... well, I see that’s about it. Pretty thin actually. Compared to Buckethead’s list, it’s downright pathetic. With two items ("Heard son’s first word,” “Watched son take first step") his list blows mine away.

Within the next eighteen hours you shall see a cessation in blogging from me as I head west to the Johno Homeland for Christmas. Have a pleasant holiday.

[wik] Since comments are turned off, I will use my powers as a Minsiter to insert my question here:  what military history did you enjoy?

I’ve Got A Lot of Problems With You People

Gather ‘round, children as the New York Times covers the true history of Festivus.

I’ll go get the pole out of the crawlspace.

Yasser Arafat Was a Son of A Bitch

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.

This Week In Exemplary Human Behavior

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

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

Johno’s deep thoughts on the nature of democracy

For no good reason I am reminded of two quotes today.

The first is from New York politician (and later US Senator and founding member of the GOP) William H. Seward. After a dinner party in the late 1840s at which he locked horns with Elizabeth Cady Stanton over the vexed questions of women’s suffrage and women’s rights, Mr. Seward admitted to Stanton:

You have the argument, but custom and prejudice are against you, and they are stronger than truth and logic.

The next comes from everyone’s favorite humanist misanthrope, H.L. Mencken.

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”

In other news, I think it’s kind of funny that certain parties are doing their yearly Dance of Vexation over the greeting “Merry Christmas.” Leaving aside the delicious ironies inherent in Protestants of any stripe defending a Mass, a pox on all y’all’s houses for bringing this up in the first place. 80 percent of the country is Christian. That’s no beleagured minority. And, hearing a few “Merry Christmases” isn’t going to blacken anyone’s soul within their bodies (or burn the ears out of their heads). Tolerance isn’t about making everyone feel comfortable at every turn. It’s about tolerating shit that makes you crazy. Your shit is making me crazy; this is me tolerating you with all my feeble might and precious good will. So, to those making noise: Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas,Merry Christmas, kiss my ass, kiss my ass, kiss your ass, kiss his ass, Happy Hannukah.

Happy Festivus, everyone.

Today in Ministry History

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”. 

Monday, December 20, 2004

Shaun Carter, C.E.Hova

Shaun Carter has 99 problems but a career ain’t one.

Jay-Z has been named new head of Def Jam Recordings. This is only interesting if you find the music industry interesting. I do. This is an intriguing move for Def Jam, and one that points up both the strength of the brand and the dangers of having a founder as important as the company itself.

Just look at the chain of stewardship for Def Jam, one of the first-- and arguably the most important-- label in all of hip hop music and culture: Russell Simmons, 1984-1999. Lyor Cohen, 1999-2002, Simmons’ longtime right-hand man all the way from the 1980s and now part of the Universal corporate ladder. LA Reid, 2002-2004, hitmaker, songwriter and Russell Simmons Disciple. And now Shaun Jay-Z Carter, the most successful Simmons-style businessman in the industry today (save perhaps Puffy), merging music, fashion, style and business into one irreducible whole.

The thing to notice about this chain is that Def Jam still gets most of its strength and momentum from moves originally made by Russell Simmons, who was never a musician but rather the greatest cool-hunter and trendsetter around.  The label’s late-90s turnaround with the signings of Ludacris, DMX, and Ja Rule took place under Simmons’ auspices even though by that time he was mostly out of the label’s picture.

Lyor Cohen was Simmons’ chosen apprentice and stalwart company man, and his time in charge amounts to Bush I after Reagan. The strategic distribution deals with labels like Roc-A-Fella and Tha Inc. (formerly Murder Inc.) were done on the strength of Simmons’ name and brand. LA Reid-- a once-time Simmons disciple-- had a fabulous run at LaFace and a rocky time in charge of Arista as temporary replacement for Clive Davis, and it’s not clear what value he added to Def Jam in his time as label head.

Jay-Z is a natural choice to take the Def Jam helm, since his Roc-a-Fella empire was modelled consciously on Russell Simmons’ business strategy (Simmons had/has advertising agencies, management companies, the Phat Farm clothing label, and a galaxy of strategic licensing/branding deals to prop up his brands). Moreover, Jay-Z knows the ropes since his label has been part of the Def Jam family for several years. However, his skill as a corporate warrior remains unproven. As head of Roc-a-Fella he was totally in charge of his own label even as that label reported through Def Jam to the rest of the Universal conglomerate. Now that buffer is gone and he needs to learn how to speak directly to that conglomerate, in a language they can understand.

