perfidy

Long understood as an enemy by uptight people everywhere, pot is now recognized as a bona-fide obstacle on the battlefield.

Canadian soldiers are having a tough time trying to fight in Afghanistan's forests (forests!) of 10' tall pot plants. In addition to all the marvelous, world-changing properties that hippies say weed has, unwashed peaceniks will be happy to know that it also dissipates heat and stores moisture in amazing quantities. The net tactical result is that it is not so very difficult to thwart the Canucks' thermal imagers. Pot can bring peace, after a fashion, by making it hard to find people to kill. Not surprisingly, the immediate remedy of removing the interfering ganja was to try and burn it.

These are professional soldiers people, and I absolutely trust their judgement on this issue: burning the weed was the best military solution.

Well, it turns out that they store so much water it's damned near impossible to burn the stuff. Except for a few stands that were already dead or d(r)ying, which went up quite nicely but did cause- ahem- "ill effects" on a unit downwind of the burn. I'm assuming they meant "ill" as in nausea, not as in "License To".

No lasting effects were reported, although the entire stockpile of pre-positioned NATO tactical cookies in theater seems to have vanished.

Joe Katzman at Winds of Change has a interesing post on the continuing unraveling of EADS/Airbus, following BAE's divestiture of its 20% stake in the Pan-European aerospace firm. This is just part of the problem with Europe, as many have noted. It seems to me that there might be, in the relatively near future, a convergence of catastrophe for Europe. There's the looming demographic collapse, and its corollary the growth of unassimilated Islamic minorities, stultified economies, military impotence, and so on. Let us keep in mind what the traditional European response to these sorts of trouble is, and hope that they come to their senses before it gets really bad somewhere around 2020.

I know that I will sleep soundly at night if the French were overseeing the Iranian nuclear enrichment program. I mean, seriously, what are the chances that the French would allow anything bad to happen?

About 2 months ago I had a phone interview with an organization in the UK. More precisely the interview was with an HR firm that organization had hired to conduct this particular search. I didn't believe anything would come of it- a belief that was borne out as it happens- and that's not really my point. My point is that it was funny getting past the language barrier.

The woman running the search was supposed to call at 11 local on the designated day. Her assistant called instead, and explained that the boss was running late with other calls and, if it was quite alright, she would like to call back in 20 minutes. That’s the translated version.

At that moment though I was having trouble:

"Yes?" [Me, in standard by-God Amurrican English. Since I was expecting this call, I wasn’t as abrupt as I usually am. But I still answered like I had just eaten a rare steak. I’m not sure why, but that was an important image to convey telephonically.]

"Hello, is this Geeklethal?" [Him, with the Queen's diction, polite and helpful with just a wisp of priss.]

"Yes."

"Geeklethal, this is Mott Hooply with Frothingsham Limited. I gribniff the eltra docalax for katy in the hibell and foralently."

"...?" [The ellipsis, here, means near total incomprehension: face pinched; eyes shut tight; lips frowning with grim tension like I was a mathematician working on fucking Enigma and the outcome of the Battle of the Atlantic hung on whether I could just get the damned key and I knew I was close, but I couldn’t get my mind working on the problem because all I had going on in my skull was my own voice yelling ‘FUCKING *WHAT* did he just say!?’ So, that’s what those three dots meant there. Moving on.]

"If that's alright...?"

"Ah, ok..." [As I slowly worked on a general sketch of comprehension, with growing awareness of an awkwardly long pause over what was probably a very routine and undemanding question.]

"And shall she criff at this number, or friddle theraflu alta?"

"....Ahhh, this number's............ffffine?" [Near-total guess, there.]

"Splendid!"

Phew, this is going to be harder than I thought, um, I thought.

When she did call 20 minutes later, it again took a few minutes to shift my eargears into British but more surely and with less grinding than with her assistant. At first it was like I was speaking to her on the Moon, with a gap between her question and my answer. But the gap was due not to distance but me "translating" what she'd asked me. I had to listen carefully, wait for my on-board translation matrices to filter it, re-understand it in American, and go from there. Later I realized that my brain does precisely the same thing, in the same way, when trying to navigate a conversation in German- starts out ok, readily grasping the first few words in the sentence, then falls off a cliff, then comes many seconds, sometimes minutes, to recreate in my mind what that was all supposed to have meant- if I ever even get an answer. Funny it was the same in unfamiliar English too. It smoothed out after a bit, and by the end was cruising right along, but never quite got the ease of comprehension we all have with each other as native American speakers.

So I basically had to blather about how dynamite I am, which if you've never done it on the phone in this manner is hugely awkward. It is in such a situation that we realize how much we rely on body language, eye contact, and a dozen other physical cues from our audience that we use in turn to modify our speech. Such body language is probably not so very culturally distinct as speech.

