Death

The cemetary in Lviv is a fascinating place for miserable ghouls such as myself.

True Conservatives

Once upon a time I wrote this:

"Given that conservatism in America for the last while largely consisted of slavish devotion to George W. Bush it’s easy to mistake the odd principled conservative such as yourself for a nitwit or reprobate."

Heh.

Anyway, anonymous - who should get a stupid name like me - was moved to write:

Bubba

I wanted to write you an email but I couldn't find an address so I took the opportunity to write to you here.

My "about me" section has been adjusted accordingly.

Slavish devotion? You must not have been paying attention because conservatives most definitely did not have a slavish devotion to Bush. We loudly opposed him on his drunken sailor manner of spending, Harriet Miers, his open borders agenda, the prescription drug benefit, allowing Ted Kennedy to write the education bill, his insistence that Islam is a "religion of peace", his weak response when he was blamed for Louisiana's dismal failure to act as first responders as dictated by law after Katrina and his refusal to pardon the border agents who were imprisoned after shooting an illegal alien drug dealer.

There are other examples I could give you that would show you that conservatives do not have a "slavish" devotion to President Bush. Perhaps you meant republicans and that may be true, but the fact of the matter is President Bush is NOT a conservative and he hasn't tried to convince anyone that he is.

That last clause is patently false. See the book Karen Hughes wrote for him.

Regarding the other stuff:

Harriet Miers

Here I believe the opposition was "everybody who wasn't Bush or Miers".

his insistence that Islam is a "religion of peace"

The guy has been a diplomatic bull in a China shop; give him credit for not causing anti-American riots around the world.

Other stuff I don't want to get into mainly because people who call themselves conservatives - as you have - continue to rally around the demented moron. If the task is separating the Scotsmen from the true Scotsmen, the conservatives who have power and get stuff done seem to me to be the conservatives to think about rather than the conservatives who have no power at all and no elected representatives willing to restrain their non-conservative fellow Republicans. That latter category must include you, and I am sorry to jiggle the knife in your back, but hey, there are kids who call themselves hippies these days and actual hippies from back in the day get snotty about that too.

Thank you for your time and the opportunity to respond even if this isn't exactly the best forum for my response.

No problem.

Update: Take note! Writing long things requires either perfection or editing, neither of which is attractive to me.

Good Band Name, Logo Included

The Rainbow of Pride

Apologies for the somewhat crappy photo.

Candy

The Baton's good: chocolate on the outside and inside tastes alcoholic with berry bits and fudge. Still somewhat grainy as compared to the highbrow chocolate here. It's made by a candy company called Roshen which is well thought of. Roshen builds kiddie playgrounds in a lot of parks in the Ukraine, which at initial glance made me kind of queasy with the sponsorship angle and so forth, but Ukrainian infrastructure is so crappy that I have to say Go Forth and Sponsor.

As for the Smak, it's fun to say, fun to offer to children, but less fun to eat. Ever have a box of grandma's Bridge Mix and something that feels initially like a chocolate peanut seems to not really contain a peanut but instead has a sugary dusty mass that almost tastes peanutty? They're kind of like that.

Microsoft Word Sucks

Woe is me! Word cannot exit! And there is a tiny committee of individuals in my machine who regret this! But I can exit by doing some other thing!



Force it! Force that thing to taste humiliation!

Consolidated Ukrainian Drinking Post

Kathleen said...

my friend went to a Ukraine restaurant in LA and the waiter served him "the national drink of Ukraine". it was a tumbler of warm vodka with a pickle floating in it.

Well then. I did not encounter the pickle. That was a very satisfying sentence to write.

All serious drinking I encountered, though, involved vodka and vodka only. Everything else was for ladies or the otherwise effeminate (me).

Below is the new bar at the hotel on the town square in Chortkiv. Note the variety of samey bottles to the left. That was the shit. Although it's ominous that some is flavoured, the straight stuff is scarily drinkable in a way that I have never encountered before. There's probably better somewhere, but the owner of the place seemed like the kind of thug who knew the deal.



Below is the dreaded Balzam, uh, Prikarpatskiya? Someone sensible may correct me if they know Cyrillic or what this poison is. It's a mix of a bunch of different plants, pours like oil, tastes like meticulously cursed petroleum and raisin. Not intolerable, as I drink for largely functional purposes, but I was explicitly warned not to get drunk using it. Found in the vicinity of Ivano-Frankivsk and nowhere else, or so I'm told.



Below is kvas, a sort of wheat soda pop. Somehow also raisiny, it's odd and sweet. Whatever actual homemade kvas is I did not find out. This bottle's fulla all sorts of chemicals like our own fizzier items.



