In a comment on my essay Quick. Don't Think of a Black Elephant immediately below Francis W. Porretto of Eternity Road says, "It looks as if we're doing that telepathy thing again, Gerard."
And indeed with have as he reveals in "The Shamans," written at about the same time:
The shamans of contemporary linguistic taboos have adopted nigger, faggot, cunt, and the other forbidden words as passwords, emblems of group membership -- and membership, as American Express has been at pains to remind us, has its privileges. No one outside the shamans' circle is permitted to speak the password; it's an arrogation of a jealously guarded status. He who dares must be cut down, ground into the dust, and forbidden ever to speak at all, to any effect, in any context. For as in all systems of nymic magic, the word is deemed congruent with the thing: the taboo words are at the root of the shamans' power. Failure to enforce the taboo would risk the loss of the group's privileges and immunities, laboriously amassed over the decades of exploitation of others' guilt.And that's just the conclusion. The entire essay is worth reading carefully.
One of the central values of what we call the "New Media" (Blogs, Web Pages, Podcasts, YouTube Videos and the like) is that they can give a voice to the thoughts many have but few speak and fewer still write. In the traditional media, such as the reporting vehicles of newspapers and corporate television programming, we can only have a very oblique discussion of these issues, if discussion is at all attempted. Most of the time it is confined to the pernicious ambiguity of phrases such as "the N-Word." Those things all understand, many think, but most are forbidden to speak. For the Shamanistic priests this is both and empowering and enriching situation. For the rest, they are left to tip-toe through the minefields of truth lest in speaking truth they offend and trigger the always lurking threat of violence.
It is in raising these issues, even in this small way to -- in large measure -- those who are predisposed to agree, that the alternative media proves and expands its worth.
It seems axiomatic that unless a society can speak frankly of the issues that concern it, it is doomed to remain forever in statis on the most pernicious issues that haunt it's history and threaten its tomorrows. It would seem so, but so many now have an investment in Race Hustling that it is more probable that this particular strain of crap will wash around our ankles long after we cease having to take off our shoes to get on an airplane.
Ironic that the Witchdoctors, those dark angels of our darker pasts, will probably haunt our Republic long after the last terrorist has been sent down into the dust. But that seems to be our fate unless, of course, our current Happy World comes to a sudden and unexpected conclusion.
Brainiacs of the Midwest:
Unhappy voters imperil heartland RepublicansPat Wilkerson says U.S. troops and veterans are her first priority, believes family values are important and voted Republican in 2004. But in November she'll switch parties -- though not because Democrats have won her over.
"When I vote now, it's not who I'm voting for, it's who I'm voting against," said the 59-year-old administrator, adding she is fed up with the war in Iraq and wants troops home.
Great idea. Pat. You've got the Big Picture on the State of the World Today. But your brainwave doesn't go far enough.
Let's have ALL THE TROOPS HOME. For about five years. Yes, every single solider stationed outside American homeland soil comes back now. Out of Europe. Out of Asia. Out of Korea. Out of Guantanamo. Out of South America. Out of the Balkans. Out of the MidEast.
The Air Force shall also be withdrawn from all bases everywhere. Especially Turkey and Diego Garcia so they can't operate as a watchdog over the oil fields and the world can start paying the Iranian piper whatever it decides oil is worth. And the Navy too. No more securing the sea lanes of the world. No more rolling the carriers up to help out in the next Third World Disaster. You get a tsunami that your corrupt plutocrats didn't budget for or prepare for? You are on your own. Crank up your backhoes and start digging mass graves in the muck.
Yes, for five years what we do in the world and for the world is exactly..... NOTHING. Instead, we work with the Pat Wilkerson's of the country and just parade and admire our armed forces here at home. Think of the fuel oil and aviation gas we'll save. As for the rest of the world, well, they can just pound sand. Which is what they will be doing in exactly 30 days after all the American forces in the world just pack up and head home for a long period of R&R.
