The man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain in the congregation of the dead. -- Proverbs 21:16
WATCHING AN ANCIENT DEMON RETURN to take control of someone you love, and begin to kill them slowly with euphoria is a hard witness to bear alone. They'll all tell you you have no power to stop it, but that cannot be true.
Surely somewhere in the mountainous library of studies written about the Demon there's a magic spell, an incantation, a potion, a pill, a recipe for rescue. You find yourself, as you always have, turning to books where, most certainly you've told yourself, all answers lie. But this particular library is, you will find when you go there, vast, unmapped and illuminated in the manner of Milton's Hell,
A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,
As one great furnace, flamed; yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible,
and the card catalogue has long since been ripped from the drawers and scattered madly about the floor by others seeking the same secret. Still, I stumbled about blind in this dark place which held no braille, nor could I have read it if it had.
The Abortion Project "Artist" bending over in studio. Plastic sacks of her dark fluid on the wall behind.
Jack Ryan: "Where are you taking me, Marty?"
Marty Cantor: "It's you who have taken us, Jack... "
-- Patriot Games
Yale said her project was a "hoax." She says they lied.
"Shvarts said her project would take the form of a large cube suspended from the ceiling of a room in the gallery of Holcombe T. Green Jr. Hall. Shvarts said she would wrap hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting around the cube, with blood from her self-induced miscarriages lining the sheeting." -- Yale Daily News - Shvarts, Yale clash over project
"...would wrap hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting..." Ah, how cutting edge. How avante-garde! How 21st century!
In the period of 1969-1971 I lived in a two-story green house in Berkeley, California, with a sculptor. I was, or so I claimed then, a poet.
The house had four small apartments. Ours was downstairs and in back. In the front apartment, a painter had reproduced Motherwell's Elegy for the Spanish Republic #110 at full size on his bedroom wall as a mural. Upstairs in the front, a couple would, from time to time, bring in a trunk and produce tens of thousands of LSD hits for sale throughout the bay area. Upstairs in back, an old gray man known as "Mr. Smith" would pursue his long affair with heroin. It was, by the standards of the time, a house fraught with art.
In a way I don't now recall, I'd come into possession of many end-rolls of clear industrial plastic. The rolls were some 7 feet tall and each had hundreds of feet of unused sheeting on it. During a long evening with the painter and my sculptor, we decided - in reference to the then obscure artist Christo -- we would wrap the entire two-story house in plastic. Which we did. I have, somewhere in my endless boxes, photographs of this "Happening" -- as it was then called.
Here's a photograph of the house that I took passing through Berkeley in 2005. As you can see, wrapping it in long plastic sheets 7 feet tall would not be a trivial exercise, but we managed it in an afternoon.
Then Duke stands up and beats his chest,
Says "I made it. Why can't all the rest?
You got nothing to lose
But the shine on your shoes"
-- Steve Strauss, Wolfgang & Strauss
I'VE KNOWN MORE THAN A FEW very rich men. Some of them came by their wealth via a win in the sperm race. Some of them got a very big hit from the money machine in the first Internet Bubble lottery. Some of them married or divorced into it. Some of them got gobs of greenbacks the "old fashioned way, they worked for it."
Let's say you're one of these. Let's say you are so wealthy that, as one said to a friend of mine, "I no longer need a 'rate of return'." You've got ALL the stuff you will ever need and the dough just keeps piling up. You've got the private plane and your advisors keep saying you need the private helicopter "for tax purposes."
In my line of work, I have to look at the Internet for many hours a day. As a steady diet this is not good.
As you all know, the Internet makes it drop-dead easy to find at least 30 things that really piss you off before your first cup of coffee cools. I don't care where you're coming from, this axiom (15 Minutes Internet = 30 Things That Frost Your Cookies ) is universal. [See: Godwin's Law / Van der Leun's Corollary for an earlier iteration. ]
So it is, I have to remind myself, always in my best interest to get up and get out of the house on a regular basis. Normally, and this is especially true on weekends, but "knowing how way leads on to way," hours can pass and this resolve is still waiting to be acted on.
During the weekdays, however, I have a great break clock just across the street from my house. It is probably the best break clock a man can have. Its alarm is made of children's laughter.
Three times a day, the elementary school across the street throws the doors to its playground open and several hundred children blast out onto the blacktop. They're out there right now. Whoops, and shouts, and laughter. Just a second, I've gotta go check....
As astute readers of American Digest know, nothing so engages my attention as technological advances that make the world a better place. Today, the always astute neo-neocon made me aware such innovations in her "Swimsuit wars."She reports,
"Fashion is hardly the issue for serious swimmers, it's winning. And in the race for the gold there's a new weapon in the arsenal, the Speedo Fastskin LZR racer swimsuit. The controversy over the suit involves whether it confers an unfair advantage in terms of buoyancy. Its attributes: bonded seams that eliminate drag-inducing stitches, a hidden zipper for the same reason, and special panels that further the cause. The problem is that not all countries have access to the suit. But is the playing field ever level?"Alas, as women know and men observe, when it comes to swimsuits, the field is always at a 45 degree slant. If it were not, then women would not equate shopping for a new swimsuit with a near-death experience.
The Speedo Fastskin, pictured here for purely scientific purposes, is a case in point. Its cutting edge features include: "Bonded seams, so no stitches to cause drag. A hidden zipper - again, less drag. LZR panels reduce drag in some areas of the swimsuit by as much as 24% compared to other Speedo suits." Clearly a swimsuit for the 21st century. As can be seen here again, purely for scientific purposes:
Clearly, something has been going on inside the Speedo development labs and, strictly in the spirit of scientific inquiry, I set out to discover what other innovations the company had in the pipeline.