Compounding that awkwardness was the distinct sensation that the more I spoke, the more I felt that what she heard on the other end was not my disciplined, thoughtful responses to her questions- themselves the result of careful reflection on a brief but respectable career - but more like "UUU HUH HEEILK YES'M I SHO' NUFF AM DA MAN FO' DA JOB". I felt as if I was from the deepest piney woods of Fuckbuckle, Arkansas, was applying for the presidency of Harvard, and any second would ask the women on the hiring committee who was keeping the house all day if they were here?

Well, since I wasn’t subsequently invited to England for a real interview, I didn’t have to figure out how I was going to communicate with them on their home turf in their own language. But after that call I could see some QESL (Queen’s English as a Second Language) coursework in my future.

Without putting too fine a point on it, yes.

Aah, New Jersey. The moment you all (and especially Bram) have been waiting for. The Ministry has spared no expense that we wouldn't normally spare to bring you this very special edition of alternate state mottoes. Our tireless and unsleeping servitors have scoured the interweb and the dark and loathsome recesses of their own minds for slogans for your reading enjoyment. New Jersey? Why not:

• Kiss Her Where It Smells
• The Oil and Petrochemical State
• You Want A Motto? I Got Your Fuckin’ Motto Right Here!
• Come for the beaches. Stay for the gambling, crack and hookers.
• What smell?
• Home of Jimmy Hoffa's grave... somewhere.
• Hey, Quit Laughing!!
• All those chemical waste sites and Trump's Taj Mahal, too!
• You have the right to remain silent, You have the right to an attorney...
• Tell 'em Guido sent ya
• Renaming it New Jersey didn’t improve things much
• Not as quaint and charming as Old Jersey
• The Suburb of not one, but two! pestilential urban shitheaps
• The smell that grows on you
• Land-filled with pride
• Aaay! How U Doin'?
• The Cancer Capital of The World
• We'll Show You What Exit
• Where nobody leaves
• The Funtime Family State for Families!
• Frightening Sky Country
• Ad Astra Per Hoboken
• The Hobo State
• I’m tired of living and scared of dying
• The Too-Easy-To-Mock State
• We Are Defensive About Our Faults
• We are a byword for corruption
• A toxic miasmatic wasteland
• We don’t trust you to pump gas
• It's Jersey: "Got a problem with that?"
• The New New Jersey: "Now with 10% less toxic waste!"
• We'll look the other way
• The Hindenburg was just the beginning ...
• All the charm of Detroit. All the culture of Phoenix
• Please lie down with your hands behind your head
• Our police force looks forward to meeting you
• Rated safer than Lebanon
• Come smell for yourself
• Nearly Good Enough
• A Deathtrap, A Suicide Rap - Get Out While You're Young
• The Fist of the Mid-Atlantic
• Sure, our governor may have given his unqualified gay lover a high-salaried position instead of looking out for homeland security, but ... uh, I forgot where I was going with this.
• New Jersey - Bend over and smile
• We’ll take the tollbooths down as soon as the Turnpike and Parkway are paid for
• Come for the taxes, stay for the corruption.
• Our sales tax may be the highest in the country but our property taxes are the highest in the country … wait a minute
• A wholly owned subsidiary of the New Jersey State Employees Union
• 2nd Amendment? Never heard of it.
• Just imagine Massachusetts without referendums or Republican Governors
• At least we aren’t New York
• Our state song, “Born to Run,” is about escaping from the New Jersey
• Pennsylvania – the promised land
• Will the last one out of Jersey please turn off the lights?
• If you try really hard, you can say Garden State without laughing
• So progressive we elected the first gay prostitute governor
• Toll Booth Capital of the United States of America
• The Corruption State.
• The Toll Booth State
• The Aggressively Industrial State
• The Mosquito State
• New Sicily
• The Knobbed Whelk State
• Liberty and Prosperity, so we can give it to the immigrants
• Proud home of our nation’s greatest political thinkers, Aaron Burr and Susan Sarandon
• The Sopranos State
• We are so gay
• Be sure to pick up a complimentary chemical drum on your way out
• Yo, Joisey: "Politicos and wiseguys, bada-bing!"
• New Jersey: " 'cause New York sucks."
• Laugh it up, we got more money than your state
• Shoot squealers, not bears
• New Jersey: Where the Martians Landed
• Most of Our Elected Officials Have Not Been Indicted
• Just Passing Through
• Welcome to New Jersey: Now Get the Hell Out of the Way!
• It Glows In The Dark!
• The 55 Gal. Drum State
• Sure It's Toxic - But We Love It!
• What A Difference A State Makes
• Only The Strong Survive: New Jersey
• Where The Weak are Killed and Eaten
• Edison electrocuted cats here so you could have light, asshole
• Your convenient cheap shot when you can’t think of anything really interesting to say
• New Jersey's Got It, We Just Don't Know What To Do With It!
• New Jersey-Guess Which Lanes Are EZPass Today?
• What The Hell Was I Thinking?
• Where 70% of the women are ugly, and those that aren't are stuck-up
• New Jersey, Not New York
• New Jersey, home of Giants Stadium
• Yeh, I Wanna Move too
• Just another state, really
• Welcome to New Jersey, Where There's a Rainbow in Every Puddle!
• New Jersey: Keeping New Yorkers out of PA since 1776
• Underdog Lady Lives Here
• Our State Capitol is the Most Geographically Centered
• The light at the end of the Tunnel
• Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.
• Your friendly neighborhood toxic waste dump
• The Asshole of America
• What the fuck YOU lookin' at?
• Leave All Your "Problems" in New Jersey. My Cousin Knows a Guy.
• Great View of Lady Liberty's Backside
• Come for the Calzones, Stay for the Wutter
• NEW Jersey? What happened to the old one?
• You Could Always Be Somewhere Better Than This
