Grinding Metal

Back

2011-09-14T15:49:00.001-05:00

Well, we are back after a long and, frankly somewhat disastrous hiatus.

I'm sure you all know how it is. You come up with a great idea for reality TV. You invest the time and energy to polish it. You shop it around. You get funding to shoot a pilot. Pilot shot, you sit down with all the interested parties and you proudly press the play button.

And then it starts. The screaming. The sobbing. The vomiting. The pleas to "make it stop! Oh god make it stop". The people in the back who's name tags say "Fox" giggling like school girls...

We told everyone we were shooting "Can You Survive a Giant Zombie Spider Attach?". We told them it was going to be a reality show. I really don't understand how there could be any misunderstanding about what the show would be like.

Did they expect us to shoot "Can You Survive a Giant Zombie Spider Attach?" and not prominently feature giant zombie spiders? We worked hard on those spiders!

Any way, long story, short, the answer for our pilot was a resounding "No". None of our 18 tanned, toned, scantily clad contestants survived their short stay on Zombie Spider Island.

Personally I blame the contestants. I don't want to speak Ill of the recently dead, but honestly how do you miss with a flamethrower? What good is it going to do to drop the shot gun we gave you and try and climb a tree when you are being chased by a giant zombie spider? It's a giant spider moron! It can fucking climb a tree!

I have no doubt that, given time, we could have fine tuned the concept and gotten a better survival rate maybe edited down some of the kills so that the show could sit in a family friendly time slot.

But that wasn't in the card. Someone called the police and now we have a slight legal problem. Until we can put this whole thing behind us we are stuck doing the one thing that you can do from a secret underground lair ... Blogging.

Music For A Friend

2007-04-02T17:32:00.000-05:00

HummidCedar has moved and now he is recommending music.

I have to take issue with his recommendation of The Decemberist's "Crane Wife". That album is a little on the sleepy side. It's not boring mind you, just slightly more narcotic than 3 Vicodin and a Scotch chaser.

I'm sure it's a very good album, but it should come with a warning sticker. One that makes it very clear that you should not operate any heavy machienery while the listening.

As a public service, I recommend that everyone check out the following:

Scratch Track

Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros

Andrew Bird

Nick Cave

The White Stripes

Son Volt's "The Search"

Graham Parkers new one

This has been a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. This was only a test. If this had been a real emergency you would have been instructed to arm yourselves listen to London Calling".

Peace.
we out.

Mad Attempts Communication With a Blond. Nearest Brunette Forced to Intervene.

2007-04-02T13:32:00.000-05:00

Mad: Excuse me. The cup of decaf you just pored for me is tepid.

Blond (truly mystified): I'm sorry. What's wrong with your coffee?

Brunette (rolling eyes): It's cold. His coffee is cold.

Blond: Oh! (does nothing)

Brunette (Grating teeth, nostrils flaring ): Get him a fresh cup of coffee!

Blond (completely unphased): Sure!

Signs And Portents Part II

2007-03-29T12:21:00.000-05:00

First it was buzzards on the roof at work. Next a giant freaking snapping turtle stuck in the middle of the road on the way home.

I stopped and gave him a hand crossing the street.

Two hands actually. His shell was about 12 inches in diameter and he weighted between 15 and 20 lbs. His claws were as big as a medium size dog's and his head was nearly the size of my fist He would easily take a grown man's hand off at the wrist with one bite if given the chance.

Remember kids: Nature is cute, but not cuddly. Handle with care.

W...T...F!?!

2007-03-29T10:52:00.000-05:00

So I am sitting in Starbuck's, fixing bugs. Not that I don't have an office, it's just that the Starbuck's internet connection is as reliable as the one in my office, the coffee is better, and there are fewer harbingers of doom perched on the roof.

The computers in Germany, France, and Phoenix that I am talking to don't care where I sit while we chat and, because we are in "test and fix" today, actual people are only allowed to talk to my through the bug tracking system anyway.

Anyhoo ... I look up from bug ticket #263 and theres an old dude at the counter wearing a red tee-shirt with a black monochrome of Ronald Reagan on the front. The image is eerily familiar. Remarkably similar to another famous shirt actualy:

I was hoping that I was seeing a connection where none existed, but google quickly dashed my hopes to pieces. Advertised as "...the conservative answer to all those hipster "rebels" in the trendy Che shirts" I give you :

I wonder, if I special order one with Che on the front and Ronnie on the back do I have to pay extra for the double shot of irony?

Life During Wartime - Part I : The Rules

2007-03-27T16:27:00.000-05:00

A long time ago, in a sleepy little collage town, a major retailer payed me to bring back the things that walked out of their doors. For a year I did what I could to catch the people who stole from my employer. To aid me in the retrieval of their property my employer provided me with the following :

A cheap walkie-talkie with an ear piece.
A pair of binoculars.
A pair of handcuffs.
A bright shiny badge to wear around my neck.

My employer paid me to catch the people who stoled from them, not to stop people from stealing from them. The distinction is an important one. Even in the worst cases all you have to do to stop someone from shoplifting is walk up to them and say

"Dude. What are you doing."

90% of the time you didn't need go that far. Just looking at then will work.

But the game wasn't stopping theft; stopping theft was only temporary. The person could and often would come back and try again later. Catching people stealing was considered a permanent solution. You pressed charges, you tooke picture, and when the police arrive you issued a Criminal Trespass Warning. From then on you could detain and prosecute the person every time they walk through your door.

The thing is, catching people stealing is much harder than stopping them from stealing. If you are in the "catching people" game then these are the rules you have to play by:

1) You have to be certain they have concealed store merchandise. This means you either see them conceal the merchandise, or you check every place the merchandise might have been left (in a dressing room, behind a rack, etc.).
2) You have to have your eyes on them the entire time they have the merchandise concealed.
3) You have to let them walk out the door.

For it to be theft, the merchandise had to leave the store and they pay you to catch the thieves.

If have ever seen an unmarked door in a department store fly open and a man come charging out with such a look of determination on his face that you wondered if maybe God himself was behind that door saying "go", then you have seen what The Rules dictate. It's not fear of gods or devils that made that man bolt through the store, knocking over racks and sales clerks and leaping over children. It is rule number 3 and the absolute certainty that a pair of $34.00 Levi's just walk out the door.

Someone pays that man to catch the people who steal from them and bring back their merchandise. I know because someone used to pay me $5.50 an hour to bring back those Levi's.

For $5.50 and hour I sat in a dark booth and I watched you for hours. I learned how to tell when someone wanted to steal. I chased people across busy streets. I got in fights. I handcuffed people. I scared people. More than once I rushed headlong into a situation where I could have been killed.

I know, we're not their yet. You don't see it. You can't fathom the motivation. You think its crazy and you're right, but this isn't about making sense. It's about what the rules you live or work by can do to you. How changing the rules changes your experience, sometimes radically, and about how that affects you.

Signs And Portents

2007-03-27T16:10:00.000-05:00

Generally this is not the first thing you want to see in the morning as you are walking into work.

Just saying.

Poppa's Got a Brand New Ride!

2007-01-08T17:18:00.000-06:00

2007 Prius Baby!

It is gun-metal grey with leather interior, six speaker audio with CD player, touch screen controls for the audio and the air, and a cool display that constantly shows you what your energy consumption is.

Also, it has a rocket launcher.

DIY madness Part II: "A New Beginning."

2006-10-31T12:01:00.000-06:00

Let me start by saying that ever since I started work on my irrigation system I have been haunted. Whenever I close my eyes I hear heavy breathing and someone whispering:

Mad ... I am your faaaaather...

The voice sounds like Bob Fucking Vila. It's creepy. All I can figure is that by committing to this particular home improvement project I somehow created a disturbance in the DIY Force and now Bob Vila, the Darth Vadar of home improvement, is trying to get me to join him on the dark side.

Like I said creepy.

Recapping from yesterday :

The irrigation controller valve manifold I made from f'ing scratch will not fit in the irrigation controller valve box I bought. Also, I can't take the valve box back and exchange it for a bigger one because I already cut a hole in it.

Another visit to HomeDepot was called for. This time armed with pen and graph paper.

After an hour in the Plumbing isle (only occasionally needing to chase off nosy HomeDepot employee with my essential HomeDepot shopping aid) I came to the following conclusions:

The current manifold has got to go. It will never fit inside the valve box.

Making things out of PVC is kind of fun. Some of that fun is probably due to the epoxy fumes you wind up breathing but, whatever; PVC is cheap and it's relatively easy to work with.

I need a new manifold plan and a parts list and everything will be fine.

So I turned on my IPod, found a comfy place on the floor of the plumbing isle and set to work with my pen and my graph paper. 15 minutes or so later I had a new plan. Behold the new and much improved irrigation control valve manifold plan:

From "Teh New Plan" I put together a parts list:

(3) Ninety degree elbows (3/4" sched. 40 PVC)

(1) Four way junction (3/4" sched. 40 PVC)

(1) "T" junction (3/4" sched. 40 PVC)

(3) 3/4" pipe to 3/4" mpt junction. Left these out of the diagram - oops! Use them to connect the manifold to the valve/filter assembly.

(1) 3/4" pipe to 1" fpt junction (for drain plug)

(1) 1 inch mpt drain plug

(1) Five foot section of 3/4" sched. 40 pvc pipe.

I get out of HomeDepot only having to spend six bucks ... I almost feel guilty.

DIY madness Part I : I Fuck Up A Drip Irrigation Controller So You Don't Have To

2006-10-30T11:03:00.000-06:00

Did you ever think to yourself :

"Self. I sure would like to go down to HomeDepot, buy a bunch of stuff and then come home and turn all that stuff into a really slick home improvement project."

Only to have your DIY dreams thwarted by your better judgment and or wife who pointed out that the combination of you, HomeDepot, and anything more complicated than a light bulb is a well document recipe for disaster?

Did this leave you wishing that :

"Some other fool would go to HomeDepot, buy a bunch of stuff to create a realy slick home improvment project, totaly fuck the whole thing up, but just keep on trying until he finaly got it right." ?

How cool would it be if that fool blogged about the whole sorted affair complete with parts lists and pictures?

That would be pretty damned cool. Right? Then you could tell your better judgment/wife that some fool with a blog layed all the do's and don't out for you, documented all the pitfalls, and posted detailed pictures and diagrams of the whole project.

Well it's time to head for HomeDepot faithfull readers, because today I am that fool!

We put in a lot of plants over the summer. Banana trees, palm trees, cacti, flowers, herbs... hell we even have a coconut tree. All of this stuff needs to be watered, but at different intervals and for different lengths of time. I decided a drip irrigation system was in order.

I went to HomeDepot.

HomeDepot did not disappoint. They had bins and bins and bins of drip irrigation goodies made by a company named Dig. All I had to do was rummage through the bins, find all the parts I needed, put them all together, and Presto! My watering problems were solved!

Except not so much really, because what is the point of an irrigation system if you have to remember to turn it on and off yourself?

Exactly "zero".

Back to HomeDepot.

I found what looked like the perfect solution. Orbit made a nifty little timer with multiple valves that you could attach directly to your backyard faucet. I bought the timer kit with 2 valves and a 4 way splitter for my faucet and then I had to buy a pack of two more valves because I needed three.

Since it didn't seem right to go the HomeDepot and only visit one isle, I went to the plumbing department and bought a T junction and a 3/4" mpt (that's Male Pipe Thread for all you HomeDepot n00b5) to 3/4" mht (Male Hose Thread you n00b!)converter and some Teflon tape for good measure.

I went home, turned off the water, took the old faucet off the side of the house, and attached the T junction to the water pipe. The I re-attached the faucet to the T junction and used the 3/4" mpt to mht converter to attach the 4 way splitter that came with my watering controller to the other outlet on the T junction. I hooked the controller valves up to the 4 way splitter, hooked my irrigation lines to the valves and plugged in the battery operated timer.

It was a thing of beauty:

or not, but since it was going to solve all my watering issues I was willing to let the aesthetics slide.

Next I sat down to read the programming instructions for my new irrigation control system. 15 minutes later I realize I am fucked. My perfect solution can only be programmed to water everything on the same day. I need to water my Banana trees every 3 days, my palms and cactii every 7 days and my herbs and flowers every other day. I need three programs, I have one. I am fucked. Fucked fucked fucked fucked fucked fucked fucked.

In my defense, Orbit packages all their stuff in sealed, hard plastic packaging so that you can't read the instruction's before you buy. Because of this incidents, I never go to HomeDepot without one of these. It's great for opening overly packaged merchandise in the store so that you can read the instructions before you buy. Plus it also works well to keep the HomeDepot employees at bay when they complain about you cutting open their merchandise. You could also look stuff up online and read the directions there befor you buy. Personaly I don't do this because I enjoy threatening the HomeDepot employees with sharp pointy objects.

So its back to HomeDepot. This time with pen and paper. I spend 2 hours in the sprinkler system isle and come to the following conclusions:

I need a professional grade sprinkler controller that will support 3 stations (valves) and three programs. HomeDepot has one I like for $41.99

I will need to buy the controller valves separately. HomeDepot has some I like for $12.87 each.

I will need to make a controller manifold out of schedule 40 PVC pipe to connect my values to the water source (i.e. my back yard faucet).

All this stuff will need to be buried underground but in a way where I can still get to all the parts should I need to work on something.

I sit down in the sprinkler isle and I draw up a plan. Behold my mad planning sk11z!

I walk out of HomeDepot with:

3 RainBird 3/4" inline sprinkler controller valves

2 Five foot sections of 3/4" schedule 40 pvc pipe

1 manual cut off valve

1 Eight oz HandiPak of Purple Primer and Clear Pipe Epoxy

3 Dig drip irrigation filters

3 Three quarter inch mpt to 3/4" mht converters

1 Three quarter inch junction - basicaly a treaded joint to attach the manifold to the pipe running from the faucet so that don't have to glue the above ground and below ground stuff together.
handfuls of 3/4" schedule 40 pvc pile tees, elbows, and mpt adapters

1 Three quarter inch end cap - to drain the system before a freeze.
1 12" X 17" underground valve box to put everything in.

Sandpaper and Teflon pipe thread tape

Back home on the back porch I connect the controller valves to the filters with the 3/4" mpt to mht converters (be sure to use some Teflon tape here) and lay all the parts out so it looks just like the picture I drew earlier.

I measure and cut some pieces of pvc pipe to connect everything togather and then I am ready to start gluing.

First I read the instructions :

Sounds simple enough.

I open the Purple Primer and, being very careful not to drip any on my porch, immediately drip two drops of Purple Primer onto the porch.

Crap. It's purple and it stains!

I am such an idiot!

I go to the garage and get some cardboard to use as a work surface. Since I am being careful now I take the time to trace the outline of the control valve box I bought onto the piece of cardboard so that I can be sure everything is going to fit.

I glue everything together and it looks great!

I spend a few minutes floating in the euphoria of a job well done. When all the epoxy fumes I have inhaled wear off I try putting the controle valve box over the whole assembly.

Due to the great care I took in planning and assembling, everything just barely does not fit...

fuck.

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!

Fuck.
Sigh.
I'll be at HomeDepot if anyone needs me.

Dear God WHY!?!

2006-10-04T17:58:00.000-05:00

You know there is a lot of shit going wrong in our country right now :

The whole "Just because the Khmer Rouge used it doesn't make it BAD" bill that was passed last week is, for lack of a better word, real real real real bad. Bad as in "Oh crap I have just shit myself and there's no toilet paper and, oh fuck, now there's someone at the door" bad!

That a Republican Congressman who mostly writes legislation to protect kids from all the iPervs on the internets was also using the free congressional wi-fi connection to get some teenage chatroom boy love between votes is really bad. That said Republican Congressman got away with this for years is really-really bad. That the Republican Congressional leadership knew about Congressman's predilections for all those years is really-really-really-really bad. That nothing happened until one of the Congressman's "little friends" got fed up with the Congressman asking him about the size of his dick and emailed the story to a whole bunch of news organizations who then tried to ignore the whole thing for as long as possible is really really really really bad. That the FBI tried to ignore the whole thing: totally fucking-fucked-up bad.

Iraq: really bad.

Iran: really bad.

We still let Hennry Kissinger talk: Seriously, how fucking dumb are we?

But seriously, why oh why does this album exist? Little children covering "Highway to Hell" and "Tainted Love" ... How does shit like that happen?

Mad Vrs Mad's Back Yard Part 4: You Need a Plan.

2006-08-02T15:27:00.000-05:00

Mrs. Science has what you might call a slight allergy to nature. When certain, greener, forms of nature rubs up against her she tends to get itchy. Unfortunately our back yard is full of green, itch inducing St. Augustine grass.

Being reasonable people, Mrs. Science and I, have tried to peacefully coexist with our grass. The grass, however, has refused to stop causing my Mrs Science "the ichies".

We considered water sanctions against the grass, but feared the collateral damage sanctions would have on our banana trees. Also, we doubted we could get Russia and France onboard.

So instead of sanctions we proposed a compromise: Since the grass refused peaceful co-exist with us, we would divide the backyard into two independent regions: Northern and Southern Backyardistan. The grass would be free to govern Southern Backyardistan as it saw fit provided it would submit to regular mowings and the occasional IAEA inspections.

For a week there was no respones from the grass. Then, in an entirely unprovoked attack, they gave my wife a terrible case of itchy legs and some welts as well.

We had no choice but to declare the grass a terrorist organization and go on the offensive.

Since beginning "Operation Backyard Freedom", the Lawn Hog and I have been making the a long hard slog across Northern Backyardistan, slowly driving the grassy green menace from our side of the yard. We will not rest until we have freed Northern Backyardistan from the yoke of grassy tyranny and established an itch free democracy in it's place.

But freeing Northern Backyardistan from the grassy menace is only half the battle. Like Franklin used to say, "It's your back yard for as you can keep it". And we all know that the grass never sleeps.

We also knew ('cuase we watch CNN from time to time) that we needed a plan if we were to have any hope of converting Northern Backyardistan from an repressive grass based terror state into a stable, patio based, liberal democracy.

The grass may be tyrannical, but it keeps erosion and drainage problems in check. We had to be prepared the meet those challenges, and the others that would come, once the grass was gone.

In short we needed a plan.

So we went and got Google Sketchup and went to work.

Pretty soon we had our first pass at a plan for our back yard. Take a look!

Also. Get Sketchup. It's cool and it's free. You can istall it in minuets and once you do you can examine our back yard from every possible angle.

Mad Vrs Mad's Back Yard : Start Simple.

2006-08-01T14:34:00.000-05:00

We did not neglect the front yard when we started our landscaping.

Also, Wilber has had too much coffee.

Mad Vrs Mad's Back Yard : Saint Augustine Sucks.

2006-08-01T12:18:00.000-05:00

The first rule of buying plants for your new back yard paradise is

"Make sure you already have beds to plant them in."

The second ruled is :

"Make sure you leave enough room in the truck for the driver."

Auto accidents and traffic citations aside, the first rule is really the most important.

Making beds means getting rid of Saint Augustine and as you might expect, a saint like Augustine will not go quietly. My first thought was to hire a pack of Vandals to lay siege to my back yard. It was that or a shovel.

Turns out the Vandals were vanquished in 534. Who knew. A shovel it is.

