the left sidebar. Any new links for giant fighting robots, zombies, and other species traitors should be sent to Patton, so that he can catch up with everyone else.

The people have spoken. By a vote of eight to three, Johno was voted winner of the game, match and tournament. Johno is the Lord High King of the Dorks, and all should avert their eyes from his painful awkwardness.

Johno should be given special credit, as he defeated two fresh opponents in his path to victory. (Frankly, he deserves this victory, as if I had had to go up against Ross, I would have had nothing - nothing - to use against Johno.) I would also like to extend a personal, huge, thank you to Johno for making me feel so much better about myself. I never spent $500 on magic cards while on an exciting European adventure.

Thanks also to everyone who shared our pain and voted in our pathetic little contest. Except for those of you who shared your own dork stories, you get anti-dork points for laughing at the dorks.

While this has been fun in an odd and vaguely cathartic way, I don't think we'll ever do this again.

Johno's tale of Space Camp dorkery won the second fight of round two of the Perfidy Dorkorama. That forces the two of us to dig yet deeper for sufficiently ugly tales of woe for the final and deciding round. Stay tuned for the last, exciting installment of dorkish combat.

[wik] See the earlier rounds here and here.

A few days ago Johno and I had a brief email exchange touching on, among other topics, D&D, TSR vs GDW vs Steve Jackson Games products, and RPG character generation and its limitations. Afterward, it occurred to me that Johno might be a bigger dork than I had previously thought.

Now, I did not need any outside help recognizing my own dorktitude, but I sometimes have trouble recognizing it in others. And outside of demonstrable evidence to the contrary, I just sort of assumed I was the bigger of any random pair of dorks. But after this email exchange, I wondered, is that always the case? Which of us is the biggest dork?

And not who HAS the biggest dork, a contest I’d never be competitive in suffering as I do from the limitations characteristic of my ethnicity. It’s who IS the bigger dork.

It is a given that ALL the Ministers are dorks. We write content for a blog, a blog which was just updated and enspiffened, for starters. We fret whether we post enough, or too much. Our imagined Doomsday scenarios guide our purchasing choices at the grocery store, pharmacy, car dealer, and gun shop. We think robots are cool, zombies are scary, and spaceships are kick-ass.

But the question remains: who among us is the biggest dork?

To settle the question, Ministers will compose a post addressing a pastime, hobby, situation, or circumstance demonstrating knowledge of the subject, or the depths of the depraved dorkness you sank to in order to achieve a result. Opponent will counter with a [wik], comparing his own experiences with a similar subject or situation.

Once the post and [wik] are complete, readers will comment. Each match will be decided by readers’ comments; best of 3 moves on to title bout. The winner will be crowned Supreme Victor of the Universe, a suitably dorky title.

Fight cards are: Johno vs. Geeklethal; Ross vs. Buckethead.

The Ministry of Minor Perfidy: where the big winner is the biggest loser.

[wik] Johno vs. Geeklethal: Round 1, Round 2, Round 3.

[alsø wik] Johno vs. Buckethead: Round 1.

Certain individuals have revealed on condition of anonymity that the Ministry does not display properly in certain browsers. If you have noticed any problems, please comment below - noting the browser and operating system. With your help, we can assign blame and punish the innocent; allowing the guilty to escape justice while keeping their large numbered Swiss accounts.

The Ministry is swelling with pride to announce what you have no doubt already noticed - we have finally completed the upgrade of the Ministry website. Countless millions who were on the verge of asphixia can now draw a deep breath of contentment and satisfaction. As you wander through the new site, thrill to the streamlined and elegant design; bow to the supreme power of the three panel layout; turn green with envy that your website could never hope to be half so nifty.

The Ministry and its legions of exhausted, HTML-chipping slave laborers would like to thank the spineless, dickless, brainless, syphilitic, greedy, choad-munching, crack-huffing, morally adrift, ass-spelunking comment spammers who made this upgrade necessary. Thanks guys! You're real heroes for speaking truth to power and letting all of us know about online casinos and penis enlargement. The Ministry is pleased that it could provide (free of charge to you) the bandwidth to further your essential missionary calling, you pissant mongoloid fuckwits.

Anyway, the Ministry sincerely hopes you enjoy the new blog edifice, and please forward any comments or suggestions to us.