[First published January 9, 2005 ]
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
--Eliot, The Wasteland
When a monumental disaster sweeps over humanity I expect myself to respond with an emotion that, to me at least, feels commensurate with the event. I'm certain most other people expect the same of themselves, and almost everyone is capable of it. And if, for some reason, we are not capable of it, we nevertheless know enough to pretend. It is what we expect of each other in the modern, civlized world.
We like to think we feel compassion naturally, but in truth we are raised up and trained in it. And, as a reasonably well-raised man, my expectation of myself was to feel, without question, an upwelling of empathy as I had in the past. This time it was different. This time I could feel nothing at all.
This time my ability to find compassion wasn't so much diminished as it was drowned under the awareness of a catastrophe so immense that it ground human imagination down to a dull nub. For days I was bothered by the fact that, for once, I just couldn't get my head around what had happened. For some time, I put it down to a persistent illness that seemed to hang on and on. But as my illness burned itself out I came to understand that nobody else could do it either.
Yes, I made all the expected statements of pity and shock and concern. I gave money in response to the unremitting pleas for money. I nodded and agreed that this was very, very bad. I applauded the heroes and condemned the criminals and hustlers.
I watched, straight on at first but then more and more at slant, the images sweeping out from the epicenter of the catastrophe. I listened, attentively at first and then with only a part of my mind, to the news repeat and repeat itself in an upward spiral as the numbers of the dead began as monumental and rose up into the incomprehensible.
Continued...A FOOD FIGHT OF SORTS has broken out within my family concerning the feeding habits of a distant relative. Some say his "habits" are merely those of a growing boy who forgot to stop growing upon reaching his majority. Others are shocked, SHOCKED!, with every passing meal and are suggesting an intervention.
Myself, I am unsure about the truth of the matter, but I put it to my readers to decide now that a family member has come up with "The Five Signs of Highly Hungry People."
1) The ability to move the cattle futures market on the CBOE "up limit" with one meal.My question is not whether an intervention should be held, but whether it should be held at The Sumo-Samoan Buffet or The Cheesecake Factory?2) The ability to suck potted plants and small pieces of furniture into the vortex when feeding.
3) Decapitation of medium sized mammals on the front lawn with hand tools when "hungry".
4) Eating the undercooked flesh of a hapless member of the animal kingdom at a pig roast due to inability to wait until it was done, much to the horror of the other participants.
5) And finally, using the screen name "Cheesecake Man."
The wind at Ground Zero during the first memorial service, September 11, 2002
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I.
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.
-- Christina Rossetti
10,000 FEARED DEAD
-- Headline, New York Post, September 12, 2001
AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY I lived in Brooklyn Heights in, of course, Brooklyn. The opening of the Brooklyn Bridge on May 24 of 1883 transformed the high bluff just to the south of the bridge into what was America's first suburb. It became possible for affluent businessmen from the tip of Manhattan which lay just over the East River to commute across the bridge easily and build their stately mansions and townhouses high above the slapdash docks below. Growth and change would wash around the Heights in the 117 years that followed, but secure on their bluff, on their high ground, they would remain a repository of some of the finest examples of 19th and early 20th century homes found in New York City.
When I moved to Brooklyn Heights from the suburbs of Westport, Connecticut in the late 90s, it was a revelation to me that such a neighborhood still existed. Small side streets and cul-de-sacs were shaded over by large oaks and maple that made it cool even in the summer doldrums. Street names such as Cranberry, Orange and Pineapple let you know you were off the grid of numbered streets and avenues. Families were everywhere and the streets of the evenings and on the weekends were full of the one thing you rarely see in Manhattan, children.
Continued...Their silence keeps me sleepless for I know:
Within the smoke their ash revolves as snow,
To settle on our skin as fading stars
Dissolve into bright dust at break of day.
