A dyer dying here has died and thus dyed for the last time
The military ones are the BEST. Here’s Mark Steyn recalling a few of his favorites:
Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Sanders, who accepted an invitation to lunch from the same Waziri tribesman who a few days earlier had blown him up and cost him his right arm; Bunny Roger, the Mayfair “aesthete” who marched through German lines brandishing a rolled-up copy of Vogue; Warrant Officer “Muscles” Strong, who interrupted his Chinese captors’ lectures on western imperialism with cries of “Bollocks!”; Sir “Honker” Henniker, Bt., an Indian Army brigadier who enjoyed being saluted by his elephants; Charles Upham, the New Zealander who charged two German machine-gun nests singlehanded and is one of only three men in history to be awarded two Victoria Crosses. When my wife’s uncle died, the paper noted that, before leaving for Normandy by glider on D-Day to seize the bridges over the River Orne, he purchased a newsboy’s entire supply of the first edition of the London Evening Standard so that the men who’d landed before dawn would be able to read press accounts of their exploits on the very same day. The Telegraph’s anthologies of military obituaries (edited by David Twiston-Davies) are highly recommended, and a very moving parade of astonishing courage punctuated by dotty elan.
On further search, though, it turns out the one I remember best wasn’t an obit at all. It’s an excerpt from the journal of Capt Robert McLaren, who operated behind Japanese lines in the second World War, and it appeared in the health section under do-it-yourself-appendectomy:
“Made incision through skin, spread the muscle layers with the end of the spoon, bared the appendix, tied off and buried the stump. Healed in three days. Japs pushed in. Took to the hills.”
Some people make you feel like a COMPLETE waste of human skin,
don’t they?
December 28, 2007 — 9:56 am
Comments: 9
Pathetic loser asshole who couldn’t get laid or keep a minimum wage job
HEL-LO! People! We have GOT to stop turning these jerkwads into rock stars.
This useless punk walked into a mall and murdered eight of his betters because he got a little taste of adulthood and he wasn’t up to it. He wasn’t man enough to live with it, either. So he took the one snap-your-fingers path to instant tabloid celebrity. Why, even a loser like him can do it!
He left a note that COULD NOT HAVE BEEN more explicit: “I’m going out in style” — “I’m going to be famous.” It worked, too. Congrats, d00d, you’re the snootch-flashing Paris Hilton of underachievers.
If you’re tired of this shit, we’re collectively going to need a lot less COMPASSION and a lot more RIDICULE. They aren’t troubled into it. Or bullied into it. Nothing “drives them” to do these things but an awareness of their own inadequacy and a desire to get a badass headshot at the top of the Drudge Report.
Losers, not monsters. This is a twenty year old man who couldn’t keep a fast food job or a girl friend. Monster is a huge promotion for this ass. Monsters are scary and powerful. They make movies about monsters. Pimply ex-fry-cooks…not so much.
It doesn’t matter for this dweeb — he did the future McDonald’s customers and mall cops of Omaha a favor and took himself out, too. Do it for the other losers. You know they’re out there. Show them your contempt for what this moron chose to do. We can’t keep making mass murder an attractive exit strategy for weenies.
And use simple language. Remember, they’re losers.
December 6, 2007 — 10:13 am
Comments: 19
“I guess that just pissed them off worser…”
Police said they were working on a more detailed description of three men dressed in drag who came into a McDonald’s restaurant and started swinging.
Restaurant employee Martez Brisco was working the drive-through window when he reportedly got into an argument with the suspects. When Brisco ignored them tapping at the window, they came in.
“They come to the window, ‘Tap, tap, tap.’ I’m still ignoring them,” Brisco told WMC-TV. “I guess that just pissed them off worser.”
The transvestites allegedly struck the manager with a tire iron, and when he swung back, the drag queens took off their stiletto boots, removed their earrings and prepared to attack. The manager, Albert Bolton, was covered with scratch marks after suspects clawed him with their fingernails.
Bolton grabbed a pot of scalding french-fry grease and hurled it at his attackers. One of the cross-dressers then smacked Bolton with a wet floor sign, sending him to the hospital in an ambulance,
WMC-TV reported.
