The Pleasures of Romanian Tabloid Photography

From here.

Phil Spector's Hair

That is all.

The Slathering of Eggos

This whole "Gathering of Eagles" thing reminds me of a seminar I went to on Bigfoot (which was hilarious in itself, but anyway...). There was a guy there who did his presentation about the UFO connection to Bigfoot and an encounter he'd had in Montana that involved both along with some remarkable ectoplasm running down a mountainside. Anyway, what he wanted to do to further his theory was mount an expedition back to deepest Montana to go over the evidence again and for that he needed investors.

Seriously.

The Stupid Mutant Weighs In

God help me, I'm the kind of guy who re-reads Herodotus for fun and I can't stop downloading stupid comics.

Lemmings

David Kurtz depresses me:

Gonzales is getting what he deserves, to be sure, but among his opponents there were far fewer profiles in courage before he was mortally wounded.

Jesus Fucking Christ

My cat is now a puking machine. One year shots were today and he's under the weather. I've locked the poor thing in the bathroom because the floor is easily cleanable. Yes, I'm awful.

I have to say though, that galumphing noise that telegraphs the imminent arrival of a pile of hideous goo from kitty's tummy is both handy and funny.

Update:

Q. How you feeling, pukey?
A. Mewp.

It's Not All About Me

A while ago a bunch of people impersonated Althouse on a very amusing thread. She was less happy about such impersonations and had previously painted a big target on her head with a complaint of her own.

On her thread I left the following:



Anyway, I find I've been retroactively anonymized. What purpose this may serve the Althouse empire remains inscrutable, especially when the comment remains in place.

More Art

I asked one of my daughter's friends to draw a machine that does two things. She drew this:



It vacuums and also dispenses candy from the top.

A Colouring Book (Slightly Used)

For additional fun you may guess the sex of those who used the book.

It's still available. The reviews are interesting.

Happy Birthday

Cunt and Its Lessers

There's been quite a debate over the use of this word. Obviously, I'm not letting it go. However, on the internet, there's no reason at all that anyone has to put up with it.

First, browse with Firefox.

Then install Greasemonkey.

Then go to Userscripts.org and pick out a censoring script and install it.

It doesn't mean you have to censor every word: it's pretty obvious how to edit the scripts, so if you'd prefer to leave "fuck" in there you can. Can't figure it out? I'm willing to help. Write me. You should even be able to replace instances of "cunt" with something like {and here I prove I'm a total idiot} or whatever might be more amusing. You can use this post to test with.

This Seemed Inevitable

The Fat

I was at some film festival or other where I saw Sarah Silverman's Jesus is Magic. She was there and took questions.

Someone asked her why, if she'd set out to be so offensive to so many different crowds, she left out fat people.

"Because they're sensitive," said Sarah.

A Nelson Muntz Moment

Something New-ish

A review in Reason:

It's possible this recent German trend toward "historical re-evaluation" helped prompt the American publication, 15 years after it first appeared in Britain, of Comrade Rockstar, Reggie Nadelson's travelogue cum biography of Dean Reed. Nadelson, a New York-based writer of detective fiction, has written the story of a failed American musician who became the "Red Elvis" of the East Bloc.

Unlikely

Have I mentioned that I love Google News? Kiwi Catholics???




Anyway, what's more likely: that the tomb of Jesus got found or that a guy sent a bunch of demons into a pig?

Limerick Time

There once was a robot called Glenn
Who beeped booped clicked whirred spun and then
Pooped out silicon chips
Raised them up to his lips
Then he ate them and did it again.

Y'ever notice how boring professional development seminars are? More from right next to the geometrical doodle:

There once was a girl called Michelle
Who emitted a terrible smell
She'd shit here and there
And piss most everywhere
And bitch that the place went to hell.

teh l4m3=Teh Funny

Plus Tigra and Bunny were super-cute on the second album cover. Were they 14 or something? Never mind. Oh wait, let's mind:

And the Counter-Example to Gore Is...

Al Gore can do anything, right? An Oscar is only a small part of Gore’s bag of tricks, the poster child for grade inflation in our generation.