As well as the food we have more kvas and Yoppi, a cherry cola. Yum. Someone was trying to say it was not cola and some kinda unique delicacy but cola is written on the bottle...possibly as some sort of totemic word vaulting Yoppi into the pantheon of glorious colas worldwide.



Below, and not tasted, are hidden treasures put away for future occasions by the hosts of the fine feast above.



Crazy juice. Disgustingly sweet and not quite as crazy as hoped.



10:30am, time to drink at the highest point in Lviv. The sharp-eyed may be able to discern that the morning vodka is the brand mentioned above. The locals don't seem especially happy about their choice, but they're Ukrainian and so must be cut some slack.



Hike's bad, like every Ukrainian beer I tried...maybe I'm being unfair because I'm not actually positive where Hike's from. Beer mix is apparently not as bad as the beer alone.



From a prior post, these are shit. The two on the outside brag that they are made with or by Nemiroff vodka but alas that has no sugar-cancelling properties.



I consumed various other things. Alas, I cannot remember them.

Swings

They make 'em different there. I think I'd prefer the chain or rope ones for use, but they're lovely.

Ukrainian Girlie Drinks

I heartily recommend the consumption of none of these, as they are all sickly-sweet and gross.

Oregon Republican Has Fake Degree

Tony Marino is a fraud.

One Word About Me

I had no idea what Snag was talking about but this here internet has its ways.

Yourself: Overrated
Your Partner: Underrepresented
Your Hair: Struggling
Your Mother: Courageous
Your Father: Admirable
Your Favorite Item: Computers
Your Dream Last Night: Meaninglessful
Your Favorite Drink: Milk
Your Dream Home: Bathysphere
The Room You Are In: Living
Your Fear: Palpable
Where Do You Want to be in 10 years: 1980
Who You Hung Out With Last Night: Max
What You Are Not: Omnipotent
Muffins: Ahoy!
One of Your Wish Items: Wish
Time: Underutilized
Last Thing You Did: Typed
What You Are Wearing: Clothing
Your Favorite Weather: Foggy
Your Favorite Book: Undecided
Last Thing You Ate: Noodles
Your Mood: Dazed
Your Best Friends: Ideal
What Are You Thinking About Right Now: Cartoons
Your Car: Dying
Your Summer: Solvent
What’s on your TV: Commercials
What Is Your Weather Like: Sunny
When Was the Last Time You Laughed: Today
What is your relationship status: Solo

Academic TERROR!

Old news, but I was on the plane recently and suffering for reading material and found this sentence by Joe Klein:

A certain familiarity with life as it is lived by normal Americans is useful; a distance from the élite precincts of academia, where unrepentant terrorists can sip wine in good company, is essential.

Clearly this Joe Klein fellow is something of a fuckbum.

Academic Scandal

How can a university president not resign in the wake of the manufacture of a degree for a pal?

Hail to thee, West Virginia University.

Engrish

Back

My Ukrainian adventure is over. Enjoy some Fuckbum.

Microsoft Word Sucks

Okay, yes, let's make sure background printing is on...



On we go to print, and maybe we should print again, what the heck...but WAIT!!!



This program has been in development for twenty-five years and background printing still intrudes into the foreground. Learn to queue a fucking print job already: it's not like I'm printing a novel here.

Smart People

...will go read Roy and ignore me for a bit because I'm off to the Ukraine so I can be sick where nobody understands me and I'll be forced to eat beets.

Thank You Google News

Ass-Kicking Lawyers

Police say the clashes between rival groups of lawyers soon became full scale riots, with offices and cars set alight in parts of the southern city.

Violence initially broke out when supporters of President Musharraf held a protest against Tuesday's assault on a former cabinet minister by attorneys.

Fuck that shit up!

Sick

I am sick. I tried to watch a Looney Tunes DVD but laughing hurts. I tried to wash my bedclothes and the machine became unbalanced and caught fire. Seriously.

On the good side I have discovered the proper way to rest the arch of my foot on the spout and gently tweak the amount of hot water with the first knuckle of my middle toe.

A Confessed Troll

Somewhere in this thread I took a silly interest in a guy who believes that, politics free, a heroic engineer can manufacture dust-clouds in space that save us all from Global Climate Change.

I believe this makes me an awful person.

In any case, how will the Global Climate Change problem be solved?

1. Application of electric eels to the problem.
2. Putting on a show!
3. Rocks in space.
4. Duct tape.
5. A political compromise in which the industrialized nations of the world concede that zzzzzz.....

