Granny Evolution: Trippy

This is possibly the greatest blog post since Gutenberg invented TypePad.

Civilized Disagreement

Ha ha, silly buggers and their arguments.



Hmm, news from the same page suggest there are no winners in this fight:

Al Gore: Genocidal Maniac

Andrew Klavan:

Jennifer discovers that Keanu [in The Day the Earth Stood Still] is sort of a spaceman Al Gore - like Al Gore himself - on an enlightened mission to save the earth from pollution. How is he going to accomplish that? Why, by destroying the human race that causes all the mess, of course. That’s right. He’s going to murder every man, woman and child so the trees won’t die. And he’s the good guy!

I do not recall such genocidal plans on the part of Al Gore, but if he has them I'm going to bet that they would be implemented with an eye towards efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Also:

In real life, from the banning of DDT* that left the third world to the mercy of malaria through to Al Gore’s current assault on our economy in the name of an hysterical nonsense, the environmental movement has been very dangerous stuff.

Indeed one can scarcely imagine the breathtaking toll on the economy that unfettered capitalism environmentalism has wrought.

*Take note, dummy.

UPDATE!
I'm just like Dr. Mengele!

Shorter Burt Prelutsky*

*Or "I took a silly picture."

Lectures

Yes we lecture you. Lesson 1: don't waterboard the guests.

Okay, that has little to do with her column, in which she complains that LEFTISTS RUINED COMMENCEMENTS! So let's try again.

If the point is "We're allowed to be dicks!" then, uh, I get the whole waterboarding deal.

Ha, I'm being silly.

Anyway:

It seems that a lot of Notre Dame students are offended by some Catholics’ decision to protest Barack Obama’s commencement speech on Sunday. In the weeks leading up to Obama’s visit, students sold T-shirts with a message for the protestors: “Please don’t ruin my graduation.”

Fair enough. But I have to ask, what are they so upset about?

Thinking cap ENGAGED. My guess is they were worried about a ruined graduation.

If the commencement speaker doesn’t tell them exactly what they want to hear (or has political views to the right of Karl Marx), liberal narcissists respond with self-serving, disruptive protests.

Michael Parenti's always booked. The first example of Liberal Commencement Perfidy:

A Georgetown professor later admitted that “...Cardinal [Francis Arinze]'s remarks were in line with Catholic doctrine and are exactly what he's paid to say.” Regardless, faculty members chose to ruin the ceremony by stomping off the stage in the middle of the speech. (Several students followed.)

So it appears that the faculty of a Catholic university just does not believe all that Catholic bullshit anyway. A strange example to use. Next:

In 2006, faculty and students at the New School wore armbands to protest the graduation speech by John McCain. Then, after taking fifteen minutes to tell the audience how great she was (“If there's one thing that I know about myself, it is that I care for people, and in that sense I have a great deal of character”), the class-elected speaker verbally attacked McCain onstage during the ceremony. The speaker proudly told reporters that her goal was to make McCain “look like an idiot.”

Some time following this speech, a broad bipartisan consensus formed around the idea that John McCain is an idiot. I look forward to the Palin memoir. On to #3:

Liberal students responded with a weeks-long tantrum, demanding that Washington University rescind the honor and ban Schlafly from graduation. When administrators refused to give in to their demands, hundreds of students stood up and turned their backs to the stage during the ceremony. (The always-feisty Schlafly responded by calling the protestors “a bunch of losers.”)

Well so much for the civility argument.*

Example four on Ashley's complaint list hasn't really happened yet, and it turned out Obama did really well taking on right-wing kooks, so uh, yes, this outrageous something-or-other in Bizarro World leads me to conclude that liberals really really zzzzzzzz.....

*The best Phyllis Schlafly quote there could ever be:

When will American men learn how to stand up to the nagging by the intolerant, uncivil feminists whose sport is to humiliate men?

HARCOURT FENTON MUDD GET UP OFF THAT COUCH AND STOP GETTING NAGGED!