At dawn a distant shudder in the earth
Disclosed the flight of fire into steel,
The shaking not of subways underground,
But screams from out of flowers forged with flame.
We stood upon the Heights like men of straw
Transfixed by flames that started in the sky,
And watched them plunging down in death’s ballet
To land among those dying deep below.
By noon the band of smoke leaned low
Upon the harbor’s skin like some dark shawl;
A pall of smoke that in its curdled crawl
Kept reaching to extend its fatal fall.
The harp strung bridge held up ten thousand souls
Who’d screaming run beneath the paws of death,
Like dusted ghosts that lived but were not sure
They lived in light or only in reprieve.
They’d writhed and spun within that storm of smoke
And stumbled out to light and clearer air,
To find upon the river’s further shore
No sanctuary other than clear air.
The sirens scraped the sky and jets carved arcs
Within a heaven empty of all hope,
And marked its epicenter with one streak
Of black on polished bone where silver stood.
By evening all their ash had settled so
That on the leaves outside my window glowed
Their souls in small bright stars until the rain
Cleaned all that could not be clean again.
We breathed the smoke that bent and crept and crawled.
We learned to hate the smoke that lingered so.
We knew that blood could only answer blood,
And so we yearned to go and not to go.
That last, lost summer faded into ash.
Their faces faded as endless autumn flowed
Through chill and heat into our winter sea
Where warships prowled in search of stones.
Within the city, shrines were our resolve.
We placed them where we stood or where they lay.
Upon our walls and trees their faces loomed
To gaze at us from time beyond repeal.
In time, their smoke and ash became but shapes
Of stories told at dinner, found in books,
Or in the comments made by magazines
For whom the "larger issues" were of note.
At first their faces faded with the rains,
The little altars thick with wax were scraped,
But now beneath clear plastic they endure
To remind us all that we’ve not yet escaped.
Their silence keeps me sleepless for I know.
If peace needs to be purchased with the sword,
we should be ready to do this. We must become
what we were during the Second World War
--ruthless and unrelenting.
[What follows is a slightly edited transcript of what I saw and how I felt on the 11th of September, 2001 from Brooklyn Heights in New York City. On that day I was posting to a West Coast Computer Conferencing system known as The Well. As a result, even though I was writing from Brooklyn Heights, directly across from the Towers the time stamp reflects PST]
Tue 11 Sep 01 08:07
Saw the first tower collapse from the Promeade across the river in Brooklyn. Fine white and pale yellow ash everywhere. Lower Manhattan covered in smoke with ash still drifting down.
Military jets overhead every five minutes or so.
Lower span of Brooklyn Bridge jammed with people walking out of the city, many covered with white ash. Ghosts. The Living Dead. BQE empty except for convoys of emergency vehicles.
Sirens in all directions. Ferry ships emerging from the smoke heading to the Brooklyn shore riding low in the water fully loaded.
This is monstrous.
Deaths in the thousands in New York.
Continued..." The victim gasped loudly as blood poured from his neck. His killer held up the head at one point, and placed it on top of the body. " -- The killing of Eugene Armstrong, American
Year upon year in this world's dark woods
Heaped at the foot of the trees,
The tangles and bundles of dead brush increase
Which sunlight can never seize.
The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by book, chant and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.
The ash that descends in the clearest of skies?
The leapers that swam down the stones?
Best answered by bombs from mid-heaven at prayer,
Bringing fire which hollows the bones.
The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by book, chant and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.
If their gods decree war, war shall prevail.
This lesson is carved into stone.
No dreams will defer, nor wishes erase,
The hate that's inscribed in the bone.
The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by book, chant and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.
Only by fire is fascism finished.
This sin is demanded that your line may live.
Only through fire is freedom reborn.
Each generation pulls the sword from the stone.
Yesterday: words that would ring true today
The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disentrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.From: Abraham Lincoln's Annual Message to Congress -- Concluding Remarks, 1862 First Posted to American Digest 2004-04-17Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.