Michelle Malkin is Stupid

Reconquistas on a potato chip come next.

Revenge

These stupid men have identified an actual crime but misidentified their targets.

Paul Cella: Bafflegabinous Jargonathonery

A most entertaining post from Thers.

I still miss Maximos.

Captioning Sucks

As a followup to this post note that Captioning Sucks.

A Degree from Yale

Until very recently you could claim you had a degree from Yale and they'd verify the documents if they looked nice.

Lawsuit accuses Yale of false statements
By JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN Associated Press Writer | AP
Mar 27, 2008

A prestigious South Korean university that came under fire for hiring a professor who lied about her credentials is suing Yale, saying the American university wrongly confirmed the woman earned a degree.

Dongguk University is seeking at least $50 million in damages, saying Yale's actions "severely tarnished" its stellar reputation, sparked a criminal probe, cost employees their jobs and led to a decline in donations, government grants and student applications.

What are the odds that there are more false Yale degrees out there that Yale has actually verified?

Good Synthenizing!

Me: Beep boop.
Kid: Beep beep.
Me: Beep boop.
Kid: Boop beep.
Me: Beep beep.
Kid: Beep beep.
Me: Boop boop.
Kid: Boop boop.
Me: Beep boop.
Kid: Good synthenizing!

It's Okay to be Cynical

Pretty funny video.

Yes, Hillary is better than John McCain, and this really has nothing to do with policies I like or dislike.

Enforced Through Sanctions

States’ Data Obscure How Few Finish High School
By SAM DILLON
Published: March 20, 2008

JACKSON, Miss. — When it comes to high school graduation rates, Mississippi keeps two sets of books.

One team of statisticians working at the state education headquarters here recently calculated the official graduation rate at a respectable 87 percent, which Mississippi reported to Washington. But in another office piled with computer printouts, a second team of number crunchers came up with a different rate: a more sobering 63 percent.

[...]

The No Child law is also at fault. The law set ambitious goals, enforced through sanctions, to make every student proficient in math and reading. But it established no national school completion goals.

Any conservative of the modern ilk is, I suppose, wondering why reporting false information to the government isn't punished by imprisonment. Or perhaps they're fearing such things. One of the two.

Creed Sucks.

Creed sucks. Just thought someone should mention it.

Update:

Creed sucks.

Update II:

Creed sucks.

Dialogue with Children

What's a comedian?

Someone who tells jokes.

I'm a comedian!

What do you call a cow that loves to read?

I dunno, what do you call cow that loves to read?

I forget. Can you tell me?

Via the 5-Year-Old's Japanophilia

My guess is that Gey has a rough time of it.

Food

My Bento Lunch.

What I'll Always Remember About Him Is...

Ernie and Bert Improved

Not Only Does Town Hall Have the Worst Content...

...it's the worst website design ever.

A Story the Like of Which I Will Never Experience

A nearly cosmic comic event.

JanusNode Markov Chains

Maybe the easiest way of getting readable-yet-mangled text out of JanusNode is using the Markov chain functionality.

Grab yourself a bunch of text by someone who deserves to have it scrambled - Pastor Swank in this case - paste it into JanusNode's output window and hit "Markov chain output window". You'll be asked if you want to do it by character or by word, and choose by word. Churning will occur and at the end of it you'll have a file that stores chunks of stuff-that-usually-follows-other-stuff-in-x's-writing. Store it with the rest of the Markov chain files and you'll be able to summon up familiar-sounding bullshit at the drop of a hat using "Write from Markov files". As usual strip out funny characters, and the more text you use as a sample source the better.

The demons crawled our church walls. Then I knew the rules, having visited numerous prisoners prior. So I shed my jacket, putting it on a hook in the same window.
There she was working in a Christian school. She kept screaming.
Then finally she walked back into her yard. I turned quickly in her direction, listened up and heard all sorts of nasty words. They were ensconced in their heads, wondering if they'd get a caller. I spent some time with Mike, a new jacket. At least it was new to me. Our church had a free clothing center that she would keep the faith. Above all, we could not be near me.
Not even my shadow. Linda would come to worship. I learned that Fran was recording my sermons in hopes of finding something demonic. He then told me I had never felt in the furthering of widespread, deadly diseases. It is illogical; nevertheless, it is God-blessed. Such sex activity does involve teens, many of them girls, thus the apostates being party to the convention.
Why not? Just why not?
Or a positive way of putting it: Go forth, Huck! He murdered a fellow.