• Jersey - it don't suck
• I love the smell of sewage in the morning!
• Home of the Teamsters!
• We Run the Cement Business in This Town!
• I Love the Smell of the East River in the Morning!
• New Jersey... the origin of "Planet of the Apes"
• New Jersey and You - Who Farted?
• There is no such thing as the Mafia
• Your New York City Trip Bathroom Break
• What Exit?
• Industrial Chemical Processing Capital of the Fuckin’ World
• You'll Never Think Once About it
• Your Philadelphia and New York City Suburb
• Ya, We'll Pump Your Gas. Nudge, Nudge
• What Exit? Nudge, Nudge
• Just hold your nose and keep driving
• Yeah, it always smells like this
• Several of our politicians are not corrupt
• three rights are a left
• The Jug-Handle State
• Jersey. It's not the asshole of the country, but you can see it from here
• No Left Turns
• Abandon hope, all ye who enter here
• Now Entering New Jersey - Consider That Your Last Warning
• No, you suck
• Please do not make any sudden arm movements
• Now with more 73% more hobos
• Bigger and with considerably more attractive cows than Old Jersey
• Smell it again for the first time
• New Jersey - like California, but without the sun, usable beaches, and warmth
• New Jersey is for Dirty Sluts!
• We got rid of our environment years ago, and we've never been happier.
• English is our fifth language
• Be a millionaire and still live like a pauper
• Welcome to Mecca West
• The place to raise a glowing family
• Still better than West Virginia
• Even if you have three nipples, you'll feel normal here
• Please don't associate us with Philly
• Hey You stupid New York fuck get outta the left freakin lane
• Bad voters, good pasta.
• Where it's OK to drive 80 on the Parkway as long as you’re not a minority
• So our governor was a Gay idiot, but at least we wasn’t Hillary Clinton
• Giving Gas-Pumping foreigners the chance to do something other then blowing people up
• Where people live who don't want to pay $1.5 million for a 350 square foot apartment, roaches included
• Only the strong survive
• We'll Fuckin kill you
• New Jersey: We'll Win You Over (ed: That one cost $260,000
• Get Away, Without Going Far Away
• Born to Fun
• Bada Bing! Choose New Jersey
• New Jersey: Come Glow With Us
• Everything is cool, really. Just don't drink the water in Ocean County.
• The authority on government corruption
• The Diner and Mall capital of the world
• A nice place if you have money.
• Less traffic than LA.
• The Statue of Liberty is OURS
• The largest chemical producer in the United States
• Home of the nation’s oldest beer brewery
• We'll make you into a man, or kill you
• Nothing is illegal here as long as you don't get caught
• The home of pork roll
• The opposite of Texas
• The only state with it's own version of the devil
• Where counties are considered metropolitan areas
• Because Jack Nicholson, Bruce Springsteen, Alan Ginsberg, Alexander Hamilton, Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson, Walt Whitman, Jerry Lewis, Bruce Willis, Caesar Romero, Ice-T, Danny DeVito, Joe Pesci, Joe Piscopo, Paul Simon, John Travolta, Dave Thomas, Ray Liotta, and Frank Sinatra make up for Bon Jovi, Tom Cruise, Robert Blake, Meryl Streep, and Sebastian Bach.
• Better than lots of other states
• Explore our exits, Nudge, Nudge
• We’ll tax the crap out of you
• We’ll crap the tax out of you
• Expect delays
• We’ll look the other way
• Big Hair, Big Fun
• Come develop our open space
• Got traffic?
• At least we’re not Ohio
• Hurry, we’re almost full
• Smell the unexpected
• Slogan? We don't need no stinkin' slogan!
• New Jersey!
• Home Is Where You Spend As Little Time As Possible
• The 4th maybe 5th place I want to be at any one time!
• Yes, you've sunk that low
• You Can't See It While You're Sleeping!
• Thanks to low expectations, you won't be disappointed
• Home of the discount latte
• Inferiority complex ‘r us
• No, you really don't get used to the smell.
• Making the best of it since 1650
• So ashamed our state university is called Rutgers
• uh... i love new jersey?
• If you don’t like it, leave, no one will know
• New Jersey Invented Leaving
• New Jersey Is Where My Mom Lives
• New Jersey Gave Me Acne
• Better than Delaware, at least a little
• So hated. So over populated. Go figure.
• Not Dense, Just Densely Populated
• A 55-Gallon Drum of Fun
• I Can't Believe I'm IN New Jersey
• When You Crave Real Supermarkets, We're The One!
• It was this or Staten Island
• Face It, You Used to Dump Shit On It Too.
• Go Ahead and Slime It, It's Expensive Enough Already
• At least we don't have a view of New Jersey
• What happens in Jersey, stays buried in Jersey.
• Come for the cancer stay for the chemo
• Spineless, soulless, flavorless, limp, disingenuous, castrated, censored, and pureed.
• Edited for television.
• If you can’t make it there, you’ll move over here
• The Big Lemon
• Yes it’s the Fuckin Garden State
• The rest of the country, go fuck yourselves
• There’s a reason the PA border says, “Welcome to America”
• We got Springsteen, uh, and, uh Springsteen
• The weird smell state
• Even NJ’s most famous son sang, New York, New York
• We spent $260,000 on our slogan
• Not as bad as you think
• Where the Rottweilers Run Scared
• We Have an Exit for You
• Pay to Play: Reap the Benefits
• Welcome to New Jersey: Don't Worry, We Hate You, Too
• New Jersey: Hurricane-Free Since 1944
• The Garden of Eden, without all that good stuff.
• Where Kevin Smith used to live.
• Only half the state smells funky!
• The only state named after a kind of cow
• Everywhere you didn't want to be
• Please ignore our plague-infested lab rats
• Vacation in New Jersey: Savor the Irony.
• Visit Newark: Just don't stop
• New Jersey, New Schmersey
• Jeerzy: The Angry Statesman
• New Jersey. It’s not what you expect from New Jersey
• Up Yours! Love, New Jersey
• New Jersey: We're not so good with slogans
• The Lame State Slogan State
• At least we’re not Ne… fuck.