Today:Bush and Lincoln Echoes of the past in today's strategic mistakes. BY NEWT GINGRICH Thursday, September 7, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. . . . As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves." --Abraham Lincoln, Annual message to Congress, Dec. 1, 1862WASHINGTON--Five years have passed since the horrific attack on our American homeland, and, still, there is one serious, undeniable fact we have yet to confront: We are, today, not where we wanted to be and nowhere near where we need to be....First, the president should address a Joint Session of Congress to explain to the country the urgency of the threat of losing millions of people in one or more cities if our enemies find a way to deliver weapons of mass murder to American soil. He should further communicate the scale of the anti-American coalition, the clarity of their desire to destroy America, and the requirement that we defeat them. He should then make clear to the world that a determined American people whose very civilization is at stake will undertake the measures needed to prevail over our enemies. While desiring the widest possible support, we will not compromise our self-defense in order to please our critics.
GILLIGAN TO MILLIONS, he'll always be Maynard G. Krebs to me: Bob Denver, TV's Gilligan, dead at 70.
In general, I don't find myself identifying with television characters. They are, after all, characters on television. But I do recall that, as a teenager stuck in the trackless suburbs of Sacramento waiting to get out of high school and into the University so my life could begin, Maynard G. Krebs was my first and last television-induced role model. I idolized this character. I had the grey sweatship with the sleeves torn off and a couple of holes I put in it myself. I had the bongos (Hey, nobody's perfect.), and I had the attitude.
Continued...
Taken by the resident's very foolish neighbor.
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
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- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
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- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
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- August 2005
- July 2005
- June 2005
- May 2005
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- March 2005
- February 2005
- January 2005
- December 2004
- November 2004
- October 2004
- September 2004
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- April 2004
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- February 2004
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- December 2003
- November 2003
- October 2003
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- June 2003
"Children seem to be 'diagnosed' with lots of things lately. It has become customary for at least one of their parents to be somehow 'enthusiastic' about said diagnosis, sometimes even confessing to having requested or demanded the diagnosis. Said parent is invariably female. Said child is invariably male. The lopsided gender trend is curious, and so is the spectacle of parents ordering diagnoses for their children, like pizzas or textbooks." - House of Eratosthenes
Please study this evidence carefully. The saints of San Diego and surrounding areas in California NEED TO BE WARNED of the MAJOR JUDGMENT coming upon them that will be MUCH WORSE THAN 911. This evidence shows JULY 8, 2008 is hard coded in the Word of God as the next Major Judgment Date that will fulfill scripture just like the attack on the Twin Towers Sept 11, 2001 and Hurricane Katrina fulfilled scripture . It cannot be prayed away and It will not be delayed. -- !!! 2,492 DAYS !!!
"I'm surprised at how finely calibrated every single word was measured. I wasn't saying anything I hadn't said before, that I didn't say a year ago or when I was a United States senator," said Obama, who is still a senator from Illinois. -- Obama puzzled by Iraq comment frenzy
A woman fell into a tank of slurry as she tried to make "manure bombs" using her stockings, German police today said. The unfortunate woman stripped off her foul smelling clothes and fled the scene naked, along with a female accomplice wearing just her bra and pants, a police spokesman told Reuters. - Cow dung fate for 'manure bomber' | World news | guardian.co.uk
"As Marie-Antoinette is said to have remarked about her starving subjects who were demanding bread, "Let then eat cake," our elected Democratic members of Congress are in effect saying of Americans, "Let them ride bikes." -- It's Time for Rage - HUMAN EVENTS
"500 years ago, oil was not a resource. Neither was uranium. People around at the time didn't know how to use them. Things that weren't resources became resources. Our ability to use new resources made old resources obsolete. Now, no home in the UK needs to burn wood for heat, for example. Or, as Bjorn Lomborg has put it, the Stone Age didn't come to an end because we ran out of stones." - Climate Resistance: Infinite Regress
"Seattle Police opened fire on a suspect in Downtown Seattle this morning who they say robbed a West Seattle bank wearing black shoe polish on his face and a wig." - Police shoot bank robbery suspect Seattle, Washington
So there I was, in the lion's den, calling Joe Lieberman an asshole. And people applauded and cheered. - Kos: Into the tiger's den
Kaboom: A Soldier's War Journal: News Well, LT G got the order from his chain-of-command to delete his blog. I guess no longer posting wasn't good enough.Archive survives at the link.
