Lead Pipe Cruelty

Monday, April 23, 2007

Your quote of the day

Just So You KnowLead Pipe Cruelty

So far, at least, as the day’s only half over.

Context is almost unimportant for this one, but could be found, if you really wanted to and had a subscription, in today’s Wall Street Journal, in an article entitled ”After Big Wins in Las Vegas, An Investor’s Luck Turns“

Speaking about city “councilwoman Lois Tarkanian, wife of former University of Nevada, Las Vegas, basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian”, the story’s protagonist, Billy T. Walters, said:

She’s well intended, and I don’t mean this with any disrespect, but she’s dumber than a road lizard.


Posted by Patton on 04/23/07 at 02:34 PM
Just So You Know • Lead Pipe Cruelty • Permalink

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Teamwork

Lead Pipe Cruelty

The new Ministry official motivational poster:

image

[Wik] Thanks to Minister Patton’s mysterious correspondent for sending us that.


Posted by Buckethead on 04/19/07 at 12:18 AM
Lead Pipe Cruelty • Permalink

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

They’re Taking Our Jobs!

Holy Shit!Lead Pipe CrueltyUnmitigated Gall

First it was the Irish, with their mining and their farming. Then it was the Slavs, those factory-dwelling scum. Then it was the Latinos with their ambition and willingness to spread mulch and cook your steak frites for little pay. Then it was the Indonesians with their endless garment factories. Then it was the Indians, who have apparently limitless capacity to take shit from irate helpline callers while producing flawless C++ code. And now it’s the damn Chinese, taking the job of insane mass murderer away from the white, Christian American males to whom it is their birthright.

No. Seriously. Check this amazing shit out! Media whore Debbie Schlussel is an early frontrunner in the contest to say the least appropriate, most reprehensible thing possible about yesterday’s shootings at Virginia Tech, and she’s come up with a doozy. Wow!

So, the perpetrator of the Virginia Tech massacre is a Chinese national here on a student visa. And, today, this alien did “the job that Americans just won’t do.”

If you really want to be put off your lunch, kite over to her site and check out all the people who somehow agree that yesterday’s tragedy is somehow an argument for tighter immigration laws (or evidence of a Great Yellow Conspiracy of unexplained provenance or purpose). Also go to her site if you somehow think I’m taking her out of context or misrepresenting the thrust of her argument. ‘Cos I ain’t.

Hat tip to Outside the Beltway

[Wik]... and check up the to this post, which I found via qando. Just awesome!

**** UPDATE #3, 04/17/07: The shooter has now been identified as a South Korean national. ****

**** UPDATE #2: The shooter has now been identified as a Chinese national here on a student visa. Lovely. Yet another reason to stop letting in so many foreign students. ****

**** UPDATE: Shootings appear professional, says expert; VTU Alum on school’s “Asian” Population; 2nd Amenment-Free Campus/VTU lobbied against students having guns on campus for personal protection ****

Here’s what we know about the murderer of at least 32 students and maimer of at least 28 more at Virginia Tech, today:

* The murderer has been identified by law enforcement and media reports as “a young Asian male.”

* The Virginia Tech campus has a very large Muslim community, many of which are from Pakistan (per terrorism investigator Bill Warner).

* Pakis are considered “Asian.”

* There were 2 attacks at least half a mile apart.

* There have been at least two bomb threats to this campus in the last two weeks.

And dig her rebuttals to the comments:

Posted by: Old Atlantic [TypeKey Profile Page] at April 16, 2007 04:48 PM

Pakis are considered “Asian.”

I believe the correct term is “Pakistani”.

YOUR BELIEF SYSTEM IS FLAWED. EITHER TERM IS CORRECT. WHAT IS THIS--THE IMUS THOUGHT POLICE?
DEBBIE SCHLUSSEL


Posted by Johno on 04/17/07 at 11:22 AM
Holy Shit! • Lead Pipe Cruelty • Unmitigated Gall • Permalink

Monday, April 16, 2007

I bet you wish you hadn’t said that

Holy Shit!Lead Pipe Cruelty

Twenty one people have been killed and at least another 21 injured at Virginia Tech.  Details are scant, but apparently the shootings took place at two separate locations on the campus - in a residence hall and in an engineering building.  I recognize that this is a minor note amidst a lot of much greater suffering, but reading the coverage available so far I imagine that Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker is going to feel like a complete shit for saying this probably as the shootings were happening:

A bill that would have given college students and employees the right to carry handguns on campus died with nary a shot being fired in the General Assembly.