I am proud to present the fruits of my research for the benefit of all mankind.
Of course the first thing a responsible journalist does when profiling a company these days is to ask, "Just how damned green is this conglomeration of craven capitalists, anyway?" I am pleased to announce that, regardless of its penchant for water resistant petrochemical byproducts, Speedo is doing all that it can to reduce its carbon breastprint.
Here, for example, is Speedo's breakthrough sustainability swimsuit, the Speedo Flora:
The Flora is made of 100% organic artisan petals grown in free-range conditions under a fair-trade agreement with the underemployed young women of Costa Rica. The expenses of upkeep are minimal. When worn near a pool, or a conscious heterosexual male, the suit waters itself.
[Note: This is a test of your attention span. If you can't read all of this you may be infected by media-induced ADD. Seek professional help.]
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
- Eliot, Burnt Norton
The Short Attention Spans of Media Professionals Mean a Hyperactive Headline Glut for You
Recently I became acquainted with a young boy, just turned nine. He's a brilliant and happy kid, but he has a problem with cleaning up and organizing his room. It isn't that he can't do it, he simply has to be told about every five minutes to continue the process. In the course of picking things up to put away he discovers anew their potential to fascinate him.
The Gameboy? "Oh, here's where I saved that last stage of Turoc. Let's see if I can get the flame-thrower and..."
Any one of the 3,000 + Lego units? "Gee, I never did get the moon base hemi-dome set up, just let me put these 400 blocks in place and..." Books? "Sure thing and, hey, did Horton ever hatch that egg..."
On it goes until, after the sixth or seventh cajoling instruction, a path has been cleared for the vacuum cleaner. After which, he promptly begins taking everything he has put away out and strews it about the floor once again.
Today's pop psychologists, addlepated educators and the marketing departments of large drug companies are hard at work trying to convince me children who behave like this have "Attention Deficit Disorder" or ADD. But I know enough to know it is the companies who are obsessed, confused and greedy in about that order.
What this young boy suffers from is no more than being a normal, heedless and all around great nine-year-old boy. He doesn't have ADD anymore than I have an elephant chained in my back yard. (Yes, I just checked.)
The only group that I can see in the United States that, as a group, is seriously afflicted with ADD is a group of would-be adults -- the group we call collectively "The Mainstream Media." For members of this group ADD is not an option, it is a requirement. Far from being a means to informing and enlightening the public, the primary role of the MSM is to distract it. At this they are very good since they are "Distracted from distraction by distraction" by their very nature. They are "the ADD professionals." They actually get paid for doing this. Paid well for having a disease.
Let's review.
Continued...
My ongoing problem with Alice Walker is not her crappy writing, -- that's easy enough to avoid -- but her crappy thinking. That's not so easy to avoid since, with the rise of the Internet, Idiocracy is everywhere. Indeed, with the rise of the Obamatron, Idiocracy is the new governing principle of the Democratic Party -- and it couldn't happen to more deserving folks.
But along with the fun this brings to the connoisseur of Idiocracy, it also brings pain. One of the constant irritations of the Obama candidacy is the endless stream of the half-talented and the race-hustlers scrambling for a place in the envisioned Obamastration, or at least a hot weekend in the Lincoln bedroom and a ride on the plane.
In their thirst for future favor, ranking members of the Idiocracy such as Walker are now commonly given space in the walking corpses of newspapers. This would be fine except for the fact that although newspapers are dead, the Internet insists on keeping them alive. In my perfect world the rule would be: "If you can toss your crap on my front porch, you can't toss it off on the Internet. I mean, fair's fair."
But the Internet, like life, is not fair. Dead newspapers still insist on putting their idiots online where, like the hidden turds in a bank of stained February snow, they melt out with Spring.
I try to step around these little gifts strewn on my path through the Internet. But every so often, there is a shit sculpture so exceptional that no matter where you go, no matter how you try to avoid it, you still step in it. You step in it because it is so stunningly stupid it is linked everywhere. And then, because it sticks to your mouse, you drag it back to your home page. Sorry about that.
Case in point -- the recent squeezing of that Novelist Laureate of Loonies, Alice Walker.
Continued...
There's an old hoax concerning Eskimos and their hundreds of words for snow. Like all good hoaxes it sounds right, especially to those who don't know much about the Inuit. But it still is wrong. It is a myth.
I am, however, undaunted by the failure of the Inuit. I am working on compiling hundreds of words for rain. All derived from careful and miserable observation here in Seattle.
My newest word is "Hailush." This is a fat blob of moisture that contains all the qualities of hail and slush at the moment it strikes you right between the eyes. Think of a "Hailush" storm as thousands of wet melting snowballs about a quarter of an inch in diameter pelting you without mercy. That's "Hailush" -- pronounced "hail - ooosh." (Rhymes with "WTF?!")
- June 2008
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"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
- The Man Who Carried the Dark Lantern
- On Soul, Shvarts "Art" and Wrapping Crap in Plastic
- Got Gas Money?: Cashing In on American Oil in an Age of Scarcity
- Run, Jump, Skip, Hop
- Advanced Speedo Swimsuit Technology, 2008
- ADD: The Mainstream Media Disease
- The Color Stupid
- "Hailush:" New Form of Rain Identified in Seattle