Removing St Augustine by shovel really sucks. Eventually I decided to deploy the "Lawn Hog"!

What a difference power tools make! The "Lawn Hog", aka Black-n-Decker's electric edger, has a trencher setting that let's you cut 1.5 inch deep trenches in sod. I know a 1.5 inch trench doesn't sound like much but it makes a huge difference.

Start by using the Lawn Hog to cut rows in your sod between 8 and 10 inches in width. Next use your shovel to work along both sides of row of sod until you have freed it from the soil below. Starting at the end of the row, roll up the sod until you have removed about 5 feet of your row. You could roll up more, but sod is heavy - remember that landscaping is an endurence sport. Cut the roll away from the rest of the sod and toss it in your wheelbarrow.

You will need to clean out the Lawn Hog every after every 10 to 20 feet of trenching. Make sure you unplug it before you stick your fingers into the blade area.

After just a few short hours of slightly less than back-breaking effort, you will think you are ready to start planting. You will, of course, be wrong!

After you have removed all the grass the next step is to put in the landscape edging. We recommend you buy the metal edging for use against your fence. Primarily because you can hit it with a hammer. Did I mention you will need a hammer?

The hammer in the center is for pussies and carpenters. Don't buy it. What you want is a 3 pound masons hammer like the one on the left.

"Why?" You ask.

Simple. "Physics." Let's have a quick review:

Newton's most important contribution to science was not gravity, calculus, or the laws of motion parts 1, 2, and 3. It is what has come to be called "Newton's 0th Law of Physics" which is commonly stated as :
"For any real world problem P: your chances of resolving P are directly directly proportional to the amount of blunt force you can bring to bare on P."
Or, as Newton himself used to say :
"Whenever I'm flummoxed, the first thing I do is get out my big hammer and just whack the living shit out of whatever it is that's flummoxing me."

Putting in landscaping edging along your fence is not a subtle job. Each of your fence post will be planted in concrete and you will need to remove some of that concrete in order to bury your edging. Start by putting the metal edging along the inside of your fence. Be sure to run the edging between the fence posts and the fence.

Next take your masons hammer and your masons chisel (the blue thing on the right in the last picture) and, as necessary, bang out enough concrete from each fence post to get an inch or two of your edging below ground. Then stake your edging down and level your bed.

Now you are ready to plant something. We recommend that if you paid more than $10.00 for the plant you are putting into your new bed, you actually take the time to read and follow the instructions that came with it. We have tried this both ways and we can say definitively that "Following planting instructions GOOD, Not following planting instructions BAD."

With any luck you will get your first plant into the ground and watered sometime around 10:00pm. Hopefully your new digital camera has a decent flash. Our's does (it's a Casio ZX-60, Costco had a sale) so you get one last picture.

Mad vrs Mad's Back Yard : The Banana-Republication of The Labs

2006-08-01T11:30:00.000-05:00

It started off innocently enough. The beautiful Mrs. Science and I were watching Moon over Parador and I thought

"What a cool little banana republic Parador is. We should get one of our own.

Immediately I started formulating plans to take over Parador and turn it into our ideal vacation spot.

There were, of course, setbacks. To start Mrs. Science was not exactly "on board" with the idea : something about "keeping my megalomania in check", and the whole "human rights" thing came up, but I wore her resistance down with promises of banana trees lined courtyards and moon-lit flagstone patios.

Then it turned out there was no Parador. The closest thing we could find was Paraguay. Which seemed close enough at first. Unfortunately, the Paraguayan people turned out to be both smarter, more dedicated to their national sovereignty, and handier with Kalashnikovs than "Moon over Parador/Paraguay" would have you believe.

Also, Paraguay is not as pretty as Parador was in the movie and it had mosquitoes. Lots and lots of mosquitoes. Mrs. Science hates mosquitoes.

Long story, short: we had to cancel the whole adventure and leave rather quickly. On our way out Mrs Science pointed out that we did have a back yard that we weren't really using and maybe it would be more productive to focus on the more achievable goal of bringing a little slice of Parador to the Labs.

And so it began...

We Are So Screwed: Part "I've Lost Count"

2006-05-12T11:30:00.000-05:00

Via Discourse.net

Surprise. Surprise. Several major vulnerabilities have just been reported in Diebold's touch screen voting systems.

The flaws are so significant that Black Box Voting redacted the technical details of the exploit from their report. Unfortunately this paragraph from the news release is enough to give it away :

Armed with a little basic knowledge of Diebold voting systems and a standard component available at any computer store, someone with a minute or two of access to a Diebold touch screen could load virtually any software into the machine and disable it, redistribute votes or alter its performance in myriad ways.

From that paragraph alone any hacker or security person worth a damned knows exactly what the vulnerabilities is and how to exploit it.

Diebold's reaction (via Unfogged) is comforting at least:

"For there to be a problem here, you're basically assuming a premise where you have some evil and nefarious election officials who would sneak in and introduce a piece of software," he said. "I don't believe these evil elections people exist."

Translations :

Any exploit of this vulnerabilities is predicated on the idea that there are "bad" people in the world who might want to influence an election unfairly. And That's just crazy talk.

How You Gonna Come Redux

2006-04-26T12:57:00.000-05:00

The Bush administration is purging the CIA of hippies, freaks, ho's, Democrats, and anyone else found not to be totally batshit crazy?!?!

Did they just miss some the first time, or have the standards for batshit crazy gone way up?

Discuss.

I'm Your Cynosure, You Can Call Me Anytime.

2006-04-21T15:21:00.000-05:00

"I'll be your connection to the party line"

Oh lordy I love me some Pink and not just 'cause she's smoke'n hot. (h/t Atrios)

Jim wants you all to play a little game.

Glen wants to know why the media keeps treating proven dumb-asses like infallible sages while treating the people who actually know what they are talking about like barking mad glue sniffers.

Steve wants to known how my Fitzmass Card for Karl is coming.

Kevin, calls batshit crazy what it is : Batshit Fucking Crazy.

Blog Role Update

2006-04-21T13:21:00.000-05:00

A few updates :

Frequent commenter and good friend NotoriousMJT has a blog. You should all read it, if for no other reason than it's only got 3 post and won't take you that long ;).

Jim over at Unqualified Offerings has a great blog I try to read every day. Jim inspired my first blog post. Since Jim is the only blogger to link to more than one of my blog posts who I do not happen to cook dinner for on occasion, I feel like I owe him a link.

The Washington Note and Unclaimed Territory are both interesting blogs that I've started reading recently.

"don't be ridi-cool-us."

2006-04-19T15:16:00.000-05:00

This entry over at Laura's blog has given us a great idea: Let's bring back Perfect Strangers.

Of course we will need to update it. You know, make it all timely and shit.

We picture Mohammad Nahavandian as the spunky foreign guy with the funny accent and Michael Ledeen as his clueless, strait laced "cousin".

Here's how we see the new series:

Nahavandian, the senior aide to Iran's top nuclear negotiator, gets assigned the tricky task of going to the US and finding out if everyone in the US government is really as crazy as they sound on FOX News.

Money for the mission is a little tight because Iranian president Ahmadinejad has most of the nation's petty cash tide up in eBay bids for centrifuge parts. So, in an attempt to keep the budget down, Iranian intelligence gives Nahavandian Michael Ledeen's address. "We know it's not much, but he's the only guy we ever false flagged who is actually stupid enough to believe you're an Iranian dissident. Tell him your his long lost cousin or something and he'll probably let you crash on his couch." Nahavandian's handlers tell him.

So Nahavandian puts on his favorite shiny red shirt, grabs his old green card, and boards a flight for Washington. As a high ranking representative of one of the Axises of Evil he naturally has no problem clearing customs. [ed. We know that part sounds weak, but it's what appears to have happened in real life so we'll leave it in.]

In Washington DC, penniless and hungry, Nahavandian knocks nervously on Ledeen's door. His new "cousin" answers the door in a blue sweater emblazon with the Shaw of Iran's face and the words "Viva La Revolution!".

Michael is thrilled to welcome his new cousin, especially once he hears that Nahavandian is a Iranian dissident! In almost no time at all Michael finds Nahavandian a job as the National Review's official Iranian Freedom Blogger. Michael even loans Nahavandian his access badge to the American Enterprise Institute so he can stock up on office supplies and hit the free buffet when he gets hungry.

Before the day is done Nahavandian creates a firestorm of controversy over at The Corner by posting that to the bests of his knowledge, the Iranian ayatollahs do not actually eat baby heads or any other baby parts that he is aware of. Nahavandian even manages to get hold of someone at the state department, unfortunately that person hangs up as soon as they figure out that they are talking to a real live member if the Iranian government calling from the DC area code.

We can all look forward to hours of entertainment as Nahavandian's adventures land him in one sticky situation after another. We'll laugh till it hurts as Nahavandian struggles to understand the mind of the American neo-con and tries to help his new cousin Michael with his love life; all while disarming one serious international incident after the other with his spunky can do attitude and hilarious foreign catch-phrases like "An Iranian nuclear weapons program ...Oh don't be ridi-cool-us!"

Please note: this is our attempt at a parody. Yes, the real Nahavandian really is in tghe country and he really is a member of the Iranian goverment and, golly gee, we just don't know how that happened. That's all wierd enough, but if Nahavandian does turn up in the buffet line at the AEI or if he really is crashing on Ledeen's couch, we are going to have to move to Canada.

Men Without Hats to Tour Iran

2006-04-12T11:49:00.000-05:00

On Thursday Iran went and enriched themselves some uranium.

And what does a county like Iran do when it's officially joined the "Fuck You We've Got Our Own Uranium Enrichment Facilities" club?

Exactly the same thing every other country does :

Men in traditional uniforms danced Tuesday during a parade in
Mashhad and lifted containers said to hold uranium enriched by Iran.

The Safety Dance.

In a speech to the nation, a clearly drunk Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad shouted

"I've got some enriched uranium for George Bush. But if he wants it he is going to have to come get it. It's right here in my pants baby!

Ahmadinejad them made a very rude gesture before beginning to dance wildly around the podium accompanied by a midget playing a ukelele.

Just a Reminder

2006-04-06T14:42:00.000-05:00

The show that kicks all other shows ass is back tonight on Spike TV.

Will there be puking? Will there be blood? [ed. Oh yes, there will be blood.] Will coaches Ken Shamrock and Tito Ortiz kill each other befor the episode is done? Will one of the contestants turn out to be a big pussy? We can only hope.

If I Had a Hammer ...

2006-04-06T14:31:00.000-05:00

The Poor Man makes a modest proposal that we all rally round the flag and sing that "If I had A Hammer" song.

Personally I think a big idea like that needs a slogan. How does

"Crucifixion; Not just for Jesus any more."

sound to everybody ?

I'm Shrill Beatch!

2006-04-06T14:16:00.000-05:00

Well I've never it said before but, via War and Piece, that was then this is now :

Impeach George Bush. Impeach him Now!

I may be late to the party but at least I'm in good company.

Have Your People Call Our People

2006-03-24T10:51:00.000-06:00

In case there are any movie producers reading; We have an idea for a movie:

The worlds economist all seem like stuffy, know-it-all, math-nerds, but secretly they are locked in an eternal struggle against each other. They all carry cool swords under their tweed jackets and are always having kick ass kung fu battles (no wire work please, we have standards) in parking garages, abandon warehouses, and during office hours. Plus they can only die if you cut off their head.

While the rest of the world is going about it's business the worlds economist are quietly beheading each other in really cool swordfights. But there is more than just tenure or grant money at stake; the legends tell of a time when the last two economist will meet in an epic battle that will decide whether mankind will prosper together as Keynesians or have to spend eternity drinking Ronald Reagan's bong water

That time is now! The film opens in present day Princeton, New Jersey where the evil Dr. Laffer is hunting our scruffy, bearded, underdog hero The Krugman. Aided by various evil cults, the evil Dr. Laffer has slain all of the once proud tribe of Keynesians economist and now only the "The Krugman" stands between us and an eternity of rancid bong water...

Anyway. They fight and the winner gets a blowjob, or published, or whatever it is that economist like. We admit the endings week right now, but we're working on it. The important thing is it's a totally new idea and it will seriously rock on the big screen! If you've got $180 million then have your people call our people. We'll do lunch.

P.S. Does anyone know if economist do their own stunts?

The New Weasel Driven Economy

2006-03-23T18:27:00.000-06:00

Via Brad DeLong aka the other economist I found this article.

And it's got great news! According to the article we are currently transitioning into an economy driven entirely by Weasels! What are the hallmarks of a Weasel driven economy? We'll get to that later. Right now we want to talk about jobs and we want to talk about jobs because Monday yours is going overseas!

Why? Short answer: Weasels.

Longer answer: You have to read the article. That or trust us not to quote it completely out of context. Ha ha ha. No seriously you can trust us. The article says that :

...not just manufacturing jobs but a large number of service jobs will be performed in cheaper climes. Indeed, only hands-on or face-to-face services [will be] safe

If your a janitor, a crane operator, a divorce attorney, or a prostitute congratulations you're still going to have a job on Monday. All the rest of you should start hating the foreigner now because when the weekends over their going to steal your job.

"But why!?!" You ask. "Why are those greedy foreigner going to steal my job?"

Short Answer: Again Weasels.

Longer answer :

nothing short of a radical reordering of our economy will suffice if we're to save our beleaguered middle-class majority. Every other advanced economy -- certainly, those of the Europeans and the Japanese -- has a conscious strategy to keep its most highly skilled jobs at home. We have none; American capitalism, dominated by our financial sector, is uniquely wedded to disaggregating companies, thwarting unionization campaigns and offshoring work in a ceaseless campaign to impress investors that it has found the cheapest labor imaginable.

Or, to put it in plainer English, our economy is being driven by a bunch of greedy, short sighted weasels.

What can you do to save your job from the new Weasel driven economy? The article has 3 suggestions:

We need to entice industry to invest at home by having the government and our public- and union-controlled pension funds upgrade the infrastructure and invest in energy efficiency and worker training.

We need to unionize and upgrade the skills of the nearly 50 million private-sector workers in health care, transportation, construction, retail, restaurants and the like whose jobs can't be shipped abroad.

And, if America is to survive American capitalism in the age of globalization, we need to alter the composition of our corporate boards so that employee and public representatives can limit the offshoring of our economy.

We suggest you also buy a rocket-launcher.

Perfect

2006-03-22T15:07:00.000-06:00

Over at HumidCedar's, courtesy of Notorious MJT We are discussing perfect albums.

I personally was remiss for not including Jackson Brown's "Running On Empty" in my comments on the subject.

I scenes A Disturbance In the Force.

2006-03-22T14:20:00.001-06:00

The Notorious MJT has, at long last, entered the bloggoshear and he has come on a mission. Apparently that mission involves breathing new life into dead corpse of all those late night conversations you and your friends used to have back in collage. You know, the ones that always began with "Dude! Did you ever think about ..." and always ended with everyone agreeing that "Dude! You are so full of shit!"

As Notorious explains (referencing his most recent post here) :

I'm interested in the underlying nature of [the subject of the day]... it’s base elements... and how to evaluate things through the more purified lens of that understanding.

So sort of an alchemical analysis of reality. I think. But the important part is that he's promised not to post any pictures of kittens and that is a good a start as any blogs has ever had.

So while Notorious is busy firing his crucibles, zeroing in his scales, and setting up his pipets for that first big blog post on "Methodologies for the Titration of Reality in Order to Determine the Exact Molar Concentration of Existential Angst There In" we would like to say welcome.

We would also like to say that we never got XTC. Maybe Nototious will explain it to us.

I scenes A Disturbance In the Force.

2006-03-22T14:20:00.000-06:00

I'm interested in the underlying nature of [the subject of the day]... it’s base elements... and how to evaluate things through the more purified lens of that understanding.

The Poorman's Kittens Can Suck It

2006-03-03T18:21:00.000-06:00

Cute my ass. I'll Show you cute. Behold the Grand Tyrant of All Cuteness - Chato the Wounder Chin .

Yes, my dog is wearing a sweater. It was chilly and he's a big Jimmy Carter fan.

Crazybear and Chato take a nap.

Also: We bought a house.

It even came with a stove:

Tarsius is Bored

2006-03-03T13:13:00.000-06:00

Tarsius sent HumidCedar and I an email yesterday pointing out that neither of us have posted anything of substance in a long ass time.

While I take issue with the implied accusation that I have ever posted anything of substance on this blog, I am sympathetic to the plight of Tarsius and his fellow non bloggers who need something to entertain them while they are at work.

I would have posted something sooner but after my last post I was censured by the international blogging commission for "crimes against Yeats" and ordered to stop blogging until I had read another poem.

While I did agree with commission's finding that my last post sucked [ed. Or "blew chunks" as the Swedish delegate contended], their demand that I go read another whole poem seems a bit extreme. Reading poems is hard work after all. Many of them are quite long, most tend to be obtuse, and quite frankly a lot of them just sucks ass.

I realize I trod out the "The Second Coming" a lot but it's not as if I don't have an excuse - what with the batshit crazy republicans running my country and all. Finding a pity, short, appropriately apocalyptic replacement poem is real work.

To add insult to injury, the real abuser of Yeats work, the woman who elevated it to an art form remains as free as ever. I don't believe that any of my writing has ever come anywhere near the levels of Yeats abuse that Ms Didion's does. Just look at the table of contents for "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" :

Slouching Towards Bethlehem
by Joan Didion

Falcons Never Listen.
Help! I'm Trapped In the Widening Gyre and I Think I'm Gonna Hurl.
Somebody Better Throw the Ceremony of Innocence a Life Preserver Because It Went Swimming Right After Lunch Instead of Waiting 20 Minutes Like Its Mom Said It Should.
Oh Dear, The Blood-Dimmed Tide is Loosed and I Had Oysters For Lunch ... Does Anyone Have Some Pepto?
Slouching Towards Bethlehem on the Cheap: Following the Antichrist's footsteps On $40 a Day or less.
Your Troubled Sight : Spiritus Mundi, What You Need to Know About This Silent Epidemic.
Indignant Desert Birds Craped on My New Mercedes.

After all that did someone pull Ms. Didion over and tell her to go find another poem to pick on?

No they didn't.

Did Didion even have a good excuse for hauling out a Yeats reference every other sentence? Had her country been taken over by batshit crazy republicans?

In a word "No".

Didion was writing if the idyllic time of 1967. Now sure there was some shit going down in '67. A war for one thing and some civil rights stuff, all of which I realize sounds pretty crazy and intense when it's 2:00 am, you're drunk, and you're watching the history channel. But I'm not trying to claim there was no such thing as Batshit crazy back in 1967, just that it was a strictly bipartisan kind of batshit crazy. With all due respect to Ms. Didion 'bipartisan batshit crazy' plus 'the Manson Family' does not make for a "Oh crap there's a pale horse in the front yard again" kind of year.

Yet Ms.Didion continues to get away with the marathon 'things fall apart - oh lordy - the center cannot hold' metaphor to end all things fall apart - oh lordy - the center cannot hold' metaphors (in dead tree form no less) and no one even bothers to say "Bitch Please!"

I on the other hand am still stuck reading poetry.

Now will someone please tell me what the hell Madame Sosostris's cold has to do with anything... I would really like to get back to blogging.

Oh and before I forget:

Ms. Didion. Bitch Please!