House Bill 1572 didn’t get through the House Committee on Militia, Police and Public Safety. It died Monday in the subcommittee stage, the first of several hurdles bills must overcome before becoming laws.

The bill was proposed by Del. Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah County, on behalf of the Virginia Citizens Defense League. Gilbert was unavailable Monday and spokesman Gary Frink would not comment on the bill’s defeat other than to say the issue was dead for this General Assembly session.

Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker was happy to hear the bill was defeated. “I’m sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly’s actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus.”

[Wik] Update: Tuesday - In the comments, the Astronomicon informs us that the bill mentioned above died in committee back at the end of January, not yesterday as I had mistakenly assumed from the dateline on the article I linked.  Thanks for the correction.  Astro has a informative post about the bill, and goes into more detail than the article I found.  It can be read here.


Posted by Buckethead on 04/16/07 at 02:38 PM
Holy Shit! • Lead Pipe Cruelty • Permalink

Saturday, April 14, 2007

Memo missed, new word learnt

Crazy ForeignersLead Pipe Cruelty

I’m sure that the rest of the Ministers got theirs, but I must have missed the memo on the start of the Canadian seal-clubbing season.  Dang.

Via an article in the April 4 2007 Economist (subscription required) entitled ”On thin ice“, I’ve learned that global warming has impacted Southern Canada’s ability to provide fodder for the particpants in its seal-clubbing industry. Clearly, the government needs to do something to avoid disenfranchisement of the affected group.

THE activists have armed themselves with helicopters, video cameras and outrage. The hunters have their sharp hooks and blunt clubs, often combined into a single sinister-looking instrument of Norwegian design known as a hakapik. Canada’s seal-hunting season officially began on April 2nd along with the usual row between those who denounce it as senseless cruelty and those who defend it as a traditional and necessary part of local livelihoods. Thanks to global warming, however, the argument might soon become redundant.

So it seems that the protesters are impaired in their ability to effectively protest. Global warming - Is there anything it can’t do? Admittedly, not everyone can muster much sympathy for the perpetually outraged pretend-protectors of the cute little seals.

The problem?

This year there has been less of the usual footage of burly men bashing small furry skulls and of blood smeared across the ice floes. That is not because the hunters have become less aggressive, but because suitable seals have become scarcer. Thanks to an unusually warm winter, the ice is melting early in the southern Gulf of Saint Lawrence, where hunting began this week. The seal pups on which the hunt preys are reared on the ice until they are old enough to swim. So the premature thaw has drowned them—before the hunters had the chance to kill many.

Less seal-cranium-crushing= less for PETA, or whomever, to kvetch about. In a nod to realities of the matter, the Canadian government points out that seal hunting “brings income to struggling fishing communities”, which I’d guess is a good thing.

Not surprisingly, the protesters don’t care, and want to protest, regardless of any benefits to the communities in which the hunting occurs.  However...

... campaigners against seal hunting are not wholly beyond reproach either. Few bother to make it clear that the killing of the youngest pups with fluffy white pelts has been banned for 20 years. They also make it sound as if the seals are endangered. In fact, the seal population has tripled since the 1970s.

In another bow to reality, and due to warm conditions in the South, the government has reduced the quota for seal hunters from 335,000 to only 270,000. The practical effect is to have shifted seal-hunting to the colder northern climes.

The sealers in those areas tend to hunt with rifles, and so do not provide such good fodder for media campaigns.

You’d think, reading it, that both the hunters and the complainers are equally wrong-footed by the weather, but that’s not the case - the hunters can always head north.  There’s not enough outrage available up there for the complainers, however, and therefore I stand by my assertion that they’re the ones most unfairly affected.

Oh, and yes, the new word learned is hakapik. Help me out here - the name of that tool isn’t onomatopoeic, since it surely doesn’t make a sound like its name. What’s the description of a word which (in its English incarnation, at least) has a name that sounds as though it’s describing what you can do with it?

[Wik] Technically, if the protesters actually cared about the seals, wouldn’t they try to save them from drowning, as well as from the evil hunters?


Posted by Patton on 04/14/07 at 11:44 PM
Crazy Foreigners • Lead Pipe Cruelty • Permalink

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Explanation of a minor sporting mystery

FakeBloggingLead Pipe Cruelty

Old news, by now, but dredged back to my frontal lobe after having heard ESPN’s Dan Patrick and Sports Illustrated’s Rick Reilly talking on ESPN Radio today on the way back from lunch, and Reilly having said something to the effect that in five years, the winner of the 2007 Masters tournament, Zach Johnson, would be waiting tables at Olive Garden.

