"There was a theme park called Beat-Down..."

Well, thank goodness MLK's tearful little dears can now go to Fun Town. But do they have to bring their parents?
Oh racism. Why. Oh why.

Buyer's Remorse

Excuse my rudery, but stuff the jubilee!
--Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine

Have they considered just putting a baton in his hand? They could replace the rolled-up paper, which makes him look like he's about to swat one of us for pissing on the rug.
Your more discerning lefty has to be uncomfortable with the Monster on the Mall. Can you blame him? It's too obvious, too much artistic and political overreach, with MLK emerging from Mother Earth like a primal deity--nothing to come before or after. Are they kidding? But tweaking the silly "drum major" quote--you've got to love it. It's like they've bought this big ugly car they have to keep forever and they're fiddling with the nameplate--because that's all they can do. Serves them right. We deserved better, though.

If Hell Has a Soundtrack

I'd have thought it impossible to improve upon the lyrics to Imagine. Some things are just too awful to salvage. But Cee Lo Green has done it.


Outkast (Feat. Cee Lo), Liberation

(God, to be able to lose that mopey f---ing solo rap at 5 minutes in--what a great song this would be!)

The Icy Flame, Mad Monk Mix

Live on, thou damned!
--Baudelaire, The Double Room

Life is the lash
Driving us on
Toward the flame
Without haste
Without pause
Calm, cruel, fixed
Indifferent to us
Its raw material that serves some purpose
We cannot know
Into the chilling fire, slave-soldiers!
Into Nature's maw!
This command the only counsel
Of a universe without conscience
And desperate Man takes his own
He imagines worlds beyond
Over and above this grave
Clear of its stench and toil
He peoples them with his beloved
Who wait there serene and knowing
Holding the Secret in trust
He blasphemes Nature's Holy Writ
As He works to will these things
He works in defiant futility
Despite Her daily proofs
Of disease and calamity
The endlessly varied forms
Her harvest of death takes, like
Myriad mutant troops enforcing Her terror
And She claims with equal indifference
Her rebels and Her slaves
But behind Her cold disdain
Concealed by Her advantage in time
Her actions reveal some jealousy
Of Man's last means of resistance
His undying imagination
And frail She may be after all
Behind that horrible beautiful face
So we may as well call Her bluff
Though we know Her game is rigged, and
Sing defiant you fading voices!
We last, we last and
We have no fear, for
In that crucible of ice and dust
In that fire that will not warm
There, final and eternal
Only there
We are
At long last my tiring friend
No longer alone.

We Come in PC

My name is ghetwI', and I'm a Mormon.

Brian Jonestown Massacre, Anemone

Rum, Sodomy, and the Rag

Fun facts encountered while looking up aircraft carrier George H.W. Bush (CVN 77), presently anchored alongside Syria:

Reports began surfacing immediately after delivery in May of 2009 of issues with the ships toilet system. As of November, 2011, the entire system has gone down at least twice, rendering all 423 commodes in the ship's 130 heads inoperable, with many more incidents that have rendered either half of the ship, or sections of the ship, without operating sanitary facilities. In one ship-wide incident, a repair crew spent 35 non-stop hours attempting to return the system to working order. The system is said to suffer breakdowns when inappropriate materials such as feminine hygiene products are flushed down the toliets.

Lone Doof

The quality of "lone wolf" terrorists remains underwhelming:

Two law enforcement officials said Monday that the NYPD’s Intelligence Division had sought to get the FBI involved at least twice as the investigation unfolded. Both times, the FBI concluded that Pimentel lacked the mental capacity to act on his own, they said.

Ask not for whom the strife bodes...

The New York Times knows multiculturalism when it sees it (abroad):

Sectarian Strife in Diverse City Bodes Ill for All of Syria

With all these models of truly multicultural (as opposed to whatever is meant by the phrase here in the States) societies around us, you'd think our elite might question its policy of planned ethnic diversification. Because while ethnic cleansing has a long, bloody history, ethnic diversification has none at all. That is other than history's many examples of imperial powers importing one population to displace another--we are the first to inflict this upon ourselves--which has always been just a means of ethnic cleansing. What part greed and what part stupidity propel our elite's actions remains a mystery to me.

There is no crueler phrase than "life goes on..."

T-Shirt Slogan

Works for any number of disciplines.

Glib Talib

The Taliban are now deploying snark:

NATO figures show that enemy attacks declined by 8 percent during the first nine months of this year compared to the year before. The United Nations, on the other hand, reported in September that insurgent attacks had increased by 39 percent in the first eight months of this year.

Referring to the gradual drawdown of military forces that has begun in Afghanistan, the Taliban statement read, “If [Nato Secretary General] Rasmussen and all his allies leave Afghanistan completely then the attacks on them will reach zero and he can propagate the notion even more and say that the number of Taliban attacks have fallen further.”

Needs work, but looks like some aspects of Westernization are taking hold.

Contextualized for Your Protection

I love this. Tintin is being sold with a familiar, reassuring paper band:

A spokesman said: “This is why we took the unusual step of placing a protective band around the book with a warning about the content and also included an introduction inside the book by the original translators explaining the historical context.
(...)
The warning reads: “In his portrayal of the Belgian Congo, the young Hergé reflects the colonial attitudes of the time…

“He depicted the African people according to the bourgeois, paternalistic stereotypes of the period – an interpretation that some of today’s readers may find offensive.”

