Wednesday, June 30, 2004
LA SAUCE POUR LE JARS:
There has been a generational shift on the right. The old ones just had nightmares about what horrors the evil liberals might impose on the country. We of the new breed actually use those fearful fantasies for sources, turning the techniques they warned leftists might use into weapons against the liberals themselves.
One great example is a novelist who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1960. (That's not a strong recommendation itself, since we know how easily old Joe Kennedy bought one for his son three years earlier.) Allen Drury showed how obsolete his attitudes were in his first book, Advise And Consent, by actually portraying a gay Senator sympathetically, something no conservative would do in this age of Santorum. His greatest mistake was assuming that authoritarian rule would come to America from the left, as shown in his Come Nineveh, Come Tyre in 1973.
That novel proved to be a treasure trove of ideas for Our Noble Leader's administration, from allowing "collaboration" between the FBI, CIA, IRS and other agencies, to setting up a new "Domestic Tranquillity Board", which promptly starts locking up subversive U.S. citizens with no recourse to the courts. I'm sure that The Rovinator and General John are both thankful to Drury for his inspiration.
Another of the newer wave who learned from old fiction is Paul Johnson. Himself a former leftist, he has become a popularizer of history, producing long tomes about the Jews, Christianity, and the U.S., all wonderful excuses to slither rightist ideas down the unsuspecting readers' throats. I've just finished his Art: A New History, clearly a labor of loathe for him, and a great example of his methods as a propagandist.
Johnson really gives the game away in his Introduction, writing "...culture wars are perhaps the cruellest and most demoralising of all wars. It is therefore essential that society defend itself against cultural breakdown." Fortunately, most will skip that and flip through the pages looking at pretty pictures. His real purpose for the book is to lure people on unsuspectingly to reading Chapter 29, "The Beginnings of Fashion Art". That's where he launches his intemperate tirade against modern art, using all the techniques he honed when editing the leftist New Statesman before coming to his senses on the road to Damascus.
We can gleefully cheer on his blood-letting ad hominems against that "fraud", Picasso, cleverly implying his work must be bad because of his personal life. Those of us familiar with the subject can only stand in awe of how he misstates facts, confuses unconnected work, and spins his own misdefinitions. Johnson's ordinary readers will have no idea how he has twisted truth for their own good, especially since he dropped any source notes and bibliography (to keep the book from becoming "prohibitively expensive and bulky").
His most intense venom is reserved, and rightly so, for the Surrealists. For just one instance, he writes that Magritte's "The Threatened Assassin (1927) ... hints that a murder is about to be committed, though not how, why, or of whom." Cleverly, this is not the example of Magritte's work which he prints a picture of. If he did, some reader might make this connection:
The best evidence of how Johnson uses techniques from old rightist nightmare fiction is his gushing praise for one American artist, whom he champions for being "optimistic" and "consoling", and, in a triumph of chutzpah, claims to display "no politics" at all, namely Norman Rockwell. One passing comment about this illustrator gives a clue to the source of Johnson's method:
There has been a generational shift on the right. The old ones just had nightmares about what horrors the evil liberals might impose on the country. We of the new breed actually use those fearful fantasies for sources, turning the techniques they warned leftists might use into weapons against the liberals themselves.
One great example is a novelist who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1960. (That's not a strong recommendation itself, since we know how easily old Joe Kennedy bought one for his son three years earlier.) Allen Drury showed how obsolete his attitudes were in his first book, Advise And Consent, by actually portraying a gay Senator sympathetically, something no conservative would do in this age of Santorum. His greatest mistake was assuming that authoritarian rule would come to America from the left, as shown in his Come Nineveh, Come Tyre in 1973.
That novel proved to be a treasure trove of ideas for Our Noble Leader's administration, from allowing "collaboration" between the FBI, CIA, IRS and other agencies, to setting up a new "Domestic Tranquillity Board", which promptly starts locking up subversive U.S. citizens with no recourse to the courts. I'm sure that The Rovinator and General John are both thankful to Drury for his inspiration.
Another of the newer wave who learned from old fiction is Paul Johnson. Himself a former leftist, he has become a popularizer of history, producing long tomes about the Jews, Christianity, and the U.S., all wonderful excuses to slither rightist ideas down the unsuspecting readers' throats. I've just finished his Art: A New History, clearly a labor of loathe for him, and a great example of his methods as a propagandist.
Johnson really gives the game away in his Introduction, writing "...culture wars are perhaps the cruellest and most demoralising of all wars. It is therefore essential that society defend itself against cultural breakdown." Fortunately, most will skip that and flip through the pages looking at pretty pictures. His real purpose for the book is to lure people on unsuspectingly to reading Chapter 29, "The Beginnings of Fashion Art". That's where he launches his intemperate tirade against modern art, using all the techniques he honed when editing the leftist New Statesman before coming to his senses on the road to Damascus.
