Hello there, New Boss
Is there any reason to be the slightest bit optimistic about the riots going on across the Middle East at the moment? So far, they’ve knocked over very bad men in Egypt and now, maybe Libya. So everything defaults to military control. Um, great?
People on both sides are being a leeetle too premature on the celebration. On the right, because we fetishize the American Revolution. On the left, because they fetishize revolution itself.
Not counting our own — which was hashed out over years by some of the finest political thinkers of the Enlightenment — when has revolution led to better lives? Honest question — I’ve been trying to think of examples.
France? Well, eventually. I guess. They’ve had lots of bad, bloody governments between then and now. Ditto Mexico and South America. I don’t know if you can say a thing improves lives if it takes a couple hundred years to do it.
Russia? No. China? No. Tscha.
After pushing against Apartheid with all their might, the left doesn’t seem to have noticed that South Africa has descended into utter third-world shit-holery. I guess shit-holery is okay as long as it’s racially equitable shit-holery. Like when Rhodesia became Zimbabwe and everybody starved together.
So that leaves Eastern Europe and the fall of the Berlin Wall. They got themselves together within a few years. So there’s that.
Anybody know Middle Eastern Lech Wałęsa? Yeah. Um, no.
I have a really bad feeling about this.
February 21, 2011 — 11:40 pm
Comments: 25
If only there was SOME kind of…visual clue
You know that montage of terrorist suspect mugshots that Michelle Malkin publishes every time there’s a new outbreak of Islamic dumbassery? It’s a great visual, but whenever I see it, I itch to Photoshop it into tidier shape.
So I did.
I know, I know — this leetle one isn’t legible. Here’s a big version (576 x 2226 and 360K) and a smaller version (300 x 1160 and 150K). Nice and color.
Feel free to suggest corrections or additions (I can’t believe the Shoe Bomber and the Panty Bomber weren’t in the original!) — and, as usual, you can steal it, edit it (.psd file available on request, ~6 megs), forward it to your favorite anti-profiling lefty, make it your Christmas Card for 2010. Whatever. Merry Christmas!
I walked down the list and Googled every single one of these guys to make sure I had the correct spelling and there weren’t better mugshots available, arranged in reasonably chronological order. I think it’s pretty clean, barring typos.
You know, it’s striking how many of these mooks were turned in by fellow Muslims. Notes passed to the FBI in broken English, clearly written by somebody else in the same immigrant group. Somebody who declined to join the jolly Jihad.
That’s the one thing that troubles me when I go all nanny-nanny-boo-boo on Islam. I don’t mind offending a billion people — that’s easy! And I think a big, fat dose of ridicule is exactly what these jihadi jack-holes are begging for.
But I sure don’t want to do anything to discourage those who rat out their evil brothers.
December 15, 2010 — 11:21 pm
Comments: 33
Good news! Our marriage is invalid!
See, this is what happens when I try to do everything all nice and proper and churchy.
The Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer, which sets out all the proper church rituals and magic spells, went merrily unchanged for three hundred something years. In 1980, modern busybodies decided to tweak it — i.e. throw out all the wherefores and whosomevers and replaced the lovely old language with words suitable for primary school remedial readers (I believe this was the point they decreed all hymns be sung to the tune of Kumbaya).
Problem is, the Marriage Act of 1949 specifies the exact language to be used. Which is the old version. This is just coming to light, for some reason.
And it’s not even the flipping vows. It’s the flipping banns that are read out in the flipping church weeks before the flipping ceremony.
Minor tweak. From “cause, or just impediment” to “reason in law.”
Considering this affect everyone who got married in the C of E for the last thirty years — including a royal or two — you can imagine the Church is poo-pooing the significance. But what do you want to bet somebody tries to wriggle out on the basis of.
Oh, I liked this bit:
Leading secular divorce lawyer Jeremy Abraham said: “Technically, many marriages are invalid. However, if both parties believe they are married, then they are protected.”
Nice. Puts the strength of our marriage contract in the same league as the existence of Tinkerbell.
November 26, 2010 — 10:06 pm
Comments: 37
There. Done. Everybody shut up and go home now.
So fifty knuckleheads in Florida vow to do something small, dumb and pointless, and the next thing you got the pope and the president and the prime minister and the general in charge of the war and everybody all up in there screaming and flapping and turning a small moment of private stupid into a HUGE INTERNATIONAL INCIDENT.
If a Koran burns in the forest and AP doesn’t report it, do thousands rally in Afghanistan?
Oh, retaliation? Really? You mean they haven’t really hated the West all that much, but NOW they’re serious? Instead of being mad at us, now they’re extra super mad?
What comes after that? Double extra super times-infinity-plus-one mad?
Seriously. Everybody shut up. Go home. Stop embarrassing me.
September 10, 2010 — 1:30 pm
Comments: 32
‘Nuff said
I think our trainee president has really put his foot in it this time.
August 16, 2010 — 11:30 pm
Comments: 13
Pagans to the left of me! Pagans to the right!
Here we are nearly through the Summer fête season, and I haven’t posted about any of our entertainments. I suppose when you’ve described one brass band and table full of knick knacks, you’ve pretty much told the story.