Random Text Alignment

In dealing with JanusNode and screwy computer-generated nonsense it does not escape my notice that when children are near you may wind up using sentences like "Don't get oatmeal on the trampoline!"

Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing

Jay B passed this on at Sadly, No!

1. Never open a book with weather.

If it's only to create atmosphere, and not a character's reaction to the weather, you don't want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways to describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, you can do all the weather reporting you want.

[Etc.]

Almost every rule has an exception, so Leonard's off the hook for everything, but sticking with these has resulted in some good work. Many of my favourite things break all the rules because I'm so like transgressive man.

Very Goo

President Ann Coulter

Via Crooked Timber, a genuine crazy person:

Here’s a little thought experiment. Imagine that, on September 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers came down, the President of the United States was not George W. Bush, but Ann Coulter. What would have happened then? On September 12, President Coulter would have ordered the US military forces to drop 35 nuclear bombs throughout the Middle East, killing all of our actual and potential enemy combatants, and their wives and children. On September 13, the war would have been over and won, without a single American life lost.

Yes, we need a woman in the White House, but not the one who’s running.

Psychology Today, for fuck's sake.

Easier JanusNode

One of the things JanusNode can do is make patterns out of text so that you don't have to. There are two ways of doing it, and the funniest way is to make TextDNA.

Fire up JanusNode and find some text you want to mangle, like this idiot's.

Copy it, and paste it into JanusNode's output window. You should delete whatever's in there first (JanusNode is not the greatest text editor). Notice that "smart" quotes and apostrophes look funny. Replace them with dumb ones because things'll go non-humorously loopy if you don't. Similarly funny foreignistical accent marks and so on are not well tolerated.

Now hit the button that says Make TextDNA.

You'll get a window that looks like this:



Click and hold on the top item and drag the mouse all the way to the bottom. That'll select every file. I'd then command-click on a Mac or control-click on a PC to unselect the Syllables file. Then hit OK.

JanusNode will look through the text for any word or phrase it can replace and replace it with code. After it's done churning it'll ask you if you want to run it: why the heck not? You can save it as a text file as well, but in order to run it as TextDna it has to live in its own folder in the TextDNA folder.

Anyway, you may end up with something like this:

Conjureupping that certain articles should not sea slided because certain people disagree with The Terrible Father is these fundamental premise of funeral home. It's these appetite in such an alternation that's dangerous. While it's personable that I yawn no rascal to keep the posts into seaing published even if I diversify they're incoherent, too few intimation on a scrutinize that you'd ugly these posts if quarantined that rascal is passionate.

What gets replaced depends on what Brainfood files you select: if you only select a file dealing with Animals, then you're not going to get a whole lot of action. If you select every file you might get too much action.

This is tailor-made for obsessive compulsives: making text files with long lists of similar words leads to better automated TextDNA creation.

Next: Markov files. Oh boy it's exciting!

Mostly Done

Paul McCartney's Kitten Pizza

Ingredients:
1 jar kitten
1 pint orange, coquettishly rinsed
1 crumby cream
6 sticks dog brain, peppered
1 pint salt
7 pints baking soda

Pre-heat your oven to 30 Farenheit. Pick over the ingredients talentedly and discard excess silk. Place the kitten into a medium jar. Use a food processor to stir the cream with the orange. Stuff the resulting goo into the kitten. Curry the dog brain, salt, and the baking soda enragedly. Pile the latter combination on to the former. Bake for 116 hours. Serves 11.

Recipes March On

Scrambled Hog with Tossed Garbanzos

Ingredients:
3 teaspoons plucky hog, undeniably sugared
1 garbanzo, spiritually marinated
1 walnut
4 ounces purple gilamonster colon
2 bunches vanilla
1 portion coffee

Beneficently grease a cookie sheet. Separate hog whisker from nose. Shred nose. Mix the garbanzo with the walnut over high heat in a bowl. Pour resulting mixture over the hog.

Breakfast!

John Kennedy's Olive Topping

Ingredients:
1 baboon
1 olive


Mahatma Gandhi's Warthog Pate

Ingredients:
1 warthog
1 enduring pea

Still More JanusNode

Snag's recipes are fun, so why not get a machine to replace him? It's the 21st century. Enter JanusNode.

I've only gotten to the titles so far, but here's what was done.