Man of letters - Professor Gore
Expert ranter - Populist Gore
Invented the internet - Entreprenureal Gore
Honorary Doctorate of Climatology - Doctor Gore
Nobel Peace Prize? - Al Gore, Man of Peace
Vice President - Yes-man Gore

What can’t Al Gore do in one lifetime?

Lead.

Boo hoo. Somebody got a prize and I didn't.

My Work Sends Me Cum Shot Mail

---- XXXX Spam Filter results:
8.90 points, 4.5 required;
* 3.3 -- Message-Id generated by spam tool (4-zeroes variant)
* 0.5 -- Message with extraneous Content-type:...type= header
* 1.0 -- BODY: Contains adult material
* 2.9 -- BODY: Possible porn - Cum Shot
* 1.1 -- BODY: Message is 20% to 30% HTML
* 0.1 -- BODY: HTML included in message

---- End of report.

This message is probably spam

KMFDM vs. Kylie Minogue

Is A Drug Against War really more aggressive than Come Into My World? If so, why?

Quoth Richard Nixon

In my idiotic quest to download and reread every crappy comic that mom sold at some garage sale when I was off playing video games or throwing melons off buildings, I've come across some sad panels, but this one's a real downer:

...And the Degenerate Mistress Ladyfinger!

Look, if I had a superhero called Captain Cookie I might have a use for someone called Von Wafer.

My Fair Lady

Computing award goes to female for first time

(AP) -- One of the most prestigious prizes in computing, the $100,000 Turing Award, went to a woman Wednesday for the first time in the award's 40-year history.

Frances E. Allen, 74, was honored for her work at IBM Corp. on techniques for optimizing the performance of compilers, the programs that translate one computer language into another.

This process is required to turn programming code into the binary zeros and ones actually read by a computer's colossal array of minuscule switches.

Allen joined IBM in 1957 after completing a master's degree in mathematics at the University of Michigan. At the time, IBM recruited women by circulating a brochure on campuses that was titled "My Fair Ladies."

[...]

Learning Photoshop

There's always an excuse to be a dick learn something new:



Smudge tool, clone brush, 3D transform, eraser like fucking crazy, colour balance, rotation, variation, pencil, lasso, Star Wars letter contraction and so on.

Attention Women

Thanks.

Language and Television Captions

My kid is a fabulous reader, as she's learned from me how to occupy time while sitting in one place for-fucking-ever. Anyway, as a result we watch TV with the captions on because babbling that's hard for her to catch is spelled out before her eyes. She had never watched a movie all the way through before we set her up with The Incredibles with subtitles.

As a result of this, I became aware that most music videos have captions on them, and now we have at a minimum learned the alternate meanings for hood and crib. This is also a good trick for use on other-language channels if you want your kid ostracized at an early age.

Christian Faith: Distinct

The Conservapedia needs a faster server: it's just not that funny if you have to wait two minutes for the comedy to load.

Weddings vs. Genocides

Thers writes about the latest outing and the mental gymnastics required to land face-first in the mud-puddle. Josh Treviño comments and in doing so reveals a literalism common to the right.

On the OI Statement of Principles itself, the issue of anonymity/pseudonymity was third out of four, and qualified, at that. This Statement was a compromise document -- drafted by a left-wing majority -- and as such, does not reflect my own views on the subject, nor anyone else's, 100%. All this has been public knowledge from the beginning.

This reading of the third out of four principles in isolation is the kind of thing that loses law cases. It's pretty clear from the rest of the principles set out that revealing personal info is supposed to be a bad bad thing. Much like constitutional literalists who think that because the constitution has nothing to say about X that you can't apply constitutional principles to X, JT scoffs at the penumbra, while reasonable people read the OI statement - which purports to simplicity - and see someone being awfully weaselly.

The Online Integrity Statement of Principles is simple:

1. Private persons are entitled to respect for their privacy regardless of their activities online. This includes respect for the non-public nature of their personal contact information, the inviolability of their homes, and the safety of their families. No information which might lead others to invade these spaces should be posted. The separateness of private persons’ professional lives should also be respected as much as is reasonable.

2. Public figures are entitled to respect for the non-public nature of their personal, non-professional contact information, and their privacy with regard to their homes and families. No information which might lead others to invade these spaces should be posted.