We can gleefully cheer on his blood-letting ad hominems against that "fraud", Picasso, cleverly implying his work must be bad because of his personal life. Those of us familiar with the subject can only stand in awe of how he misstates facts, confuses unconnected work, and spins his own misdefinitions. Johnson's ordinary readers will have no idea how he has twisted truth for their own good, especially since he dropped any source notes and bibliography (to keep the book from becoming "prohibitively expensive and bulky").
His most intense venom is reserved, and rightly so, for the Surrealists. For just one instance, he writes that Magritte's "The Threatened Assassin (1927) ... hints that a murder is about to be committed, though not how, why, or of whom." Cleverly, this is not the example of Magritte's work which he prints a picture of. If he did, some reader might make this connection:
A five-part serial, "Fantomas", by the French movie-maker Louis Feuillade was the main cinematic influence on Magritte. This series of films (taken from novels of the same name) dealt with a character named Fantomas who captured the imagination of Magritte as well as many other surrealists. Fantomas was a "genius of evil ". He could commit grisly and brilliant crimes without leaving a trace. ...You can see the picture and judge Johnson's honesty and perception for yourself HERE. Liberals, preferring to believe the best of everyone, might assume that Johnson can't read French, and so is unaware of thirty-two volumes of stories about Fantomas. Go right on believing this is just sloppy work, you foolish idealists, while he goes on doing whatever it takes to win those culture wars, including noble lies. Your gullibility is why you're losing.
In another painting, The Threatened Assassin, Magritte painted another episode from Fantomas. In this painting there are five men waiting outside of a room which contains the nude corpse of a woman and an unperturbed man standing by a gramophone. Fantomas strikes again.
The best evidence of how Johnson uses techniques from old rightist nightmare fiction is his gushing praise for one American artist, whom he champions for being "optimistic" and "consoling", and, in a triumph of chutzpah, claims to display "no politics" at all, namely Norman Rockwell. One passing comment about this illustrator gives a clue to the source of Johnson's method:
His wartime industrial heroine, Rosie the Riveter, is a pastiche of a Michelangelo figure from the Sistine Ceiling....He goes on to compare him to De Hooch and Hopper. This immediately reminded me of a passage in an old rightist novel about a different art:
The Cosmo-Slotnick building, which is pure Michelangelo. ... The Prudential Bank Building, which is genuine Palladio. The Slottern Department Store, which is snitched Christopher Wren.A later passage in that famous novel about architecture attributes to an evil leftist writer the very essence of what Johnson is doing here:
Sure he's good, but suppose I didn't like him. Suppose I wanted to stop people from seeing his plays. It would do me no good whatever to tell them so. But if I sold them the idea that you're just as great as Ibsen -- pretty soon they wouldn't be able to tell the difference.Thus the former Saul of the New Statesman undercuts Dali, Ernst, and all the other modernists not just by sliming them, but by building up as an ideal the work of a trivial simplistic chauvinist of technical adequacy but no inspiration, who used his talent to sell magazines. This is a perfect example of how we on the right can profit from the imaginative fears of our fiction writers. Take the vilest approaches they try to scare us with about the left, and use those very tools ourselves. Meanwhile, pass on Johnson's cleverly concealed subject-changing doorstop to uninformed friends who would like to know something about art. He's one more useful weapon in bringing the war back home.
Monday, June 28, 2004
THE LONE STAR CIVIL WAR:
For several days The American Street has been stilled, with its bloggers unable to post more of their usual snide attacks upon Our Noble Leader. For some time, they have foolishly allowed me to post there on occasion, just to prove to the world how tolerant of diversity of opinions they are. No doubt they expect I would return the favor if I had my own domain name and web host. Silly idealists.
Today they thought they finally managed to resolve whatever bugs were glitching them up. Little did they know the truth. They need to look South to W's own home base, and, as usual, to the Good Book, in this case in Mark 6:4:
Just last month, the Libertarian Party met and nominated Michael Badnarik for President. His choice is also bad news for the incumbent, since he is likely to split off some right-wing voters disgusted by deficits and foreign crusades -- and, unlike Nadir, he will be on the ballot in virtually every state. Both the Green and Libertarian nominees were surprises. They had one other thing in common: both of them are from Texas.
Why did these unknown challengers emerge from George's own home state this year? I blame Tom Delay. Yes, his redistricting was a brilliant ploy to pick up more seats in Congress, but it stirred such fierce antagonism that it was like first use of nuclear weapons. Sadly, he did not devastate his enemies there quite enough. Not only are those Democratic lame ducks from Texas filing ethics charges against him, I believe they are the ones who secretly encouraged these nobodys from the Lone Star State. Both of them were chosen to do the maximum possible damage to the Republican national ticket in swing states. If I had to guess, I would be most suspicious of redistricted Democrat Martin Frost, who seems to see himself as the would-be Third Coast Phil Burton.