Apparently, Reilly has a habit of recycling his jokes:

(regarding Brett Wetterich, a rookie in last year’s Ryder Cup matches)

Rick Reilly, the celebrated American columnist, was more brutal. “You look at him and think, was he my waiter at Olive Garden last night? If he wasn’t, he will be soon.”

Tiger Woods Reveals He Is Zach Johnson

The Onion

Tiger Woods Reveals He Is Zach Johnson

AUGUSTA, GA—World No. 1-ranked golfer Tiger Woods, after appearing to struggle through the weekend—playing with uncharacteristic inconsistency, bogeying twice in the final rounds, and breaking clubs—shocked the crowd at Augusta...


Posted by Patton on 04/12/07 at 09:42 PM
FakeBlogging • Lead Pipe Cruelty • Permalink

Friday, April 06, 2007

How do I say this nicely?

Lead Pipe Cruelty

I just don’t know. So let me put it plainly.

If you want to hit on a girl, don’t spit on her. If you want to try and get a girl interested in what you have to say, don’t punctuate your diction with spittle.

I went out last night and there’s always that overeager guy. He’s dominating the dancefloor and thinks he’s just a funboy extraordinaire. He IS the party.

He is THAT guy too. You all know him. He knows all the words. He can tell you what albums they’re from. He knows what year they were released and the who was TIME’s Man of the Year cover that year.

Well sweaty, nasty, Mr. Life of the Party, I just had effing surgery. I don’t really feeling like throwing down, so please don’t try to talk to me and get me to shake my moneymaker on the dancefloor. Take a hint. I didn’t take to your invitation the first time. Did you have to come back for a second and third? Did you have to get to the point where a bouncer had to ask me if you were being creepy? Just quit being creepy the first time. Nothing has changed in 3 minutes, no matter if Sisters of Mercy just started playing and that’s THE shirt I’m wearing.

Yes, you almost drove me out of the club, while one of my DJ acquaintances was in the middle of an amazing set. If I was interested in the power trip of having you tossed out, I would have done it. But in my mellow old age, I just run from you, the walking biohazard.


Posted by Mapgirl on 04/06/07 at 04:49 PM
Lead Pipe Cruelty • Permalink

Thursday, April 05, 2007

The massive Zune user community

Lead Pipe Cruelty

In the wake of the joint EMI/Apple announcement that DRM-free EMI tunes will be available for sale on Apple’s iTunes store, people have been speculating on what it all means.  Aside from many predictions of the imminent demise of DRM, one potential fallout is a new chapter in the audio standards war.  (Apple favors AAC, Microsoft WMA, and MP3 is the default other format.  For more info on audio file formats, see this wikipedia overview with links, or the second half of this article for a good explanation.) Arik Hesseldahl of Business Week talks on this, and it’s well worth a read, but the bit that got me laughing was this:

AAC-format supporters include some notable names, including Microsoft’s Zune. So come May, the 16 people who own one will be able to buy EMI tracks from iTunes and presumably play them on that device.

I am amused by how Microsoft always quotes market share figures by saying, “Hard Drive Music Players.” They’ve gotten less than 10% of maybe a quarter of the total music player market, and that doesn’t even take into account iPod sales from Apple stores and online.  They might have managed to get 2% of the total market.  Quite a splash considering how much cash they through at it.


Posted by Buckethead on 04/05/07 at 02:41 PM
Lead Pipe Cruelty • Permalink

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Blasfunny?

FakeBloggingLead Pipe Cruelty
Christ Getting In Shape For Second Coming

The Onion

Christ Getting In Shape For Second Coming

HEAVEN—Since His birthday last Dec. 25, the Lamb of God has committed Himself to a demanding regimen of exercise and prophecy-fulfillment in preparation for the Second Coming.


Posted by Patton on 04/04/07 at 03:54 PM
FakeBlogging • Lead Pipe Cruelty • Permalink

Saturday, March 31, 2007

Since we can’t really reopen the book on Minnesota…

EntertainmentHoly Shit!Lead Pipe Cruelty

Minnesota has already had its turn in the barrel, and it’s far enough in the past (Aug 2006) that simply appending this item to it would consign the appendage to obscurity, and spare the Gopher State the additional ridicule that it so richly deserves.