November 27, 2007 — 1:04 pm
Comments: 9
And what would their costumes look like?
Incidentally, that “Dingo baby mum says she’ll support McCanns” is the actual headline from the Daily Mail. British newspapers — even the very good ones — frequently describe people using that formula: <thing they’re famous for> + <appropriate noun>.
So British papers are full of characters like dingo baby mum, wrong kidney doctor, knife in forehead boy, spastic colon girl.
To an American, they sound like pointless and terrifying superheroes.
September 13, 2007 — 5:43 pm
Comments: 23
And now for something cheerful and stupid
Must…lighten up…top…page. Too…depressing. Ah, here we go. Daily Mail to the rescue. Here are some images from the Cloud Appreciation Society. For a nominal fee, you too can join the society like 9,613 of your fellow cloud starer-atters. They have a manifesto and certificates and buttons and everything.
Back to the Mail, here’s my favorite headline of the week: Dingo baby mum says she’ll support McCanns. Thanks, but…ummm…
There’s a cat at Downing Street again: meet Sybil (named after Sybil Fawlty). Her predecessor, Humphrey, was evicted during the Blair years. Rumors Cherie had him offed were so pervasive that she was forced to call a press conference and have herself photographed smiling and holding the beast. That didn’t stem the impression that she had him evicted (or worse), so Humphrey was periodically photographed in his secret London home standing on the day’s newspaper. He died last year, age 18.
Doofuses Wed. The Society for Creative Anachronism doesn’t have a branch in the UK, but chubby people everywhere seem inexorably drawn to period costume. I feel for the horses. Though at least these people had a real live castle to get married in.
Man shoots honkin’ big pig. Sad story, actually. He’s a farmer in Devon and he was raising a herd of wild boar. Animal rights activists destroyed his fence and set a hundred of them free (including many pregnant sows), so hunters are having to track them down and kill them. I fail to see how this is a victory for the animals.
Thank you, Mail. And now let us turn to the BBC, where Mighty Weasel Brings Beeb to its Knees. This article about Muslims fasting during Ramadan began with “Thirty-one-year-old Sumaya Amra is just one of the billions of Muslims who takes part in the holy month of Ramadan by fasting in daylight hours, each day for 30 days.” Oh, I don’t think so, Auntie. I left a comment (which didn’t get published), but it was corrected to “billion or so” not long after. I don’t for a moment think the original was an accident. Reminder: the BBC pulls this shit all the time, and you can track it at BBC-Biased.
September 12, 2007 — 11:09 am
Comments: 25
Elsewhere in the news…
Nothing very exciting here, just an afternoon trawl through the world of journalism. I’ve got a bookmark list that would choke a goat.
Norwegian princess talks to angels. You know what struck me as really strange? She’s a trained physical therapist. What kind of job is that for a princess?
It’s the Popephone! And it’s for you. “Organizers of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Austria next month are offering the faithful a foretaste: daily cell phone text messages with quotes from the pontiff.”
Nepalese man slices off right hand and presents it to Kali. Some religions are harder to practice than others.
World’s largest hand-woven carpet unveiled in Tehran. It’s five and a half tons. Three hundred and ninety-nine feet long by 145 feet wide. It took 1,200 Iranian carpet weavers a year to make it. It’s going in a mosque in the UAE and I’d hate like hell to be the one who had to Hoover it.
British teachers’ union way too big for its britches. Calls for YouTube to be shut down to forestall “cyber bullying.” Some days, you want to queue them up and walk down the line, slapping.
I had to read this lede three times before I understood a word of it: “A one-legged man who was run down by a drunk woman after she hijacked a horse-drawn carriage has said he’ll be able to get out of the way if it happens again – with a new mobility scooter donated by regulars at his local pub.” That is so Brighton.
First Khmer Rouge leader charged. Seriously. First one. This isn’t some new outbreak of Khmer Rougery, either. This is the first of the whole murderous pack of commie nutjobs from the mid seventies to go on trial. Pol Pot died years ago, and the rest of the psychos are wandering around free.
