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Monday, April 30, 2007

Queer

Really, queer.

Found among this morning’s email joke deliveries

Subject: Tragedy vs Accident

Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, while visiting a primary school class.  They suddenly found themselves in the middle of a discussion related to words and their meanings.

The teacher asked both men if they would like to lead the discussion of The word “tragedy”.

So the illustrious Rev Jackson asks the class for an example of a “tragedy”.

One little boy stood up and offered: “If my best friend, who lives on a farm, is playing in the field and a runaway tractor comes along and kills him, that would be a tragedy.”

No,” says the Great Jesse Jackson, “that would be an accident.”

A little girl raised her hand: “If a school bus carrying 50 children drove over a cliff, killing everyone inside, that would be a tragedy.”

I’m afraid not,” explains the exalted Reverend Al. “That’s what we would call a great loss.” The room goes silent.

No other children would volunteer.

Reverend Al searches the room. “Isn’t there someone here who can give me an example of a tragedy?”

Finally at the back of the room little Johnny raises his hand. In a stern voice he says: “If a plane carrying the Reverends Jackson and Sharpton was struck by a missile and blown to smithereens that would be a tragedy.”

Fantastic!” exclaims Jackson and Sharpton, “That’s right. And can you tell me why that would be a tragedy?”

Well,” says little Johnny, “because it sure as hell wouldn’t be a great loss, and it probably wouldn’t be an accident either.

Friendly Reminder

Just a note to remind the Ministry’s loyal reader...dammit, readers...readers... that we are only three months away from Moon Conquest Day. 

I hope everyone can take some time out and reflect on the stellar travellers who we have lost, commemorate America’s first off-planet adventure, and celebrate telling the Russians to suck it.  “It” being our collective wang which, given its interplanetary reach, is among the largest on our world.

And let’s think about what symbol we can add to the flag to represent the moon.  If states are stars, what can the moon be?

Back from a short vacation…

...and once again, I find myself astounded by the institutionalized idiocy of the Transportation Security Administration.

Thanks to Richard Reid, for instance, I still get to experience the silly waste of time inherent in removing my shoes and running them through the scanning equipment. Thanks to the efforts of the 21 alleged terrorists in the UK during the summer of 2006, passenger screening personnel still get to inflict the silly waste of time inherent in depriving passengers of any liquid or gel not contained in a properly sized receptacle, or that receptacle itself not contained in the proper 1-quart see through bag.  (See also this item on the Department of Homeland Security’s designation of an entire state of matter as a national security risk)

Just noticed my dictionary is a relic of a bygone age

Call me anachronistic, but I use a real dictionary to look up words.

I like the internets as much as the next guy, but still prefer, more often than not, the look and feel of a solid dense bit of bookery in my hands.  It means authority, and presence, and presents language in a more permanent and, I daresay, reassuring way than do bits and pixels.

Mostly.  I just noticed that my dictionary is a relic of a bygone age.  Not the age of print and type, but the age when terrorism had to do with Them, not Us. 

I was looking for a word and happened upon a small picture in the margin that caught my eye: a tiny black and white photo of Manhattan, including the Twin Towers, associated with the definition of “skyline”.  About three inches down is another pic, a little larger, of just the towers and labeled “skyscraper”.  Also in the same corner of the page: skyjack.  And sky marshall.

Saturday, April 28, 2007

This Week in Exemplary Human Behavior for 4/28/07

From time to time (as often as our stomachs will allow us to manage it) we at the Ministry will look closely into the depths of human depravity both comical and twisted, and drag up whatever we find there for consideration. The general hope is that by bringing these stories into the light of day we can make them rarer. The usual effect is, instead, we end up sad and depressed about the future of the species.

So, onward!

Dateline: Washington, DC

The Washington Madam scandal has claimed its first victim: The State Department’s senior diplomat in charge of USAID, which is devoted to stamping out sex trafficking, human exploitation, and AIDS, has resigned, having copped to using a perfectly innocent telephone service to hire nice Latin American women to come to his house and give him nice therapeutic “massages” in exchange for some untraceable cash money. Nice!!

Dateline: Crazytown

Newsflash: Michelle Malkin has finally completely lost her shit.

Dateline: The Congo and elsewhere

The New York Times has a heartwarmer on the rising use of child soldiers in the pointless conflicts of Africa, because they are loyal, pliable, and uncomplicated by higher philosophical thinking (plus they’re easy to make more of). The article also notes that, in a cunning twist, the strongmen who hire them have at this point given up even the thinniest pretenses of a “cause,” preferring to cut right to the basic raping, killing, and stealing as their main kinks.

... aaand that’s enough for this week. I think I’m going to curl up in my bed under the covers for a while and wish real hard. 

Friday, April 27, 2007

Kicked

Now that I’ve felt my ever less theoretical son kick me right in the hand (oh, how special!, interjects Mrs. Johno… he’s been whaling on my cervix for weeks!), I have a public announcement to make:

I keep making beer, like a fool, for ever more theoretical consumption. At the moment, I have a nice floral and bitter pale ale, a spicy, strong and sweet Abbey, and a plain out freako-delicious Dunkel ready to go, and five gallons of porter curing besides. So, please.... kick my kegs. Run ‘em out. I’ll make more. Please help… drink all my booze, I’m begging out.