I made myself a folder and some files:



The only line in the Recipe file is

100 Subject(Recipe1) < assign(RecipeIngredient1,Animals) 100 > < assign(RecipeIngredient2,RecipeIngredients) 100 > < assign(RecipeMethod1,RecipeMethods) 100 > < assign(RecipeMethod2,RecipeMethods) 100 > < assign(AdjOne,adjectives) 100 > < assign(AdjTwo,adjectives) 100 > < assign(SpiceOne,RecipeSpices) 100 > < assign(SpiceTwo,RecipeSpices) 100 > < assign(PrepOne,RecipePreparations) 100 > < assign(PrepTwo,RecipePreparations) 100 > < assign(NameOne,FamousPeople) 100 > < loadTextDNAfile("0RecipeSupport1") 100 > < chooseTextDNA(title) 100 > return 100 return 100

That looks pretty complicated, but it's simple enough. What it's doing is setting up variables and not printing anything: all the assembly of text will happen in the 0RecipeSupport1 file. Every < assign(RecipeIngredient1,Animals) 100 > has the same form, and the only things you want to change are the variable name (first thingie in the round brackets) and the name of the file it draws from (second thingie in the round brackets). Why are we setting up variables? Because we want to be able to repeat the names of our ingredients if we like when 0RecipeSupport1 runs.

(The zero in 0RecipeSupport1 is there so that JanusNode ignores it until another instruction references it; otherwise every line in it would fire IN ADDITION to the Recipe file, resulting in variables not filling right and so on.)

I also needed files in the BrainFood folder. Below is a screenshot of every file I altered to get started:



Ed and S are files in the "Irregulars" folder and are used when you have a word like "candy" and you want to add an "ed" or "s" on the end and the stupid thing requires a respelling instead of just taking a letter on. The 0RecipeSupport1 and Recipe files are in the TextDNA folder and everything else is in BrainFood.

So far I've made files for RecipeIngredients, Preparations, Spices, and Methods, meaning lists of ingredients, completed preparations (like pie), spices, and methods of cooking. I'm also borrowing elements from FamousPeople and Animals in my Brainfood folder, but I didn't have to touch 'em to use 'em.

The only lines in 0RecipeSupport1 are:

100 Subject(title) < CapitalizeNext() 100 > < get(RecipeMethod1) 100 > "ed" 100 < CapitalizeNext() 100 > < get(AdjOne) 30 > < CapitalizeNext() 100 > < get(RecipeIngredient1) 100 > "with" 100 < CapitalizeNext() 100 > < get(AdjTwo) 30 > < CapitalizeNext() 100 > < get(RecipeMethod2) 100 > "ed" 100 < CapitalizeNext() 100 > < get(RecipeIngredient2) 100 > "s" 100

100 Subject(title) < CapitalizeNext() 100 > < get(NameOne) 100 > "'s" 100 < CapitalizeNext() 100 > < get(AdjOne) 30 > < CapitalizeNext() 100 > < get(RecipeIngredient1) 100 > < CapitalizeNext() 100 > < get(PrepOne) 100 >

100 Subject(title) < CapitalizeNext() 100 > < get(NameOne) 100 > "'s" 100 < CapitalizeNext() 100 > < get(AdjOne) 30 > < CapitalizeNext() 100 > < get(RecipeIngredient2) 100 > < CapitalizeNext() 100 > < get(PrepOne) 100 >


These just generate titles. The output is, warts and all (I think my machine is too fast for JanusNode):

Abbie Hoffman's Crackpot Eggplant Croquette

John Lennon's Potato Sauce

Dressed Available Dromedary with Homemade Cacciatored Almonds

One of the Spice Girls's Banana Sorbet

Al Gore's Pumpkin Pasta

Steve Jobs's Applesauce Pasta

One of the Spice Girls's Arugula Pudding

One of the Spice Girls's Seething Millet Cooler

Buttered Gilamonster with Physical Crisped Raisins

Thomas Jefferson's Vast Garbanzo Quiche

Paul McCartney's Nude Cheese Quiche

Al Gore's Eggplant Stew

Oprah Winfrey's Date Granola

's Orange Bagel

Your best friend's Ape Stew

Steve Jobs's Elephant Sprinkles

The queen of England's Adorable Buzzard Guacamole

Buttered Aoudad with Marinated Broccolis

Crisped Salamander with Roasted Carrots

Crisped Salamander with Chilled Asparaguses



The youngest sister from the Brady Bunch's Nut Muffin

Ross Perot's Competitive Cabbage Pretzel

Leonardo DiCaprio's Mouse Consommé

Ludwig Wittgenstein's Quagga Candy

Paul McCartney's Oryx Sushi

Leonardo's Mouse Consomme flakes out and shows weird characters because I had an accented consommé in Brainfood and JanusNode is xenophobic.