Stagger Around the World

Global Zombies (A Lesson in Cultural Assumptions):

Albanian		teveqel (dolt, dull, dummy, fool, foolish, imbecile, innocent, noodle, simpleton, zany), mumje (mummy). (various references)
Arabic		‏ميت أعيد الى الحياة, ‏غيبوبة (coma, shock, stupefaction, stupor), ‏الزومبية شراب مسكر. (various references)
Bulgarian		съживен с магия мъртвец, глупак (bird brained, blinker, boeotian, bonehead, boob, booby, calf, chuckle-head, clod, clot, coot, dodo, dotterel, driveler, dummy, fathead, flat, fool, gaby, gawk, goof, goon, gowk, greenhorn, gull, hammerhead, jackass, jobbernowl, lack-brain, lame brain, leather-head, lunkhead, muggins, mutt, mutton head, ninny, nitwit, noddy, noodle, numskull, nutter, oaf, pudding-head, pumpkin-head, sap, sap-head, schmo, schnook, sheep's head, silly, simp, simple, simpleton, spoon, stupe, stupid, thickhead, tomfool, twit, witling, wittol, zany), вид коктейл (old fashioned, sidecar, stinger), новобранец (boot, inductee, raw recruit, recruit, rookie, yard bird), автомат (automat, automation, machine gun, robot, submachine gun, tommy gun), дървеняк (ape, ape-man, bumpkin, loon, lubber, lubber-head, lug, lummox, numskull, pudding-head). (various references)
Chinese		蛇神. (various references)
Czech		tupec (blockhead, dullard), moula (drip, goon, mug), mátoha, chodící mrtvola, živá mrtvola. (various references)
French		zombi, mort vivant. (various references)
German		Zombie. (various references)
Greek		βρυκόλακασ (vampire), ζωντανόσ νεκρόσ. (various references)
Hebrew		מת קם לתחי�", פולחן �"פיתון, א�"ם ר�"ום חסר מרץ, �'ופ�" מת�"לכת. (various references)
Hungarian		reaktivált ember. (various references)
Indonesian		orang bebal (dunce, zombi), mayat hidup. (various references)
Italian		zombie. (various references)
Japanese Kanji		ソ連 (Russia, Soviet Union, tar, target, term, terminal, terminal building, terminal care, terminator, turban, turbine, turbo, turbocharger, turquoise, zone, Zoroaster). (various references)
Japanese Katakana		ゾン�" . (various references)
Manx		corp fo ghruiaghtys. (various references)
Pig Latin		ombiezay
Portuguese		zumbi, morto-vivo. (various references)
Romanian		prost (ass, bad, badly, beef-witted, blinkard, blockhead, blunt, booby, calf, cheap, clumsy, cock eyed, common, dead, dolt, doltish, donkey, dull, dullard, dumb, dunce, dunderhead, flat, fool, foolish, good for nothing, goof, goon, goose, Goosey, gull, harmful, idiot, idiotish, inhospitable, lousy, lubber-head, miserable, nincompoop, ninny, nitwit, nitwitted, noddy, noodle, numskull, numskulled, oaf, oafish, pin head, poor, poorly, silly, simple, simpleton, snipe, soft, soft-headed, sorry, spoony, stupid, thoughtless, unfavorable, unfavourable, wretched), nãtâng (blockhead, clumsy, dead from the neck, Dotty, driveller, duffer, dummy, dunce, fat-head, feather-brained, foolish, noddy, silly, tomfool, wet), fantomã (apparition, Bogle, chimera, fetch, ghost, phantasm, phantom, shade, shadow, spectre, spook, wraith). (various references)
Russian		зомби (zombies). (various references)
Serbo-Croatian		zombi, oživljeni leš, natprirodna sila, bog zmija. (various references)
Spanish		zombi, autómata (automaton, robot). (various references)
Swedish		gengångare (ghost, spectre). (various references)
Thai		เทพเจ้างูในแอฟริกาตะวันตกและหมู่เกาะแถบอินเ�"ียตะวันตก, อำนาจเหนือธรรมชาติที่ทำให้ศพกลา�, อำนาจเหนือธรรมชาติที่ทำให้ศพกลับมามีชีวิตอีกครั้ง, ซากศพที่ถูกทำให้มีชีวิตขึ้นมาอีกครั้ง. (various references)
Turkish		zombi (zombi), yaşayan ölü, yılan tanrı. (various references)
Ukrainian		чудило (case), тупак (numskull), новобранець (boot, conscript, freshman, recruit, rookie), зомбі, перевертень. (various references)

Can't Tell the Players Without a Program of Torture

Humbert Humbert:

Of course I know that most Somalis are not terrorists. Some Somalis are terrorists, though, and we have utterly no way of distinguishing them from the others. So let's play safe and keep 'em all out. Again, I don't see what's wrong with this.