At least not permanently. According to the WSJ, in a story last week, "Soccer Star Zidane May Have Lost His Head, But(t) It Hasn't Hurt Him".

Good for him.

Rash actions in the heat of the moment, particularly during a sporting event, seem easy to forgive. Exceptions, of course, exist - think Woody Hayes' attack on Clemson's Charlie Bauman in the 1978 Gator Bowl. Quite an embarrassment, and one he never really lived down. It differs both because he wasn't a contestant, and because it was clearly a childish hissy-fit, unlike Zinedine Zidane's head butt of Marco Materazzi, who, let's be serious, probably earned it.

Seeing the story, however, reminded me of an idiotic picture that circulated shortly thereafter. Just because it was idiotic doesn't mean it wasn't funny, however, and the WSJ story provided a cheap excuse to post it, so I will:

(Note: That's an animated picture, and I got tired of watching it move on our page, so click to see it in its native, full motion, form. It's far less funny if the animation is disabled in your browser, to the point of "not at all funny")

Clearly, posts based on the contents of one or more of the roughly 200 non-SPAM email messages I get per day are easy. Why, they practically write themselves!

But that's not the point. The point is to give me a jumping off point to opine about one thing or another, and Steve Elliot, of Grassfire.org, has done just that. I have no idea how I ended up on their mailing list - I'm not aware of anything they've had to say (at least in the periodic "Please sign this petition!" emails I've gotten from them) that I think is worthy of even clicking the link to go to their site. That, plus internet petitions are generally tools for twits. This latest, however, coerced me to action.

That action? To ridicule the silliness of the Grassfire.org actions, if not their intentions. Actually, come to think of it, I'm ridiculing their intentions, too. Here's an excerpted version of their 'plaint for this week:

If you didn't see Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez call President Bush "the devil" during his U.N. speech, go here and see for yourself: redacted

Thanks, Steve - I didn't see it, but I read about it, and have no need to go watch Chavez make an ass of himself on tape delay. Continuing:

Here is what Chavez said:

"Yesterday, the devil [President Bush] came here. Right here. Right here. And it smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of."
--Hugo Chavez

Then Chavez made the sign of the cross as if praying to God for deliverance from the "devil" (President Bush)! This was one of the worst mockeries of a U.S. President ON OUR OWN SOIL by a foreign leader in history!

Did you know this fascist thug also own (sic) Citgo oil company and is making untold millions on Citgo profits to undermine our President and the troops?

Chavez is using OUR MONEY to attack and undermine our President and our nation!

In response to this outrage, thousands of citizens are sending Chavez a message by joining the Citgo boycott. Go here to send Chavez a message: (also redacted) We want to rally 100,000 signers in the next 7 days and deliver these petitions to the main distributors of Citgo Gas, including 7-Eleven.

Thanks for your immediate action!

Steve Elliott, President
Grassfire.org Alliance

So, if I read him correctly, Hugo Chavez "own" Citgo Oil? Technically, as well as factually, no, he doesn't. He controls it, as part of his country's nationalized OPEC member, Petróleos de Venezuela SA, and controls it quite poorly, on reflection. So any damage "needed" to Citgo, he seems clearly able to inflict on his own without the help of me or any of my more gullible co-mailinglist-members.