That is all.

Buckethead, Biblical Authority

It’s Friday Funtime Quizzery time.  Over at Naked Villainy, we find a biblical quiz.  I scared the Bejesus out of myself by getting a 100%, proving that despite two and half decades without cracking open the bible, my Lutheran Confirmation classes were ruthlessly effective.  How well can you do, Heathen?

Put ‘er in Batman

From a wonderful little website that I just discovered, this gem:

Guy 1: So my friend almost ran over a big family the other day but at the last moment a little boy popped up beside the car and I said ‘dude you gotta make sure you get them all, or else that little boy is going to grow up and become Batman and come after you’

Guy 2: That’s why they invented reverse, so that Batman won’t get you.

Guy 1: They should just call it Batman. I’m just going to put the car in Batman and back into this spot.

Guy 2: Seems perfectly logical to me.

Yet another odd lexical twitch to add to my armamentarium, and confuse those near me.

Thursday, April 26, 2007

I messed with Texas, and now I have a rash

We’re moving into the home stretch here on Perfidy’s longest running series, alternative state slogans for alternate state people.  Today, we focus on Texas, a state that has, historically, been foremost in the republic for arrogance and misplaced judgments of its own competence.  Twice since independence Texas has not been part of the United States, a fact that is not well appreciated in light of Texans vehement protestations of patriotism.  Anyway, on to the ridicule and fun-poking:

• I messed with Texas, and now I have a rash
• If it’s good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for Texas
• Because Sometimes You Make Bad Choices
• Se Habla Ingles
• We Kill ‘em So YOU Don’t Have To
• 95% More Texasness Than The Next Leading State
• Crazy ‘Bout Guns!
• Where everything’s bigger, except the IQ’s
• Mess with Texas, and Chuck Norris will roundhouse kick you to death
• All the oil, without all the burkhas
• 49 of 50 states agree, Texas Sucks
• Why?
• More episodes of Cops filmed on location here than anywhere
• Prone To Flooding
• We kill because we’re frightened little girls
• Have Fun Driving Through Us On Your Way To Nowhere!
• We gave you nuculer
• You Grill ‘Em, We’ll Kill ‘Em
• If we secede again, you’re all in deep crap.
• The Beefstick State
• I can see for miles and miles and miles and miles
• An execution a day keeps the prisons relatively empty
• The Manhandle State
• Swim to freedom!
• The unconditionally affirmative frontier
• Most, but by no means all, things are bigger in Texas
• Better Behave, or We’ll Fry Your Ass
• Because You Can Never Have Enough Churches
• Come for the oppressive heat, stay for the flat dusty sameness
• Texas, Schmexas
• We Live to Annoy the Rest of the Country.
• Enjoy Leaving!
• More Mexico
• Friendship, Except When Betrayed or Approached By Strangers
• The Key To A Door You Don’t Want To Open
• Yes, it is bigger.  You’ll have to step back though.
• Everything Is Brown Here
• Twice as loud, half as popular
• We put the “Ex” in “execution”!
• Texas: Your last, best defense against education.
• The Dumbo State
• Our state tree is the gallows.
• We Let America See Our Bush!
• The Great Horney Toad State
• That chili’s not hot, you’re just a pussy
• Don’t blame me, I voted Kinky
• Steers and Queers
• Y’all can go to hell.  I’m goin to Texas.  Damn, same thing.
• Tuck Fexas
• Welcome Wetbacks and Yankees!
• The Criminal’s Lethal Injection Connection
• The Big Freakin’ Hat State
• More Crime Than You’d Think
• Things look smaller in Texas
• Poker? I don’t even know her
• Texas: Come for the Adventure, Stay for your wrongful execution
• Birthplace of the meanest president in US History.
• Rodeo: a way for nominally straight Texans to dress in leather chaps and wrestle with animals
• Wetbacks R Us
• Of course we’re loners, who likes a loner?
• It’s like a whole other planet
• Gateway to Texas
• New Jersey thanks God they’re not us
• Our teenagers are the cutest!  Did I say that out loud?
• Still proud of defeating Mexico
• Oil, leather, cows, mustaches… It’s not what you think

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

C or Bust!

The more alert of our mostly sessile readership may have noted that astronomers have detected a new extrasolar planet.  We’ve discovered hundreds of extrasolar planets, so why is this one so damned special?  Well, let me tell you.  It’s earthlike.  It’s close.  And it’s in the habitable zone of its star.

Roadtrip!