A Waterstones spokesman confirmed that the book had been switched to the graphic novels section of its stores four years ago, and that since then its position had not changed.

In the social realm what is conventionally meant by “progress”, now, is the direction of societal drift, whatever it may be. The aggregate of all those liberated, loosed souls, whose beneficent effect is presumed. Social Progressives concern themselves with identifying the general direction of this drift, so that they may then name it, and approve of it as, Progress.

From the Untethered Newswire

October 31, 2021, Stamford CT (UNS)

In an incident experts are calling unprecedented, a veteran daytime talk-show host died today when his soul fled his body.
"At approximately 12:59 this afternoon Maury Povich died of multiple complications resulting from the catastrophic, sudden detachment of his soul from his physical body,” a spokesperson at Stamford General Hospital read from a prepared statement hours later.

Povich, 76, collapsed during the taping of his television program Maury, which has been running in one form or another since 1991. In the recording of his final, incomplete show, disseminated on the Internet within minutes of his death, Povich appears to become disoriented, massaging his chest before taking a seat on the edge of the stage and waving off a concerned assistant. Then he loosens his tie and, smiling pensively, says, "you know I've done about a thousand of these paternity tests by now..."
At that point (warning: disturbing content at 10:58) his voice becomes unintelligible as he appears to physically implode. To the horror of his crew and the confusion of audience members, Povich collapsed in a gelatinous heap, unrecognizable as human, within seconds.

The studio audience reacted violently, as some bolted for the exits, some laughed at what they, perhaps, took to be a stunt, and others jockeyed to photograph or prod Povich's remains. At one point a man, who had just learned he is the father of three children, can be seen trying to cut away a piece of the former host for a souvenir. Stamford police took several hours to contain the chaos, making several arrests.

Loquatious DeVonne, 36, a participant on the program, was nearby when it happened.
"His voice got all weird and blubbery, like he was underwater or something. Then he just went all like a big rubber baby, you know, that was all hollow inside. I was like damn!"

Dr. Hal Ashborne of the Institute for Scientific Theology, after examining the tape, said the incident is vindication for the religious belief in the existence of a soul as the "core element of the human person." Dr. Ashborne played and analyzed the recording for reporters.
"Right here, just as he begins to collapse in on himself, we can clearly discern the implosion beginning in the chest, proving a longtime, nearly universal human intuition wrongly discredited by science--that of a soul extant as a physical reality within the human breast. And then here, precisely at 10:59:06, you can actually see Mr. Povich's soul leaving his body."

Ms. DeVonne and others could not confirm the soul's departure from their eyewitness accounts.
"All I know is it got real smelly up in there right when he fall down and he kind of made this loud fart sound." She said.

In an historic news conference scheduled for tomorrow, several of the world's top scientists and theologians reportedly will join to assert the death has demonstrated conclusively the existence of the soul as a "physical and ontological reality."
"I know. I couldn't believe it either." Richard Dawkins, celebrity atheist, said, shaking his head. "But what other explanation is there?"

The debate over the nature of the soul has only just begun, however, according to Dr. Samuel Mitchell, head of Connecticut University's theology department.
"The question remains as to the disposition of that soul. The soul is known to depart the body following death, not to precipitate or cause death. What became of it? Was it destroyed? And if it was, then has the existence of the soul really been proven? The soul is supposed to be immortal and immutable. Or is it subject, with enough time and effort, to degradation the same way a biological entity is? The question remains: can a man lose his soul?"

Dr. Mitchell reassured those concerned about meeting a similar fate. Povich was an extraordinary case, he said.
"One thing is clear. After years of intense, unremitting assault upon the seat of his own humanity with utter disregard for its well-being, Povich has unintentionally proved the existence of the soul, providing us here with the first recorded image of it. But it required concerted effort over a lifetime. It's unlikely there are very many people capable of scaring their soul from their own body, even if they tried."

Mitchell suggested the death of Jerry Springer, another veteran daytime talk-show host, may have to be reexamined in light of today's event. According to a police inquiry, Springer was killed in 2017 when a stage-light fell on him during a staple of his show, his "final thoughts" on the day's program. Yet several in the studio audience insisted they saw a lightning-like electric current passing from somewhere overhead and through Mr. Springer, who was reduced to ash in seconds. Controversy has surrounded that incident and was exacerbated when the recording of the program turned up missing. Mitchell isn't prepared to link the two deaths, but insists the degree and nature of Springer's injuries have not been adequately explained and should be reevaluated.
"This was no lighting accident."

Birth Fangs of Democracy

Too bad for Hillary Clinton, so proud to stand on "the soil of a free Tripoli", so humbly furtive in arriving there, as our declining prestige (born largely of just the sort of intervention she was celebrating) warrants yet another secret Mideast visit from the Secretary of State (shuttle diplomacy has given way to touch and go diplomacy). Consequently, she just-missed the world's newest democracy taking its first tentative baby steps. They're so cute at that age!
And I'm sure they're just getting started. Maybe Ms. Clinton can drop in on her way home (in secret, of course), to have her picture taken with the corpse, trophy-hunt style. Hurry Hil, that thing's got to be ripening quickly.