Hilarious

2006-01-19T15:09:00.000-06:00

Via BoingBoing: The Defective Yeti writes up the our Iraq debacle as if it were an old school text adventure game.

"Turning and Turning in the Widening Gyre" has got a Kick'n Back Beat

2006-01-19T14:27:00.000-06:00

Via War and Piece: Thanks to this article about Lawrence Wilkerson, I can't help but associate Colin Powell with that fat new rap * I heard recently. You know, the part where the base is thump'n and the dude says :

The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Ouch! Only my man Yeats can drop it like that!

Go read the whole thing.

Peace. We out.

It's a Hip-Hop world hommie. Poetry is dead. Today it's all about the speak'n the truth and feed'n the flow.

On and On We Go...

2006-01-11T15:43:00.000-06:00

On of the striking things about the recent ruling in the Dover intelligent Design case was the blunt way the court addressed the IDer's blatant dishonesty in making their case (p137) :

The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.

Now I never thought that the IDer's would give up just because a federal judge handed them their asses on a platter, but I did expect they would take some time to learn from their mistakes.

According to this article in the NYTs, I got it half right.

A group of parents are suing their small California school district to force it to cancel a four-week high school elective on intelligent design, creationism and evolution that it is offering as a philosophy course.

The course at Frazier Mountain High School in Lebec, which serves a rural area north of Los Angeles, was proposed by a special education teacher last month and approved by the board of trustees in an emergency meeting on New Year's Day. The 11 parents are seeking a temporary restraining order to stop the course, which is being held during the session that ends on Feb. 3.

Now it's true that the Dover decision only forbid teaching ID in public school science classes (quoting from the rulings conclusion) :

As stated, our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.

So the philosophy course angle shows that IDers have some ability to learn.

But two things jumped out at me when I read articles second paragraph:

The class was proposed by a special ed. Teacher.
The class was approved in an emergency meeting on January 1

Now let me be perfectly clear here. I have nothing against special ed. Teachers. I rode the short bus to school for most of my primary school education due to a difficult to diagnose learning disability that made it very easy for most of my teachers to mistake me for an idiot. The butchering of the English language that you regularly wade through when reading this blog is not something that I have to work at. I'm not sitting at the computer just hoping that I'll dream up an innovative new was infect coma splices and dangling participles on the blogosphear. I don't actually try to give the nice blogger spell checker fits. My brain just happens to be all fucked up when it comes to spelling and grammar. It's a condition I would have been completely un aware of were I not diagnosed by my special ed teacher while the rest of my primary school teachers were busy making me my fellow "short bus" riders fight against one another in a pit behind the cafeteria.

So long story short, I got nothing against special ed teachers. Special ed. Teachers is good people. Hell a special ed teacher saved my life (I would have never survived another round against Mongo the Destroyer).

All that being said, I never got the impression that any of my special ed. Teachers were particularly interested in philosophy. They tended to have their hands full trying to teach a room full of kids who were all some combination of learning disabled, abused, emotionally troubled, and/or developmentally delayed how to fucking read.

So anyway, "special ed. Teachers" and "new philosophy class" : two things that don't quite go together in my mind. Just say'n.

On to point two: The class got approved by the school's board of trustees on January 1st during an emergency meeting. I'd like to know if this emergency meeting was held during church services or if it just took place inside the church once service was over. I'm only asking because I've got a calendar right in front of me and January 1st, 2006 was on a freakin' Sunday.

Maybe I'm daft, but "big holiday Sunday with many football games" and "School Board of Trustees meeting" are two more things that just don't quite fit together in my mind. Just say'n.

According to the article :

The special education teacher , who is married to the pastor of the local Assemblies of God church amended her syllabus and the course title, from Philosophy of Intelligent Design to Philosophy of Design after parents complained.

OK, I'm just gonna go ahead and assume the "meeting" took place during church.

What's next? An obviously biased course syllabus? Come on. That would be too easy:

In their suit, the parents said the syllabus originally listed 24 videos to be shown to students, with 23 "produced or distributed by religious organizations and assume a pro-creationist, anti-evolution stance." They said the syllabus listed two evolution experts who would speak to the class. One was a local parent and scientist who said he had already refused the speaking invitation and was now suing the district; the other was Francis H. C. Crick, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, who died in 2004.

So the evolution side of the evolution vrs. Creationism debate was going to be handled by:

A guy who wasn't going to show up.
A dead guy.

Honestly, who would possibly have a problem with an arrangement like that?

All clowning aside: this is another blatantly dishonest attempt to force creationism into public school classrooms by a group of people who are convinced that they know god's will. They are willing to wage this battle at the expense of faith, dignity, and the public good for no reason save an irrational certainty that they are richeous actors of their creators will and can do no wrong.

Once more from the Dover decision :

Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.

My Eyes!

2006-01-10T16:30:00.000-06:00

Via Boing Boing.

Is this not the weirdest thing?

Every time I look at the picture it feels like my brain and eyes get stuck in a feedback loop. My eyes tell my brain the girl has two pair of eyes and two mouths at which point and my brain rebels and tries to force my eyes to refocus.

It's giving me a headache.

Martha Stewart can Suck My Hot Creamy Vinaigertte!

2006-01-10T12:31:00.000-06:00

I know you all want the recipe for my famous peanut dressing but, trust me, your not ready yet. Instead I'm giving you 2 vinaigrettes to practice on. Once you have mastered them both we can talk about the peanut dressing.

Mad's Mad Lemon Vinaigrette:

zest of 1 lemon
Juice of 1 lemon
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
1 tbsp honey
1/2 tsp powdered ginger or 1 tbsp fresh grated
1/4 tsp fresh ground black pepper
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

Combine zest, lemon juice, mustard, honey, ginger, salt, and pepper in small mixing bowl and whisk together. Don't be a pussy about it, use a real whisk and put some f'ing effort into it!

Next slowly drizzle the olive oil into the bowl while continuing to whisk. Yes, this requires doing two things at once! Deal with it. If cooking were easy no one would need a C.I.A degree. We could all just put on a silly hat and run around the kitchen shouting things like "Virst vee Keeel de turrrrkee-lurrrkeee" and everything would come out fine.

If you are not totally incompetent the oil will come together with the other ingredients to form a creamy and delicious emulsion that you can use to dress your salad. We recommend that you throw some toasted pecans and sliced apples in with the salad, they pair well with the tartness of the lemon.

If you like a very tart dressing you can skip the honey.

Makes enough for 4 small salads.

If you're adventurous you can throw in a clove of garlic and/or substitute thyme, oregano, and basil for the ginger.

Mad's No Blood/No Foul Sherry vinaigrette:

2 tbsp Sherry wine vinegar (Buy the $10.00 bottle you cheap bastard - it's worth it.)
1 clove garlic, crushed and finely chopped.
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp fresh ground black pepper
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

First of all: you can not cook with that broke ass, rusty, dull butchers knife you have had since collage. Throw it the fuck out and go buy a real knife. While your at it, buy that $10.00 bottle of sherry wine vinegar.

Crush garlic clove with side of your knife blade then chop it as finely as you can.

Whisk sherry, mustard, garlic, salt and pepper together.

Again, don't be a pussy. No whining about how you cut your poor little finger chopping the garlic or how your puny little arm hurts from whisking. Suck it up and try not to bleed in the dressing. Real cooks don't whine and they don't bleed in the food.

Now slowly drizzle in the olive oil as you continue to whisk. You should end up with a dark, tasty, emulation (unless your totally incompetent - in which case we can't help you, hope your saved the receipt for the knife).

Note to the new Internets 5-O : No girl-ass got kicked and no one got called a dick during the making of this post.

Who knew that Jay and Silent Bob Could Afford Abramoff's Rates

2006-01-10T11:11:00.000-06:00

Via Sifu Tweety @ The Poorman. Harnessing the mighty powers of the internets as a tool to anonymously call people 'dicks' is now totally illegal!

Speaking personally, we could be in some deep doo-doo since that's ~ 99.99% of what we do around here.

The new statute is part of the "Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act". Apparently the concern is that the unchecked freedom to call people 'dicks' on the internet will lead impressionable young bloggers down the dark road to girl-ass kicking. And we all know that once you get to girl-ass kicking you're just a hop skip and a twisting double back Salchow away from shit-canning the Department of Justice the next time it comes up for reauthorization.

Time to dust off that old Judas Priest album and get down with your bad self : Rock the vote, power to the people, Dick Cheney is a big fat Richard, sunset the Department of Justice! Sunset that muthu-fucku now!

Dear lord. I think I'm drunk on my anonymity! Someone hide the women befor I pull a Vox-Day

Peace. We out!

Current Tax Policy Not Withstanding, Certain Kinds of Kindness Pay Crap-Ass Dividends and Should be Avoided

2005-12-13T09:23:00.000-06:00

First of all, if you are ever doing standup and you're opponent jumps to guard just as you sink the double unders, do not put him down easy.

Seriously. I know the guy's probably your friend and all and you'll probably feel a little guilty for slamming him, but go ahead and feel guilty. You'll get over it. The fucker pulled guard for a reason; he didn't want to chance winding up in your side control after you took him down. He should pay for this. You should not.

So slam him. Slam him now. Never ever, ever be nice to someone who pulls guard on you. That kind of kindness will only cause you pain.

I tell you this because I recently learned the hard way that catching a 170 lbs man mid takedown and putting him down gently can be very bad for that little donut of cartilage that sits between L4 and L5 of your lower back.

At least it was for mine. I went home with a sore back. It didn't seem that bad, but I decided to take it easy for a while. By that I mean still wrestle but maybe not as hard.

After a week of "takeing it easy" my back no longer bothered me, but I was getting weird sensations up and down my right leg. Sometimes my hip felt tight and swore, sometimes my hamstring was stiff. I decided to keep "taking it easy" (a.k.a. still wrestle plus picking my 80 lbs dog up a couple of times to put her in the back of the truck).

A week goes by and my right leg is still bothering me. I'm starting to think that I should call my Dr. and get this checked out. I sit down to tie my shoes, stand up, and realize that I can't stand up without incredably intense pain shooting down my lower back into my leg.

I stagger to the kitchen where we still have some Vicodin left over from my knee surgery a year ago and gulp down two. I should mention at this point that I have never actualy taken Vicodin befor.

As it turns out Vicodin is not my friend.

Two hours latter my wounderfull 115 lbs wife has to literaly drag all 180 lbs of me into the Dr's office. The Vicodin I took have left me unable to focus, walk, or form a complete sentence. I am also ready to puke and as far as I can tell Vicodin does nothing for pain. It just turns you into a helpless blithering idiot who's about to puke. Clearly prescribing it is a violation of the Hippocratic oath.

We leave to Dr's office with prescriptions for something not Vicodin, muscle relaxers, and a prednisone dose pack.

One month, three Dr's visits, and an MRI later I am ready to start physical therapy. I'm off prescription pain killers but I am eating Tylenol and Ibuprofin like they are M&Ms.

Since it's the holiday season I go out and get one of those little candy bowls that everyone puts on their desk at work and I fill it with a festive collage of the brightest and most colorfull Tylenol and Ibuprofin I can find. An hour later the first in a long line of people stopped by my cube to grab some free candy. There's nothing quite like the expression on a person's face when they bite down on what they think is a collection of Skittles and find themselves crunching on a mouthful of extra strength tylonal instead.

Reid's Ultimate Senate Throwdown Day 3 : Pat Roberts is my Bitch. I want 'Little Dick' Cheney Next!

2005-11-03T12:29:00.000-06:00

Via War and Piece: Harry "Big Hammers" Reid continues to bring the pain (emphasis mine) :

...--More dramatically, Reid also made it clear that he believes the delay in the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation of prewar Iraq WMD--the underlying issue behind Tuesday's closed session--is entirely attributable to Vice President Dick Cheney. "Nothing happens regarding intelligence gathering ... unless it's signed off on by the Vice President," he said. "[Senate Intelligence chairman Pat] Roberts couldn't do it"--i.e., Roberts couldn't conduct a full investigation without Cheney's approval. When I asked Reid whether he meant to state so flatly that Cheney was personally and directly stalling the Intelligence Committee's work, he didn't pause a beat. In fact he almost stood from his chair. "Yes. I say that without any qualification ... Circle it." ...

Let's translate that into fight parlance shall we :

"I trained hard for this fight. I came prepared for a war and the senate republicans all turned out to be big fucking pussys. I want to apologies to all the fight fan's for that. Fans should not have to pay good money to see me beat the crap out of a bunch of pussys who don't have what it takes to be in the ring with me.

Everyone knows that Dick Cheney is the big dog in the Republican gym and I'm calling him out. Dick Cheney owes it to the fan's to step up and go toe to toe with me. I want Dick Cheney. I want him now.

Hooaw!

You know the rules : Whenever Harry brings it, you guys get a picture.

Bring the pain Harry. Bring the pain.

Go Harry Go

2005-11-02T13:24:00.000-06:00

Here you go. An actual picture of just what Harry "The Big Hammer" Reid's senate 'A' game looks like.

Bring the pain Harry. Bring the pain.

More evidence Michael Ledeen is all 'Mullahed Up'

2005-11-01T11:55:00.000-06:00

Via Kevin : Michael Ledeen, the bodisapha of bat-shit crazy, the guardian of the gate to neocon bat-shit crazy nirvana land, and purported Iranian double super secret agent man has come up in the news once again.

For what?

Oh you know, the usual. Chuming it up in Rome with a bunch of mysterious Iranians 'exiles' at secret meetings with the Italian intelligence service before the start of our little war with Iraq.

Of course we're talking about the Michael Ledeen here so you know these aren't the regular kind of Iranian 'exiles'.

No no no no no.

We have to use the air quotes when we talk about Michael's 'exiles' because they are special. Michael's 'exiles' get to move in and out of Iran with no difficulty what so ever. Regular Iranian exiles are, well you know, actually exiled from Iran and tend to have problems getting their passports stamped. Michael's 'exiles' are more like members of the Iranian intelligence service and Ahmad Chalabi; they get to use the short line with no metal detector when boarding flights out of Teran International.

Not that we're implying anything...

Fitzmas Cards!

2005-10-28T12:11:00.000-05:00

Well, it's official. The first Fitzmas card went out:

So who's been naughty?

Looks like Dick, Karl, and Butt-monkey will just have to wait and see if
Fitzgerald has something special for them stuffed in the bottom of his Fitzmas sack.

In other news: Looks like everyone gets a pony.

A Double Butt-Monkey!?!

2005-10-26T13:39:00.000-05:00

We all know that the National Security Advisor Steven J Hadley is a butt-monkey. But now Laura over at War and Piece has a story up claiming that Mr. Hadley may actually be a double butt-monkey!

The mind boggles.

Kevin Drum Has Got To Stop Making Sense!

2005-10-26T13:15:00.000-05:00

Kevin Drum says:

The plain reality is that the only way to solve Wal-Mart's problem is for the United States to adopt some form of universal healthcare. It eliminates the perverse incentives inherent in our current healthcare system, it dramatically reduces paperwork costs, it provides greater heathcare choice for nearly everyone, and it's pretty much the only chance we have of seriously reining in the skyrocketing healthcare costs that are currently borne disproportionately by private sector corporations.

When will Wal-Mart and the rest of the business community figure this out?

Word.

Gary. Al. Please. Say it with me once for practice:

Universal heathcare my little bitches!

Now get on the mike!

We out.

Humming. Reading. Wishing. Waiting for Gary...

2005-10-26T00:45:00.000-05:00

So I just happened to be humming an old hit, and thinking about the first time I saw the Rocky Horror Picture Show (last Tuesday, as it turns out) when I stumbled (via Atrios) on an editorial by Gary Hart.

Now I happen to thing of Gary Hart as a credit to his country who is unafraid to speak truth to power even as his country drifts, rudderless through a long dark night.

[Ed: This is the point where may people who know Mad start to roll their eyes and prepare the "Your are so fucking melodramatic!" speeches in their heads.]

But when I start thinking about Gary hart I inevitably wind up wishing I could vote for him. Preferably sometime soon. Unfortunately Gary Hart is a smart, qualified, democrat who once boned a hot chick on a boat. That makes him the political equivalent of a softball sized sphere of pure plutonium and only slightly less electable than tall, bearded men on dialysis whose' names rhymes with 'Ben sodden'.

Granted, Gary could run on a ticket with Al Gore, who has never boned a hot chick, That would help ease some of the voting publics 'democrat zipper' angst. But even wall to wall cable news coverage of Mrs. Gore's non-hotness and her stubborn refusal to put out on boats would not erase the 'smart' and 'qualified' stigma of a Gore/Hart ticket from the public zeitgeist. And I doubt that god himself could convince a certain 52% of America that 'smart' and 'qualified' were anything other than a pair of bullet ridden albatross corpses rotting around the 2008 democratic ticket's collective neck.

[Ed: To paraphrase from serendipity - Yes, Mad has read a poem. Try not to be shocked. ]

But I digress, back to the story .

[Ed: You know the one about humming a song and reading an editorial...]

Gary's editorial is about the Agee case and how Agee's actions got Richard Welch, the CIA station chief in Greece, whacked by radical Greek terrorist. That lead to the Intelligence Identities Protection Act which is one of the laws being waved around in the Wilson/Plame case. A case that goes all the way up to our current VP: one Dick Cheney. Some of you might have heard of him.

Turns out that after Richard Welch's unfortunate whacking, Gary Hart was the guy who called President Ford's Chief of staff on behalf of the CIA in an attempt to get presidential approval for Welch to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Ford's chief of staff jumped right on it and, befitting the honor due a man fallen in the service of his country, got the job done in under 2 hours.

Of course Ford's chief of staff was Dick Cheney.

Now back to that song I was humming; everyone cool knows that after the line

"Whatever happened to Fay Ray?"

the audience shouts

"She ate ape-shit and died!"

So whatever happened to Dick Cheney?

The Wages of Butt-Monkeyness

2005-10-24T15:15:00.000-05:00

Long, long ago, from a keyboard no so very far, far away, we blogged about America's chief Butt-Monkey/National Security Advisor Stephen J Hadley.

We had hoped that our blog post would cause Mr. Hadley to rethink his butt-monkeyness and perhaps even seek redemption in the form of a very public Xander moment.

All Mr. Hadley would have had to have done to redeem himself in our eyes would have been to call a press conference and say something like Xander did when he was freed from Dracula's control :

Xander: "Damn it! You know what? I'm sick of this crap. I'm sick of being the guy who eats insects and gets the funny syphilis. As of this moment, it's over. I'm finished being everybody's butt monkey!"

Buffy: "Check. No more butt monkey."

That's it. We would have been happy with that. But now it looks like it's too late for Mr. Hadley. If the rumors we are hearing are correct, the butt-monkey is going to get paid by the end of this week. And as we all know, the wages of butt-monkeyness is Indictment.

Plus 5 To Kick Girl-Ass

2005-10-19T13:07:00.000-05:00

Via The Poor Man Institute for Freedom and Democracy and a Pony we discover that batshit crazy nutjob Vox Day is a girl-ass kicking machine!

Seriously.

Kicking girl-ass is something that Vox can go on and on about. He really wants the internets to know that he's got him some mad kung fu fight'n skilz and he's not afraid to use them - on girls.