Well, close in astronomical terms, and for some odd values of “earthlike.” The new planet, Gliese 581c, is about half again as big, and five times as massive as Earth.  The bigdomes are guessing that this would result in a surface gravity somewheres around twice that of Earth.  Which would kill any fat, tall people on a colonization mission.  It’d be worse than Oregon Trail.  For more details on what life might be like on this planet, visit here, here, here, or here.  And get in line behind this guy for tickets:

What might be most significant about this discovery is its implications for the Drake Equation – something we talked about in great depth just a little while ago.  Pretty much as soon as we fired up that fancy new telescope, we discover an earthlike world, right on our doorstep.  That has to be indicative of how common planets like ours are in the galaxy. 

As we learn more about the big universe out there, more of the numbers in the Drake equation are looking to be large.  The Drake eqation can be divided into physical, life, and civilization factors.  All of the physical factors are now almost certain to be large across the galaxy, so there’s no way to minimize your estimates of the number of ETs by saying that there aren’t going to be abodes for life as we know it.  (Of course, they may be many other places amenable to life as we don’t know it.)

As for life, there are two ways that we could get a firmer grasp on how to judge those numbers, and both are within, nearly, our grasp.  Any evidence of life in our solar system would be a strong, but not definitive, clue that life is common in the galaxy.  Europa and Mars are the prime candidates there.  More research along the lines we are pursuing now may give us some answers.  The other way is to increase our capacity to gain information on extrasolar planets, which we are also pursuing.  If we get to the point where we can image these planets, it is certainly possible that we could detect chlorophyll or other biological evidence in their reflected light.  Finding that would be strong evidence that life exists outside our solar system, and that it could be common as well.

That would mean that two thirds of the Drake Equation’s constituent elements would be heavily weighted toward high numbers.  And that the chance of ET’s would be correspondingly higher as well.

[Wik] The super nifty star map has not yet been updated to include our new vacation destination.  However, you can look at it anyway by going to the to the scrolly thing right on the left side of the window, and scroll down about halfway, looking for “Gl 581.” When you find it, click it, and you’ll see the Gl 581 circled on the star map.  Click on it, or in the window on the right to see the solar system, sadly absent little c.  On the star map, if you click on the right arrow, and then the back arrow, you’ll be in our sector.  Neato!

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Golf trip preparations are underway

I’m taking off tomorrow morning for another in a long series of annual gatherings of a group of my friends, at which much golf will be played and several other forms of hell may well be raised.

In preparation for the trip, one of the participants, Rick, sent out a link to this video:

In our group’s defense, I’m comfortable asserting that none of us will play anything near as badly as those on the film above. At least not during the first 18 holes of any given day.

Oh, and the several incoherent misspellings you see in the video were there when I got it, just in case you were wondering.

The Best and the Brightest

Dammit, David Halberstam died. He was one of the finest reporters - and finest writers - of his generation, and he will be missed.

(I imagine we can expect a story from Christopher Hitchens within the next day or two about how Halberstam was really a second-rate hack who slew children to collect their shoes.)

An inconvenient phrase

Everyone can now stop using “inconvenient truth” - or its derivatives in any sort of writing, anywhere.  If you feel tempted to do so in spite of my request, please read Orwell’s ”Politics and the English Language“ and reconsider.  Failing that, find an unabridged copy of Orwell’s collected works and hit yourself repeatedly in the head with it. 

That’s Un-American!

Who would have thought that making quality products would lead to world-wide domination?  Apparently not GM, who just slipped into second place behind Toyota.  When reached for comment, GM spokesmen replied, “They cheated.”

The last American car I bought was a 1963 Cadillac, 20 years ago.  Based on my experience with friends and relatives, I don’t believe that I will buy any others in the near future - the sole exception being the potential purchase of a used pickup.  The reason?  They suck.  Just ‘cause they’re made here (which, strictly speaking, they’re aren’t always) is not reason for me to subject myself to unreliable and poorly engineered vehicles.

[Wik] Patton also posted on this very topic, but was too shy to post it at Perfidy.  I will do him the favor of reproducing it here:

Hide the women and children! To the storm cellar, pronto! The Japs have sold 90,000 more cars than the, (quick - what’s a light-hearted pejorative for Detroit natives?) the Detroit guys!

…

Hey, wait a minute - so what? That little statistic is even less important than the dates and times at which the Dow Jones Industrials crossed each of the 1,000 point barriers, that is, “not at all”.

Given the fine mess that’s characterized GM these past few years, including poor results, billions of dollars in losses, junk bond ratings on its corporate debt, the jettisoning of the majority of its GMAC finance arm to Cerberus, the bankruptcy of Delphi, which it tried (and failed) to hive off as a separate, self-sustaining entity, and the battles with Jerry York, Kirk Kerkorian, and Tracinda, the fact that Toyota has passed them in sales is neither surprising nor particularly newsworthy.

They’re rather lucky to still be ahead of Ford, itself a company that is, as Monty Python might say “not at all well”.

Xenophobes and Detroit residents may mark this day as one that will live in infamy. More rational sorts will simply see it as the logical end to a progression that Toyota began, 20 years ago, when they started making cars better than General Motors was able or willing to do. Given that my last four vehicles have been made by Toyota, perhaps my objectivity isn’t perfect in this matter.

My post has the advantage of pithiness, but Patton got several more jokes in.

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