3. Persons seeking anonymity or pseudonymity online should have their wishes in this regard respected as much as is reasonable. Exceptions include cases of criminal, misleading, or intentionally disruptive behavior.

4. Violations of these principles should be met with a lack of positive publicity and traffic.

There's also the limited takeback in operation with the "does not reflect my own views on the subject, nor anyone else's, 100%" bit, which also fits neatly with those who love readings in isolation: authorial intent is a big deal to the right-wingers who would limit legal interpretation to what the authors of the law could possibly conceive of at the time. (Some make such a big deal of authorial intent in novels that they out others over it: the doctrine is personal as well as political.) Tacitus is, I suppose, being consistent in the way he thinks legalese should be used.

Anyway, for the latest trigger to be a not-purloined wedding photo (though I think I would have agreed to dispose of the picture in question) as opposed to whether or not concentration camps are a good idea is just sad.

Complaining About Free Stuff

Also complaining about stupid stuff. Bonus! Many thanks to Azureus.

The following are all drawings of one woman, who's supposed to be a combination superhero/newswoman.



Her scarily meandering features remind me how depressing it was that Roy Lichtenstein was so crappy at composition in comparison to the people he was ripping off. Yes yes, that was not the point of putting that stuff on the walls of an art gallery, but it could have been better stuff instead of what was delivered.

Thanks Worldnut and Newsbusters!

Without you I would never have known that someone called The Decider an idiot again.




Keep that left-wing propaganda machine in high gear please.

Heroism in Afghanistan

Every now and then I think about Afghanistan (because I'm not supposed to be paying attention to Iraq) and I despair at the chaos. One of the things I can't put out of my mind is Massoud, l'Afghan, a film about Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud.

It's been a while since I saw it so much of it's foggy to me. I remember it as an odd film, anthropological, political, and worshipful to its subject. There was a set of scenes involving an attack on Kabul. Massoud and his men make their way to some hills overlooking the city with various broken down vehicles, set up a crappy firing rack (like a giant-sized slanted cookie sheet) and set rockets up on it aimed loosely at the city (the rockets would roll around on the rack a little). In a technique I was familiar with from near-constant cartoon-watching, they touched off the rockets by applying fire to their ends.

What I thought at that point was that it was an awful crime and that someone, anyone, filmmaker included, would have been justified in shooting those men where they stood. The rockets flew off in whatever direction destroying whatever was at the end of their arcs for symbolic purposes, as this was the kind of attack that nobody in Kabul would surrender to or could cheer on unless by dumb luck each and every rocket hit Taliban personnel only.

Thus endeth the discussion of the only Afghan hero I'm aware of.

Fark Provides

I vote streetlight.

In the Headlines

I guess if the principal had been less devoted the story would have led with the broken traffic signals.

Remarkable

No editors at Town Hall I guess. Kevin McCullough:

So if the Democratic Party, which ironically enough founded the Ku Klux Klan** as tool by which to intimidate blacks into voting Democrat, has in fact become the modern day plantation to black voters, Hillary is without question the plantation madam. On her plantation are the house slaves - Revs Sharpton, Jackson, and most recently South Carolina state senators Robert Ford, and Darrell Jackson.

[...]

The job of these four modern house slaves (and others for all we know) is to "be black" and to publicly cast doubt on Obama's "blackness, ability to win, his true blackness, experience in public office, and once and for all why he's just not black enough."

I believe that this was suddenly why a few weeks back Sharpton began getting all uppity to Obama, "Just because you're our color doesn't mean you’re our kind."

To Click or Not to Click

Town Hall has not convinced me that I will see funnies.

There's Something Strange About This Headline

But I can't quite finger it.

What the Fuck?

If someone could point out to me why my goddamned cat keeps licking my - freshly-cleaned mind you - overcoat I'd be grateful.

Depravity Unbound

I think you have to be a fairly awful person to giggle when you listen to Teddy Bear by Red Sovine.

"Now, I'm not supposed to bother you fellas out there,
Mom says you're busy and for me to stay off the air.
But, you see, I get lonely and it helps to talk
'Cause that's about all I can do. I'm crippled and I can't walk."