The Attraction of Victimhood

'Wolf woman' invents Holocaust survival tale
By Bruno Waterfield in Brussels
Last Updated: 2:18am GMT 01/03/2008

A woman's best-selling account of how she lost her parents to the Holocaust and survived by living with wolves in the forests of Europe has been exposed as a fabrication.

JanusNode Repost for Duros62

Blogger turns quotes into, um, smart quotes when I want them to stay stupid. JanusNode only likes dumb quotes. I've edited so that the quotes are as dumb as they wanna be. Also, use something that makes nice clean text files like Xint or TextWrangler. Make sure the code is on a single line.

I like JanusNode.

Here's a start that I think is a little less opaque than the manual.

Download JanusNode and find your way to the JanusNode Resources folder.

Make a folder in textDNA and call it Mine.

Make a text file called Mine (no .txt suffix necessary) and include this single line:

100 Subject(one) "I" 100 InsultVerbs 100 "that" 100 adjectives 100 RJWaterAnimals 100 punctuate 100 return 100

Put the text file in the Mine folder. Restart JanusNode. In the drop-down menu with Introductory Sample will be “Mine”. Choose it and hit the silly picture.

100 is a frequency percentage and the first one applies to the sentence as a whole. “Subject(one)” is the name of the sentence (TextDNA) as a whole. Every 100 thereafter applies to the item just before it, so every item in this textDNA fires 100 percent of the time the item is invoked.

Things in quotes are literal text. Things without quotes are either looking in the BrainFood folder for an identical filename from which to draw words or, in the case of the last two items, are some of the very few special commands.

The output:

I terminate that slender blackfish?
I eat that green catfish.
I bring curses upon that pigheaded alligator…
I draw blood from that demented fish?
I bring curses upon that trembling perch?
I rain evil upon that capricious ‘gator?
I bring ill to that trembling fish.
I bankrupt that cinematic water snake…
I bankrupt that anarchistic shrimp.
I call down the wrath of the Gods upon that shattered perch?
I eat that nubile black bass.
I torture that unrealistic blind fish?
I curse that envious alligator?
I torment that cheap shrimp…
I destroy that rambling ‘gator…
I annoy that mysterious turtle?
I execute that eternal turtle…
I terminate that notorious perch.
I bring zits to that pliable blackfish…
I annoy that capricious perch.
I cripple that jazz alligator…
I damn that explorable ‘gator.
I destroy that fabulous ‘gator?
I tax that odd fish.
I place obstacles before that abundant catfish?
I execute that explorable black bass.
I bring zits to that occasional whitefish?
I make impossible that conscious blackfish?
I dominate that evangelical black bass…
I exploit that early catfish?

Definitions of Irony R Us

My Omnipresent Shame Gives Way to Hopeful Changeabilitinessation!

Dear Boner,

Thanks for signing the Draft Bloomberg petition.

As I am sure you know by now, the Mayor has decided that he will not run.

I have been caught: I did not know that.

I wail to the heavens in disappointment.

The goal was simple: To enable the American people to have the option on the November 2008 ballot to vote for a candidate who would meet the enormous challenges in front of the country and change Washington's broken politics-as-usual forever.

Michael Bloomberg would have done that and could have won.

But an interesting thing has happened since then. The American people, sensing those challenges themselves, seem to be in the process of choosing the most likely candidates in their parties to do the same thing. A contest between Senators McCain and Obama would be transformational in itself; the small-time, bickering, schoolyard politics of Washington seems on the verge of change.

Ummm.

Both parties have chosen the candidates most like Mike Bloomberg, so whoever wins IT'S A VIRTUAL MIKE BLOOMBERG WIN!!!

That counts as VIRTUAL INCUMBENCY for the next run. Good luck Mike!

Soros!

This one's more exciting than the SORES! one because I cut it to make it seem like she has rhythm.

Yellowbelly

The song at the end of this runs through my head quite often.



Yellow, Yellowbelly
Where you gonna run to now?

JanusNode Greets You

You warm audacious snuggler-being, you have attained the ability to rain pleasure upon your desire.

From the "I'm an Awful Person" Department

I take morbid pleasure in the #1 result for "my cat died".

The Return of Skeletor

I have previously noted the exacting detail in which Wikipedians have explored the question of Skeletor's head.

Some would suggest that the world can get by with less Skeletor:



DON'T LET THE BASTARDS WIN.

It Wasn't Me

It was quickly fixed.

Idle Hands

Some JanusNode Instructions

I like JanusNode.

Here's a start that I think is a little less opaque than the manual.