Howard Dean in 2004: "Military experience is vital"
"Who would you rather have in charge of the defense of the United States of America, a group of people who never served a day overseas in their life, or a guy who served his country honorably and has three Purple Hearts and a Silver Star on the battlefields of Vietnam?" McCain, by the way, has been awarded the Silver Star, the Legion of Merit, two Bronze Star Medals, a Purple Heart and the Distinguished Flying Cross.
"All the News that's Fit to Print"? How about "Yesterday's News, Spun and Bent"? - Roger's Rules - The New York Times catches up with Mark Steyn (sort of)
"Let's assume that talking on a hands-free cellphone indeed leads to higher accident rates. So I ask: What is the difference between talking over a hands-free cellphone and talking to a passenger in the car? I say there is no difference; both can present distractions. Therefore, in the name of public safety, I strongly urge -- no, demand -- that state legislatures immediately act to prohibit all talk in moving automobiles." - Donald Pittenger
Washington DC - In a sweeping 4 1/2 to 3.14159 decision with 1.35841 abstaining, the United States Supreme Court handed down a ruling this morning in the landmark Abdul the Party Clown v. U.S case, recognizing the individual rights to gun ownership by child rapists and Guantanamo detainees. The decision was immediately hailed by international human rights activists and child rape organizations..... In his dissenting opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia said "I totally fucking give up." -- iowahawk: Court Okays Gun Rights for Detainees, Child Rapists
S+ = F- (More Safety equals less Freedom)
"In government economics, supply and demand are irrelevant -- what counts are the feelings of major campaign contributors and large voting blocks. In government economics, you take money based on rate of increase of profits, not on actual profits. In government economics, you claim that a program's funding was cut because you decreased its annual rate of funding increases. In government economics, forcing businesses to increase wages is improving the free market. In government economics, you repeatedly overestimate tax revenues and economic growth and repeatedly underestimate government expenditures, interest on debt, and future obligations. There must be some secret place where government economics is taught, since it doesn't appear in university catalogs. Maybe that's what goes on at Area 51." -- Dr. T @ Coyote Blog: Economic Morons in Europe, but is Congress Much Better?
Obama was introduced by Karen Bass, the California Assembly Speaker. Donors sipped wine and bottled water. Waiters wearing black vests, white shirts and black ties served hors d'oeuvres: endive spears of brie, toasted almonds and truffle oil; tuna tartare with passion fruit ponzu and macadamia nut on wonton crisp; beef short rib skewers with Asian flavors." -- Lynn Sweet: Obama Hollywood fund-raiser. Pool reports
"In many ways nonsense is a more effective organizing tool than the truth. Anyone can believe in the truth. To believe in nonsense is an unforgeable demonstration of loyalty. It serves as a political uniform. And if you have a uniform, you have an army." - Unqualified Reservations: OL4: Dr. Johnson's hypothesis
"It's also critical that you avoid the fatal mistake of getting creative and comparing people you don't like to other evil dictators, such as Joseph Stalin or Fidel Castro. With few exceptions, white people are actually fond of almost any dictator not named Hitler...." - Stuff White People Like
Power has all the usual reasons to hide. Power is delicious, and everyone wants it. To bite into its crisp, sweet flesh, to lick its juices off your lips -- this is more than pleasure. It is satisfaction. It is fulfillment. It is meaning. The love of a bird for a caterpillar is a tenuous and passing attachment next to the bond between man and power." - Unqualified Reservations: OL7: the ugly truth about government
"A listing of books, a Web site, movies and restaurants on Friday with the Weekend Explorer column, about sites in New York associated with the photographer Weegee, referred incorrectly to Lombardi’s Pizza, at 32 Spring Street on the Lower East Side, an area where Weegee lived and worked. It sells pizza only as pies, not by the slice." - Corrections - For the Record - NYTimes.com
"Here we stand. We have squandered great wealth to defeat death -- only to find ourselves impoverished, and turning to death itself for our answers. The succubus we sought to defeat now dominates us, for she is a lusty and insatiable whore. We have sacrificed our humanity, our compassion, our empathy, our humility in the face of a force far greater than ourselves, while forgetting the power and grace and the vision which first led us and empowered us on this grand crusade. Our weapons are now turned upon us; let the slaughter begin." - Crossing That Dark River | The Doctor Is InOn the Oregon Health Plan that will pay for cancer patients to die, but not to live.