Do you have what it takes to be an experimental subject? Well, if you think you've got the moxie, go here, where the new Perfidy website is brewing. The last few posts have been moved over, so make comments, click on things, and generally screw around. Be aware, some things are not working. But if you have the time and the kindness of heart, send us an email and let us know what needs a beatin'. As always suggestions are welcome. They make the masses feel better about their suffering.

The Ministry thanks you for your cooperation.

[wik] Once all the tweaks and fixes have been implemented, we'll make an official announcement, and everything will move over to the new site. The address will be the same, so there shouldn't be much confusion for you, the reader. The old site will just disappear in a puff of logic.

I have (tentatively, with reservations), enabled comments on my three most recent posts (counting this one), after deleting the auto-spammed entry from the one bot that seems to have figured out the Ministry post-numbering scheme in advance.

Have at it.

[wik] Well... that didn't work. Never mind!

21DEC04: There are 10 days left in the year.

There are 4 shopping days 'til Christmas.

There are 2,354 days until the end of mankind and the rise of the Perfidious New Order.

Today in Ministry History:

1999: Johno offered MA in History but declines; feels he hasn't read enough yet. Considers pimping as a career alternative, but is concerned about the strength of his pimp hand.

1980: GeekLethal can't decide between Pat Benetar or Debby Harry for dream girlfriend.

1976: Ross refuses to enjoy American Bicentennial, even a little bit and vicariously through American relatives, on principal.

ca 3,000 BC: Malevolent aliens unleash the first fighting robot on an unsuspecting and primitive humanity; a scribe in the court of Sargon records the robot's name as "akkadinakidinu", or "Bucket-headed one". 

... comments have been turned off. But fear not! The pasty troglodytes with big foreheads, laboring away in the dim recesses of the Ministry's poorly funded and unheated research labs have come up with what they promise is a solution. Over the next couple days, the Ministry will be abandoning the battered and defenseless castle that is pMachine (which replaced the leaky and utterly defenseless shelter half that was blogger) and moving to the high-tech, art deco furnished, impregnable and ne plus ultra of security that is the Expression Engine underground bunker.

Until the move is complete, and the ministers are enjoying cosmopolitans, rob roys, and manhattans (or in Minister GeekLethal's case, Budweiser) in the air conditioned elegance of the new Ministry underground lair; comments will remain painfully absent. To you, our loyal readers, we apologize. But think of the joy that awaits, when you will be able to comment without fear of inducements to offshore online gambling, interweb porn, or penis enlargement.

When the migration is complete, there will be announcements, mandatory celebrations and all the pomp and ceremony that typically attend great events in Ministry history. So, have patience, and remember that we do it all for the children. Somebody has to to.

The Ministry hereby announces the following changes to the blogroll:

1. Mike Patton of Opinion8 has been summarily promoted to crony status.
2. The main blog roll has been limited to 25 blogs. Any surplus blogs have been moved to a new category.
3. That new category is "The Ministry Legion of Merit." This blogroll is not size constrained, so that the Ministry's innate goodness and generosity can now be allowed to shine forth in its full glory and radiance. The legion of merit blogroll can be found on the left sidebar, a little further down from the main blogroll.

Thank you for your cooperation.

You will notice that the blogroll to your left - no, your other left, and down a little bit - has been expanded. Over the last several weeks, my blog reading habits have undergone a slow but inexorable change. With the absence of Steven den Beste's truly incomparable weblog (in prolixity, if nothing else) I have found that I now have time to read many, many more blogs.

By and large, the blogs added are precisely those blogs that I am irritated that I have to dig into my bookmarks for, rather than just click to from the Perfidious homepage. This may seem a selfish motive, but I choose to view it as a heartfelt judgment and appreciation of the quality and irresistible appeal of these fine blogs. The following links each point to what I feel is a singularly fine example of what these blogs have to offer to you, the blogreading public.