I came back and told him to fire up that mike
And I'd talk to him as long as he'd like.
"This was my dad's radio," the little boy said,
"But I guess it's mine and Mom's now 'cause my daddy's dead.
Dad had a wreck about a month ago.
He was trying to get home in a blinding snow.
Mom has to work now to make ends meet
And I'm not much help with my two crippled feet.
She says not to worry, that we'll make it all right,
But I hear her crying sometimes late at night.
You know, there's one thing I want more than anything else to see.
Aw, I know you guys are too busy to bother with me,
But, you see, my dad used to take me for rides when he was home
But I guess that's all over now since my daddy's gone."

You probably have to be even worse to think what I think about this:

And as I rounded the corner, boy, I got one heck of a shock--
Eighteen-wheelers were lined up for three city blocks!
Why, I guess every driver for miles around had caught Teddy Bear's call
And that little crippled boy was having a ball.
For as fast as one driver would carry him in,
Another would carry him to his truck and take off again.
Well, you better believe I took my turn at riding Teddy Bear
And then I carried him back in and put him down in his chair.

Let's Say There's a God

Do you think we can get him to submit to a medical exam, then clone an evil one and have him fight himself for universal domination?

These are the kinds of things I think about when people start talking about religion.

Why Have I Missed This?

Metalocalypse is right up my alley. I'm officially excited, especially since I loved the metal bits from Home Movies.

I Got Mine, Jack

Michael Medved:

The only valid, sensible way to judge a President involves an evaluation of whether the nation thrived or suffered under his leadership.

The rest of the world is not a consideration.

What the heck, why not UPDATE?

UNICEF: U.S., British children worst off in industrialized world
By Associated Press
Wednesday, February 14, 2007 - Updated: 11:18 AM EST

BERLIN - The United States and Britain ranked at the bottom of a U.N. survey released Wednesday evaluating the well-being of children in wealthy countries.
The Netherlands topped the report issued by UNICEF, followed by other European countries with strong social welfare systems - Sweden, Denmark and Finland.

[...]

The Velvet Smog

Did I see this first on Boing Boing? Probably, but I'm too lazy to check.

That's Good Enough for Me
Cookie Monsters of death-metal music.

BY JIM FUSILLI
Wednesday, February 1, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

While the extreme branch of heavy-metal music known as death metal is defined in part by often-vile lyrics about violence, catastrophic destruction, nihilism, anarchy and paranoia, its singing style is associated with a beloved goggle-eyed, fuzzy blue puppet.

Death-metal vocalizing is also known as Cookie Monster singing, if not in tribute to, at least in acknowledgment of, the "Sesame Street" puppet that blurts in a guttural growl, his words discharged so rapidly that they tend to collide with each other.

All this was news to people at Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind "Sesame Street." "We have nothing to do with it," said Ellen Lewis, vice president of corporate communications. "What is it?"

"It's a whole new thing to me," said Frank Oz, who originated the voice of the Cookie Monster. "I've never heard of it."

[...]

Handjob for D'Souzaphone

Ooh, slappy fight!

Why are some conservatives so determined to let liberals off the hook for 9/11? For the past five years, leading pundits on the left have blamed American foreign policy for the blowback of Muslim rage that produced 9/11. In my book The Enemy at Home I turn the tables and say that it is liberal foreign policy and liberal values projected abroad that are largely responsible for this blowback.

In a recent column, Victor Davis Hanson charges that my argument puts me in the category of leftist author Susan Sontag and fundamentalist preacher Jerry Falwell. Sontag blamed 9/11 on “specific American alliances and actions.” Falwell said 9/11 was God’s punishment for America’s sins. Both seemed to imply that America deserved it.

But this is not what I say at all. My book asks a completely secular question: why did the guys who did 9/11 do it? Five years after this event, it’s not an unreasonable question. To ask it is not to “justify” the attacks any more than to ask whether British appeasement of Hitler prior to his invasion of Poland “justified” that invasion. Explanation is not the same as justification.

"But this is not what I say at all." I remind D'Souza of the title of his book: The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11. And what General Handjob said was

But D'Souza's strained effort to fault millions of Americans for 9/11 proves no more convincing than was Susan Sontag's or Jerry Falwell's.

He's just saying your blaming is as stupid as theirs, not that it turns around the same, uh, axis.