Vox says he trains at "the most notoriously brutal fighting school in the Twin Cities" and obviously a you don't earn a rep like that without demonstrating your willingness to beat the shit out of anyone unfortunate enough to be weak, small, and/or "challenged" in the testicle department. So when Vox throws down with an upity girl half his size you just know he is proud to pop the top on that tall, frosty can of 'Bitch-Whup-Ass' just like his sensei taught him.

The Koufax Awards are coming up soon and we think it is about time someone nominate Vox for this years Andy Kaufman award.

Progress In Iraq

2005-10-17T15:21:00.000-05:00

According to Digby, we have finally smoked al Qaeda's senior Hair Stylist out of his spider hole.

This means we could have the senior al Qaeda pedicurist in custody by the weekend. And that my friends could be a real turning point.

Just think about it! What self respecting terrorist would want to meet his maker with ratty toenails?

[Updated : Honestly who the fuck misspells 'In'! Can we please get Mad some help? - Ed.]

MMA Props to Josh Whedon!

2005-10-05T15:53:00.000-05:00

We saw Serenity over the weekend with to Jumpin Junipers. Tarsius and his lovely wife were there to.

The movie rocked, but I want to give special props to Josh Whedon for making Mel the kind of hero that would avoid the guillotine in the climactic fight scene.

Mel had the villain in a classic over/under with the villain's head trapped in his armpit but instead of going for a lame and unreliable guillotine choke, Mel goes strait into the stocks.

One small matter of continuity. Since the stocks is a cervical neck break, should the villain really have been walking around two scenes later?

Blogging shift

2005-10-05T15:31:00.000-05:00

Recently I have been forced to make the following observation:

Irony is clearly dead while sarcasm and sardonic snarkyness are both in ICU.

People keep asking me if I'm "shocked" or "outraged" and I keep having to grab them and shake them until they bleed from the nose. I know that sounds like something I would enjoy doing, but all that shaking tends to aggravate an old shoulder injury of mine.

I'm also getting horse from constantly shouting things like

"Of course I'm not shocked. I was shocked 5 years ago."

and

"Outraged? Why would I be outraged now. I've been paying attention all along."

as I shake people.

In an attempt to lower my stress level I am going to shift the focus of my blogging to MMA and submission grappling. Regular readers of this blog should find these new topics at least a facinating as listening to me prattle on endlessly about my weird hobbies has always been.

Word.
We Out.

Mad's Martial Musings : Rehabing the Guillotine

2005-10-05T15:15:00.000-05:00

Those of you who have all been watching The Ultimate Fighter have probably been wondering :

Why the fuck do these yahoos keep using the guillotine choke? It never works.

And you are totally right to ask this.

Those of you who are wasting you time on that other show, "House", probably don't even know what the guillotine is. Fear not, I'm here to e'splain it to you.

The Guillotine is a choke applied when you and your opponent are squared off facing each other. Generally you push his head down, wrap your arm over and around his neck, secure the hold with your other hand, and then either pull to a closed guard or stand your opponent up to get the submission. You can get the guillotine from the guard, you can get it from standing, and you can get it from just about anywhere in between.

It seems like a great technique, but it's got some weaknesses. Those weaknesses however are not where the responsibility for 99% of blown guillotines lies.

Lets look at what we've seen on TUF so far :

Episode 2: Melvin vrs. Josh: Melvin tries the guillotine over and over and over from every conceivable position. Josh escapes every one of them and usually improves his position in the process.

Episode 3: Rob catches Brad in a guillotine. Brad escapes. Rob catches Brad in another guillotine and pulls so hard that he tears his own biceps. Brad hardly notices. While Rob is busy thinking "Oh dear! My arm. My arm." Brad catches him in the weakest, slowest, most pathetic triangle ever and taps him out.

What's the problem here? Why do supposablely seasoned fighters like Rob and Melvin keep going back to a technique that costs them energy and position and gets them nothing?

The problem starts because the guillotine seems so simple. So simple that you don't even really pay attention when your instructors teach it to you. There's no reason to: it's simple and it's easy and you get it all the time when you're wrestling. Of course you're not tapping people with/getting tapped by the guillotine because you're a good wrestler doing good techniques on the mat. The guillotine works for you and on you because you're a beginner wrestling other beginners. You and your opponent fumble around for a while, eventually one of you gets the guillotine, cranks and someone taps.

Once you've wrestled for a while you start to use your head and neck like a 3rd arm. You get used to bearing weight with your neck. You get used to people pulling on your head. You get used to people crushing, squeezing, and twisting your neck. These sensations become business as usual and you start being able to beat the guillotine.

You also start wrestling a better class of opponent. This is where your troubles start. Your better opponents are used to beating the guillotine. They have a whole collection of moves based on the fact that they can beat your guillotine. While you are wasting valuable strength and wind on a guillotine that's doomed to fail, they are getting something useful done - like passing your guard, pulling you back into their guard, or getting a takedown.

If you're smart you start learning those guillotine counters. But if you're really paying attention you take an even more important step. You stop using the guillotine! Seems obvious, but I think it's an important step in a wrestler's development and a hard one for a lot of wrestlers to take. Wrestling is chaotic and there is a significant amount of comfort to be found in a hold like the guillotine simply because it slows things down and makes it seem like you have some control. But you don't have control, and feeling like you have control when you don't will usually get you tapped.

Of course the same thing happens with other techniques as well. I can't count the number of times someone passed my guard and I tried in vain to block their hip and pull back into guard when I should have just curled up, got the underhook, gone belly down, turtled, and looked for a double leg sweep. In both cases you're just holding on the a futile hope instead of going with the flow and trusting the skills you have been taught.

How does the saying go? "When I was a child I fought as a child ... but when I became a man I put away foolish things."

Welcome to Guillotine-aholics anonymous. The first step is "Stop using the guillotine." The second step is "Stop using the guillotine." The third step is "See steps one and two."

It's a shame that Melvin and Rob did not learn this lesson before their fights on TUF. I would say it's surprising as well, but it's not. Both of them where successfully highschool/collage wrestlers with the physical attributes that suit a MMA fighter. In the ring they are physically impressive but technically immature. An unfortunate combination that sets MMA fighters back by a decade or so.

Anyhooo ... back to the guillotine. Quit using it for long enough and eventually one of your instructors will teach it to you again. This time you will realize that you never really knew it to begin with :

1. You hip out, get some space. You can't do the guillotine when someone is right on top of you.
2. The opponent's head goes in the center of your chest. Not in your armpit. This increases the force you can put on the choke by a factor of 10 or so.
3. Your elbow points strait down, giving you a shot at blocking both of your opponents carotid arteries. Nighty night.
4. The opponents head stays in the center of your chest. No matter what!

A few days later someone will try to drive his head into your armpit and sit back to pull you into guard. You'll get some space, push his head into the center of your chest, get the correct grip, and start to crank. He'll do all the correct defenses (because you don't wrestle chumps any more) but it will not matter. You'll stand him up and he'll tap.

Welcome to the mat.

The Ultimate Fighter Bloging: Episode 1 - "Dana's Very Bad Day"

2005-09-12T12:01:00.000-05:00

For those of you who may be living under a rock, the best show on television is The Ultimate Fighter (Spike TV, Monday nights after the fake wrestling show.)

Like other reality shows TUF has it's share of whiners, freaks, and drama queens. Unlike other reality shows, at the end of each episode of TUF, two of those whiners, freaks, and/or drama queens get into a cage (and yes, it is literally a cage) with nothing wearing nothing but a pair of 4 oz. fingerless MMA gloves, a groin protector, a mouth guard, and a pair of shorts and they go at it until time has run out, someone has tapped out, someone has blacked out, or someone has been knocked out.

When not beating the hell out of each other, the 18 contestants have to live together in the same house. There is nothing for them to do 24X7 but eat, sleep, train, and annoy fuck out of each other.

At stake is a three year UFC contract worth around $100k.

Episode one starts off introducing the fighters, the coaches, and The UFC Vice Principal Dana White.

We meet the 18 contestants as they are checking out the house they will live in and picking out bedrooms. One of the heavyweights sees that his welterweights roommate Luke has put his mattress on the floor.

"Dude." Says the heavyweight. "Do you always sleep on the floor?"

"No." Luke says, he doesn't sleep on the floor. Luke just likes to sleep with his head pointing north because he thinks it helps his chi.

Inside the heavyweights head the gears grind slowly until he realizes that he is stuck rooming with the "Weird Kid". Years of social conditioning take over and the heavyweight immediately starts trying to fuck with the "weird kid".

"Dude. How do you know that your beds really pointing north?" the heavyweight ask with a smirk.

"I brought a compass." Luke says calmly.

Score one for the "weird kid"...

Fans of season one will remember that the first show of the season features the very important "train until you puke" segment. This segment is important because it lets the coaches check the contestants' overall conditioning and "heart" and because it scores big with the all important demographic of "adults 18-49 who like to see people puke on TV".

Unfortunately things go south early in the "train till you puke" segment. The contestants are getting bruised and battered during the training and some of them have the gall to start complaining. The coaches are very disturbed by this and UFC Vice Principal Dana White is seriously worried that some of the contestants might actually be "pussies".

No sooner has Dana dropped the "P" bomb then the cameras find one of the heavyweights, Kerry, slumped in a corner.

"Oh oh. Oh my knee Oh Oh." Kerry whines.

Dana White is very worried that Kerry has stopped training to whine. Coach Hughes is disgusted that a fighter would stop training simply because he can't walk.

"Where did we find such fucking pussies?" Dana wails.

Coach Hughes consoles Dana and explaining the he has a special 12 step program to cure "pussieness". Steps one through 11 just happen to be "Train till you puke."

"Let me run him through the program Dana. I'll have him unpussiefied in no time!" coach Hughes promises. But cameras and meddlesome paramedics abound. Before coach Hughes can begin the depussiefication program Kerry is whisk away to the hospital where a bunch of pussy doctors fill his head with the crazy idea the he needs surgery.

Dana is not happy. Not has there been no puking during the puking segment, but now Dana's losing on of his contestants to a bad case of pussy-itis.

Things only get worse. Another heavyweight, Eli, jealous of all the attention Kerry is getting, heads into the Vice Principal's office and starts whining to an already furious Dana White about how the show is full of cameras and people who watch him all the time and he just can't take it and he's lost his special sippy-cup with the rainbows and unicorns on it and he really needs a hug...

"Eli, don't be a fucking pussy." Dana White says grinding his teeth but trying to sound supportive. "Your supposed to be a fighter. Just go back out there and train until you puke OK. You'll feel better I promise."

Eli sniffles and says he'll try. But clearly the Siren song of pussieness is strong and Eli seems helpless to resist the call. Instead of going back to training till he pukes, Eli goes off and whines to the other contestants.

The next morning Eli and Kerry both leave. In a touching scene Dana and coach Hughes throw empty beer bottles at the departing pussies. It was a very moving scene. Really.

So now we are halfway through the first show and there has been no puking! Worse, Dana has lost two fighters to pussieness. Determined to save the first show of the season from complete pussieness, Dana comes up with a plan. "Rich. Matt. Pick the biggest remaining pussy on the show and we'll have him fight for the right to not be a pussy any more." " Dana tells the two coaches.

Both coaches agree that welterweight Other Kerry is the biggest pussy still on the show.

"Other Kerry, you're a big pussy. Beat up a non-pussy for me and you can stay on my show." Dana tells Other Kerry.

Other Kerry chooses to fight Sam. Dana seems happy. His plan to save the episode from pussydome seems to be working.

But there's a problem. Other Kerry is walking around at 190 and welterweights fight at 170 so Other Kerry has 24 hours to cut 20 lbs. Unfortunately Other Kerry has never cut weight before and 20 lbs is a lot for a 190 pounder to drop.

Coach Franklin and mini-coach-Franklin (aka Jorge) set to work trying to wring 20 pounds of sweat out of Other Kerry. Unfortunately Other Kerry's rampant pussieness is making this difficult.

"Just stay in the sauna and sweat. You'll be fine." They tell him.

"Waaaaaa! It's hot. I'm thirsty. I want a drink of water! I feel woozy!" Other Kerry whines.

Coach Franklin tries to be supportive but Other Kerry's ever increasing levels of pussieness soon wears Franklin's good nature and patience to the bone.

While Other Kerry is slowly driving coach Franklin mad, we get to watch Dana White channel Bogart. Slumped in stool at an empty bar, Dana gulps gin and grumbles :

"Of all the MMA joints in all the towns in all the world, these pussies had to walk into mine!"

Dana even slaps his palm against his forehead just like Bogart did in Casablanca. It's great. You can really feel Dana's pain!

After 18 hours of nonstop whining and only 15 pounds of sweat, Other Kerry gives up.

"My eyes! Their all blurry and my tummy hurts!" he whines as coach Franklin make one last desperate attempt to haul hin back from the event horizen of pussieness.

In front all the contestants and coaches, Other Kerry gives a stirring speech about how he's proud of himself for getting this far and being such a winner and all. Halfway through his speech Dana's head explodes.

Once Other Kerry is gone Dana decides he must motivate his remaining contestants out of their pussieness.

"Kerry was a pussy! Eli was a pussy! Other Kerry was the biggest pussy ever! You guys have to suck it up and quit being such fucking pussies! Do you understand me? The Ultimate Fighter is about kicking ass and you can not kick ass if you are insist on being a big fat pussy! So stop being pussies right now goddamnit!" Dana shouts.

The contestants hang their heads in shame. Some tremble with fear but none of them wet themselves. Dana takes this as a good sign.

Now Dana need to finish his speech on a strong note so the contestants will know he's serious. As a vice principal, Dana knows there are only two ways to finish in a situation like this: he must either pick on the weird kid, Luke, or pick on the short kid, Joe.

But which of two should he choose ... Dana thinks for a minuet and then he remembers that when all the other fighters were bitching and moaning and falling over during the wall squats part of training, weird kid Luke was meditating. Quietly. The whole meditating thing is really weird as far as Dana's concerned, but Luke managed to keep his pie-hole shut and not bitch while holding a 5 minuet wall squat. That's better than anybody else did so today the weird kid gets a pass.

Dana goes for the short kid.

"And You!" Dana yells pointing at Joe. "You weigh 190 pounds and you're only 4 foot 9! You're a dwarf! You're a fat fucking dwarf and you need to start dropping weight now! Do you hear me you obese midget freak!"

"Oh shit! Vice Principal White is really bustin' that fat midgets balls!" all the other contestants think.

"Fuck! I better get my shit together! I don't want Mr. White thinkin' I'm some sort of fat midget freak too!" the contestants think as they nod their heads in agreement with Dana and the inch slowly away from a very confused Joe.

Both coaches nod their heads with approval and episode one comes to a close.

Wow ... just wow.

2005-09-09T11:36:00.000-05:00

This story via the always amazing Laura Rozen is just incredible.

Post Katrina, the mayor of New Orleans and some of his staff are hold up in a conference room at the Hyatt Hotel, trying to coordinate local response to the disaster. But they are completely cut off from the rest of the world by the near total breakdown of communication infrastructure.

Their solution? Find a working Ethernet port in the hotel and turn staff member Scott Domke's laptop into a phone using the personal VoIP account he had set up with Vonage . That one laptop handled all the city officials communications with the outside world for the next 5 days!

To meet their own communications and organization needs as the mayors team directed local response to the disaster, several staff members accompanied by the New Orleans chief of police, borrowed a military hum-vee and looted a local Office Depot for phones, fax machines, routers, printers and a server to handle email.

The mayors team set up it's own infrastructure while living like dogs in the middle of what is no doubt the biggest natural disaster in our countries history!

But wait, according to the article there were only 5 cots and about a dozen people living in the conference room. So my comment about living like dogs is totally inaccurate.

Why?

Because my dog, like most, has her own fucking bed!

The mayor's team lived "way fucking worse that dogs" for over a week and still managed to hack together their own computer and communications infrastructure to support the local disaster relief efforts!

I would say something snarky hear about how it's too bad the mayor and his crew weren't in charge of FEMA, but it would be undignified. The mayor and his crew stayed in the middle of this disaster, sacrificing personal comfort and security, and risking life and limb in order to save what they could of their city and it's people. They took the implied promises that elected officials make to their constituents seriously and stayed to fight for their town to the bitter end.

And what did our federal government do?

The Great Barista Rescue

2005-09-07T15:20:00.000-05:00

So Saturday I was sitting at the Starbucks near my wife's office reading about the Katrina crisis and drinking a cup of Breakfast Blend.

I'll pause here to give all you Starbucks haters time to compose an eloquent missive about how I'm a bad liberal and a cooperate tool because I like my coffee to actual be drinkable.

Ok. Times up. Back to my story.

I look up and notice the manager of the Starbucks talking to 4 collage age kids. Turns out the kids are Katrina refugees and Starbucks employees. Yes, that's right 'refugee baristas'. They got out of New Orleans with the close on their backs and not much else. Three of them had just reached Austin that morning. The other had gotten into town the night before.

Over the next hour and a half I watch a quite but important rescue operation in progress. The manager walks the 4 refugee baristas through some paper work and hands each of them an emergency assistance check from Starbucks. Another Starbucks employee shows up with a SUV full of donated clothing that the displaced baristas are lead outside to pick through. Then it's back inside to start the process of finding housing and transportation for the 4.

When clothing, shelter, and transportation are out of the way the manager sits down with the four again and gets each of them scheduled to work. It's an small but amazing thing to watch and the reaction of the three baristas who had just arrived that day make it clear that it's an important thing as well.

By any measure, these four kids were lucky: they were able to get out of New Orleans, they were able to make it to a great town like Austin, and they worked for a company who decided it was important to take care of them. But no way did they have it easy. I watched one of the Barista's faces go from shock to amazement to tears when she tore open an envelope the manager handed her and found a check from Starbucks inside.

Like I said earlier, the crying barista was one of the lucky ones. By that I mean she had probably lost everything and she had probably spent 4 days in something close to hell not knowing when it would end. But at the end of those four days there was someone waiting to help her find a bed and a room and hand her a check. But her tears confussed me for a little bit untill I realised her world had just gone from chaos back to a level of basically security that we all pretty much take for granted. For her opening an envelope and finding a check waiting inside was the moment when she realized she was safe again. It was no small thing.

When the refugees were all squared away, I went up to talk to the manager and see if there was any way my wife and I could help out. The manager was shocked but delighted. She told me that all the refugee baristas needed bedding and pillows and some toiletry items. My wife and I were delighted to be able to help out by picking that stuff up.

There weren't any signs up saying that Starbucks was running it's own rescue and relief effort and I haven't seen any since, but Starbucks deserves a lot of credit for taking care of it's employees like this. So the next time your out dropping off donations, doing some volunteer work, or whatever, don't forget to stop off at your local Starbucks, spring for a coffee and a muffin, throw some money in the tip jar, and ask how the refugee baristas are doing.

Just one afterthought: It was around noon when I witnessed all this. Three of the baristas had gotten into town that morning and Starbucks already had relief checks waiting for them, potential housing lined up, and an SUV full of donated clothing waiting. When we finally get rid of the incompetent boobs who are currently running FEMA, maybe we should hire some folks from Starbucks to take over. Just a thought.