• Wizbang offers insightful political commentary, trenchant humor, and posts by Jay Tea. Also boobies! Wizbang has brought us the Carnival of the Vanities, an excellent caption contest, and just recently the neologism "wizbanging." I'd been reading Wizbang semi-regularly, but their coverage of the memogate hooforah roped me in. As an exemplar, here is this excellent takedown of the feared but nor dreaded parasite interwebus asshatus.
• Q and O is a relatively new blog that has become disgustingly successful. I hate them for their success, but I admire what they write. Questions and Observations regularly produces Belmont Club quality posts on a wide range of topics. Earlier, I linked to a post by contributor Dale Franks on Roe v. Wade, and here is another post by co-blogger McQ on rapprochement with France.
• So comrade, what sort of revanchist counterrevolutionary wrecking have you plotted today? If you are falling behind your five year plan's quotas, don't lie to the apparatchiki from the central committee, just steal from the Politburo Diktat. Clenched fist salute to der Commisar!
• Protein Wisdom doesn't just want you to vote, it tells you why. And also explains the Second World War. Now that's wisdom.
• "Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." A wonderful quote from H. L. Mencken, and a reasonably apt description of Ace's blogging ethos. He once complimented us on our site design, but has rudely failed to link to us since. Here he slaps Chris Matthews around.
• The Command Post is simply a wonderful resource for breaking news, provided by some of your favorite bloggers. This was a terrible oversight, now corrected. No need to provide a specific link, just go and bask in the warm sunlight of countless bits of interweb goodness.

We have developed an ethos of exclusivity here at the Ministry, which for no other reason but laziness has compelled us to maintain a relatively small blogroll. Were we to throw hallowed tradition to the wind and start adding blogs willy-nilly, these fine blogs would no doubt be on that roll of honor. In no particular order:

• The Jawa Report ***Must Credit Rusty Shackleford!***
• BeldarBlog He's pretty good, for a lawyer.
• Captain's Quarters Excellent!
• The Llamabutchers I absolutely, absolutely love the name of this blog. Though I still don't get why they hate Tibetan Buddhists.
• The 'Dredge Report Now with a new name and a spiffy site redesign.
• Oldsmoblogger And yes, he apparently is slow and in the way.
• The Idea Shop Where the dismal science gets groovy.
• Naked Villainy The Maximum Leader stole our whole minister thingy, but I love him anyway
• Transterrestrial Musings Great space stuff, and good commentary on events of the day.

[wik] I wasn't kidding about laziness. Doing one of these posts is very time consuming.

[alsø wik] I'm also not kidding about the other blogs. If I didn't feel compelled to keep the blogroll relatively small, I'd have certainly added them. 

The Ministry is pleased, nearly to the point of emotional trauma, to announce the first quadrennial "Guess the end of the Election Contest." Unlike previous Ministry contests, which really weren't contests at all, this rainbow actually has a pot of gold at the end. A very small pot, to be sure, but more on that later.

Enter your best guess as to the date that the election will be resolved in the comment section - any date, past or future - and the Ministry's dedicated staff of underpaid Moldavian migrant child laborers will record your entry in a great book, which will be consulted as soon as we are informed that the election has been decided. The person or entity whose guess is closest to the actual date will win a prize. In the event of a tie, each contestant will have to answer an election related trivia question from each participating minister. The person or entity answering the most questions correctly will be deemed the winner. In the event of a further tie, the entrant who submits the most humorous or sexy picture of him/her/themselves will be made winner. All judgments are purely subjective, and the Ministry makes no pretense of objectivity, fairness or even sanity. Any smartass who picks Dec 13, just because that's the date that the Electoral College votes, will be summarily disqualified and subject to ridicule.

As for the prize: the Ministry, at great risk to its personal integrity and reputation, will offer the winner posting rights on the Ministry interweb site for a period of one (1) week. If the winner is a Minister, they will get a sloppy kiss on the cheek from Minister Buckethead's loyal but somewhat dim animal companion Bodhi.

The Ministry demands, for the first time, that you link to this post far and wide, so that the contest will have sufficient participants so as to make it interesting. It is your moral duty, as well as in your own self interest to comply. And the Ministry knows where you live. 

Please note some modifications to the roster at left. Erstwhile loghorrean Steven den Beste has temporarily retired from posting. Minister Buckethead, at least, will miss him. Should he return to blogging, his name shall once more grace our site.

Also retiring is Tacitus, a formerly top-shelf site which has slumped of late as its principals have migrated their most compelling work to the new conservative site redstate.org.

In the interest of balance, former CalPundit Kevin Drum's new enterprise at the Washington Monthly has also been liquidated.

Finally, please welcome new addition Obsidian Wings, a group site featuring high-octane discussion and intelligent writing. Kindly visit them, comment, and drag even more traffic our way. The more bandwith we devour, the more powerful we become. Your compliance is appreciated. Indeed, it is compulsory.

That is all.

At this time three years ago, flight 93 crashed into a field in southeastern Pennsylvania. Since that time, we have not suffered another terrorist attack in this country. But many have died in those three years. They sacrificed their lives to protect ours, and our freedom. Think of them, and of those that died three years ago today. For their sake we need to remember that there is evil in the world, and that it is worth fighting.