I agree that you don't see what's wrong with this.

In fact, I think our public discourse has come to a sorry pass when I even have to say the things I just said.

Do tell.

Let the Teabagging Begin!

What the heck, drag and drop:

The Two Categories

Nutpicking a Rand fan:

There are three categories that humans fit into. A human is either a slave, man, or parasite. The slave completes work without any benefit for himself. He works to help all others before himself, he erases himself as an individual. The parasite forces others to become slaves for him. He sacrifices others onto himself for his own benefit. He is the worst of humanity. Unlike the slave who offers up his happiness to the world voluntarily, the parasite takes other's happiness away without any remorse. The true man walks the line between slave and parasite. He neither gives himself to others freely nor takes others onto himself. He has an ego, which advocates rational selfishness, and he works to benefit himself, neither at the expense of others or himself.

There is bonus fun to be had in his grappling with Adam Smith. More recent efforts are less satisfying. What, is he 13?

Fingernails+Chalkboard=Fun

The whole of a post at The Corner:

Pahk It In, Already [Mark Krikorian]

The president has been the rightful target of much mockery for his "Pahkistahn" pronounciation (a pronunciation defended again just yesterday by Tunku Varadarajan), but I heard something positively hilarious on NPR this week. (Yes, I'm an NPR type of guy — but I love Rush!) There was a report on our South Asian imbroglio and the reporter repeatedly used — in the very same sentence — the Obama-ite pronunciation of Pakistan but the normal American pronunciation of Afghanistan. (And I just noticed the president himself does the same thing.) Look, if you're going to say "Pahkistahn," you need to also say "Ahf-ghan-i-stahn," with a voiced uvular fricative for the "gh," kind of like a French "r". And you should also say "Soorya" for Syria, and "Italia" for Italy, and "Suomi" for Finland, and "Hayastan" for Armenia, etc., etc. Anything else is both ignorant and affected, like Moliere's middle-class gentleman bragging about having spoken in prose his whole life.

05/12 05:53 PMShare

With, I'm sure, a non-presidential purpose in mind, once upon a time the late lamented Anton LaVey wrote an article about hambuger preparation. Yep, he loved them hambugers. Nothin' like a good hambuger.

I'm gonna break out "Pahkistahn" depending on the company.

All the Shakespearos

Richard Posner:

The end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the surge of prosperity worldwide that marked the global triumph of capitalism, the essentially conservative policies, especially in economics, of the Clinton administration, and finally the election and early years of the Bush Administration, marked the apogee of the conservative movement. But there were signs that it had not only already peaked, but was beginning to decline. Leading conservative intellectual figures grew old and died (Friedman, Hayek, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Buckley, etc.) and others as they aged became silent or less active (such as Robert Bork, Irving Kristol, and Gertrude Himmelfarb), and their successors lacked equivalent public prominence, as conservatism grew strident and populist.

In short, now that Darwin is dead nobody believes in evolution.

Lord, Let Us Hope Dick Cheney Has Influence

Cheney backs Limbaugh over Powell on GOP future
By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN – 36 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Dick Cheney made clear Sunday he'd rather follow firebrand broadcaster Rush Limbaugh than former Joint Chiefs chairman Colin Powell into political battle over the future of the Republican Party.

Why Are Zombies Popular?

Socialism.

More Q

Q is for quokka
And for a fine soup you will
Boil up this cuddly
Australian marsupial

ALSO:

Quokka shocka
Cocka Jacques
Kicka sacka do

Quokka socka
Crap out Jacques
Brick attacka, too

Drum bum,
Gag and hang,
Wring wang ooo!

Quokka shocka
Cocka Jacques
Kicka sacka do

The Candy Scene from Gravity's Rainbow

I force people to read this - or read it to them - to convince them to go further with Gravity's Rainbow. I mean, eventually there's poop and stuff! No poop in this scene though. Sickos.