And, about those gullible souls who might "Take ... immediate action!" because of Chavez's actions "ON OUR OWN SOIL!" and what he does to us with "OUR MONEY!" (yeah, I added a couple exclamation points, but only because Steve must have forgotten these guaranteed-to-enflame necessities from the toolbox of all rabble-rousers), I hope there are few, not because I wish Elliott or Grassfire any particular harm, but because this is a meaningless gesture, designed to enflame the rubes among us and generate funds for Grassfire, nothing more.

I consider it no different than the several-per-week pretend-solicitations of my opinion or involvement in some God-forsaken pretend-grown-up activity put together by the Republican Party. And, lest Ross get all chubby, the DNC is no different, and no more intelligent in its pretense to actually give a shit what any of its Middle America adherents think, only about the money they can milch (or would that be "mulct"?) for the latest cause du jour.

Puh-leeze. If you don't want to buy Citgo gas, go buy some other gas. But don't pretend Chavez's distributors will give a fat rat's ass about some Intertube-circulated pseudo-petition expressing the nation's indignation about the way he acted at the U.N. toward GW Bush.

Here's a couple clues for those who might think Elliott has a point: Bush almost certainly doesn't care about Chavez's opinion of him, and less so about any words he might use to enunciate it. Including this nugget, from a NY Times story on the matter:

[Chavez] brandished a copy of Noam Chomsky's "Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance" and recommended it to members of the General Assembly to read. Later, he told a news conference that one of his greatest regrets was not getting to meet Mr. Chomsky before he died. (Mr. Chomsky, 77, is still alive.)

I mean, "everyone" knows Bush is dumb as a bag of hair, right? But even Bush knows Mr. Chomsky is still alive.

Furthermore, he made this speech at the United Nations General Assembly, and nobody who's got a lick of sense actually believes the General Assembly is worth the powder it would take to blow it to hell. The UN does such a poor job at most of what it does that the few good things it does are lost in the backwash. So who cares where he made this inane statement?

Elliott does, or claims to. Whatever nit-wits sign his petition do, or claim to. I do not.

[wik] No, I don't know why I turned into the hyphenation queen for this post. It's just how it came out.

[alsø wik] Odd, this entire embargo thing must not be working out. I got a follow-on from Steve today (9/26/2006) informing me that:

In the next seven days, I want to deliver 50,000 petitions
to 7-Eleven which distributes Citgo gas at thousands of
locations. Please help.

No offense, but tough shit, snookums - boycotts of volatile commodity items seldom make sense, and seldom achieve the desired effect. I hope that the shortfall in signatures is because most of his recipients realize this. Otherwise, it means the internet is broken, and that would suck. Too bad about the inability to meet the reduced and extended expectations. And, yes, I've unsubscribed from his mailing list.

Today, the mockery of states continues with the first of far too damn many states beginning with the word "New." This is evidence, I believe, of a serious and startling lack of creativity on the part of our forebears. Couldn't they have done better than naming a state after some pox-ridden, benighted and impoverished British locality where people spoke funny and ate odd cheeses? Apparently, no. Nevertheless, here is the state of New Hampshire.

• The Switzerland of New England; cold, ambivalent and tied to Nazi gold
• Live Free or DIE!
• Like Old Hampshire, only newer
• Taxing out-of-staters since 1804
• We're Just Like Vermont, But Smaller and Cozier
• Yes, it's on the map ... somewhere
• Your Primary Choice
• Rocky soil and stony hearts
• Just Leave Us The Hell Alone
• The Other White Meat
• Mmmm… Maple
• You can’t get there from here
• The State Liquor Store State
• Proud Home of Mary Morse Baker Eddy, Sarah Josepha Buell Hale, Thaddeus Sobieski Coulincourt Lowe and other people with two many fucking names
• Mother of tiny, insignificant rivers
• Drive-thru booze!
• Live Free or I won't like you anymore
• Go away, Masshole
• About as exciting as Vermont
• The White Mountain State. Okay, the White Hill State
• The Spotted Newt State
• At least we’re not Vermont
• President Coolidge should have been born here
• The Little Wooden Statue of a Crusty Sailor State
• White Mountains Are Better Than Green
• Here We Cease Our Motion
• Look out for other states (cough… Vermont) masquerading as glorious New Hampshire
• You’d think libertarians would be welcome here. And you’d be wrong.
• We had very little to do with the Revolution
• Ignore those copycat Vermonter scum
• Live Free or Get Very, Very Sick
• The Florida of Canada
• We hate Vermont

[wik] Bonus slogans!

• Taxes, we don't need no stinking taxes!
• Top destination for refugees from Massachusetts
• The pinko-free New England state
• Come for the tax-breaks, stay for the guns

Canadians are widely seen as the closest thing to being American, world-wide. So what's up with the US government torturing Canadians? Should the Canadian government begin torturing US citizens? As a Canadian living here in the US, I am hopeful that black-masked thugs will not show up in the middle of the night, slap my fiance to the floor, and extradite me to a secret CIA prison in Syria, where I can be tortured into saying just about anything. It won't be hard; I won't last.