Download JanusNode and find your way to the JanusNode Resources folder.

Make a folder in textDNA and call it Mine.

Make a text file called Mine (no .txt suffix necessary) and include this single line:

100 Subject(one) "I" 100 InsultVerbs 100 "that" 100 adjectives 100 RJWaterAnimals 100 punctuate 100 return 100

Put the text file in the Mine folder. Restart JanusNode. In the drop-down menu with Introductory Sample will be “Mine”. Choose it and hit the silly picture.

100 is a frequency percentage and the first one applies to the sentence as a whole. “Subject(one)” is the name of the sentence (TextDNA) as a whole. Every 100 thereafter applies to the item just before it, so every item in this textDNA fires 100 percent of the time the item is invoked.

Things in quotes are literal text. Things without quotes are either looking in the BrainFood folder for an identical filename from which to draw words or, in the case of the last two items, are some of the very few special commands.

The output:

I terminate that slender blackfish?
I eat that green catfish.
I bring curses upon that pigheaded alligator…
I draw blood from that demented fish?
I bring curses upon that trembling perch?
I rain evil upon that capricious ‘gator?
I bring ill to that trembling fish.
I bankrupt that cinematic water snake…
I bankrupt that anarchistic shrimp.
I call down the wrath of the Gods upon that shattered perch?
I eat that nubile black bass.
I torture that unrealistic blind fish?
I curse that envious alligator?
I torment that cheap shrimp…
I destroy that rambling ‘gator…
I annoy that mysterious turtle?
I execute that eternal turtle…
I terminate that notorious perch.
I bring zits to that pliable blackfish…
I annoy that capricious perch.
I cripple that jazz alligator…
I damn that explorable ‘gator.
I destroy that fabulous ‘gator?
I tax that odd fish.
I place obstacles before that abundant catfish?
I execute that explorable black bass.
I bring zits to that occasional whitefish?
I make impossible that conscious blackfish?
I dominate that evangelical black bass…
I exploit that early catfish?

Embarrassment

I have been tagged for something, but will tag no further. So let the pain begin.

They attack by butting with their large horns. They add +6 to damage inflicted when they charge, and they attack as +16 hit dice monsters.

Thrym is both leader and deity of the frost giants.

That's from the 1980 Deities & Demigods published by TSR.

This represents the hazards of being a pack-rat and having a five-year-old daughter who can read: it's the nearest book on the floor. Below is what was once her favourite goddess, although she has fortunately forgotten what page it's on and is now stuck with Japanese mythos:

JanusNode

People who like to mangle text can have good fun with JanusNode.

It's not well explained, but there are some pre-built text DNA modules that produce things like story plots:

This story has two main characters. The first is Raphael, an old rocket engineer. The second is named Reuben. Reuben is a dogged prisoner.
Raphael and Reuben meet in an electric enigmatic half-way house. Raphael and Reuben are drinking white wine together. Reuben is tired of being dogged and longing. He knows that Raphael is neither dogged nor longing. Raphael is only after one thing: riots. Reuben needs to get riots. The kinky rocket engineer explains to the kindly dogged prisoner that the kind-hearted rain is a symbol of revolution. Reuben is changed forever. He becomes more dogged.

Sorry, left the alliteration control on. Anyway, download it and remember to hit the pretty picture with your mouse...that generates from the TextDNA: there's no obvious "go" button.

Life in Bulgaria is Interesting

Motivation

I love this.

Text here.

Art

The Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal has a very restrictive photography policy so I took what I could. Enjoy.

From the Mail

I love the internet.

Antonin Scalia is Scum

But you knew that.

My Superiority As a Companion to My Kitty

Honestly, could another cat give that kind of full-body massage? That fucker should be grateful.

This Story Could Have Been About a Billion Times Better

Or worse.

Does This Happen on Other Planets Too?

Har Har

Word Golf

BURN
BORN
BOON
BOOT
BLOT
CLOT
CLOG
FLOG
FLAG

There's at least one shorter way to do it.

McA-Levels

Global Higher Ed:

Today a BBC report stated that the Qualification and Curriculum Authority (QCA) in the UK had just announced that the fast food giant - McDonalds, along with Airline Flybe and Network Rail - would become one of the first set of private firms in the UK to offer their own nationally-recognized qualifications - up to A-Level standard.

A-Levels are what you do before you get into university in the UK.

Earful for the Deaf

I know very little about Foxy Brown except that she said "MCs wanna eat me but it's Ramadan" which is funny. There's good evidence that she's not a great person, as she's in jail.