So, Minnesota gets to be our first multi-part state smackdown recipient, all for a single news story from today:

Minn. lawmaker lobbies for Tilt-A-Whirl

Fri Mar 30, 5:38 AM ET

ST. PAUL - State Rep. Patti Fritz, DFL-Faribault, has introduced a bill designating the Tilt-A-Whirl the official amusement ride in Minnesota.

Fritz said she’s taking up the cause of 52 kindergarten students from her district who say it deserves special attention because it was invented in their town.

“I represent children too,” Fritz said, adding, “Minnesotans like to have fun, and it’s a fun thing to do.”

The Tilt-A-Whirl is a platform-type ride consisting of seven freely spinning cars holding up to four riders apiece.

Herbert Sellner invented it in 1926 and the first one debuted at the Minnesota State Fair a year later. Sellner Manufacturing in Faribault still makes it.

Minnesota already has a state muffin (blueberry), a state gemstone (the Lake Superior agate), a state drink (milk), a state butterfly (monarch) and seven other official symbols.

Sorry - it’s short, so I just included it all. Well, that, plus it’s a Yahoo story, so it’ll eventually disappear from the web on its own if I don’t snatch it. Can’t have the Ministry archives filled with dead links, now can we? Of course, the story itself is a bit short on important details, such as surprise vomiting attacks suffered by tilt-a-whirlers and indirectly by those to their left and right.

Another thought occurs to me, now that I’ve gone to all the trouble to lift that entire news story - we could just start another semi-regular series here at the Ministry, one devoted to ridiculing individual legislators also richly in need of such ridicule.  The potential downside, of course, is that given the size of the list of valid editorial targets, we’re woefully understaffed for such an enterprise.


Posted by Patton on 03/31/07 at 02:03 AM
Entertainment • Holy Shit! • Lead Pipe Cruelty • Permalink

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Its little brains look so cute steaming on the ice!!

FakeBloggingLead Pipe Cruelty

What does it say about me that my initial reaction to an email from the Humane Society titled “Cruel seal hunt just a week away” is “Huh. Wonder if I can get some time off from work?”


Posted by Johno on 03/25/07 at 04:44 PM
FakeBlogging • Lead Pipe Cruelty • Permalink

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Up to our ankles in blood and Fruitopia

Lead Pipe CrueltyPartisan Politics

Despite being nearly two years out from the next presidential election, the shenanigans are in full swing.  Fucking shenanigans.  The Democratic Party candidates are already attacking each other, and the Republicans are doing their traditional Sloth and Emu imitations.  I’ve seen reports of candidates withdrawing from the race that I not only did not know were running, but in fact had never heard of.  As the campaign rhetoric heats up, the electorate will play its role in the quadrennial morality play - that of the Greek chorus.  That is, if you imagine the Chorus from Aristophanes’ The Clouds repeatedly muttering to itself, “Who the fuck are these people, and why can’t we get someone cool to run for President, like John Wayne?  Someone who won’t bother to understand all that economics crap, but will put the fear of Jebus into the furriners?” When they’re not muttering that, the mutters will center on the fact that despite the claims of diametrical oppositeness, the two parties seem to be strikingly similar in every important aspect - seriously considering as candidates people we would never allow alone with our children, pompous self righteousness, and shrill condemnation of anything or anyone that stands in the way of attaining, holding, and cashing in on power.

It is at times like these that the more thoughtful of the sheople will think, maybe another party will make a difference.  Aside from the fact that the last time this was successfully tried, the new party ended being merely a slightly newer version of one of the original parties, which then gracefully (and miraculously) expired.  The people will think to themselves, “Hey, that paranoid big eared guy did pretty well.” If they are of a leftward tilt, they’ll fantasize about a Green party victory.  If they list to starboard, they might imagine a Libertarian triumph. Of course, any sane person would run screaming from the country if either of those things happened. 

What is needed is a true alternative.  One that has been slumbering for nearly a decade could be our savior.  It is,

The Scorched Earth Party

WHY THE FOOLS MUST DIE

It’s happened to you, no doubt.

You are somewhere public, trying to complete a simple task. Perhaps you are eating in a Dennys. Perhaps you are buying something at Costco. Perhaps you are just driving along on the highway. Then it happens:

Some stupid moron causes a problem. They put their trivial life ahead of your own existence, and as a result they move, however briefly, from the position of ‘faceless drone’ to ‘obstacle’.