He takes charge of a label family that, though it is the biggest name in hip-hop, is still one tiny column of figures on the quarterly balance sheet of a gigantic international colossus. For all the Kanye Wests, Ashantis, and Beanie Sigals he has, it is still a small roster in a volatile industry, and a label getting farther every day from the firsthand guidance of the man who founded, grew, and guided it to unparalleled success.

Jay-Z already has the skills. Can he pay Universal’s bills?

[wik] A scratched copy of Europe’s “The Final Countdown” to the first person to email with the correct answer to this question: What does “Jay-Z” the nickname refer to?

The Jawa Report

***Must Credit Dr. Rusty Shackleford***

Rusty asked me (and others, I hope) to guest blog on the Jawa Report (formerly hot lesbo star wars chick pundit) in his absence.  I threw a little something up over there, so check it out.  I will endeavor to increase the volume of posting both here, and there. 

Also, if Minister Ross will actually send the software for expression engine to , the site migration will go much faster.  Infinitely faster, in fact.

Friday, December 17, 2004

Fun With Cognates ‘n’ Synonyms!

Fool:

Fool:

Fool:

An All-Johno All-Music Onanistic Super Linkfest!!

I’ve been posting a few music reviews over at blogcritics.org that I haven’t put up here assuming that you wouldn’t care.

Ha! Of course you care!!

DVD- Poncho Sanchez: Live at Montreux

CD- Poncho Sanchez: Instant Party!

Trifecta- The Prestige Recordings Best of Coleman Hawkins, Sonny Rollins, and Red Garland.

CD- Antler

Play safe, kids! The Ministry homunculi are hard at work converting ones into zeroes and zeroes into nullsets in preparation for the Great Software Migration. The trek will be long and arduous. Morale would be lower but for the regular electric shocks administered to each minion. We cannot fail.

In the meantime children, be good to each other.

[wik] A word on onanism. One of my projects in graduate school was researching the intellectual history of Mason Locke Weems’ Life of Washington, the book in which the whole cherry tree/cannot tell a lie thingy got started. It’s a worthy project that touches on the very origins of what it means to be a citizen of the United States; indeed Weems’ Washington was more than anything else a Primer For The Young American With Attention To The Virtues, Duties, and Benefits Which Are His To Bear. Weems was also a huckster, an itinerant bookseller whose livelihood pre-Washington (which was the number two bestseller in the nation after the Bible from about 1800 to 1850) who wrote a great many other books aimed at a mass market. Among these titles were: Hymen’s Recruiting Sergeant (1799); God’s Revenge Against Murder (1807); God’s Revenge Against Gambling (1810); The Drunkard’s Looking Glass (1812); God’s Revenge Against Adultery (1815); The Bad Wife’s Looking Glass (1823), and The Sin Of Onan (~1795), the last of which I desperately want to read though no copies are known to have survived. Onan!

Thursday, December 16, 2004

Holiday cheer, with a side of explosive flatulence

This kind of thing sort of belongs better over at vodkapundit, but those dudes have been pretty weak recently so I shall pick up the slack.

ABC news is reporting on an Ohio company marketing a recipe for a sauerkraut martini. Ohhhh...kaaaaay. In truth, I’m sure that a K-Tini, as they have dubbed the concoction, is delicious. Good sauerkraut is phenomenal. But to think that anyone-- anyone-- is going to hit it big hawking partially digested cabbage as a suitable garnish for an ice-cold jigger of Hangar One or Belvedere is just dumb.

Personally I prefer my own recipe for the Filthy Martini. No sauerkraut, but plenty of bacteria. And it kind of looks like what the Department of Public Works calls “brown water”:

5:1 excellent vodka
2:1 pepper vodka
1:1 dry vermouth
1:1 green olive juice
1:1 pickle brine from kosher-style lactose-fermented half-sours, lactobacilli alive and well.
Garnish with two green olives and a black olive and a teeny shot of pepper sauce.

Nummies!!

A Perfect Waste of My Time

The best music game ever. Type in the name of an artist and see if you can name them there ten songs based on 30-second clips.

I have gone 29 of 30 on Tom Waits, 17 of 20 on the Flaming Lips, and 29 of 30 on Frank Zappa so far (damn you, Rubber Shirt!!). So addictive. So horribly addictive.

[wik] Go ahead… type in anybody. I just played name that song with Reid Paley (who?), Josh Rouse (who!?), the Willard Grant Conspiracy (who?!?!) and Monty Python skits.  What a silly bunt.