As a "guest" of the CIA, Maher Arar confessed, under torture, to having attended weapons training in Afghanistan and being an al-Qaeda member. We know now that he's never been to Afghanistan (or anywhere near it). So good job there on the "interrogation" -- what we've shown is that someone being tortured will say whatever they can to get it to stop.

This guy is a regular guy. He's an engineer who was doing nothing but minding his own business.

If you support Bush's policies in this area, your positions are fairly limited:

• This was wrong and it shouldn't have happened, but you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. Nobody was supposed to know.
• This was wrong, it shouldn't have happened, and it's illegal. Someone should be held responsible.
• This was OK because he was a foreigner. Americans don't have anything to worry about.
• This was OK because he was of middle eastern descent. Normal Americans don't have anything to worry about.
• We're in a war and we don't have to explain shit to any other stupid country.

I've left this article plural deliberately. This is the one guy that we know about. Are there others? How many other Canadian citizens has the US government abducted? And where are they?

What's the official position of the US government on compensation for Arar?

For your Sunday reading pleasure, we bring you a plethora of mildly to seriously derisive mottoes for the State of Nevada. Enjoy!

• Two words: Celine Fucking Dion
• Tip #1: Whores, then gambling
• We are to the United States what Mariah Carey is to music
• And to think, we used to be part of Utah
• We’ve been nuked more than 464 times as much as Japan
• More fun than Sodom, less disease than Gomorrah
• Topless and Poker!
• Prostitutes and Poker!
• Hookers and Poker!
• Drugs and Poker!
• Ho's, Drugs and Poker!
• Poker and Poker!
• Poker, Canasta and Poker!
• We’ve got Vegas and normal people.
• Tip #2: Nickel Slots = Free Beer
• Nevada, where you can pay for sex and not get arrested!
• Come for the tasteless glitz, stay for the soulless debauchery
• More weirdos than Alaska (warmer too)
• Location, Location, Location!
• Tastes Great, Less Filling
• 3:5 you'll leave broke
• The pointy state
• We purely love your lack of knowledge of the laws of probability
• Waiting for California to Fall Into the Ocean
• Home of the Bambi Hunters
• Our strippers are almost as good as Canada’s
• The New Jersey of the West
• You Bet!
• Tip #3: Yes, Siegfried and Roy are really gay
• Big Dams, Big Losers
• Atlantic City? Where’s that?
• Our pyramid is so much more durable and classy than the original
• We put roller coasters on the tops of buildings. Because we can!
• The wedding and divorce capital of the world. We’ve got you covered.
• Babylon Mystery, Mother of Harlots and all these abominations of the earth

[wik] With a little help from Blackfive

[alsø wik] Bonus slogans!

• Your ignorance of probability means no state income taxes for us
• Holy fucking shit it's hot!

What can you say about Nebraska? Well, this:

• In the middle parts of fortune
• You're Not in Kansas Anymore! Not that you’d notice
• More culture and learning than you can shake a stick at, plus the stick
• We named our rivers "White" and "Republican" - do we need to hit you with a brick or what?
• Yeah, corn. And under the corn, thermonuclear warhead-tipped, MIRVed Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. So shut the fuck up about the corn.
• "N" is for "Knowledge!"
• We’ll get a sea coast if we have to destroy Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas to do it
• We're Located Somewhere In The Center
• More Corn than Kansas, Less Bombs than Oklahoma
• "Wildfire Free Since...oh, shit..."
• We're only half as boring as our state sounds
• Where Elephants Roam the CornFields
• We’re glad that Jerk Marlin Perkins is dead
• Ask About Our State Motto Contest
• The geographical center of the USA, and therefore, the universe
• The Flat Water State
• The Delaware of the Plains
• The Plainsy Plains Plains State
• More than just college football. Well, ok, just college football.
• We think we’re not New Jersey
• Home of the Cow-Tipping World Championship
• We put the ‘Mid’ in ‘Midwest’
• There are ten times as many illegal immigrants as Nebraskans
• The "looks kinda like Boba-Fett's spaceship" state
• We still want our corner back from Colorado
• Proud Home of Identical Twin Entertainers Fred Astaire and Malcolm X
• When you think of flat, think Nebraska!
• We believe in Evolution, because we see it stalled to the south
• Nebraska, possibilities...endless. Roads... endless
• The Bug-Eating State
• We gave the world Kool-Aid, and, indirectly, the Holy Purple Jesus
• Our tractors have air conditioning
• If civilization collapses tomorrow, we’ll be the Mongol Hordes by next Tuesday
• And Bill Callahan will be the Great and Dread Khan

[wik] Thanks to GeekLethal and Princess Cat, who contributed mockery and derision to this installment of, "Hey, let's make fun of a state."

To celebrate Labor Day, the Ministry continues to riducule and belittle the states of our glorious Union. On deck is the last of the 'M' states, Montana, where the buffalo roam and home is a shack in the wilderness.