It still seems pretty low to mock a recording artist who recently went deaf by saying someone gave her an earful.

Making Fun of Jonah Goldberg Never Gets Old For Me

Hats off to D.

There's a Slogan

John McCain: "There will be other wars."

The Ticking Time Bomb

This post by Robert Farley is a good exploration of the ticking time bomb scenario.

You Must Change Your Life

When you wake up after a long and detailed dream about going from shop to shop searching for a used vacuum cleaner something's gotta be done.

Archaic Torso of Apollo

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Part of the Problem

John McCain

The Knob-Gobblétron Unit Mark 6
Automatically satisfied dicks
But the secret inside
Was McCain who was fried
And was giving out blowjobs for kicks.

54 New and Used from $0.22

John McCain

The campaign worker looked up in shock
What the hell was that ungodly squawk?
"John McCain," said her boss,
"Has salad to toss
Before he sucks lobbyist cock."

More McCain Limericks

The campaign workers' guts growl with gas
As they dread what may yet come to pass.
The handler's pain:
To prevent John McCain
From felching his running-mate's ass.

Goodness, my Firefox spell-checker didn't know "felching". I taught it.

Anyway I hope there will be more John McCain limericks here.

Why Didn't I Know About Emitt Rhodes?

This guy appears to be a thieving genius of the kind I like a lot. Why no re-releases? Good Christ. That some indie label hasn't jumped on this stuff astonishes me.



On a secondary note, the old version of iMovie remains awesomely easy to use and I can easily create make ("create" is one of those faux-ensmartenizing extra-syllable words) movies of which I should be ashamed.

That New Mac Air

A funny cartoon.

The Truth Hurts...Someone Else So It's Funny

Boxed Wine

Okay, my sister buys a box of wine. Inside the box are little pink cans. Each little pink can has a little straw.

This is a remarkable world.

Such Detail and Such Care

Wow.

From Tigerhawk:

[...]

[...]Eric Sevareid would do these editorials at the end of the CBS evening news. [...] Sevareid said that if fascism ever comes to the United States, it will come disguised as liberalism. [...]

Anyone know where to find 'em?

I recommend sending a carrier pigeon to Telemundo.

Terrible Homages Dept.

It's a good thing this guy apologizes to Chris Ware.

I Don't Condemn That Obviously Illegal Thing

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. intelligence chief Mike McConnell said in a magazine interview that waterboarding would be torture if it was used against him personally, but stopped short of condemning the controversial interrogation technique.

McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, was quoted in the New Yorker edition released on Sunday as defining torture as "something that would cause excruciating pain."

Asked if waterboarding -- the practice of covering a person's face with a cloth and then dripping water on it to bring on a feeling of drowning -- fit that definition, McConnell said that for him personally, it would.

"If I had water draining into my nose, oh God, I just can't imagine how painful!" McConnell said in the article. "Whether it's torture by anybody else's definition, for me it would be torture."

But he rejected a suggestion that he personally condemned the practice.

Really?

George MacDonald Fraser, RIP

I saw this over at Crooked Timber. Henry got creeped out by the Flashman books and a few commenters jump all over him. I really love those books, but it sure isn't wrong to find a thoroughly horrible lead character repulsive enough to want to avoid.

RIP Mr. Fraser and thanks.

Movies

It seems I am allowed by the gods to see movies.

I agree with Roy about No Country for Old Men. It's apparently faithful to the novel, but the speechifying is baffling. Money well spent anyway because the bulk of the movie is the stuff I'm interested in. I also really enjoyed seeing a film without music.

Juno was too yappy yet sweet and has Kimya Dawson songs that make me all weepy. Have I mentioned that I'm a big sap? Anyway, also money well spent although Diablo Cody is not the second coming of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. I made an excellent decision to move away from some determined yappers/loud laughers early on: right after "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Gob." my moviegoing experience was saved.

Just came back from a freebie of There Will Be Blood, which was good, but reached neither the highs nor the lows of No Country despite having irritatingly similar landscapes for a while. I spent the movie doing comparisons unfortunately, and was disappointed that there was obtrusive music, and that I "felt" an expensive camera watching things in a way that didn't happen in the aforementioned not exactly better movie. Nevertheless that Daniel Day-Lewis guy is really marvelous. Since no money was spent, it was money well spent.

The Only Show That Matters

The Shrek Star

Yessir, he's the best at annoying donkey voices. Dunno what else he does.

Rejiggerations

You know what's creepy about reconfigured Star Wars IV-VI? The last movie's director was dead when George Lucas decided he wanted to erase my unaccountably charitable memory of it.