Here’s something new to me, though — we bought a corn dolly at the last one.
“Corn” here means wheat, oats, rye or barley — whatever your staple carb crop may be — and not just maize. Maize being the thing-on-the-cob we call corn.
Except for tuna and sweetcorn, which is indeed tuna salad with corn kernels in. Which is like…yeah. It’s like that.
God, being a immigrant is confusing.
Anyhoo, a corn dolly is a little sculpture plaited out of straw, either as a love token at harvest time, or a receptacle to hold the spirit of the grain until she can be ploughed back into the earth in Spring.
Children of the Corn. Rosemary’s Baby. Wicker Man. Can I just trust y’all to come up with your own pop culture film reference for the place where I am currently at?
Thank you.
July 26, 2010 — 11:02 pm
Comments: 24
Civilization versus Islam
You know that famous satellite shot of the Korean Peninsula, where South Korea is lit up like a Chlistmas Tree, and North Korea is pitch brack? The difference between communism and capitalism — oh, how we laughed!
Well, I Googled up a night shot of the Middle East, looking for the same dealio (the lines and the land masses don’t exactly match because one is a satellite photo — earth curvature and all — and the other is a map I superimposed). And there it is. There are pools of light around a few cities in the Middle East, but the only place lit up end to end, like a proper Western nation, is Israel.
Behold the difference between Islam and anyplace you might want to be.
What got me thinking was Doc Zero’s excellent piece today on anti-Civilization. Read it; it’s good. His conclusion is something I have been thinking for a while.
I used to believe if Iran or somebody lobbed a nuke at Israel, then the lefties would be sorry. I don’t think that any more. I bet the reaction would be something more like, “oh, it’s horrible — horrible! What a tragedy. But, really — putting a Jewish nation there was never going to work, was it? And I hate to speak ill of the dead, what with the smoke still rising out of Tel Aviv Crater, but the way Israel behaved. I wouldn’t dare say they brought it on themselves, but…”
Makes me feel sick.
Remember, Dead Pool tomorrow. When the timestamp on this blog says 6pm, which is GMT I think, but if I screw that up again, steve will probably come to my house and beat me to death with my own spotted dick.
June 3, 2010 — 10:14 pm
Comments: 29
Happy EDM day!
I don’t actually approve of this, you know.
I went to a particularly flaky art school (the Rhode Island School of Design) during a particularly flaky era (the late Seventies) and I’ve seen enough mental retardation masquerading as art to last a lifetime.
There was one egregious kid in my year — I’ve just Googled his name, and I’m delighted to report Google knowest him not — whose whole schtick was sit around thinking up offensive shit. For his end-of-term project in 3D design, he went down to a slaughterhouse and got four bloody severed horse legs, piled them in the middle of the studio floor and called it “Goodbye, Mister Ed.”
Offensive is for people who desperately want attention but don’t have the talent to get it the usual way. Offensive is the “moon, June, croon” of the post-Modern world — it’s dumb, it’s formulaic and it’s so fucking boring.
In a free world, we have to tolerate offensive but we don’t have to celebrate it. Or for chrissakes give it government arts grants. You hear me lefties? I have to put up with Piss Christ, but you shouldn’t oughta have made me pay for it.
When offensive is aimed at the same groups over and over again — people who can’t do much about it but wave a sign or boycott an advertiser — that’s just plain bullying.
Bullies. That’s the word for people who only pick on those who can’t or won’t fight back. “Courage” isn’t even in the same zip code.
So, sorry Muslims — have a little sacrilege. It’s only fair. You want SUV’s, cell phones and dialysis, you’re going to have to put up with stupid offensive shit, too. Freedom is the common denominator.
When you have to live in a world where some things make you crazy angry, my advice is — don’t go looking for them.
Picture was EZnSF’s idea. Dude, I wish you’d said something earlier. I’m tight for time this week; I could’ve used a couple more days to have fun with this. Here’s a big color version just for you. Kidding — it’s for anyone who wants it, but EZ can have the FaceBook honors.
Update: Since EZ doesn’t seem to be around, I posted the illo to FB. But I gave you a shout-out!
May 20, 2010 — 5:45 pm
Comments: 39
Behold, seven dumb guys and a lady with no chin
Ladies and gentlemen, fresh from a bust-up trailer somewhere in rural Michigan, I give you — the Hutaree!
If these guys were really fixing to start picking off the local constabulary, then I hope they get locked up for a nice, long stretch. But it’s hard not to imagine Janet Napolitano phoning up Central Casting and ordering up a violent Christian militia.
“Get me some angry white boys with guns and Bibles, stat!”
Militias are one of those seasonal political problems, like how there are only homeless people when Republicans are in power. There are only scary right-wing Christian militias when the Dems control the apparatus.
Oh, well. There really was a Tim McVeigh (thanks a lot, dude). From what I’ve seen so far, though, the only charge that’ll stick to these bozos is Felony Mouthy Redneck.
March 31, 2010 — 10:11 pm
Comments: 31
Captions?
Hmmm. I don’t know. My best so far is:
Only YOU can prevent Muslim crotch fires!
December 28, 2009 — 5:48 pm
Comments: 64