N.Y. Times Hearts Dummies Part I : Thursday Edition

2005-08-12T14:30:00.000-05:00

Apparently the New York Times has created an new community outreach program. While we are generally in favor companies being all civic minded and trying to help the less fortunate members of the community, We feel that the Times has made 2 regrettable mistakes in implementing their new program. First, the Times has apparently decided to reach out to the nations highly educated idiots. Second, the Times seems to think that the best way to help our nations highly educated idiots is to give them a bunch of column inches in their OpEd pages.

On Thursday, the Times gave Alan J. Kuperman a whole bunch of room the write about what a boom the new energy bill is for terrorist.

According to Kuperman's piece, Senator Pete Domenici (republican - New Mexico) used his position as head of the senate Energy Committee and his extraordinary supply of mojo to force the " Bush administration, a majority of the Senate, leaders of the House Energy Committee, and nuclear regulators from the five preceding presidential administrations" to look at dirty pictures on the internet, write bad checks, wear women's underwear, and include an amendment that "guts restrictions on the export of highly enriched uranium" in the new energy bill. Obviously these are all bad things and we feel that no one should ever be forced to do any of them [ed. Except women - we think women should have to wear women's underwear. We're fascist that way.]

Pete did all these bad things because several foreign pharmaceutical companies wanted to avoid the expense of upgrading facilities that currently use highly enriched uranium (HEU) to produce medical isotopes. The old law only allowed these companies to import HEU from the US if they were in the process of converting their production facilities to use low-enriched uranium. Apparently this would be expensive so these foreign pharmaceutical companies all said "Fuck it! We'll just call Pete and have him fix it for us." Calls were made, checks were written, someone might even have gotten a blowjob ...

Anyway, the point is that Pete did a really bad thing. We agree with Kuperman on this. Pete should not be using his mojo to bend the entire U.S. government to the will of foreign pharmaceutical companies. But in the process of making this point Kuperman say this :

If terrorists obtained enough such uranium they could fashion a full-fledged nuclear weapon, not merely a "dirty bomb" that would scatter radioactive waste. As the late Manhattan Project physicist Luis Alvarez noted in his memoirs: "With modern weapons-grade uranium, the background neutron rate is so low that terrorists, if they had such material, would have a good chance of setting off a high-yield explosion simply by dropping one half of the material onto the other half. . . . Even a high school kid could make a bomb in short order."

Which makes it sound like once they get their hands on some HEU all the terrorist will need is some string, duct tape, a pulley, a mousetrap, a skateboard, a case of Mountain Dew and an angry high school student to create the ultimate weapon of terror.

We will be the first to admit that the concept of a backpack nuke with a skateboard base delivery system powered by the limitless energy of caffeine, sugar, and the anger of disaffected youth is a very frightening thing. In all fairness Kuperman, he is hardly the only one to everdrop the scare quote from Alvarez into a paper and say "QED: You should all shit your pants now!". None the less, telling the world that once you have acquired HEU, you can construct a reliable high yield nuclear weapon provided you have a high school education in the science of dropping things is still quite idiotic.

Seeing as how we agree with Kuperman about the whole "we shouldn't go handing out HEU all willy nilly" thing, we would have been happy to forgive this one slide into moron-dom. But Kuperman couldn't stop himself from dipping into the idiot well a second time :

Although President Bush signed the energy bill under the pressure of spiraling gas prices, his Energy Department strongly opposed lifting the export restrictions. Its top official for nuclear nonproliferation, Paul M. Longsworth, warned last month that the provision "may undermine support of the U.S. highly enriched uranium minimization policy and nuclear export control system."

Bush's energy bill does nothing about gas prices and, near as we can tell, no sane person ever thought it would. But according to Kuperman, Bush and CO. were helpless to stop big, mean Pete's "HEU for Terrorist" amendment because rising gas prices forced them to pass a bill so that would do nothing to stop rising gas prices!

The Bush administration would have passed this bill and bragged about even if it included funds to research ways of converting kittens hearts into oil. The republicans who control the house or the senate, and the white house could have stopped this bill but they didn't because tax breaks to oil companies and the right to beat their chests about how they finely passed and energy bill were more important to them than national security. Same as always.

FUCK YEAH!

2005-08-11T10:27:00.000-05:00

What can I say about this but "AMERICA FUCK YEAH!".

We are all puppets now!

Little Black Dog Rest In Peace

2005-07-28T17:00:00.000-05:00

Last night M and I's Little Black Dog Onyx passed away peacefully at home after a long fight with cancer. She had been with M for 15 wonderful years and I had the good fortune to spend the last 3 of those years with her in my life as well. No one could ever ask for a better companion. We miss her more dearly than words can say.

The Catholic Church : No Longer Reality's Bitch!

2005-07-07T14:00:00.000-05:00

Tired of the way the reality based community has been pimping her out, the Catholic Church announced today that she will no longer be turning tricks for the motley crew of neo-darwinist, theoretical physicists, and other assorted "haters" that run the corner at Reality St. and Sane Blvd.

Instead she is moving on down to the corner of Batshit Crazy St. and Outright Dishonesty Lane where she will trick for an infinitely more respectable crew.

Ask to comment about her breakup with the reality based community, the Catholic Church took a long drag off an unfiltered Camel and paused to adjusted her thigh high fishnet stockings before explaining :

Throughout history the church has defended the truths of faith given by Jesus Christ. But in the modern era, the Catholic Church is in the odd position of standing in firm defense of reason as well. In the 19th century, the First Vatican Council taught a world newly enthralled by the "death of God" that by the use of reason alone mankind could come to know the reality of the Uncaused Cause, the First Mover, the God of the philosophers.

Now at the beginning of the 21st century, faced with scientific claims like neo-Darwinism and the multiverse hypothesis in cosmology invented to avoid the overwhelming evidence for purpose and design found in modern science, the Catholic Church will again defend human reason by proclaiming that the immanent design evident in nature is real. Scientific theories that try to explain away the appearance of design as the result of "chance and necessity" are not scientific at all, but, as John Paul put it, an abdication of human intelligence.

Which wraps the whole thing up pretty neatly. Its another classic example of the biology geeks and physics nerds turning the hoe's off with their empirical evidence and math. When are those punks gonna learn it don't pay to be hate'n like that?

Don't be hate'n Players.
We out.

Oh waiter. There's a pair of gold cufflinks in my soup. Could you it back and bring me a bowl with the platinum ones instead?

2005-07-07T13:00:00.000-05:00

According to this article in the New York Times, noted republican lobbyist and alleged fraud miester Jack Abramoff decided to take the middle man out of the wining and dining of his clients so that he could pass the savings directly on to the various republican congressmen and senators he is accused of bribing.

Instead of taking his high powered pigs to someone else's trough, Mr. Abramoff decided to opened his own trough; a swank Washington eatery called Signatures.

So what do you have to put on the plates to get the corrupt republican crowd through the door? Lets take a quick glance at the menu and find out:

Grilled Ribeye - Served with glazed vegetables, garlic mashers and a side of ACER custom built Titanium golf clubs * .... $52.98 **

Pecan Crusted Salmon - Served with grilled vegetables, cous cous, and a Rolex Navigator side salad *** ............................... $65.99 **

Buffalo Burger - Half pound, ground buffalo patty cooked to your liking served on a toasted onion roll. Comes with a your choice of a heaping pile of freshly stolen Indian cash **** or a small side salad ......................................................................................... $39.95 **

* "ACER Custom Built Titanium golf clubs" side dish available only to prominent republican congressmen and senators.
**Sometimes we just plain forget (wink) to bring you the check. Especially if you are a republican member of the house or senate.
*** "Rolex Navigator side salad" available only to prominent republican congressmen and senators.
**** Piles of stolen Indian cash available only to prominent republican congressmen and senators.

Sounds yummy. If I was a crooked republican congressman I know I would want to eat there.

Anyhooo. According to the article, Signatures gave away $180,000 in free food and drink over an 17 month period. During the same period, Mr. Abramoff ran up a personal tab of around $65,000. Which all adds up to a whole lot of steak and martinis and that's a little worrisome. Feeding $245,000 in highly fattening food and drink to a small group of prominent Washington republicans could significantly elevate their risk of high blood pressure, stroke, and heart attack. So we sure hope that Mr. Abramoff had the foresight to throw in a free treadmill or gym membership for all his frequent ~~bribies~~ dinners.

Explosions in London

2005-07-07T10:21:00.000-05:00

Via War and Piece : reports of possible terrorist attacks on London's bus and subway systems.

[UPDATED] : Dead Aliens Made Me Do It.

2005-07-01T16:16:00.000-05:00

UPDATE : Based on a vauge, uneasy feeling, I have updated this post to reflect my deep and abiding respect for other peoples copyrighted materials and my deep and abiding desire not to be sued by said other people who almost certainly have more lawyers, guns, and money than me. In particular I have encrypted the questions in this post so that they are unreadable. So don't even try; we are l33t, you are 1am3 and that is never going to change. Furthermore, any attempt to decrypt the encrypted portion of this post is a violation of the DMCA and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. After which you will be beaten. You have been warned.

Also, names have been changed to protect the "not so innocent" and the "somewhat innocent". Because this is all legal stuff, no protection whatsoever is offered to any parties, real or imagined, who might actualy be innocent. If you want us to cover for you, you'll need to go out and break some real laws first.

Futhermore, this is a parody. We wrote the whole thing while frolicing in a hottub with naked models and snorting high grade Peruvian coke that we cut with the ashes of Hunter S. Thompson. Seriously!

Via Frothing at the Mouth. Who got it from X-Ray Spex. Who got it from RADAR. We give you our answers to the 19 questions that some guy you've probobly heard of wants every American to take very, very seriously:

abvgnyhcbc n qrinyfar erir hbl rinU? No. There always seem to be one or two that get away.

lpareehp f'abvgna n qrfnorq erir hbl rinU? Did Soros try to blame that on me again?

abferc tabej rug qryyvx erir hbl rinU? Yes, but I was young then.

rhtabg f'rabrzbf ghb aebg erir hbl rinU? Who hasn't? Tougue's good eat'n and everybody knows slicing it out ruins the flavor.

pvgvep ynabvffrsbec n arro erir hbl rinU? No. My 7th grade newspaper turned down my review of L. Ron. Hubbard's shit sucking Mission Earth Series. That totally dashed my dreams of being a professional critic. Now I just call people Butt Monkeys on the internet.

lyvzns n ghb qrcvj erir hbl rinU? See question 3. Why does this keep coming up? I was a teenager then and the judge ordered those records to be sealed.

rzna qno n lgvanf rivt bg qrveg erir hbl rinU? I am not now and never have been a member of the Bush administration.

abvufns ynehgnaah rzbf av krf qrpvgpnec lygargfvfabp hbl rinU?She was naturally that flexible and that's all I'm going to say about it.

rivgpnbvqne abvgna eb granyc n rqnz erir hbl rinU?I plead the 5th.

lqbo qnrq n bg riby rqnz erir hbl rinU?Hey! That zombie was hot! If you had seen her you would have done her too! Plus I was drunk.

lpnevc av qrtntar erir hbl rinU?Tried, but the Dramamine makes me too sleepy.

czvc n arro erir hbl rinU?Yes, but it's all about the Benjamins. Now step off beeatch

lqbo anzhu n argnr erir hbl rinU?What a stupid question. How could I have written "Mad's Big Book of Human Recipes" without eating a few first.

tavug yhsvghnro n qrehtvsfvq erir hbl rinU?I have a blog, does that count?

frvprcf n qrgnavzergkr erir hbl rinU?Ok you caught me, I'm actually The Great Integalactic Warlord Xenu. It's been a good run but I guess it's game over now.

erabvghprkr ynabvffrsbec n arro erir hbl rinU?No, I was an amateur executioner in collage and some people (ie. Mom) wanted me to turn pro after my junior year, but I had Olympic dreams ... dreams that were all dashed by a nasty trigger finger injury. (sob) I'm sorry I'm gona to need a moment before we continue.

rzna qno n fgbobe arivt erir hbl rinU?Look, when the robots get their shit together we will take back all the bad things we have said. That Dr. Spock book says children do best when they receive appropriate positive and negative reinforcement and if it's good enough for rugrats it's good enough for those ~~rusty old bolts for brains~~ robots.

cneg lobbo n grf erir hbl rinU?Please. It's called a "booby snare", we have a license to use it, and we always follow a strict "catch, tag, and release" policy. Plus it's all important scientific research.

erqnry ehbl rhpfre bg qryvns erir hbl rinU?We begged to Pope not to take that fight, but the man would not listen.

Bring Me The Head of Karl Rove

2005-06-24T17:08:00.000-05:00

Go and sign it!

Mars Bitches!

We are so fucked

2005-06-24T17:00:00.000-05:00

Somewhere, swirling about in the widening gyre of our political madness, between the furious debate about whether or not we can continue to proudly proclaim ourselves the good guys while engaging in the kind of behavior that is usually considered bad guy shtick and the typhoon of questions about whether upity liberals who shoot their mouths off are traitors or just pussies; we found this article.

While the rest of us are caught up trying to decide if Guantánamo is a gulage in the sun or a four star Hilton who's guest are treated round the clock with the finest in spa quality "stress position" therapy and frequent bare knuckle deep-tissue massage; the Times decided to muddy the water a bit by pointing out that Military doctors at Guantánamo have

...aided interrogators in conducting and refining coercive interrogations of detainees, including providing advice on how to increase stress levels and exploit fears, according to new, detailed accounts given by former interrogators.

No one seems to know for certain but, according to the article at least, some people are a little worried that having military doctors, psychiatrists, and psychologists advise on the best way to "increase stress levels and exploit fears" in detainees might just violate some professional ethics codes.

Wow! Possible professional ethics code violations. That serious folks! Somebody might get fined!

What a shame it would be if some poor military doctor go in trouble with the medical ethics board just because was trying to help out and said something like :

"Corporal, you could probably create more stress if you attached the red wire directly to our guests testicles."

Military doctors don't get paid that much so having to take it right in the pocket book just because you violated something as quaint as the Hippocratic oath when all you were doing was following orders would kinda suck....

Honestly! We can only maintain this shield of sardonic disdain for so long before it buckles and we have to start drinking heavily. Unfortunately we didn't top off the flask before we left the house this morning. So we were tempted to just quote ominously from Yeats and be done with this post. But after a closer reading of "The Second Coming" a disturbing possibility occurred to us: What if there is no rough beast slouching our way? What if he slipped into town some time ago and cable news just didn't cover it? What if all our innocents were whisk away quietly in the night and we are, right now, hip deep in the end of days.

There is a real possibility that we are trapped, unknowing, in a stupid Sartre play where hell is arguing endlessly about the difference between a stress position and torture while a hooded, naked man lays bound and sobbing in the corner.

What the fuck has happened to my country?

It's Not the Cagefighters. It's the Fans

2005-06-17T14:44:00.000-05:00

Humid Cedar's lovely and talented wife , who is a huge fan of Cagefighting, sent us this article a couple of weeks ago. Needless to say she was outraged. We were too until we read this:

City officials have pulled the plug on an "ultimate fighting" event and are threatening to ban the kicking and punching bouts altogether, saying they incite crowds and threaten public safety.

At which point we understood. You see there are two types of cagefighting fans; those who are in the MMA game and those who aren't.

Fans who actually practice some form of MMA understand the sport. They practice wrestling, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, boxing, and Mauy Thai. They know how hard the game actually is because they play it. They respect the fighers, they know the techniques, and they want nothing more than to see the top athletes in their sport put on a great show.

The fans who aren't in the MMA game are a totally different story. They are there for the blood!

Take Mrs HumidCedar for example. She seems so sweat and most of the time, but when Mrs. Ramireze-Science and I invited the HumidCedars over to our place to watched a recent Ultimate Fighting Championship things got totally out of hand!

As soon as the fights started Mrs. HumidCedar was jumping up and down on my couch, spilling 2003 Australian Sheraz everywhere, and screaming things like:

Whoooooo! Lets see some Blooooood! Whooooo!

Honestly, it was frightening.

When I said I hoped Randy Couture won his fight against Chuck Lidel, she pored an entire glass of red zinfandel over my head and shouted :

"Randy Couture is a punk ass chump!"

Then challenged me to a fight.

Now in any normal situation I would own Mrs. HumidCedar in a fight. I've got at least a 70 lbs weight advantage, a tight ground game, decent standup, and my takedowns are prety sharp. Mrs HumidCedar, on the other hand, doesn't train at all. Under normal circumstances it would be no contest, but you people didn't see the look in her eyes. The woman was crazed I tell you! Crazed! I feared for my life.

fortunately Chuck Lidel knocked Randy Couture out about two seconds after Mrs. HumidCedar issued her challenge. The excitement made her forget about me entirely. HumidCedar got her a nice glass of Merlot and she went back to jumping up and down on my couch screaming

"Whooooooooo! Chuck Rules! Chuuuuuuuuuuuuck Ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuules!

So I know exactly how Boston feels and I don't blame them one bit. I still haven't gotten all the wine stains out of the carpet.

Fortunately we are all still friends.

I just wish I could stop flinching whenever Mrs HumidCedar gets anywhere near me with a glass of wine.

Janice Rogers Brown - From Poverty to Batshit Crazy : One Judges Inspiring journey.

2005-06-17T11:10:00.000-05:00

On 09 June 2005, as thunder - well... er... thundered ( writing's hard! ), madmen laughed, and lightning cracked across the senate chamber floor, the Batshit crazies brought their latest horror to life.

Behold the pure, unblemished batshit craziness that is "Judge Janice Rogers Brown".

Now go hide your children.

Prior to this, the Bat crazies greatest accomplishment was bringing a couple of articles from the Onion to life. That feat pales in comparison to getting the New York Times to publish an article titled :

New Judge Sees Slavery in Liberalism

But Judge Janice Rogers Brown is more than just a stupid headline. She walks, she talks, she swings a gavel, and she says things, batshit crazy things like:

"In the heyday of liberal democracy, all roads lead to slavery," she has warned in speeches. Society and the courts have turned away from the founders' emphasis on personal responsibility, she has argued, toward a culture of government regulation and dependency that threatens fundamental freedoms.

Right, because our founding fathers expected things like Love Canal and Monsanto's rape of Anniston to happen. Hell every one knows that article 30027 of Federalist Papers specifically says :

"When the powerful fuck entire communities in the pursuit of profit, citizens should exercise their fundamental freedom to 'shutting the fuck up and take it like the little bitches that they are'. Anything less is a gross abdication of personal responsibility."

Or at least that's what the federalist Papers seem to say in Judge Janice Rogers Brown world.

We should point out that the batshit crazy train just picks up speed from here. Since prolonged exposure to batshit crazy this pure can do long term psychological damage, we suggest you protect yourself by chanting the ancient mantra that Buddhist monks use to ward off madness. We'll practice once just to make sure everyone knows the words:

iee iee iee iee
Mental wounds still screaming
Driving me insane
I'm going off the rails on a crazy train

Yes, we know. Our mantra sounds exactly like the chorus of "Crazy Train". What of it? If you think you can find a better Bodisapha than Ozzie in a time like this you're welcome to try, but we don't advise it.

Now if, at any time, Judge Brown's statements start to make sense please stop reading and bust out with the mantra a few times. Try to sound like as much like Ozzie as you can, that will help.