(I should add here that it's been a long time since I read the Sontag piece, and I do not recall craziness within it. I'd look it up, but time to go.)

I Like This Song

"I believe that is called al fresco" is a very funny line.

I Really Enjoy Althousian Hijinx

Thanks to Thers and Scott at LGM, this post by the incomparable Althouse has me giggling like a schoolgirl. I confess to some minor trolling. Gotta stop that and remember to confuse Max the cat instead.

Burdened By Vanity

Via Pharyngula:
Your results:
You are Dr. Doom

Dr. Doom 71% Mr. Freeze 67% Magneto 61% Apocalypse 56% Lex Luthor 56% The Joker 56% Venom 53% Juggernaut 50% Dark Phoenix 48% Catwoman 45% Poison Ivy 42% Kingpin 41% Green Goblin 38% Two-Face 34% Riddler 32% Mystique 26%

Blessed with smarts and power but burdened by vanity.

Click here to take the Super Villain Personality Test

This looks great in preview but really stinks as published (according to my Mac/Firefox combo). So what the fuck, I blame my vanity for leaving this crap up.

Victor Davis Hanson on D'Souza

Well I'll be:

D'Souza's solution is for conservatives here to embrace conservative Muslims, in a shared struggle against both the American left that misrepresented us and the jihadists who now misrepresent them.

But D'Souza's strained effort to fault millions of Americans for 9/11 proves no more convincing than was Susan Sontag's or Jerry Falwell's.

We Are All Alfabetizadores

Thanks to Google.

Irony Alert

Liberals Don't Ask "What Happens Next?"
By Dennis Prager
Tuesday, February 6, 2007

In general, the Left does not ask the question, "What will happen next?" when formulating social policy. Not thinking through the long-range consequences of their positions is liberalism's tragic flaw.

Compare and contrast:

The Lone Ranger rides again
By Dennis Prager
Tuesday, March 11, 2003

Let it be said before we know the outcome of the war in Iraq that America and the world are inordinately lucky to have George W. Bush as America's president.

Malkin Screenshot Contest

1. john said,

   February 6, 2007 at 3:56

   Let’s have a contest. Who can come up with the best screen capture of malkin.

Seems like an okay idea to me.

Nyum nyum nyum nyum must eat cardboard and run on wheel nyum nyum.



If I was an elderly pederast I would totally fuck Will Robinson.



Dafydd ab Hugh, that's a biohazard!



It's the expression of what's inside of you that makes you beautiful.

Quoth the Joker in the Blue Cape

Ah, the internet. Is there anything it can't steal?

Nicer than Christ

It's Time for Conservatives to Take Comedy Seriously

[...]

Look, as far as comedy goes, Mr. and Mrs. Conservative, you must bow and kiss the Left’s ring. They slay us. You can count on one hand how many conservatives are making a semi-distinct blip on the comedic scene. Who do we have? Dennis Miller, Brad Stine, Julie Gorin, and ________ . I had to google “conservative comics” just to add a third person to that list.

[...]

What’s wrong with us? We’ve become nicer than Christ.

Seuss Deserves Better

“It’s a pretty good war”
Said old Wingnut McSnore
“And the fellow who runs it
Seems proud and cocksure.”

“But if I ran this war,”
Said old Wingnut McSnore
“I’d make a few changes
And give Eye-raq what for.”

The weapons and airplanes and that kind of stuff
They have out there now are not quite good enough.
You see things like these in just any old war.
They’re awfully limp-wristed. I want stuff with more gore!

A one-barreled gun is not that big a deal.
The guns in my war have five barrels for real!
They’ll flay off the skin of an Arab tout suite
And the guy right behind him will end up chopped meat.
The kid behind that will be holy as Swiss
And send out the hearse for that lovely young miss.
The pundits back home will smell blood and be drooling
“That Wingnut’s not kidding! He’s really not fooling!”

My Gore War, McSnore War, will make people talk.
My Gore War, McSnore War, will make people gawk
At the bloodiest victims that ever did walk,
Or stagger or crawl or wheel ’round in a chair,
And my tank will just roll like they’re not even there,
Squishing their guts out with style and with flair.
The boys back at home will all wish they were killing
With tanks with neat drink holders to stop any spilling!