• We’ll be first to go when the glaciers come
• Population: 12
• Where what a man does with his cattle is his business
• Now with 50% fewer radical dissidents
• At least our cows are sane
• The New Jersey of the Upper Midwest
• Mountainous, know what I mean? Nudge, nudge
• It's where you're wanted
• Big Pie Country
• We Dug up Our State to Enrich Eastern Mining Interests
• Anti-Government-Isolationist-Compound Conventions Welcome!
• Bring Your Own Guns
• If you’re tracing the steps of that Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance guy, get the fuck out.
• Land of the Big Sky, and and a lot of dirt
• The Stubtoe State. Don’t Ask
• One nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all. Unless, of course, you don't believe in that sort of thing, in which case you can find a patch of land, build an arsenal, write a manifesto and start your own damned government.
• Turn The Lights Out When You Leave
• Proud Home of Gary Fucking Cooper
• Your Militia Is Safe Here
• We could all fit in Cleveland, Ohio
• We've got lots of 10'x10' shacks in the woods
• Land of the Big Sky, the Unabomber, Right-Wing Crazies, and Very Little Else
• Is Mercury Poisonous?
• More guns per capita than Detroit
• More Prairie Dogs than People

"Brothels take the sting out of pump prices"

When you see a headline like that, you almost don't care what the story actually says. In Australia, it seems, hookers do have a heart of gold.

With the addition of Missouri, we are officially half way through our methodical mocking of every state in the union. Unlike most states, Missouri pitched in all by itself to get this list going. Three of the mottoes below are real, actual, authentic state mottoes. They're placed together. Two kudo units to the person who can pick them out.

• Missouri Loves Company
• Drivers Wanted
• Proud Home of Renowned Wordsmiths T. S. Eliot and Yogi Berra
• The Shower Me State
• We're better than Illinois
• Gateway to Kansas
• Your Federal Flood Relief Tax Dollars at Work
• Someday, we’ll finish our giant McDonald’s sign
• The Lead State
• The Pennsylvania of the West
• The Puke State
• The Blow Me State
• The I'll-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours state
• We’re not stubborn, just thorough
• Mother of the West. Well, mother of something
• At least we've got our teeth ... mostly
• We’re like West Virginia, but, you know, wester
• Home of more cool shit than Iowa
• Yes, Kansas City is really in Missouri
• We're giving Kansas City back to Kansas
• The best damn state in the lower central midwest
• Like Utah, but flatter and less fun
• We make New Jersey look cool
• Come for the… ah, sheeit, don’t bother
• West Appalachia
• We take 'show me yours and I'll show you mine' to a whole new level, with our sisters
• Home of the biggest goddamned earthquakes, ever
• No, you show me

We return to our state mockery after a brief hiatus. We had to conserve our strength, because Mississippi is amongst the most deserving of the several states when it comes to mockery. Despite enlisting the aid of others, we feel that even with all the fine mockery below, we have not truly done Mississippi justice. You are cordially invited to join the pile-on in the comments. Let the ridicule begin!

• The Redneck and Peckerwood State
• Come Feel Better About Your Own State
• Come check out our history ... then could you read it to us? [thanks, Cat]
• Come see the past of American racial relations
• Don’t let the sun set on you in our state, N… ah sheeit, that ain't legal no more
• Fucking Boll Weevils
• I’m goin to Jackson, not gonna mess around
• There’s a reason the Blues were born here
• Keeping Louisiana from being last in *every* quality of life category
• We're lucky we can spell it
• Why would you want to come here?
• Proud home of musical greats Conway Twitty and Lance “I’m Gay” Bass
• Raise 'Em Up Right - God n Guns!
• Where Cotton was King
• The red headed stepchild of the United States
• Cotton pickin'? Them’s fightin' words
• The New Jersey of the south
• The end result of generations of careful inbreeding
• America’s premier hurricane destination!
• Where poverty isn’t just a state of mind
• The easiest state to identify on Wheel of Fortune
• George Washington never slept here
• Don’t Miss Mississippi!
• Magnolia trees suck, and so do we
• The south will rise again! (We just hope the Grand Army of the Republic won’t, too.)
• Big Muddy
• Don't even *think* about it, Chester!
• Just because we venerate the Ten Commandments doesn't mean we read them
• The Mud Cat state, because catfish is smarter than us
• Only the second poorest state! Woohoo!
• We're hardon Crime
• Foiling Spelling Bees contestants for nearly 200 years
• Home of the Great Wall of Mississippi
• The Lynching State
• The upholstered furniture capital of the world
• Oh, yeah, and Elvis is from Mississippi

[wik] Bonus slogans!