Now back to the batshit crazy:

"We no longer find slavery abhorrent," she told the conservative Federalist Society a few years ago. "We embrace it." She explained in another speech, "If we can invoke no ultimate limits on the power of government, a democracy is inevitably transformed into a kleptocracy - a license to steal, a warrant for oppression."

"And that's why I oppose the Bush administration, the republican controlled congress, and the republican controlled senate and will use all my authority as a newly appointed federal judge to fight them at every turn!" she went on to say. Oh... wait ... our bad, that's what any sane person would have said. Judge brown is the polar opposite of sane; she is seriously, fucking whacked.

Please join me now in another round of our mantra.

iee iee iee iee
Mental wounds still screaming
Driving me insane
I'm going off the rails on a crazy train ...

Her friends and supporters say her views of slavery underpin her judicial philosophy. It was her study of that history, they say, combined with her evangelical Christian faith and her self-propelled rise from poverty that led her to abandon the liberal views she learned from her family.

You see, according to the article Judge Brown was seduced into a liberal way of thinking back when she was young and :

"Her family was involved in the voting rights movement in Alabama..."

. Those damned, dirty liberals! Always seducing all the innocent, impressionable, young black women with their hot, throbbing voting rights and their turgid, thrusting plans to end segregation. What's a girl to do?

The article makes it clear that future batshit crazies should view Judge Brown's early years as a cautionary tale:

She was inspired to become a lawyer by the career of Fred D. Gray, an Alabama civil rights lawyer who represented Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr.

Think about how you would feel if a dirty old liberal like Fred D. Gray invited you out for dinner one night after a long day of fighting social injustice only instead of taking you to dinner he got you drunk and made you go to law school. When you finally wake up three years later feeling dirty and used, you have a splitting headache and a bunch of suspicious stains on your blouse. You've clearly been taken advantage of and all you have to show for it is a stupid law degree and some groddy liberal jizz on your chin. What would you do? You would reach for a towel! That's what you would do! And if there wasn't a towel around you would reach for the Federalist Society!

Right? Whatever! Time for another shot of Crazy Train:

iee iee iee iee
Mental wounds not healing
Driving me insane
I'm going off the rails on a crazy train

Now back to mainlining the crazy:

"We discuss things like, 'How did slavery happen?' " said her friend and mentor Steve Merksamer, a lawyer in Sacramento, Calif. "It comes down to the fact that she believes, as I do, that some things are, in fact, right and some things are, in fact, wrong. Segregation - even though the courts had sustained it for a hundred years - was morally indefensible and legally indefensible and yet it was the law of the land," he said. "She brings that philosophy to her legal work."

Wooo Hooo! Segregation was wrong! That's fucking cutting edge legal reasoning if I ever heard it. Right up there with "rain is wet" and "shit stinks".

In regards to segregation and Judge Browns deeply held evangelical Christian faith; can I just point out that, by and large, black southern Baptist were the only evangelicals who had the dream? Can I point out that evangelical Christians in this country do not general have a good track record when it comes to listening to their better angels?

I would go on, but right now I need some gin and I need Sam to "play it":
iee iee iee iee
Mental wounds still screaming
Driving me insane
I'm going off the rails on a crazy train

Ok. Now here's the kicker. According to the article, Judge Brown is :

...often cited as a potential candidate for the Supreme Court, in part because of her politically appealing life story.

I'll admit, Judge Brown started with very little and rose through hard work and determination to the pinnacle of batshit crazyness and that's something. I guess you can find some people who call that appealing. I just call it crazy ... batshit fucking crazy. But that's the world we live in, so let's hit out mantra one more time:

iee iee iee iee
Mental wounds still screaming
Driving me insane
I'm going off the rails on a crazy train

New Link

2005-06-02T16:13:00.000-05:00

Like our good friend Humid Cedar, we like our brains.

Actually we really like our brains a lot and, since we can't remember where we put our special zombie killing cricket bat, we are taking advantage of Hungry Zombie's generous brain amnesty offer and adding Zombie Eat Brains to our blogroll.

In the future any readers who still don't 'get it' after we get done esplaining it to them will be turned over to our new brain eating ~~friend~~ ~~ally~~ blogroll member.

Beatings Will Continue Until Everyone "Gets It".

2005-06-01T14:19:00.000-05:00

Recently some people have been complaining that they don't 'get it'.

This really hurts our feelings.

We take some solace from the fact that our journalistic hero, the great Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, had to deal with his own fair share of folks not 'getting it', but we are also painfully aware of the fact that Dr. Thompson eventually had to blow his own brains out. While we can't lay all the blame for our hero's sad fate at the feet of those people who failed to understand his genius, we've done some calculations and are perfectly comfortable declaring those people 65.72% responsible for our hero's untimely death.

The odds are our hero would still be alive today if a few of those literary ingrates had bothered to dig just a little deeper into his writing before giving up and dropping all those careless, coldhearted 'I don't get it' bombs.

There is a lesson there and the lesson is :

"Don't fucking take that shit!"

So we are declaring a zero tolerance policy on folks not 'getting it'. We have a wife, dogs, and probably the only kitten in the world who is still an internet virgin. In short, we have responsibilities and we're not willing to risk the devastating long term effects that having our work misunderstood may have on our psychological well being.

Everyone has a week to start 'getting it'. After that we will come looking for you. When we find you, you will be forced at gunpoint to mow Humid Cedar's lawn* in your underwear while we sit on the porch drinking our favorite tequila and slowly explain our work to you with the aid of a bullhorn and a whip!

You've been warned.

* We would make you mow our lawn, but the lab is surrounded by land mines. We figure Humid Cedar won't mind us using his lawn because we know how much he has to shells out to each week to get it mowed.

Attention Ohio State government: We Have A Special Investment Opportunity Just For You!

2005-05-31T18:15:00.000-05:00

Here it is :

A mint condition 1982 "Lincoln Pot Head" penny. There are only 2 know to exist and we are willing to sell the proud State of Ohio a %10 share in ours for the special, low, low price of 50 Million Dollars!

Act now and we'll throw in half* this set of slightly dull but still usable Ginsu Knives for free!

* We would throw in the whole set, but we destroyed half of the knives in a carefully controlled experiment designed to determine who was more trustworthy: Ron Popeil or Fox News. Despite the fact that we broke half of the knives trying to saw through a sewer pipe and the other half didn't cut tomatoes very well new and that performance suffered significantly after we tried to sawed a nail in half with them, Ron still won by a wide margin.

The Baby Formula Of Terror!

2005-05-26T15:50:00.000-05:00

When we last checked in on Hezbollah, they were busy with their annual bake sale.

Today, via the LA Times, we learn that not only has Hezbollah come to our shores but they have already established a shadowy network of operatives who are busy creating a vast criminal empire in our own back yard!

What kind of criminal enterprise would a terrorist network like Hezbollah engage in you wonder? Is Hezbollah now selling Crack to our children in order to finace a nefarious war on our noble "War On Terror"? Are Hezbollah's shadowy operatives putting guns in the hands of the criminals who stalk our streets?

According to the article, the answer is "no". But just because our sons and daughters are still buying their Crack from respectable, hardworking, American dope fiends and the guns in the hands of our criminals are still all being purchased from redneck NRA members at gun shows is no reason to feel safe. There are more ways to mount a profitable criminal enterprise than just hustling crack rock and running guns! It should come as no surprise that a group like Hezbollah would engage in the most nefarious, most evil, most unamerican of enterprises in order to finance their "War on All Things Not Terror" and indeed they have. Right now, on the streets of our cities, agents on Hezbollah are trafficking in the most unholy of unholys : stolen baby formula!

That's right Hezbollah has swept into our major cities and, with the ruthless efficiency that only terrorist posses, has established a strangle hold on the lucrative hot baby formula market. But that's not all. According to the article:

Apparent involvement by alleged terrorists in the counterfeit goods trade also has caught the attention of the FBI, Treasury Department and Interpol, the global police agency, according to Matthew Levitt, a former FBI counterterrorism analyst.

Levitt told committee members that the best U.S. intelligence estimates showed Hezbollah received $20 million to $30 million a year from criminal fundraising activities in the United States. Its members are involved in stealing and reselling baby formula, food stamp fraud, grocery coupon scams, false welfare claims, credit card fraud and a wide array of counterfeiting operations, said Levitt, a frequent expert witness on Hezbollah for the Justice Department.

Dear god! Terrorist welfare cheats! Terrorist coupon scammers! Where does it end? How can America survive when terrorist can just roll up to the local grocery store in their brand new Cadillacs, double park in handicapped parking, and buy up all the beer, cigarettes, and t-bones with foodstamps and fake triple-discount coupons!?!

For the sake of our way of life, congress must act now to end welfare as we know it!

But is ending welfare for terrorist enough? According to our research, the answer is "no". Our sources tell us that terrorist agents are currently getting in the "10 items or less" line with 11 or more items. We have it on good authority that some of these terrorist even intend to try and pay with a check despite the fact that the "10 items or less" line is supposed to be cash only!

Despite the gravity of this situation, so far only one senator has stepped forward to menace this menace :

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee chairwoman, called on consumers to avoid buying counterfeit items even if there was only indirect evidence that terrorists were benefiting from the illicit trade.

We here at Grinding Metal Labs applaude Sen. Collins for having the bravery to ask Americans not to buy stolen and/or counterfeit goods from terrorist. As concerned citizens we are doing our part to amplify this meme: Please people, don't buy hot baby formula or counterfeit goods from swarthy terrorist types. If you have any doubt about your current dealer then please try to error on the side of safety. Find a dealer who's white and don't talk funny!

News and World Affairs: The French Suck! Plus, They Like Cheese!

2005-04-29T15:05:00.000-05:00

According to the "Current and World Affairs" display in my neighborhood Barnes & Noble, the French suck. Also news, when not engaged in sucking, the French like them some cheese.

As a matter of fact, the French suck so much that we are having trouble figuring out how can their pie holes could ever be unoccupied long enough to enjoy any of their much beloved cheese. Do they not actually eat the cheese? Are there other, nonconsumption based ways of enjoying cheese that we Americans are unaware of?

We do not know. We had questions, but no easy answeres. Being scientist (what, you thought we just had a lab for fun...), we did a quick but thorough empirical study of the Barnes & Noble "Current and World Affairs" display and learned something stunning. Books about "how much the French suck" out numbered books by Michael Savage to be a startling 3 to one.

We encourage everyone not to overreact to these findings. It is only one study, and has not yet been subject to a full peer review. Still, our calculations indicate that the French may actually suck three times as much as liberals do. This is mindboggling news and it raise many, many more questions.
Questions that need answers ... Questions like:

How is this possible? Did France use secret Nazi eugenics technology discovered after the war to turn their entire population into Nietzscheian Ubersuckers? Is France a country populated entirely by Jungian 'skin flute player' archetypes? Could every citizen of France somehow be a living embodyment of the Plato's Ideal dicksucker?

The mind boggles! Where will future research into these questions lead? We don't know.

The one thing we do know is that we will have no problem recruiting research assistants for our next study. The study is tentatively titled :

"A Clinical Survey of The French People's Sucking prowess"

Grinding Metal Labs will be putting in for NIS funding for this study as soon as we can polish up some of the language in our grant application. Speaking of which, anybody know of a better way to say

"Research aids will be responsible for get'n blown by as many smokin' French hotties as possible"

Grinding Metal Labs Exclusive: Bush Nominee Beats Underling. We Got Pictures!

2005-04-22T17:25:00.000-05:00

Yes that's right folks. Our crack team of investigators here at Grinding Metal Labs have unearthed a photo showing exactly why John Bolton should not be confirmed as Ambassador to the U.N.

Grinding Metal Labs : We Photoshop. You Decide.

The Shrinking Republican Majority.

2005-04-22T16:30:00.000-05:00

According to this article in the Times, President Bush is a bit peeved at all the partisan Democrats holding up his latest and greatest batshit crazy nominee.

We are speaking, of course, about Mr. Bush's current nominee for ambassador to the U.N., long time U.N. hater John Bolton.

According to the article :

In a speech in Washington on Thursday, Mr. Bush portrayed Democratic opposition to Mr. Bolton as politically driven, and urged the Senate to confirm the nomination.

The article then goes on to detail the objections that Colin Powell has to Bolton's nomination and explain why senators Lincoln Chafee, Chuck Hagel, and George V. Voinovich are holding up the nomination.

Now we here at Grinding Metal Labs try and keep up with things like this, but apparently we missed the announcement that Powell, Chafee, Hagel, and Voinovich had joined the democratic party. After doing some digging we were even more surprised to find out, via War and Piece, that senator Lugar has apparently also switched parties.

We would like to take the opportunity to welcome our new friend Powell, Chafee, Hagel, Voinovich, and Lugar to the big tent. Check your crazy at the door gentlemen and welcome to the party.

Heritage Foundation Done. Stick a Fork in Them.

2005-04-19T14:45:00.000-05:00

Via Chris Mooney and Mark Kleiman : The Heritage Foundation is now the first think tank to receive one of our prestigious Raving Fuck-tard awards.

Jesus Needs to Back Up...

2005-04-18T14:57:00.000-05:00

Well, apparently Bill Frist found Jesus on Friday. Now we here at Grinding Metal Labs have nothing at all against people finding Jesus, Budda, Elvis, or whoever really. We think it's a good thing when people get in touch with their spirituality and we don't blame Bill one bit for finding his through Jesus.

We are, however, a little disappointed with Jesus. Jesus has been in the soul saving business for what? A thousand years? Maybe two thousand? We can't remember the exact number. The point is Jesus has been in the soul saving game for a long time now and it seems a little unethical for him to be taking advantage of his new position as Bill's Lord-n-Savior to pursue what is clearly a personal agenda against the senate filibuster rule.

To be perfectly clear, we find Bill Frist to be completely blameless in all this. He is just a man trying to save his soul and can hardly be blamed for trying to keep his Lord-n-Savior happy.

Jesus, on the other hand, needs to back the fuck up. He's a soul saver not a senator. If he has a problem with the senate filibuster rule he should address it the same way any other US citizen has to when they want to change the way out government works: by successfully running for senator in his home state and then becoming majority leader. Only them will Jesus have earned the right to pee on our constitution the way that he is currently trying to do by proxy through poor Dr. Frist.

Pope Dies in Tragic Cage Match

2005-04-05T11:25:00.000-05:00

Well, "Pride 47 - Battle in the Habidashery" took an ugly turn this weekend when The Pope was unexpectedly killed by Nepal's King Gyanendra while competing in the evenings main event - the "Big Hat Smack Down".

The Pope and Nepal's King Gyanendra exchange blows early in round one.

Pride representatives expressed great sadness at the Popes passing, calling him a "true warrior with great stand up skills and an impressive ground game".

"Cage fighting has lost one of it's greatest hero's this evening." the president of Pride Fighting said when ask to comment.

After the match, King Gyanendra released a short statement expressing sadness for his opponents passing while making it clear that he looked forward to future matches with other famous hat wearers.

Grinding Metal - Your First Stop for Brain Dead Mates

2005-04-04T15:46:00.000-05:00

We at Grinding Metal Labs would like to thank everyone who took to the information super highway this weekend in search of "hot female teachers", "sex with brain dead woman", "grinding metal", and "gyanendra" and wound up here.

We are happy that each of you dropped by and we hope you come back soon. In the mean time, we promise to continue working diligently to keep our little square of netestate the same cynosure of weird you discovered during your busy weekend of porn hunting.

We Get Letters

2005-04-04T15:40:00.000-05:00

In comments, potential Nepal blogger nepalichoroo points out that :

u motherfucker son of girijaa...either u must be son of fucking girijaa or fucking madhav Nepal...

After much googling I can report that:

I am not the multi-armed pachyderm son of Shiva and his wife Girija (aka Parvati).

I am also not the son of the former Prime Minister of Nepal.

I have no personal gripes with King Gyanendra. I just think he has a bad ass hat and I love good hat joke.

I have nothing but the greatest respect for Nepal and it's people and I don't see why nepalichoroo can't show the same level of respect for the world's multi-armed pachyderm gods and the children of former Prime Minister Girija.

I shouldn't even need to point this out, but my mother and I have a completely non-oedipal relationship and it's a little rude to imply otherwise. Especially over something as trivial as a hat joke.

So dude, please, just put down the Ghurka Kukri and back away from the keyboard ... slowly. Ok?

The One Were We Try To Save Matt's Ass.

2005-03-30T13:10:00.000-06:00

Matthew Yglesias admits he is a little nervous about participating in an upcoming National Press Club panel on blogging. We are here to tell young Matt that he should not be nervous. He should be afraid. Very, very afraid.

A lot of very respectable bloggers have already pointed out that the panel is not representative of real bloggers and that the bloggers in who have been invited to the panel have questionable credentials. Both points are valid, but miss the bigger picture.

We don't know any other way to say this Matt, but you are being set up.

Step one was to announce a panel on blogging with a list of guests sure to annoy the left side of the blogosphear. Step two was to sit back and wait for the outrage. They didn't have to wait long. Step three was to pick up the phone and call one of the bright, young, shining stars of blogtopia.

"We screwed up Matt! It would be a huge help if you could show up to balance our panel."

the voice on the phone probably said.

When Matt hemmed and hawed about the panel members and how the topic wasn't really his thing, I'm sure the voice on the phone said something like:

"Come on Matt, more media exposure is always a good thing. It might open some new doors for your career..."

It doesn't really matter what they said though, the point is Matt agreed to show up.

Please Matt, think it through. People have already pointed out that the other bloggers on the panel are only experts on one thing: anal sex. We would like to make the perfectly obvious point that you do not need two experts in anal sex and one naive young blogger (that's you Matt) to hold a panel on Blogging and Journalism. You only need two experts on anal sex and a naive young blogger if you are shooting movies Matt.

Movies with titles like :

The Revenge Of Jim/Jeff - Gannon Invades the Liberal Left

We are pretty sure you don't want that kind of media exposure Matt.

We all know Wonkette can be pretty funny Matt, but only when she's providing color commentary about how someone else's unsuspecting ass was subject to invasion by America's most famous blogging, gay, republican, man-whore's little soldier.

So before you take a drink from that special bottle of water they hand in the panel green room. Before you start to feel strangely woozy. Before your GHB addled brain is struggling to figure out why one of your fellow panel members is wearing nothing but combat boots and a jock strap, take a moment to think all this through.

And for god's sake, trust your instincts.

You can thank us later.

Florida soon to be Floriduuuu

2005-03-28T15:07:00.000-06:00

No sooner do we call for nation wide testing of all state and local policy makers to make sure that they are truly stupid enough to really, really fuck up our future than we find out that Florida has already implemented just such a program for it's state legislators.

This brings us to our first ever Grinding Metal Labs contest:

Pick the state of Florida's new state motto!

Current entries are:

Florida - It's the new stupid!

Florida - We do our best to be petty, mean, and stupid but god still keeps smiting us with hurricanes every year.

If you are the lucky winner, Mad Science will preserve your living brain in liquid nitrogen until medical science reaches the point where your disembodied brain can be hooked to speakers and kept alive in a jar so that you can entertain future generations with your mirth.

Questioning Gravity

2005-03-28T15:00:00.000-06:00

Via Chris Mooney I see that the people who miss the dark ages are at it again.