"Now I remember you - the one with the graft at the Ministry of Supply!" but he knows, from last time, that no gallantry can help him now. After that visit he wrote home to Nalline : "The English are kind of weird when it comes to the way things taste, Mom. They aren't like us. It might be the climate. They go for things we would never dream of. Sometimes it is enough to turn your stomach, boy. The other day I had one of these things they call 'wine jellies'. That's their idea of candy, Mom! Figure out a way to feed some to that Hitler 'n' I betcha the war'd be over tomorrow!". Now once again he finds himself checking out these ruddy gelatin objects, nodding, he hopes amiably, at Mrs. Quoad. They have the names of different wines written on them in bas-relief.

"Just a touch of menthol too," Mrs. Quoad popping one into her mouth. "Delicious."

Slothrop finally chooses one that says Lafitte Rothschild and stuffs it on into his kisser. "Oh yeah. Yeah. Mmm. It's great."

Rhyme Crime

Q is for Quayle
Who misspelled potato
It's hard to believe
He'd been a senato

(Replacement Q)

Old Bird Has Old Pinions

It may come as a shock to some, but Burt Prelutsky still has opinions:

According to my wife, I have a tendency to state my opinion as fact. She suggests that I begin my sentences by saying “It’s only my opinion, but…” and go on from there. It’s my opinion, however, that people already understand that it’s my opinion and that they share it if they’re smart, or don’t, if they’re not.

Oh Burt, she doesn't mean you should literally do that, she means "Shut up and stop embarrassing me while we're in the prescription line-up." It's a hint. Take it.

In any case, in the spirit of compromise, let us pretend that each of the following paragraphs begins “It’s only my opinion, but…”

A deft set-up, surely taking the place of "My mind wanders." There follows wandering:

When Gloria Steinem [...] finally got married

Here I have truncated a joke you may have seen on a late night talk show nine years ago.

these Somali punks

Yes, yes, those punks. Moving on, Burt encounters the wonders of the internets:

About a month ago, I looked up George Soros at Wikipedia and read about his helping the Nazis confiscate the property of his fellow Hungarian Jews when he was a teenager. At the same time and place, I read that in response to a Steve Croft question on “60 Minutes,” Soros claimed that he had never regretted doing it or felt any shame or remorse afterwards because, as he explained, if he hadn’t done it, someone else would have. The other day, I re-visited the site and the entire episode had vanished. There still remained the mention of his having been convicted by a French court of insider trading. I am now wondering if billionaire Soros will make certain that it, too, disappears.

Burt can find the reasoning here if he likes. What I wonder about, apart from the lack of charity to a 13-year-old Jew who hid in plain sight from Nazis doing something odious, is if "billionaire Soros" is throwing money at Wikipedia editors HOW DO I GET PAID?

As much as I disapprove of Obama’s policies, what I truly find distasteful is the way he travels around the world apologizing for America, even to the likes of Hugo Chavez and the Castros. He bows to King Abdullah, cozies up to Ahmadinejad and tells the French — the French! — that America is arrogant.

Right! He should be apologizing to them for being leftist Muslim terrorist-loving anti-American Obama!

When, by the way, do we stop apologizing for slavery?

In your case never, just because.

And lest we forget, it was the Arabs and their fellow blacks who rounded them up for the slave traders in the first place. Which makes it sadly ironic that so many American blacks, including Muhammad Ali and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, assumed Arabic names.

Note. Following on though, I agree that that first name change 45 years ago remains chilling to the bone, and the second name change 38 years ago still makes me check my deadbolt when I wake up at night screaming.

Finally, one of the only places, aside from Communist nations, the Middle East and Thailand, where slavery still endures is in Africa!

Kudos to Burt, I suppose, for not noticing that massage parlours exist.

Finally, it occurs to me that perhaps I’ve been wrong in opposing same-sex marriages.

Of course this sentence is the start of some other cranky rambling, but I am inclined to give Burt a pat on the head in this case, as what follows is not quite as horribly insulting as past go-rounds. Baby steps, ya big baby.

The Academy Is Peril

Steve K is worried about the academy:

Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1816, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be.”

As anyone who has been to college or a university knows, leftwing ideas and perspectives dominate every part of the campus.