Comments I Wish Were Mine

1. steve_e said,

   February 3, 2007 at 20:27

   “I wonder what the Wingnut version of the E-meter is…”

   You twist a radio’s AM dial. If you find a wingnut without knowing the area’s right-wing radio stations beforehand, you are a Clear.

WBUR Feed

Follow the link for WBUR in Boston, which is likely to re-run the Molly Ivins interview I'm listening to.

Pundints

More fun from the Biden blog. I appreciate the need to put that finishing touch on, but really, sometimes perfectionists go too far.



Second thought: Pundintry is for jaw-dropping Hewittisms as in "oh no he di'int".

Time for Another Poem

Inspiration from Thers.

The Passionate Maximos to His Love

Come live with me and be my wife,
And we'll forego all pleasures rife
In rock and hip-hop, modern jazz,
Or any joy that good sex has.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Whipping shepherds who whip their flocks
By grey-brown rivers, to whose falls
Laundry women sing madrigals.

And I will make thee a bed that squeaks
Like those of which my grandpa speaks;
Decent bloomers, and dowdy dress
Lest lusty negroes their love confess.

A shirt made of the finest hair
(Things that cover what's down there);
Sensible shoes for warm and cold,
Which suit the young and suit the old.

No belt to bring out waist or hips
And thereby whet the gossips' lips:
And if these steps may thee approve,
To marry me t'would thee behoove.

The minstrel band shall dance and sing
Though they'll be beaten if they should swing:
In these conditions my wife must live,
If not she's no conservative.

Amusement Via Atrios

See this.

Michelle Malkin

It's worth noting while all the "GET TEH AP!!!!!" shit is going that there is a devastating, comprehensive and fair-minded (!) destruction of one of the pieces of crap that Malkin hangs her hat on freely available at Is That Legal.

In Defense of Internment is complete bullshit, so awful in fact that it's dishonest to keep pushing the thing. Yet she does, and presumes to point fingers at others for dissembling.

I've never thought much of cries of "hypocrisy!" as an argument, but she's she girl who cried "Woof!"

Bad Grammer (Too Sleepy to Spell) Meets Emily Whatsit

Just for Fun

Every now and then it's nice to pull out the ol' movie editor and play, especially if it's short.

Sadly No! Destroyed, Says AP!!!!!!!!

D'Souza on Hate

Contrary to President Bush's view, they don't hate us for our freedom, either. Rather, they hate us for how we use our freedom.

Quite the scholar.

I Can Be Pushed Around

1. ¡El Gato Negro! said,

   January 27, 2007 at 22:37

   ¿Joo know what makes weengnut heads explode?

   A new Spocko Video from Dan McEnroe

   Vamanos, go and see, then post eet on jour blogs, and email eet to everyone joo know. (esp. jour fave weengnutbars)

   so.

Perfect Stupid

It takes a lot of effort and talent to do good stupid, which is evident in Altmouse.

Still, hard to do better than The Editors for stupid, and I mean that in the nicest possible way.

I like steamroom.

John McCain

Wrote some limericks for a high-level high-stakes competition and the result is... We're all winners! Or something!

Anyway, it's always fun to have an excuse to write a limerick. There should be more writing projects to give us lazy types a kick in the pants.

One more for fun:

While he pumped John McCain in the ass
The president cried out "Alas!
Since you held out your tongue
And licked shit from my bung
Kissing you now would be crass!"

Welcome to Our Taliban Overlords

I found this via Inside Higher Ed:
At the Inside Higher Ed posting a nice comment:

John McCain

Limerick Contest!

John McCain's belching George Bush's come
And Dobson's left goo in his bum
For the props of his peers
He'll take jizz in his ears
And then he'll be both deaf and dumb.

Update! Breaking!!!!!

Who'd eat shit on a plate for the crown?
Gargle urine and swallow it down?
It's our man John McCain
Letting pols run a train
And he'll either be king or be clown.

John McCain's sending Valentine's notes
To those sowing political oats
"I'm a faithful factotum
Who'll slurp crabs from your scrotum
If you can deliver me votes."