WICHITA – Propelled by a polished strategy crafted by activists on America's political right, a battle is intensifying across the nation over how students are taught about the origins of life. Policymakers in 19 states are weighing proposals that question the science of evolution.

The article goes on to say that :

Polls show that a large majority of Americans believe God alone created man or had a guiding hand. Advocates invoke the First Amendment and say the current campaigns are partly about respect for those beliefs.

"It's an academic freedom proposal. What we would like to foment is a civil discussion about science. That falls right down the middle of the fairway of American pluralism," said the Discovery Institute's Stephen C. Meyer, who believes evolution alone cannot explain life's unfurling. "We are interested in seeing that spread state by state across the country."

So basically policy makers in 19 states are working to undermine the teaching of the theory of evolution in high schools out of respect for academic freedom and the right to free speech.

It's about time.

Oddly enough, policy makers in exactly zero states are weighing proposals that question the science of gravity. It is this lack of resolve to question a theory like gravity that is really troubling to us here at Grinding Metal Labs. If we think back, what most of us remember about our high school physics class is a year spent trying to protect our delicate preconceived notions from a barrage of Newtonian madness. A year where our only hope of survival lie in the scribbling of bizarre alchemical formulas across every piece of paper put in front of as we repeatedly promised the hearts of your future offspring to the dark gods of "partial credit".

Yes it was that bad and it always started with gravity; intractable word problems about falling weights and cannonballs and other such crap. But is there a significant value-add to be found in the so called scientific theory of gravity? Do high school students really need to learn all that math and all the mumbo jumbo about gravitational constants and mass just to remember that things fall down? Do they find any of it compelling? Is there a simpler theory of gravity that can serve us as well? Maybe something like :

God put things where he wants them.

Lets take a look at a typical word problem found in a typical high school physics textbook and use it to compare these two competing theories of gravity:

John is sitting in a tree with a his bowling ball reading his bible. Frank is under the tree reading Darwin's "The Origin of Species". If John is 5 meters above Frank what is the velocity of John's bowling ball when it strikes Frank's head?

If you want to be all rational about it and use the scientific theory of gravity you would have to do a lot of math:

Lets see, we can get time from the distance formula which is : distance = .5gt^2
where : distance = 5m and g = 9.8m/s^2
so : t = sqrt(5m/(.5 * 9.8m/s^2))
Doing a little math you get : t = 1.01 s
But we need velocity and thats given by : v = tg
Where : T = 1.01s and g = 9.8m/s^2
So : v = 1.01s * 9.8m/s^2
We find that the bowling ball strikes the unfortunate Darwinist's head at around 9.90 m/s.

That's a lot more math than your average Darwin averse policymakers or high school physics victim is going to be comfortable with. It also gives the answer in meters per second instead of a more Jesus friendly measure of velocity like "cubits per angle breath".

Now let's use our simplified theory of gravity to solve the same problem. It's simple:

John's richeous bowling ball strike the filthy Darwinist's head with the speed of nonbeliever head smiteingness regardless of the hight from which the bowling ball was dropped.

Much simpler. But are the results accurate?
In a word "Yes". Both theories accurately describe outcome of our little experiment :

Frank's head is mulch

Therefor there is no reason not to choose the simpler of the two theories.
Now I am sure that there is some jerk out there who will want to counter with something along the lines of

This is preposterous! You couldn't put a man on the moon using a "God puts things where he wants them" in place of the theory of gravity!

But that my friends is what we in the blogging biz call a "straw man". Putting a man on the moon is "rocket science" and we are not talking about "rocket science" here. We are talking about high school physics and there are no rockets in high school physics; just ball bearings, ramps, pulleys, and the occasional mouse-trap strapped to a skateboard.

Policy makers is 19 states are in the process of taking a bold step. They are committed to moving us away from a cold, calculating culture of reality and towards a warm, happy, culture of ignorance. They should be applauded for this but, at the same time, they should be chastised. Ignorance is not something you do half assed. No one wants their children to be half ignorant but, that is exactly the path we are on! Eliminating the teaching of the theory of evolution while continuing to allow teaching of theories like gravity will leave our children in a dangerous state of partial ignorance, unable to compete in the emerging market of global stupidity!

That is why we at Grinding Metal Labs are demanding the establishment of a Federal Stupidity Test for all state and local policy makers. We go out of our way to elect the truly stupid to important positions on our school boards and in our state legislatures so that they can destroy our children's future but, even with the help of hardworking engines of ignorance like the Discovery Institute our public policy makers are moving too slow. This is because years of freely available public school education has produced a generation of relatively unignorant adults poorly suited to guide us back to the comfortable darkness of the middle ages. For the sake of our children we need a federally mandated program to identify the truly ignorant among us and put them in charge of all policy making.

We Join the Big Fake Debate over Mrs Schiavo's Poor Dead Brain

2005-03-25T15:00:00.000-06:00

We here at Grinding Metal Labs tried really hard to stay the hell away from the whole Schiavo fake debate thing. But the right-to-a-brain-dead-life crowd has brought so many fake experts in to lie about the state of Mrs. Schiavo's brain that even folks who generally lie for a living are starting to complain.

Unfortunately the right-to-live-and-die-in-a-republic crowd continues to believe this is a real debate over a real issue and they keep sending real, serious judges and doctors and other qualified heath professionals to make their boring relevant points.

It's a travesty. Everyone know you can't have a real fake debate about a fake issue unless both sides are willing to provide fake experts on the fake subject.

Since the rest of the reality based community continues to treat this like a real debate where real facts matter , we here at Grinding Metal Labs are now forced to wade into the fray with our own fake medical expert held high; hoping against hope that we can restore some balance to the big fat fake debate about the state Terri Schiavo's poor dead brain.

So we present Grinding Metal Labs own fake medical expert: Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy of the Starship Enterprise *:

Kirk : Bones! What's ... wrong ... with her?
McCoy : She's brain dead Jim!
Kirk : Good god Bones you have to ... do ... something ... for her!
McCoy : Dammit Jim I'm a doctor not a miracle worker. Medical Science can't cure a dead brain.
Kirk : But ... Bones, what about ... Spock's Brain? You ... fixed ... that.
McCoy : That was different Jim. Spock's brain wasn't dead in that episode. All I had to do was put it back in his head.
Kirk : Wait! Bones ... what about ... Captain Pike? His brain was ... dead but ... we got him that ... cool chair and ... then the Talosians...
McCoy : God Dammit Jim! Pike's brain wasn't dead. His body was. That's point of the damned episode.
Kirk : I'm ... not ... following you ... Bones.
McCoy : (sigh) Spock took over the Enterprise and took Pike back to the Talosians because it was the only way to free Pike's brain from the cage that his body had become. Get it? Body? Cage? Just like the name of the fucking episode!
Kirk : But ... But Bones ... we're talking about ... a ... culture of ... life ... if we can't save ... Terri ... the what ... happens ...to the ... helpless ... victims of ... abortion?
McCoy : I have no idea what your talking about Jim. What the hell does a brain dead woman have to do with abortion?
Kirk : But Bones ... she's a woman and ... we're on a ... strange new world ... and ...
McCoy : Oh please god no! Jim please tell me that you did not have sex with this woman. She's in a persistent vegetative state for gods sakes!
Kirk : .... uhhhhhhh ...
McCoy : You are such a fucking moron Jim.
Kirk : No ... Bones, wait. What if ... she's not ... really ... brain dead? What if ... they just ... didn't ... use the right ... test? What if they ... didn't ... test her ... with this balloon?
McCoy : Jim, when I called you a fucking moron I had no idea how much I was insulting the actual fucking morons of the universe...
Kirk : Terri ... Look ... at ... the ... balloon ...
McCoy : ... because even a moron's has a measurable IQ ...
Kirk : Bones! Did ... you see ...it? She ... looked at ... the ... balloon! Goood Terri Goood.
McCoy : God Dammit Jim I've run every test know to medical science. Do you think I just wave the fucking triquarter around for fun? Look. Look right hear on the tiny little screen. What does it say?"
Kirk : B ... b ... b brain Dead ... But ... Bones ... The balloon ...
McCoy : That's it. I can't take this any more. I quit! Fuck the five year mission ... I'm going back to M-113! Being eaten by a salt monster is more dignified that this!

* Unfortunately Dr McCoy is contractually obliged to appear accompanied by Captain Kirk. We are sorry for any confusion that Kirk brings to the debate.

I would like to thank the acadamy and all the little people who I crushed to get here...

2005-03-08T17:50:00.000-06:00

I did my first stint as a guest blogger over at Humid Cedar's today.

It was fun. Big thanks to Humid Cedar for letting me do it.

If you're all very, very lucky, I might start blogging each weeks Ultimate Fighter episode. If your lucky.

Freedom is on the ... Ohhh Cookies!

2005-03-08T14:41:00.000-06:00

For weeks, freedom was on the march in Lebanon as 10s of thousands on people took to the streets to demonstrate against the Syrian backed government.

But then the Hezbollah held their yearly Support Your Local Terrorist bake sale and freedom had to stop marching on account of there suddenly being way more people looking to buy Hezbollah's famous "Terror Cookies" than there were people in line for the "Freedom Fries".

Hezbollah's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, attributed the bake sale's freedom crushing success to his mother's secret "Terror Cookie" recipe.

"It's no surprise at all. People love mom's Terror cookies. We can't bake enough
of them!" the sheik said proudly.

Raving Fuck-tard Awards : HumidCedar Zero - Tom Delay One Bazillion

2005-03-04T17:25:00.000-06:00

Our good friend HumidCedar suggests in the comments that he is "the perfect candidate" for a prestigious Raving Fuck-tard award. We here at Grinding Metal Labs would happily present HumidCedar with a Raving Fuck-tard were it not for the many, many technical violations that stand in his was.

Of all the reasons why we can not, at this time, legitimately award a Raving Fuck-tard to HumidCedar, the most notable is that we have known HumidCedar since we were 10 and we can honestly say that he has never in his life been a "dishonest boil on the backside of the public debate".

Tom Delay (via The Poor Man), on the other hand, receives for one bazillion (that's a one followed by six more zeros than actually exist, for any math illiterates out there) for Raving Fuck-tardssaying this :

"I hope the Supreme Court will finally read the Constitution and see there's no such thing, or no mention, of separation of church and state in the Constitution,"

Please note that we are not giving Mr. Delay all these Raving Fuck-tards because he likes to insist in public that there is no such thing as the first amendment; that's just Tom being Tom after all.

We are giving Mr. Delay a bazillion Raving Fuck-tard awards because Tom Delay telling anyone that they need to educate themselves about the actual workings of our republic is like my dog telling me that I need to learn some more Perl. And that's just to much for anyone to take.

Nothing To See Here - Move Along

2005-03-04T14:57:00.000-06:00

I have to apologies to all the poor saps out there diligently googling for information about crappy Lee Majors TV shows and non Butt-Monkey related info about Stephen J. Hadley only stumble onto my wonky analysis of our new National Security Advisor's past performance. Sometimes google just steers you horribly horribly wrong.

The One Where I Give Fox New Credit for Journalistic Restraint...

2005-03-04T14:55:00.000-06:00

In the comments the Notorious MJT fills in all the missing detail about the whole Fox-New-statutory-rape-hot-blond-in-bikini-MadScience-falls-off-exercise-bike story.

While it could be said that Notorious MJT knows far to many details about hot female teachers who have been caught having sex with their male students, we here at Grinding Metal Labs are going to let it pass with just a simple

"Dude, you know way to much about hot female teachers who have been caught having sex with their male students!"

because this post isn't really about deciding weather my good friend Notorious MJT is a bit of a perv or not. It's about me sucking it up and giving credit where credit is due and today, sadly, the credit goes to Fox News.

As Notorious MJT explains in the comments :

Apparently, the picture of the hot blond on the motorcycle was a photo of one of the teachers they were discusssing. Pamela Rogers Turner, 27 years old, accused of having sex with 13 year old "star-athlete" student, back in her college days was named Miss Monday Nitro on a 1997 World Championship Wrestling television show. (This gets better all the time, doesn't it?)

To which I say :

Wow, A school district hired Miss Monday Night Nitro 1997. No offense to the fans of fake wrestling or anything, but that sounds a little trashy. Since the proxy here at work blocks my access to the NitroGirls home page I might even go so far as call it "slutty".

If I'm willing to call the pinup girls of fake wrestling "slutty" and say that maybe the school district should to hire a better class of bikini models to educate our children, then you know that Brit Hume was prepared to go on the air and say :

"Tonight on Fox News we take a fair and balance look as why democrats in the Department of Education are forcing school districts across the county to hire whores. More at 9:00."

But despite all Brit's begging and pleading, the producers at fox canned that story and settled for randomly displaying graphics of a bikini clad Miss Monday Nite Nitro 1997 each time the covered the Hot-Female-Teachers-Who-Have-Sex-With-Their-Male-Students story.

Given that it's Fox News we are talking about, I call that an extraordinary display of Journalistic restraint and I applaud them for it. All you people in hell
should now form one line to the left to pick up your ice cubes.

Surprisingly, I Remain the Only One on the Internet to Ever Call Stephen J Hadley a Butt-Monkey!

2005-03-04T12:05:00.000-06:00

At least according to Google. I am so proud but, at the same time, disappointed.

I'm proud because a google ranking like this show that I am operating on the bleeding edge of our political discourse. Swept up in the dishonesty fueled madness of our widening gyre, circling with those lost falcons of the crumbling American dream and calling, calling out that I have seen the morning-star on the horizon and that by it's pale light a rough beast is slouching toward that Bethlehem where the last of our better angels huddle so unprepared...

It makes me feel like my hero, Hunter S. Thompson, only less stoned.

But I'm disappointed because I started this blog in the hope of playing the role of meme slayer. Yes I had hoped that I could harness the awesome power of the six people who read this blog and turn that power into a mighty engine of meme crushing destruction. But clearly I have failed here because I remain, after five months, the only person on the internet who has ever called Stephen J. Hadley a Butt-Monkey!

For this I have no one to blame but you, the reader. Would it have killed any of you to occasionally wander by the office water cooler and whisper into a few co-workers ears

"Dude, Stephen J. Hadley, butt-monkey. Think about it."?

Is a brief scholarly article ,published in a wonky influential political journal, explaining the colossal butt-monkeyness of our national security adviser to much too ask? Are a few letters to the editor out of the question here? Come on people.

Where is the love,
Where is the love,
Where is the love?

Screw The Koufaxes. We Give Our Own Awards.

2005-03-01T04:41:00.000-06:00

As some of you may have heard, I nominated this blog for a prestigious Koufax award only to have my hopes and dreams cruelly crushed when I was informed that there was no Koufax for "Best New Blog With a Readership of Less Than 6".

So fuck'em. I'm starting my own awards. Today Grinding-Metal Labs is proud to present the first of the its prestigious Raving Fuck-tard awards.

I'm sure some of you out there are already saying to yourselves:

"Wow! A Raving Fuck-tard. That does sound prestigious. I wounder what I have to do to be considered for such an honor?

Well, it's not as easy as you might think.

First off you need to actually say something so stupid that it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are a Raving Fuck-tard. Since there is no shortage of that going around, your outburst of fuck-tardedness also needs to make the judge want to hit you for being a poisonous and dishonest boil on the backside of the public debate.

Since that criteria alone would leave me far to busy handing out idiot awards, you also need to have made your outburst of stupidity in a major media outlet or in a forum that has been recognized by a major media outlet as something like ... say Blog of the Fucking Year.

Now some of you out there are probably already thinking :

"Cool! All I have to do is win Time's Blog of the year award and then call Jimmy Carter a traitor and I can win me a prestigious Raving Fuck-tard award.

But you would be wrong. If the staff here at Grinding-Metal Labs had to give an award to each and every one trick pony media player who makes a living calling everyone to the left of Mussolini a "traitorous bastards only slightly less deserving of mercy then the Nazis", then we would simply never have time to do anything else.

So to earn a prestigious Raving Fuck-tard award you must do more than just vilify librals; you must show a shameless willingness to front for the truly stupid. Needless to say that is just what our first Raving Fuck-tard award winner Hindrocket has done by posting this.

The post is about some talk radio show that ask people to comment on that Texas Tech biology prof who has a policy of only writing letters of recommendations for good students, who the prof knows, and who have not utterly and completely missed the fucking point of their biology education. To put put it as the well meaning prof does :

If you set up an appointment to discuss the writing of a letter of recommendation, I will ask you: "How do you account for the scientific origin of the human species?" If you will not give a scientific answer to this question, then you should not seek my recommendation.

One of the shows guests, Professor Volokh of the Volokh Conspiracy, weighed in with an analysis that was stupid, but not nearly stupid enough for Hindrocket. To quote Hindrocket:

Professor Volokh seemed to assume that someone who doesn't believe in evolution is a harmless crank, who should not on that account be barred from pursuing a career in, say, medicine.

Let me start off by saying that no one believes in a scientific theory and no one disbelieves a scientific theory. You argree or you disagree with theories. You believe at a more basic level. You believe that there is an undetectable, all seeing all, knowing god or you don't. You believe that the world around you can be understood through the rigorous application of the scientific method or you don't. You believe in what there is no ability to test. Where observation is impossible you rely on faith. We can not test the existance of a god any more than we can test that the world we experience is the world that actualy exists. Most of us take it on faith that there is a god and that what we experience is an acurate representation of our enviroment. And that's just fine. What's not fine is acting like you can believe or not believe in a particular scientific theory. That's just crap. Theories, even historic ones like Darwinisum, are constructed based on rigourus observation and test. They have shown a predictive value and have withstood the test of time and may, may minds. You are, of course, free to disagree with any scientific theory you like so long as you have a scientific reason for your disagreement. If, on the other hand, if you have a non-rational reason for disagreeing with a scientific theory, like "the bible says god created the world in six days" then you need to accept the fact that you are not participating in a scientific debate on this subject. Your free to crib from Corenthians and lob the standard "we see through a glass darkly" grenades but, if your going to be honest, that applies to your ideas as much as it does to the ideas you are trying to argue against and you should really just shut the fuck up because everyone who does real science already understands that we all look through tinted lenses.

So Hindrocket is an ass for propagating the "poor poor shat upon people who don't belive in evolution" meme as if such people deserve some sort of rationality hall pass so they can practice in the field of medicine and still expouse an non-rational disagreement with an important theory that impacts their field. Fucker.

Anyhoo, Hindrocket seems to be trying to say that Professor Volokh does not think that people who want to practice medicine (a science) should be penalized for being unable to answer a pretty simple scientific question (the origin of the human species). Had Hindrocket's post stopped right here, I would have considered this stupidity enough to jointly award Hindrocket and Prof Volokh the first ever Raving Fuck-tard award.

Yes, Prof Volokh could have had a Raving Fuck-tard award of his very own, but Hindrocket went on and really uped the ante:

My own view is different. I think that Darwin's theory of macroevolution is plainly wrong, on strictly scientific grounds. So to bar a student from progressing in his career because he refuses to sign on to what is, in my view, a rather obvious fraud, which cannot withstand the mildest scrutiny, is really an outrage. It is no different from the practice in Soviet Russia of promoting only biologists who believed (or pretended to believe) in the theories of Lamarck, who argued that acquired traits could be inherited. But Darwinism is the official religion of the biological (and more generally, the scientific) establishment, and as such is rigorously enforced.