The waiter messes up your order. You can’t get a refill of coffee because they’re “too busy”, despite the fact that the restaurant is empty. Some jerk cuts you off with their cart and there’s no way around them now. That asshole who is coming up on your tail, flashing his brights, decides to cut around you on the right at about 90 mph just as you start signaling to get out of his way, and he honks wildly as though you’re the one endangering everyone on the road.

And you think to yourself: This person must die.

The Scorched Earth Party is here to tell you: Yeah. Go for it.

The basics

Here at the Scorched Earth Party, we are dedicated to a few simple principles:

  • that the concept of “life is sacred” is the best joke we’ve heard this year.
  • that nothing satisfies like clubbing some moron to death with a lead pipe.
  • that you can never get laid enough.
  • that the world will continue to deteriorate until 90% of its population is eliminated.

True happiness will never be yours unless you rise up with us. Join the 10% with the lead pipes. Help save the world through random, messy violence, and then wallow in carnal pleasure among the ruins.

Now that would make the ‘08 elections more interesting. 


Posted by Buckethead on 03/14/07 at 06:20 PM
Lead Pipe Cruelty • Partisan Politics • Permalink

Friday, March 09, 2007

Went out like a bitch

Lead Pipe CrueltyUnmitigated Gall

Comic book hero Captain America has been killed off by his corporate masters.  With a sniper bullet.  From my title, please don’t think that I am speaking ill of Captain America.  Cap was always, after Batman, one of my favorite comic book heroes.  I think that putting him down in this manner is cheap.  It’s Captain America, fer chrissakes.  Cap should have gone down, if at all, in a blaze of glory saving us from a certain doom.  Martyrdom, if anything.  Heroic sacrifice.  Not a pot shot on the streets. 


Posted by Buckethead on 03/09/07 at 07:17 PM
Lead Pipe Cruelty • Unmitigated Gall • Permalink

Monday, March 05, 2007

Learning about nature

Crazy ForeignersLead Pipe Cruelty

All these years, I’ve never really given much thought to them, and have remained uneducated about wolverines.

What, to my wondering eyes, should appear the other week but an article insert in the Economist of Feb 15th (really, just a sidebar), including a picture of a wolverine.  Who knew they looked so much like beavers?  Or would that be better stated as “fat-assed ferrets”?  Silly me - I’ve always assumed it was just a small wolf. Not being from Michigan, I guess it’s OK for me to have had such a gap in my knowledge.  It’s a shame that the online article omits the picture of the wolverine, as it was truly a nasty looking bugger.  None of the first couple hundred wolverine pictures available in a Google Image search, after omitting those 90% which seemed to be related to the X-Men movies, came even close to capturing the bugger’s nasty buggerishness.

Oh, and that article? (sorry - subscription only, near as I can tell, though how it classifies as “premium content” is a bit beyond me).  It’s about the proposed rebranding of Canada, and is entitled “Tenacious, smelly—and uncool”.  No, they weren’t talking about Canada in the title, they were talking about what a poor choice a wolver-rat would be for a national symbol.

Close your eyes and think of Canada. Perhaps the picture that comes to mind is one of a country of cold winters and civilised prosperity. But Stephen Harper, the country’s Conservative prime minister, has another idea. This month he suggested that the national image was best captured by the wolverine, a sort of weasel.

That seems odd. Wolverines have some unpleasant habits. They emit a foul-smelling musk and eat carrion. They are close relatives of skunks and their name translates as “glutton” in French. But Mr Harper was thinking of their reputation for aggression and tenacity in the face of much larger predators. Canada is no mouse beside the American elephant, but a wolverine next to a grizzly bear, he said. “We may be smaller but we’re no less fierce about protecting our territory.”

The Economist goes on to remind readers that it’s already suggested new symbology for Canada, back in 2003 - a moose wearing shades.  So yeah, that’s rather cool - a lot better than a nasty smelling sharp-clawed mole-like creature that eats carrion.

[Wik] What? Ohio State fan?  Moi?


Posted by Patton on 03/05/07 at 01:25 AM
Crazy Foreigners • Lead Pipe Cruelty • Permalink

Saturday, March 03, 2007

A fun game you can play in almost any public place

Lead Pipe Cruelty

Crazy Person or Bluetooth Headset? The Home Game.


Posted by Patton on 03/03/07 at 09:19 PM
Lead Pipe Cruelty • Permalink
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