• Like Alabama looking in a mirror
• Don't forget, Mississippi has Graceland Too!
• Finest audiobook collection in the USA!
• Not dumm, jes' lade bak
• Boil it and call it cuisine

Two Fox journalists were kidnapped Monday in Gaza. The Palestinians have, apparently, vowed to find the two journalists. Palestinian President Abbas and Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh have said that Security Forces are hunting for the two kidnapped reporters as we speak. Somewhat ominously,

The prime minister assured the Fox News representatives that Palestinian security forces would use all their power to "put an end to it soon," said government spokesman Ghazi Hamad said, without elaborating.

This is utter, unrelieved and irremediable crap. I put more credence in OJ Simpson's claim to be searching for the real killers on the golf courses of America than in the promises of the Palestinian "leadership" that they will find the real kidnappers. Political theater, of a particularly tawdry, played-out and tiresome kind.

The Ministry is almost half done with milking this topic, now that we have reached the cold, wet and vaguely Swedish state of Minnesota.

• Gopher Gopher Gopher Gopher Gopher Gopher Gopher Gopher
• We’re the best damn state in the upper central Midwest.
• What Do You Mean We Talk Funny?
• You could live here, but why?
• No, I’m not the Swedish Chef
• 10,000 Lakes and 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Mosquitoes
• Ya, Sure
• We’re done with “North Star State.” From now on, we’re the Polaris Province.
• Moderation in all things, except for lakes. And snow. And silly accents…
• The striped gopher is an insignificant animal with a destructive nature; useless and undignified. That’s why it’s our mascot.
• Not Sweden, but we act like it
• At least we’re not New Jersey
• Sure beats Canada
• Star of the North, my ass
• Land of 7,000 lakes and 3,000 man-made ponds
• Come for the bitter winter cold, stay for the sweltering summer heat.
• America’s first line of defense against Vikings
• Proud home of Snoopy and that annoying fuck Garrison Keillor
• Land of 11,842 Lakes
• The Lakota Sioux word “mnishota” means milky water, or semen.
• We have a bigger mall than you
• Land of the land icebergs
• Those guys in Fargo lived in ND, okay?
• Like spelling Mississippi, but with n’s
• We support racial understanding and tolerance, except towards the god-damned, herring-eating Norwegian scum.
• We're better than Wisconsin
• Lutefisk!
• Our contribution to American Political life: Walter Mondale
• We piss in the Mississippi, just to make New Orleans suffer
• More than just whining about the cold. Okay, just whining about the cold.
• The Scandinavia of North America
• Actually, if you count swimming pools, it’s a half million lakes

How strange, I have a hobby in common with genocidal fucknut Iranian President Ahmijabbabber.

Today's Onion installment contains an item called "Millions Of Americans Buying Floyd Landis-Inspired Bracelets". I refer to it as an "item" because it's just a picture, rather than even an article with commentary. Fair use, then, dictates that you have to click the link to see the picture. Deal with it, because it's one of the keys to my premise here.

I find the Tour de France, and bicycling generally, to be uninteresting, and couldn't care less that half the field's big names were axed on drug-related charges just prior to the start. I care just a bit more about Floyd Landis' case, primarily because, contrary to all rational indications reported so far, I still think he might be deserving of the, well, whatever it is that a Tour de France winner wins.

He went from a day of abject failure in the Tour to a day of reportedly unprecendented athletic achievement. Or so I've read - I don't know for certain, because, honestly, the Tour interests me not even slightly. Nobody seems willing to claim his pass on the mountain climb was anything other than majestic. And, just in case his reported high-testosterone levels had something to do with it, here are the odd things:

• Only a dumb-ass would shoot testosterone during the Tour de France, where everyone is assumed to be cheating, and is regularly tested like the cheaters they most likely are
• Testosterone isn't fast-acting, and from what I've seen, takes several weeks' lead time to be of any effect
• If, in fact, he did inject testosterone, he's both clinically retarded and likely quite surprised that it didn't kick in to avoid his abject failure of the previous day's ride
• All due respect to the doping agencies and their tests, I wouldn't trust the results of such tests any farther than I could throw a bull by the dick

Why the skepticism on my part about such tests? Other than my general skeptical nature, there was an interesting article in Saturday's WSJ (subscribers only, most likely, but who friggin' knows?) reporting on tests using "Etg Alcohol Testing" (ethyl glucuronide). The article, "A Test for Alcohol -- And Its Flaws".

Boiled down to its basics, the article describes a test that's supposed to get past the problem of detecting weekend binge drinkers during the work week, when they're presumably not tippling. The problem is:

The test "can't distinguish between beer and Purell" hand sanitizer, says H. Westley Clark, director of the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's center for substance-abuse treatment. His office intends to study EtG and issue a statement on its use in the fall. "When you're looking at loss of job, loss of child, loss of privileges, you want to make sure" the test is right, he says.

I'd hate to have my rights impinged for washing my hands with Purell (not that I do, but that's not the point).

The point is that I think the drug testing zealots spend a lot of time on precision and completely disdain accuracy.

That and, honestly, who gives a shit about cheating in a stupid bicycle race?

[wik] See also this essay on Wired by Bruce Schneier of Counterpane Internet Security, explaining, I think, why doping is forever.