perfidy

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!