Master Rumsfeld is departing from the temple, and to be honest, I won’t miss him much. At all.
But I do hope that those who follow in his footsteps do not overlook his rich legacy of fighting styles.
Category Archives: Politics
Cheesy Song Lyrics — Special “Vote Or Be Damned To Me” Edition
via Spirit of the West, with the usual apologies to Hellblazer
You with the jaundiced eyes, drunk on your old reflection,
Propped up with desks and flags, eight chairs short of perfection.
Your lines are drawn — here, there, and everywhere:
None of your own volition.
Unrecognized, you pace in your shadow,
Stripped of all your definition.
Scour the house, flip the wig, shake the tree
Scour the house, flip the wig, shake the tree
Until your whereabouts are known to me
You’ve been abused and cheated,
Shat on, you’re beyond defeated.
Those who rise stand in your name,
Then treat you roughly once they’re seated.
Your pen in one, sword in the other,
Satisfied the blessing is given.
In God they trust, only their way, one way,
Afraid of the other -isms.
Scour the house, flip the wig, shake the tree
Scour the house, flip the wig, shake the tree
Until your whereabouts are known to me
The grass is always greener
Under western skies,
But your Norman Rockwell nation
Is being choked by weeds and vines.
Lookie here — the old grey mare,
She ain’t what she used to be, oh no.
Lookee here — the old grey mayor
He’s all he’s cracked up to be
Scour the house, flip the wig, shake the tree
Scour the house, flip the wig, shake the tree
Until your whereabouts are known to me
Drilling Into the Bottom of the Barrel
John Gruber takes a break from the usual “Mac Nerdery” to bestow the Jackass of the Week award upon Rush Limbaugh, for picking on a man whose nervous system is basically falling apart.
Gruber is constrained by both decorum and tradition — Jackass of the Week is a running series, after all — from calling Limbaugh something harsher. I, however, am not. “Asshole” comes to mind, of course, but the term’s been bleached a bit by overuse. “Scum” seems short, sharp, and to-the-point.
This, to use Lois McMaster Bujold’s expression, “is not news“, but it bears periodic repeating anyway.
What’s in a name?
Confusion, apparently.
Browsing the headlines on Yahoo! this morning, I was thrown not once but twice.
First, “Delay disrupts meeting to discuss Iran“. Wait, what? Tom DeLay disrupted a meeting to discuss the Republican boogeyman of the moment? Which meeting? And anyway, isn’t he out of the picture? Oh, wait, they’re just talking about Condoleezza Rice’s flight being delayed. Right. I heard about that on the radio while driving in. (In hindsight, the failure to correctly capitalize DeLay should have tipped me off, except that I’m so used to sloppy typography in journalism that I’ve almost come, sadly, to expect it.)
Skimming down a few lines, I then got to “Rice could doom U.S.-Korea trade deal: source” and thought, Jesus, what’s she screwing up now?. But it turns out they’re just talking about the grain.
Context is everything. And there is no conspiracy.
Strange Synchrony
The latest Bob The Angry Flower, Smashing! Hand!! With hammer!!! is weirdly resonant with The Poor Man‘s recent Getting serious about terror.
I suppose that a certain degree of convergent evolution is unavoidable when you’re dealing with intransigent mulish stupidity on a scale this epic, but still…
New Blog of the Month: Kung Fu Monkey
First with “Wait, aren’t you scared?” and now This is Technically Child Abuse, John Rogers has earned his Kung Fu Monkey a spot amongst the half-dozen or so blogs I visit regularly.
(Unfortunately, I may soon wind up dropping Fafblog from that same list. Not because I want to, just because we’re coming up on a month and a half since it was last updated. Fafnir? Giblets? Medium Lobster? C’mon out, guys — joke’s over.)
The Word of the Day
…is “douchegeiser”. As in, “Ralph Peters is officially the biggest douchegeiser in the entire universe.“
Bloody Hell
Now I owe Antonin Scalia for something: introducing me to the word “condign“.
I feel tainted.
God damnit.
Fafnir/Lobster 2008
There are times when only the surreal absurdism of the Fafblog is up to the challenge of grappling with the issues of the day, whether it’s the rise of the imperial Presidency or the sad state of the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, such times are increasingly frequent of late.
Blowing up a Starbux
Last week saw a minor scare in San Francisco, when what appeared to be a pipe bomb was discovered in a Starbucks. It now appears that the “bomb” may not actually have been one, but the story nevertheless prompted me to look up and reread Adam Greenfield’s excellent essay, “Ikeaphobia and its Discontents”.