Pi is now 3.13, Pluto is not politically correct enought to be a planet, yadda yadda yadda. Here's the funny part:

This is a big part of why Obama and the political left are pushing that everyone go to college, and even have government (taxpayers) pay for it. The more impressionable young minds that are systematically indoctrinated, the more liberal Democrat voters there will be. In essence, this is no different than a re-education camp, but we pay for it in more ways than one.

So much for my dreams of fancy and new re-education camps with the latest torture equipment.

National Service Forever

Eritrea is now one of the leading sources of refugees. Here's one reason why:

The law states that all Eritrean citizens, men and women between the ages of 18 and 50, have the obligation to perform national service. In normal circumstances, national service is supposed to last 18 months (article 8). This consists of six months military training and 12 months deployment either on military duties or some other national development project. However, article 13 (2) states that even after completing the compulsory 18 months, national service can be extended until 50 years of age “under mobilization or emergency situation directives given by the government.”

During the first four rounds of the national service, those who were called up were demobilized after 18 months, but after war broke out with Ethiopia in 1998, everything changed. Former fighters were called up again, reservists who had been demobilized were conscripted, and all national service recruits were retained under emergency directives.

Gaze Upon the Face of Beauty

Chris Muir is in love with Sarah Palin.

Let's take a closer look at just how much in love he is.

Here is her beautiful Spock-browed cross-and-cockeyed face, settled almost centrally on her neck. Perhaps her glasses were damaged in a snowmobile accident:



The lovely orangutan arm of love can cuddle with the strength of ten men, while the club-like "hand" attachment crushes ice lickety-split:



Chris knows some brokeback mountin' ain't bad after all! Palin's protruding rib suggests that she is working hard to keep herself trim, but she could obviously thumb a ride if she needed to:



He loves her from her head to her head-sized foot:

Joke

Daughter: Who is the stinkiest god?
Me: I dunno, who?
D: Odur.

Products

Nurse Rangeland's St. Andre Cheese Salsa
Lieutenant General Commander Flounders's Feral Chigger Borscht
Lord Safeguard's Wild Ox Wonton
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Teodora Consulting's Fresh Mozzarella Filling
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Beefer Ciklalmef's Lizardfish Burger
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Leola's Chocolate Compote
Transmit's Emperor Smoothie
Uncle Righteous's Enchanting Rainbowfish Cobbler
Fink Alisia's Good Conger Eel Sprinkles
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Great-Uncle Jegpamela Arduously's Loggerhead Turtle Tea
Guru Dukepo's Orthodox Bandfish Dip
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Jerald Daugherty's Admirable Giant Squid Coffee
Bessie's Peach Toast
Grandpa Miybiv Nellie's Feta Borscht
Sprinkling raqu Despicable's Pigheaded Weatherfish Mush

Gotta get some corporate names in there. Here we go:

Altria Group, Inc.'s Avocado Mix
Detaches-Plumped's Poppyseed Vinaigrette
Cle's Onion Miso
Weldon Beriberi's Extroverted Greenling Macaroni
Lieutenant Colonel Joodivyise's Funny Fishing Cat Brownie
ING Group N.V. Goat's Milk Vinaigrette
General Motors Corp. Lovebird Pate
Professor State Senator Fuwafub's Trembling Lark Pizza
Deutsche Bahn AG's Noncommittal Sind Danio Vinaigrette
Staff Sergeant Sanderling-Leyden's Sarcastic Fringehead Croquette
Zoy Primarily's Electric Ray Dolma
Commodore Dede's Witches' Mummy Granola
Karan Karren's Merluccid Hake Ketchup
Cindy Norene's Rockhopper Penguin Topping
Suez's Ratty Rockweed Gunnel Cocoa
Reverend Deepensklem Remy-Worldwide's Nosy Ox Patty
Baroness Linda-Sanctimonious's Charismatic Lost River Sucker Smoothie
Intensifiers Piw's Brynza Cheese Terrine
Uncle Molested's Peter's Elephantnose Fish Pilaf
A. P. Moller - Maersk Freshwater Flyingfish Syrup
Sunoco's Chimaera Coffee

Dear iTunes Developers

This is not sorting by release date.

Why We Invade

Charles Krauthammer on torture:

Did it work? The current evidence is fairly compelling. George Tenet said that the "enhanced interrogation" program alone yielded more information than everything gotten from "the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency put together."

Indeed, that is why the wisdom of invading Iraq is unquestioned.