Phew! Lighten up, Weasel. A few from Fazed. Babies eating lemons. I’m not much on babies, but watching a bunch of these poor little bastards get the citrus willies made me go “awwwwwww.” The mask illusion. A slowly rotating Charlie Chaplin mask. Your brain absolutely refuses to let you see a concave human face, so when you get ’round to the back of the mask, it tells you terrible lies. From the New Yorker, what you thought people were thinking about you when you were a kid.
That’s it. Enough. Now we drink.
August 1, 2007 — 6:45 pm
Comments: 4
It’s not one of mine, I swear!
Oscar is a two-year-old cat adopted as a kitten by Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, RI, where I be at (Providence, not a nursing home. Not yet, bucko). Oscar isn’t an especially friendly cat. Doesn’t seem to like people that much, in fact.
Every morning, Oscar makes the rounds of the dementia ward, checking up on everybody, just like a real doctor. Say, Dr Kevorkian. Because, every once in a while, Oscar will hop up on the bed and curl up next to somebody. And when he does this, that old coot is going to die today.
So far, he’s gotten it right upwards of 25 times, which is a better track record than the doctors. When Oscar cuddles up to somebody, they call that person’s family and a priest. One ungrateful wretch asked that Oscar be put out of the room while he said goodbye to his mom. Oscar paced up and down the hall, mewing.
Sender-inner thinks they’re overlooking the obvious explanation: when no-one’s looking, Oscar bumps people off (presumably by the classic feline method of breath-stealing). Me, I think it’s adequately explained by the “special relationship” between cats and the Man in Black. The one with the sickle, not the one with the guitar. Eh. Either one, at this point.
July 26, 2007 — 8:43 am
Comments: 23
A bleak day for journalism
Weekly World News is calling it quits.
American Media Incorporated’s other titles include the Star, National Enquirer and Men’s Fitness — which, if you ask me, is putting way too many of our precious journalistic resources in one basket. If AMI went under, what would I read in the checkout line?
And I speak for all of us when I shriek uncontrollably, WHAT ABOUT BATBOY?!
According to Wikipedia the original Bat Boy edition of Weekly World News was the second-best selling issue of all time, and then infuriatingly doesn’t reveal which one was first best, so screw Wikipedia.
Bat Boy was rendered by editor-slash-cartoonist (or editor/cartoonist, if you prefer) Dick Kulpa. Dick’s other claims to fame include drawing Star Trek and Bruce Lee comics for the LA Times Syndicate and art direction for the Testor’s corporation (where he drew the instruction sheets for the Weird-Ohs line of models). Also, he was elected to the Loves Park Illinois City Council, where he regularly appeared wearing tights and a cape as Alder-man, crusader for justice. Weasel does not make this shit up.
But I digress. More Wiki.
Bat Boy has a chaotic sense of morality. He has been known to steal cars as well as come to the aid of the needy. According to the mythos, the only person who cares about the chiropteran child is Dr. Ron Dillon, who discovered him in a West Virginia cave. At the time of capture, he was two feet tall and weighed nineteen pounds. By February 2001, he was 2′ 6″. In 2004, he was five feet tall and his weight was unknown.
He sheds his wings every three years, and regenerates a new pair.
During the 1990s Bat Boy is rumored to have tried to escape society’s gaze by enrolling in a small liberal arts college in upstate New York under the assumed name of Guy Fledermaus (German for bat). He purportedly graduated with an art degree from the college’s “Music Program Zero”.
On 27 February 2001, he allegedly attacked a fifth-grader in an Orlando, Florida park. The girl was nearly ripped to shreds. The next day, he endorsed presidential candidate Al Gore.
Worth following the link just for the geneology of the Boy family. A sad day. A sad, sad day. Also, I goofed off too much yesterday and so I’ll have to make up for it today. A sad, sad, sad day.
July 25, 2007 — 8:26 am
Comments: 24
Stalking the BBC
Brian: Excuse me. Are you the Judean People’s Front?