Then:
"How tough do we have it, really? Our most threatening menace is a gallon of gas that costs four dollars and sixty cents." -- House of Eratosthenes
Doing the Job American Journalism Won't Do By Counting the Jobs They Will:
Obama Media BJs To Date - "Not that there's anything wrong with that."
Marriage as it is known would have to end but couples could form mutually agreed unions. They would list their "desires, diseases, needs" on little cards and a central authority would decide who was fitted for whom. - Socialists made eugenics fashionable
It is weird how so many who claim to like Obama hope he is lying.
"And with the loss of transcendentals comes the loss of the human -- not to mention the hero, the saint, the sage. These are our fixed "vertical stars" that have always guided us up the ladder of ascent, but in the Darwinian paradigm, these are all illusions, pure and simple. Richard Dawkins is greater than Shankara. Chrisopher Hitchens is superior to Meister Eckhart. Ray Ingles is on a higher plane than Jesus. " - One Cosmos: Religious Humanism vs. Darwinist Animalism
"You know, I did not want Barack to go into politics because I thought politics was a mean business. And you know, I knew this man that I loved, he was sweet and pathetic, I thought. there was no way....... Lynn Sweet: "The View" ladies dive in to rescue Michelle Obama after she calls Barack "pathetic." UPDATE Obama spokesman Vietor said Michelle said "empathetic.""Empathetic" Yeah, right.
That punk Morgan over at House of Eratosthenes is "Hot Pants -- Upping the Ante". Oh, yeah? He says, "This can't possibly end well." Oh, yeah?
Dukes of Hazard
Wife #2
Wife #1
Girlfriend #49
wear them myself.
"I do have recollections of black women who aren't angry, and each and every single one of them is a person I know from talking face-to-face. Electronic media is a very different thing, because in that forum there are powerful nameless faceless people who get to decide what I'm ready to see. And for reasons I don't quite understand -- or maybe I do, and that's a loathsome thought by itself -- these nameless faceless people seem to think the black woman I'm ready to see has to be angry, or else I have little interest in seeing her." - House of Eratosthenes
This playset is one of the best purchases I have made for my three-year-old. In the past, when we have been stopped at roadblocks, or when during one of Daddy's arrests, he would start crying uncontrollably. Now, after playing with this for the past several months, he is perfectly docile. As an adjunct to this product, I would also recommend that you purchase the Playmobil Armed Standoff Playset, Fisher-Price Little People Battering Ram, and the Nerf Tear-Gas Canister Deployment Gun.