Everyone knows that when it comes to capricious backstabbing, random wantonness and general perfidiousness, nobody beats Ma Nature. The muscular and talented Phil Dennison has the details on some fairly badass relief efforts aimed at helping the victims of Hurricane Charley, and, we presume, the victims of Hurricane II: The Strange And Terrible Revenge Of Frances.

Great Western Media Satans Clear Channel and MTV have each launched a high-profile celebrity auction to raise money to aid the Red Cross' relief efforts in storm-hit areas. MTV's auction (full monty here) has items from the Video Music Awards, including everything from a sweaty wifebeater worn by Nelly (eww!) to guitars signed by Yoko Ono and Gwen Stefani (dude!!) to a Saturn VUE signed by everybody and their mother (sweet!!!!). Like seriously: everybody and their mother, Christina Aguilera, Carson Daly, Gwyneth Paltrow, Dave Navarro, Hulk Hogan, Will Smith, LL Cool J, Ludacris and the Beasties being among the signers.

ClearChannel's auction is a guitar bonanza, featuring guitars signed by everyone from The Nuge and Tenacious D to Alan Jackson. I even found one signed by JohnO, which is odd as I didn't even know I was in Five For Fighting! Where's my royalty checks and songwriter splits, dammit!? And why have I been writing such lameass songs?

If auctions aren't your thing, or if it's a ramen-in-the-dark-hiding-from-the-landlord kind of month, please consider donating to the Red Cross directly. The last tropical storm deluged my brother-in-law's family with ten feet of flood waters, and if Frances turns juuuuust a little to the north of it's present course my sister will have to run like hell for the high ground. Maybe these storms don't affect every one of us-- least of all those of us with the good sense not to live near the water in the Southern states-- but as REM taught us in "Everybody Hurts," human suffering is not only subjective but universal too.

If nothing else, bid on something for the queer satisfaction of seeing Clear Channel do something decent for a change.

Mark Kleiman pays ruminative homage to the grammar behind the word (say it with me: it feels good on the lips) "perfidy."

The Ministry's vast legions of overworked, unpaid migrant worker drones were hard at work this morning; chiseling names off a granite edifice with their teeth. Why, one might ask, were these hard working and underappreciated proles performing work such as this; when they could have been laboring in the html mines, digging up web goodness for you, the gentle reader? The reason is simple. That sheet of granite contained the laser etched names of all those who have willingly become registered members of the Ministry of Minor Perfidy's extended family. (The Ministry is also curious as to why many of you do not have your name on that roll of honor. The Ministry is keeping track of those who abuse the its generosity. Our memory is long.)

Dark and unknown forces have shamelessly perverted the Ministry's enlightened policy of openness and transparency. Initial indications are that these forces are Russian, which does not surpise the Ministry in the least. They have registered for membership not to revel in a sense of oneness with the Ministry's goals and vision; but only to use that sacrosanct status to attempt to spam the innocent with invitations to disgusting, ill-designed, and tasteless porn sites. (Nota bene: The Ministry might forgive invitations to well-designed and artistic porn sites. The Ministry is well aware of the beauty of the unclothed female form. But these sites require the download of malicious software, a practice the Ministry does not support or condone.)

Therefore, from this moment forward, all prospective registrants will be vetted by the Ministry's crack team of investigators and busybodies. Those who survive the rigorous and intrusive background check will be granted membership, an email confirming their new status, and their name will be laser etched on granite wall in the lobby of the Ministry's headquarters. Those who do not pass will live in fear, fear of the highly trained and lethal hordes of assassins at the Ministry's beck and call; and praying that they will not be unleashed.

Those who pass muster will bask in the bright sun of comradery, and feel the warm joy of submission to the Ministry's vision for the future. As well, they will in time have access to special features unavailable to the unwashed masses. The Ministry invites all those of sound moral character to register instantly, lest they suffer the consequences.

This message from the Ministry of Minor Perfidy
Thank you for your cooperation

The Ministry welcomes BlackFive's daughter, Grace, to this material plane. Although Grace will be missed on the Astral Plane, we are confident of her success and happiness on Earth. Congratulations to the Paratrooper of Love and his family for the addition to their clan.

As a present for Grace, the Ministry is considering Baby's First Fuzzy Wuzzy HALO Rig (which I believe is a Fisher Price product). Other suggestions are welcome. Indeed, expected.

End transmission