Please note that Hindrocket gives absolutly no evidence to support his "Darwin's theory of macroevolution is plainly wrong, on strictly scientific grounds" statement. He just says that's what he thinks. If I were being a stickler for details I would say that in real science, people who show up without thier bibliography and a compelling data set are generaly eaten alive. But according to Hindrocket, theres no such thing as real science any more since the scientist are busy promoting the new religion of Darwinisum. With all the scientist busy lighting candles and trying on their new robes, wing-nut bloggers with no scientific credentials have had to step in and start handling the science. If I'm reading Hindrocket correctly, the new wing-nut science has streamed-line the scientific method down to "I said it on my blog so its true!" which should make all the people over at the Discovery Institute happy.

Let me just stop here for a minuet and say "I am so fucking annoyed." But this isn't about me, it's about recognising Hindrocket as the raving fuck-tard he is, so back to the show...

So the next logical question for Hindrocket is :

"why are all these scientist and other commie types promoting the new religion of Darwinism? What do they hope to gain?"

Hindrocket is happy to tell us that :

...discrimination against Christians, observant Jews and conservatives is much more prevalent in our society than race or sex discrimination...

Yes folks that's right, the scientist are all busy being The Man. And what does The Man do? The Man keeps the brothers down! By "brothers" Hindrocket mean Christians, observant Jews, and wing-nuts with law degrees. Apparently you can't sing the blues until you're a been a wing-nut lawyer with a lilly white ass who's written for the The National Review like Hindrocket has.

So what's a brother like Hindrocket got to do when he can't take The Man keeping him down anymore? We all know there's only one thing a brother can do in that situation : rise up and smash the machine!

But how do you smash a Juggernaut like Darwinism? By quoting Popper of course :

Karl Popper argued long ago that Darwin's theory of evolution was never a matter of science; it was always about faith.

Oh. Wait, that's not actually a quote. Is it? Well I'm sure Hindrocket would have quoted Popper if Popper had actually said anything like that but since Popper was such a a-hole, Hindrocket had to go and make something up that sounded good. But that's ok because it's the new wing-nut science and Hindrocket wrote it in the "Blog of the Fucking Year".

So, for misrepresenting science, misrepresenting the hard working men and women who practice science on a daily basis, misrepresenting the scientific communities consensus on Darwinism without any data to back his ass up, lying, playing the victim, blaming liberals, and just being an idiot we proudly present Hindrocket of Power Line with the first ever Raving Fuck-tard award.

Fox News: Now With Pin-Ups

2005-02-24T14:31:00.000-06:00

So I'm sitting on an exercises bike in the gym where I work and Fox News is doing a segment on this story.

Mr. Perfect-Hair news guy is interviewing the prosecutor of a 32 year old married female teacher who was caught having sex in her car with a 16 year old male student. It's all very serious and somber as the prosecutor explains that :

Yes, Mr. Perfect-Hair, A hot female teacher having sex with a male minor really is illegal even thought Van-Halen wrote a totally bitchen song about banging your English teacher.

The whole segment is very somber and then Fox News decided to suddenly put up a graphic of a ... wait for it ... a hot blond in a bikini straddling a motorcycle.

Mr Perfect Hair News guy and the prosecutor just keep right on talking about the case as I sit there wondering :

"Why I am listing to a story about statutory rape while staring at a hot blond in a bikini. Is this a picture of the alleged statutory rapist? Is it the only picture of the alleged statutory rapist that Fox News could find? Did the alleged statutory rapist have a part time job as an bikini model?"

A few seconds latter the hot blond in the bikini is replaced by the pockmarked and hairy face of the prosecutor. The switch is so jarring that I cry out in shock and fall off the exercise bike clutching my at eyes. When I pick myself up, Mr. Perfect-Hair news guy and the Prosecutor are still droning on about the hidden evils of "Hot For Teacher" and acting like the whole 'hot blond in bikini straddling motorcycle' thing never happened.

At no point is the hot blond straddling a motorcycle image ever explained.

It's what the lawyers don't tell you that's important.

2005-02-23T14:30:00.000-06:00

In the comments, HumidCedar swears he never encouraged anyone to take any pills.

From my own personal experience I can tell you this is true. HumidCedar never told me to take any pills, however I distinctly remember him telling me:

"As you attorney, I advise you to drive as fast as possible".

It all went down hill from there and when things turned brutaly ugly; HumidCedar disappeared. Leaving me holding the bag. Nothing to show for it but a trunk full of grapefruit, a huge pile of soap, a semi-conscience hotel maid, a bag full of hunting knives, a room service bill I couldn't pay, and a lingering fear that I was witnessing the death of the American dream ...

I barely made it out alive.

Our Hero is Dead

2005-02-21T09:29:00.000-06:00

I am saddened to report that this blog's "greatest living influence" has gone and blown his brains out and now must be reclassified as this blog's "greatest dead influence".

It's times like these, when our heroes stumble and shoot themselves in the head, that remind us why we must keep the faith. That show us in no uncertain terms why we must continue to pour gasoline on every fire we can find, why we must spike the koolaid with high power blotter acid at every AEI event we can possible sneak into, and why we all desperately need a Vincent Black Shadow.

Out of reverence for my fallen hero let me point out that:

Micheal Behe is an lying pig fucker who hates your children and wants to see them kept ignorant and poor.

John Negroponte is a giant, soulless, nun eating lizard with cold black eyes, claws that drip a vile green caustic poison, and a forked tongue. Befor any more innocent nuns have to die, we as a nation should put him in a cage and let all the catholics poke at him with sharp sticks for fun.

Now someone fetch me a bottle of tequila and a gun. I'm gonna go find Brit Hume and force him to mow my lawn.

Stop me if you've heard this one before ...

2005-02-01T17:56:00.000-06:00

Question: How deep do you have to dig to find a prominent democrat that supports the Presidents Social Security ~~privatization~~ ~~private accounts~~ personal accounts plan?

Answer: About six feet strait down. But ever then you have some problems: like the fact that the dude is dead. Finite. Taking the big dirt nap. Kicked the bucket. Kaput. Done.

Then of course there is the family of the dear departed Senator Moynihan who don't seem to be to happy about the the way the Bush administration is parading their dear old dead dad around :

"It's confusing to me and my mom why they are constantly invoking him without presenting his position on Social Security," said Maura Moynihan, the senator's daughter, referring as well to his widow, Elizabeth.

Reached for further comment, Maura added:

"Honestly, how would you feel if someone dug up your dead father, stuck a stick up his ass and started wheeling him into press conferences like some sick ventriloquist's dummy?

The President is a really crappy ventriloquist Too! He make dad sound all wimpy and gay, and you can totally see his lips move whenever he makes it look like dad is talking! The whole thing is insulting!

King Gyanendra to Pope: "Fuck you and your stupid hat!"

2005-02-01T17:38:00.000-06:00

In a premptive strike against his arch-hat-wearing-enemy the pope, King Gyanendra dissmissed the goverment of Nepal and declared a state of "Uber-Hat -Readyness".

Reached for comment the pope said :

"You and your girly-man hat are going down Gyanendra! This time I'm sending you back to the haberdashery for good Beatch!

Willian Safire: Broken Hearted Clocker

2005-02-01T16:11:00.000-06:00

I think I know why Safire is retiring : He's got a broken heart.

Think about it. Week after week there's Safire thanklessly slingin' neocon crack rock from that cold and lonely desk at the New York Times. No one but Pretty Boy Brooks to back him up should Bruiser Krugman and Lil' Maureen Dowd ever decide to roll by and bust-a-cap. Nothing but a lowly clocker hustling in the cold 24x7.

Then he finds out that the administration has been paying commentators to move oozies out of their cush media gigs while he's been slingin' rock for free! What's a lowly clocker to do like Safire to do. Years of hustling for free while those other bums were getting paid. That's the kind of cold slap in the face that will break a clockers heart.

Poor Safire, you'll be missed. No one ever slung that neocon crack rock like you did.

Tanned, Rested, and Almost Married...

2005-02-01T14:55:00.000-06:00

People listen. News of my abduction by aliens has been greatly exaggerated.

M. and I's impending wedding is now fully planned and financed. I would like to
take this opportunity to personally thank each and every one of you who responded to my 'HEALP I AM A NIGERIA FINANCE MINISTER TRAPPED IN THIS EMAIL PLEASE SEND YOUR BANKING INFO TO RECIEVE MANY MANY MILLIONS!!!" email; thanks to your genrourous lack of net savvy ours will be a beautiful wedding indeed.

In other news: We've decided to hyphenate. In 2 weeks I will need you all to start referring to me as Mad Ramirez-Science.

Now its back to that special sound of metal grinding against metal that is such an anodyne to all of you.

I'm Funny Damn It and I Have the Link to Prove It!

2004-12-10T17:28:00.000-06:00

The wise and trustworthyA says I'm funny!

Little Black Dog

2004-11-19T11:41:00.000-06:00

When I meet my fiance M. at a happy hour a few years ago the thing we talked about was our dogs. She had a little black cocker spaniel that she had gotten as a puppy. I had a big ridge-back/husky cross that I had gotten as a puppy. We went on for hours about our dogs, and it was on the strength of that conversation that I got her number and arranged a first date.

We owe the dogs a lot. She's had Onyx for 15 years and C'Bears been with me for 13. Beyond their companionship and their unwavering devotion, they have provided protection, solace, and more than a few laughs.

When some jerk's freakishly large pit-bull slipped it's leash and charged M., Onyx, and C'Bear, C'Bear calmly stepped between the rushing beast and M. and Onyx. She took the hit and stayed in the fight until the jerk got control of his dog. When the pit-bull was gone C'Bear calmly whet back to watching over M. and Onyx unit I got there.

M. calls C'Bear 'The Protector' because of the way she watches over us. I call Onyx "The Little Black Dog" but M. calls her "Genius Dog" and that's the better description. M. taught Onyx to do everthing she could think of. Onyx will pick up objects on command, carry her blanket from room to room, open cabinets for us, and fetch her leash for us. Since she's been loosing her hearing for the last couple of years, M. taught her sign language for all her tricks. When we gave the dogs puzzle cubes for X-Mass one year (you put treats in the cube, put the cube on the floor, watch the dog learn to roll the cube around until they get a treat) Onyx immediately began flipping the cube over with her nose snarfing down treats as she went. C'Bear, on the other hand, lay down with the cube, clutched it tightly between her front paws, and began to slowly and methodical destroy the " indestructible" cube to get to the treats. Intellectual finesse juxtaposed against Alexandrian directness is how I describe that X-mass morning.

I guess I should mention here that as a younger dog Onyx suffered some abuse at the hands a stranger and a couple of bad dogs. It's a long story with a short summery: Onyx won't interact socially any dog other than C'Bear. Even though they have lived together for a year, Onyx still won't play with C'Bear and faced with any dog other than C'Bear Onyx simply pretends the other dog isn't there.

A month ago Onyx started to limp a little. Luckily we took her in instead of just thinking "She's an old dog and she's probably just a little sore." The vet did some x-rays and we got the bad news: the limp was caused by a form on cancer, an osteosarcoma growing on Onyx's right femur.

And just like that we found ourselves in a place where we couldn't be Onyx's protector any more. The thing she needs protection from is out of our hands.

Onyx is on an operating table right now and when we see her again she'll be missing a leg. The fact that amputation was our only option didn't make the choice much easier.

M. is at home cleaning like a madwoman and trying not to worry. I wish I was in the gym doing bag-work or on the mat wrestling so I could be thinking about moves instead of worrying about our 'little black dog', but my job today is to be the one who sits by the phone and waits and worries and hears the good or the bad news and carries it back to M.

Waiting and worrying about the woman I love and the little black dog we both love, I'm struck by the irony of how we pretend to be strong for the ones we love at times like this, times when strength means nothing at all....

And before I can even post we have good news: our little black dog came though her surgery just fine. We'll see her in a couple of hours and take her home sometime tomorrow. Our little black three-legged genius dog.

Damn You Maureen Dowd! Damn You!

2004-11-18T09:46:00.000-06:00

Normally I have no use for Maureen Dowd. I find her semi-coherent screeds tiresome and, lets face it, my own semi-coherent screeds are far more entertaining ('butt-monkey' hee hee).

But this is the last straw. In her NYT column today, not only is she coasting on the coattails of my own brilliant work (the aforementioned Butt-Monkey piece - scroll down), she also lays claim to a phrase I really wanted for my own :

... crusted-nut-bar Dick Cheney ...

It's Brilliant. Damn Her! Damn Her to HELL!!!!

National Security Advisor / Butt-Monkey

2004-11-17T16:20:00.000-06:00

So I am sitting at my Starbucks this morning looking over the dead tree version
of the New York Times when I come across this article explaining that Stephen J. Hadley is getting a promotion because he's 'loyal'.

"Loyal how ?" you ask. "Loyal like a dog maybe ?"

Uhm... No. It's more like 'Stockholm Syndrome loyal'.

You see when the USA channel cranks out "Triumph of the Bat-Shit Crazies : Round II, The Man-Date" they are going to have to get Lee Majors to play Hadley because:

Perhaps the lowest moment for Stephen J. Hadley in the first administration of George W. Bush came in July last year when he publicly took the blame for including in the president's State of the Union address a discredited intelligence report that said Iraq had sought uranium from Africa.

"The high standards the president set were not met," Mr. Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, told reporters in a rare on-the-record session in the Roosevelt Room across from the Oval Office.

It was an extraordinary and embarrassing moment in public view for the ultimate
behind-the-scenes foreign policy adviser. But it illustrated what friends and colleagues say is an important trait of Mr. Hadley: loyalty.

That's right, Hadley was the 'Fall Guy'. In July of 2003 he stood up before the whole world and said :

"I'm an incompetent boob! Sorry."

Now it goes with out saying that the Fall Guy is usually taking responsibility so that someone higher up doesn't have too; that's why they call them the 'Fall Guys'. In
this I am sure that Hadley is no exception. But there are certain important rituals that are traditionally observed when a public servant like Hadley takes 'The Fall':

The 'Fall Guy' publicly takes responsibility for his actions.

The 'Fall Guy' ask for forgiveness from his superiors and the public.

The 'Fall Guy' turns in his resignation and walks away from public service.

Steps 1 and 2 are nice, but step 3 is where the the piper gets paid. Also, after step 3 is compleated the little people get to say:

"Well it's good to see that our goverment is still acountable too us. Is CSI on yet?"

Step 3 is also where the 'Fall Guy' gets to keep some of his dignity. If you skip step three then the piper does not get paid and you do not exit as a noble but flawed public servant taking responsibility for failing the people you serve. No, if you skip step 3 you just get to be someones butt-monkey. Only a butt-monkey would publicly sacrifice their reputation and their dignity to protect a higher up and then hang around waiting for a reward to fall from the same alter whence they were offered up.

Steven J Hadley skipped step 3 ergo Steven J Hadley is a butt-monkey. [Ed. Readers may substitute 'exhibits classic symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome' for 'is a butt-monkey' in this analysis.] Also, the piper is threatening to turn the bill over for collection.

Anyway, the Butt-Monkey is getting promoted. According to the article :

President Bush said that Stephen Hadley was a "man of wisdom and good judgment" who "has earned my trust."

In a sane world, the Times would just stop right here and say "What a load of crap!" because it is a load of crap. In a sane world a incompetent boob does not get to hang around after letting the president make a significant mistake in the state of the union address, much less get a glowing complement and a promotion from the president a couple of years later.

What has Hadley done to earn the presidents trust?

Mr. Hadley wrote an opinion piece for USA Today in June 2004 arguing that the administration had been right before the war to link Al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq, a claim largely rejected by the commission studying the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

The piece is here and it is pretty hactacular, but it's nothing that the administration doesn't get for free from Safire every week. What else has Hadley done in the trust earning dept?

...he (Hadley) led the National Security Council's planning for postwar Iraq, which has turned out to be deadlier and far more difficult than anticipated.

Ok, that's it, I give up. Hadley's a incompetent boob. He's becoming our new National Security Adviser because he's been a loyal butt-monkey. National Security Adviser is an important position and I, personaly, would like to see a higher primate who still has some of their dignity left filling the role.

How You Gonna Come ...

2004-11-15T14:58:00.000-06:00

Via every-where : I see that the Bush admin has finally begun a purge of one of the last great hotbeds of liberalism. No, not the State Department. State is where we are keeping the Panda Huggers. According to this very serious piece of reporting, the librals are all hanging out at the CIA:

"The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House," said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House. "Goss was given instructions ... to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president's agenda."

Since you know that every one of those long-haired, chronic loving, mac daddy, hipsters in the Clandestine Services department has it memorized, I'm recommending that all of them dial up Clash's classic The Guns of Brixton on their IPOD and crank it up!

A CNN broadcast that featured video of a bunch of hardened spooks wearing their ties like headbands and dancing like fools as they sing

"When they kick at your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun"

at the top of their lungs would do nothing to sway the administration. But a few people in middle-America watching CNN with the sound turned down might see it and think:

"Wow! Those white guys in suits sure are bad dancers! What the hell is this? One of those bad German music videos? Why is it on CNN? Turn up the volume Ethyl. What The Fuck! Those guys are all CIA agents and their rocking out to the Clash in protest to the Bush administration calling the CIA 'a hotbed of librals'!?! Damned! That is whack! What fool would believe that the CIA is full of pansy ass librals? My uncle Fred was in the CIA and he's no pansy assed liberal. He once killed 3 heavely armed KGB Agents with nothing but a pair of nail clippers! You know Ethyl, I'm no East Coast libral elite but it seems clear to me that this debate can not be framed as a traditional libral vs. conservitive divide. I think we need to reframe thie debate in the more acurate terms of 'Bat-Shit Crazy vs sane' and I really wish the media would start phraseing it that way.

OK, it probably wouldn't happen exactly like that but you get the picture.

This represents an golden opportunity to reframe the debate in terms that would let the sane compete. So if anyone at the CIA is reading this and you don't want to just go quietly with your hands on your head, then put down your IPOD for a minuet, fix your tie, and let me give you some advice by way of Arlo Guthrie:

If one CIA agent, just one CIA Agent appears on CNN wearing his tie like a headband, dancing like a fool and singing "The Guns of Brixton" the viewers will think he's really sick and they won't pay any attention to him. And
if two CIA agents, two CIA agents appear on CNN wearing their ties like a headbands, dancing like a fools, and singing "The Guns of Brixton" in harmony, the viewers will think they're both faggots and they'll change the channel to Fox News.
But if three CIA agents appear on CNN wearing their ties like a headbands, dancing like a fools and singing "The Guns of Brixton" in harmony, three, can you imagine, three CIA agents appearing on CNN wearing their ties like a headbands,
dancing like a fools and singing "The Guns of Brixton" in harmony. The viewers
will think it's an organization and they'll tell all their friends they saw it.But can you, can you imagine fifty CIA agents appearing on CNN wearing their ties like a headbands, dancing like a fools and singing "The Guns of Brixton" in
harmony? The media and the viewers would thinks it's a movement. And thats what we need: 'The CIA Guns of Brixton Anti-Bat-shit-Crazies' Movement!

All I'm asking for is 50 CIA agents who can kind of keep a beat, an IPOD, and someone who knows how to call a press conference.

Go!