"Looking at Germany, then, Iran sees a country with nothing to counter the pressure of merely an implied nuclear threat. Jihadists see the linchpin of Europe, easy of access and inadvertently hospitable to operations, that will hardly punish those who fall into its hands, and that can neither accomplish on its own a flexible expeditionary response against a hostile base or sponsor, nor reply in kind to a nuclear strike. Thus the German government should be especially nervous about cargos trucked overland from the east." - Mark Helprin - The New Soft Underbelly of Europe
"Spring is in the air! Its the time of year to release your gametes into the water and make baby barnacles. But wait a second, you are a permanent fixture on a rock. Can't move. What is a young, lovestruck sessile she-male to do? Well, if you are hung like a barnacle you don't really have to move that far." -Deep Sea News : Environment Shapes Barnacle Penis
"The easy story is the one right down the hall and the easy story that "speaks to the heart" is the one that speaks directly to the writer's heart. NBC News, I'm sorry you lost a skilled colleague and a well-liked friend but he is not the news. Report his death, cry in private and get back to work. -- And man up a little, willya? It's creepy to see grown up men blathering like schoolgirls. Ew." -- Roberta X
"I hope it was a good idea to appease those Hillfems by partnering with Elizabeth Edwards on my Health Care platform. I'll let you in on a little secret, the health care plan is one of those "throw away" platforms every candidate has. We never really plan on improving or changing it, it's what we call a "filler piece" we can fall back on if we hit a hard spot. See also the Environment. I gotta run Countdown is about to start, hit me back when you get a chance. I left you a message on myspace." - vksempireofdirt.com
"The sheer repetition of lies about Bush is wearing people down. There is not a liberal in this country worthy of kissing Bush's rear end, but the weakest members of the herd run from Bush. Compared to the lickspittles denying and attacking him, Bush is a moral giant -- if that's not damning with faint praise. John McCain should be so lucky as to be running for Bush's third term. Then he might have a chance." - Ann Coulter
In Bizarro World, illegal foreign combatants are granted constitutional rights; in Bizarro World, people react to high gas prices and energy shortfalls by refusing to boost domestic capacity. - LILEKS (James) the Bleat
"Do you really think most of the halfwit 'celebrities' who contribute to my blog even know how to write a complete sentence? So really, it's not like anyone noticed when I switched to AutoBlogger anyway."
"If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun," Obama said at a fundraiser in Philadelphia Friday, according to pool reports. Uh huh. I hope he also brings a gun permit, a trigger lock, and a good lawyer. And a health care plan. -- JustOneMinute: The Chicago Way
Yes. Hulk. Smash. Yes. Smash. Big Hulk smash. Smash cars. Buildings. Army tanks. Hulk not just smash. Hulk also go rarrr! Then smash again. Smash important, obviously. Smash Hulk's USP. What Hulk smash most? Hulk smash all hope of interesting time in cinema. Hulk take all effort of cinema, effort getting babysitter, effort finding parking, and Hulk put great green fist right through it. - Peter Bradshaw @ guardian.co.uk Film
"The Environmental Puritans agree with the ayatollahs on this one point: America is the Great Satan. And Obama echoes that view when he refers to our gasoline consumption, our eating, and our air-conditioning and heating as if they were sins for which we are accountable to the rest of the world.... Let me guess, though, where Obama's thermostat is set. You can't run for president and have people see you sweat."
The end. Who says scrolling is without rewards?
"I am going to stay optimistic. Chistendom can be revived -- not through political action, but by fulfilling the Great Commission with both word and deed. Good people create good culture, from which springs good government. By living the words of Our Lord, we have the hope of becoming good people; therefore, it is imperative that we concentrate all our energies on doing so. It's salt, light, and leaven that will defeat the Conspiracy."
"Pity the nation that reaches a point where it needs a Churchill to save it; but pity even more a nation that, needing a Churchill, fails to find one." - Adam Kirsch, The New York Sun
- As I Was Saying....
- Notes in Passing
- The Deluge
- Piglet or Proud American?
- The Wind In The Heights
- The Missing
- Notes Made on 11 September 2001
- Only By Fire is Fascism Finished
- "We Must Disenthrall Ourselves"
- "WORK!?!?"
- Why Everybody in Florida Locks Their Doors at Night