Reg: Fuck off! We’re the People’s Front of Judea——————————————————————————–
Reg: If you want to join the People’s Front of Judea, you have to really hate the Romans.
Brian: I do!
Reg: Oh yeah, how much?
Brian: A lot!
Reg: Right, you’re in.
However bad our media is, the BBC is shockingly worse. Smug, bitter, anti-West, pro-just-about-anything-else — I swear, they work “George Bush is stupid” jokes into the cooking program. It’s like swimming through a leftoid fever dream.
Brits are required to fund the BBC by paying a hefty annual license fee. A colo(u)r TV license currently stands at £135.50 annually, which is…$278.14627 per today’s exchange rate. Free if you’re old, half price if you’re blind (I guess they figure blind people aren’t using the video portion. Maybe they recycle it).
Having ‘customers’ that are forced to pay up whether they like your product or not is bad, m’kay? Brits of the conservative persuasion (a small, angry tribe) are justly furious at the BBC’s clear ideological bent, but they have no recourse. Being stuck in a situation they are utterly helpless to change makes people mad, and mad is going to spill onto the web.
The best blog tracking the BBC was Biased BBC. I’ve read it for a couple of years, but it’s been going for five. In my time, there wasn’t a whole lot of action in the main posts; the good stuff was in the comments. An open thread there will typically run for a couple of hundred comments, most by good and conscientious regular commenters. Trollage was minor.
Sweet deal, huh? An excellent, popular blog that writes its own damn self…?
I guess not. Someone with a set of keys decided to impose a little authoritay on the place. Have you ever seen someone get hold of the moderating stick and go nuts? It’s an ugly scene. It’s like a blood frenzy. It starts with “off topic” posts and naturally moves to the posts that complain about the deletions, and then to any complaints and settles into a cranky, arbitrary, uneasy place, where no-one knows quite where they stand. For a blog that relies so heavily on commenters, it was a suicidally arrogant act.
This happened when I was away at Weaselfest last week, so I didn’t see it in realtime. I’m not a contributor there, anyhow. A faithful reader, but the BBC is not (yet) imposed on me by force, so I seldom have much to add. But that alpha wolf shit really gets my knickers in a twist, so I pulled my link (that’s right — offa my blogroll! They’ll rue the day they angered a weasel. Rue, I say!)
I repeat: Being stuck in a situation they are utterly helpless to change makes people mad, and mad is going to spill onto the web. A couple of different schismatic sites sprang up and fizzled. One looks like it’s got the right attitude and is going to stick: BBC-Biased — Exposing the bias of the BBC.
Keep an eye on it. It’s picked up several of the better commenters from the old site, and will undoubtedly pick up more when word gets out (it’s hard to leave a breadcrumb trail in a place where posts disappear).
I’ll even put it on my blogroll (my blogroll!) if I can remember where I left the keys…
July 20, 2007 — 9:07 am
Comments: 34
Islamic Rage Boy: the interview
Look what JW found: an interview with Shakeel Bhat, the Islamic Rage Boy. Who is, in fact, 31 and a “full-time demonstrator” (how do you say “lives in moms’ basement” in…whatever dialect they speak in Kashmir?)
Apart from drawing ridicule from bloggers, Bhat has even inspired one American neoconservative website to push “Rage Boy” merchandise — including T-shirts, beer mugs, mouse pads.
“I don’t believe this! I have no knowledge about all this. Why do they do it?” demanded Bhat, who says he has no idea how to use a computer and the Internet. [You don’t say? – ed]
Bhat also shrugged off his rather unflattering “Rage Boy” nickname.
“I don’t need any titles. I am a simple Muslim. Yes, I get enraged if someone, somewhere makes derogatory remarks about our religion or Prophet,” he said.
“Titles”? I wonder if he thinks he’s being honored in some way. It would really mean a lot to me if I knew he knew we were laughing at him.
Update: Oooo! And look at the cool picture Dawn found. Which I might possibly have tweaked just a little teeny bit. How does one get a nostril injury, anyhow?
July 5, 2007 — 3:27 pm
Comments: 54