The Dumbest Argument Ever

I was listening to Sam Seder field a phone call this morning and the guy calling was mad about the idea of slavery reparations, his main point being was that ancestors of slaves should be glad because they might have been born in Ethiopia instead.

Hurtin' 101

You Have a Chance to Name a Person

An adult no less.

Do your duty.

The Word Samosa

And I'm not trying to bait you here, but could you show me where it *is* said/spelled this way?

Sure.

Samoza
Samusa
Samboosa

The samoza variant seems more of a Euro-Indian thing and anything with a B in it is more Arab.

I dunno how it's rendered in Hindi but you can see that they've got a bunch of S sounds, some of which might get transliterated as a Z, and a whole lotta vowel sounds, which are nearly always inexact.

This is pretty hard to look at, but the Farsi rendering of somosa looks to me like four letters: SMUS. (Grain of salt required because I'm a novice.) In Farsi and non-fancy Arabic a lot of the stuff between consonants is unwritten, so English rendering is hard and varies with the whims of the person who does it.

It's this kind of thing that made me positive that the whole Jamil Hussein thingie was going to revolve around spelling and transliteration, but I was too stupid to take bets on the outcome.

Five Things I Like About Me

Jesus, that's a tall order.

And what's worse than just bragging via typing is showing it all off. How do you live up to that? Well, you don't, you just copy it, so I stake my claim to unoriginality right here, start chugging the peach schnapps and reveal all. Here goes.

There's a lot about me I wish would change, externally and in-, but let's give this exercise a go.

#1:



My snout is a great one, inherited from my father, good for getting things all the way down at the bottom of the trough. Lose your keys while you're rototilling? I'm there! And this might be kind of a cheat, because I've had a little surgery on it, but it's mine, on my body, and I'm proud.

#2:


My flipper. It's a little smaller than most, which naturally got me some razzing in school, but lookit them little scrapers on the end there: Brent didn't laugh long once he was scooping his flesh up off the floor. And now I use 'em for peaceful purposes! What a world.

#3:


My foot. Just this one though, since the others have webbing that's getting all crinkly. Anyway, this one looks awesome in those plastic-bubble sandal thingies, but they don't sell those in threes which kind of pisses me off. And hey, this little darling is also good for back-scratching: ladies, I'm available!

#4:


My tentacle. Just look at it, like some kind of gorgeous slimy fractal. Sure, you can unmask a diver any old time, but show me a spaghetti-sauce jar that can defeat me. And you know that joke where you reach around behind someone and tap them on the opposite shoulder and they go "wuh, whozzat?" I just leave the tentacle there and it's twice as funny. And yes, I pay for the dry-cleaning, so quit wagging your fingers at me.

#5:



My, uh, hindquarters. I'm embarrassed to admit that I think it's so fantastic that I shake it for all it's worth whenever I get the chance, which is actually frequently now that I've managed that belly-dancing job at the Greek place on Broadway. So far only one bratty kid with the salt-shaker, but one spray of ink and that was that.

I am going to have to post this before I pass out and maybe I'll forget I did it by morning, which might be a good thing.

Dumbest Man on the Internet?

Via Sadly, No! we are once again treated to the spectacle of Dan Riehl making an ass out of himself. For my money, the last line is the best:

Go read or write a book, or something. You certainly don’t have what it takes to fight, or even help fight a difficult war. With benefit of hindsight, I’m forced to assume you never really did.

He's typing a war here people! Show some respect!

The Reason I Use Condoms Revealed

This is very funny.

Like many of my ilk, I have some sort of stupid aversion to even seeking out female writing. It's idiotic and should stop, especially since I pretend to have an open mind and all that. Into the links with Shakespeare's Sister for starters then.

Eric Clapton

You know, it came to me after butchering that Tears in Heaven song that Eric Clapton has a lesson to give to us all:

When life hands you a dead kid, make dead-kid-ade.

Take a Looka This Nice Xmas Gift

Comedy

Just the mention of Althouse sets off a chain of hilarity.

Started here, I think, via teh l4m3's fab comment, and Althouse herself seems to care, though AFAIK all posts labelled "Ann Althouse" are obviously not her. They link to other blogs, for instance. Like this one.

The workings of the Althouse mind are baffling.