Just days ago my brilliant research uncovered this insidious liberal plot. Naturally I intended to warn those puppets at the Green convention how they were being manipulated, so that they would sever those strings and support Ralph the Trojan Horse instead, giving our plans the greatest possible help. Not knowing any Greens personally, I thought it only fitting to turn the left's "tolerance" against them, by posting this revelation on The American Street, which has a much higher lefty readership than my own site. Unfortunately, I let this plan slip out too soon. The result was a stealthy attack by liberal hackers on The Street's servers, effectively blocking new posts -- and keeping the truth hidden about the attempted Texas revenge on their past Governor, who Left No Surplus Behind for those Democrats to ever spend.
The recidivist big spenders want those tax cuts back so they can give them away to the undeserving poor, and they'll try any trick they can to beat the Bushes this fall. That included blocking The Street over the weekend. Now that they've planted another unwitting Texas stalking horse to block Nader, they've gotten out of the way, and that web site is free to go on with its predictable cat calls against the only President we've got. Well, they won this battle, but it's a long long war through November. I won't let them catch me napping again.
For several days The American Street has been stilled, with its bloggers unable to post more of their usual snide attacks upon Our Noble Leader. For some time, they have foolishly allowed me to post there on occasion, just to prove to the world how tolerant of diversity of opinions they are. No doubt they expect I would return the favor if I had my own domain name and web host. Silly idealists.
Today they thought they finally managed to resolve whatever bugs were glitching them up. Little did they know the truth. They need to look South to W's own home base, and, as usual, to the Good Book, in this case in Mark 6:4:
"A prophet is not without honor except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house."Just this past weekend the Green Party held their own national convention, and chose not to endorse Ralph Nader, instead nominating David Cobb. Most liberals will see that as good news, since it will keep the Crusader against Corvairs off the ballot in many states. To we who hope to see the Preemptive Crusade expanded against the entire Axis of Medieval, that is bad news. We had been contributing to Ralphie to help his efforts, but Cobb promises (more credibly than Nay-sayer did) to only campaign in non-swing states which Bush will either win or lose big-time. This November election might be close enough for a credible left-wing alternative to The Ketchup Consort to throw it to us again -- or at least to let La Familia Scalia to close the deal.
Just last month, the Libertarian Party met and nominated Michael Badnarik for President. His choice is also bad news for the incumbent, since he is likely to split off some right-wing voters disgusted by deficits and foreign crusades -- and, unlike Nadir, he will be on the ballot in virtually every state. Both the Green and Libertarian nominees were surprises. They had one other thing in common: both of them are from Texas.
Why did these unknown challengers emerge from George's own home state this year? I blame Tom Delay. Yes, his redistricting was a brilliant ploy to pick up more seats in Congress, but it stirred such fierce antagonism that it was like first use of nuclear weapons. Sadly, he did not devastate his enemies there quite enough. Not only are those Democratic lame ducks from Texas filing ethics charges against him, I believe they are the ones who secretly encouraged these nobodys from the Lone Star State. Both of them were chosen to do the maximum possible damage to the Republican national ticket in swing states. If I had to guess, I would be most suspicious of redistricted Democrat Martin Frost, who seems to see himself as the would-be Third Coast Phil Burton.
Just days ago my brilliant research uncovered this insidious liberal plot. Naturally I intended to warn those puppets at the Green convention how they were being manipulated, so that they would sever those strings and support Ralph the Trojan Horse instead, giving our plans the greatest possible help. Not knowing any Greens personally, I thought it only fitting to turn the left's "tolerance" against them, by posting this revelation on The American Street, which has a much higher lefty readership than my own site. Unfortunately, I let this plan slip out too soon. The result was a stealthy attack by liberal hackers on The Street's servers, effectively blocking new posts -- and keeping the truth hidden about the attempted Texas revenge on their past Governor, who Left No Surplus Behind for those Democrats to ever spend.
The recidivist big spenders want those tax cuts back so they can give them away to the undeserving poor, and they'll try any trick they can to beat the Bushes this fall. That included blocking The Street over the weekend. Now that they've planted another unwitting Texas stalking horse to block Nader, they've gotten out of the way, and that web site is free to go on with its predictable cat calls against the only President we've got. Well, they won this battle, but it's a long long war through November. I won't let them catch me napping again.
Thursday, June 24, 2004
MY OWN PRIVATE DIEBOLD:
Taking an idea from skippy the bush kangaroo, I have put up a poll on my sidebar. While he merely asked, in his inadequately capitalized way, "who would be the best candidate for john kerry's vice president?", I have decided to show how serious this question is by reminding you of what will happen if John Heinz-Kerry should actually win this fall. That's right, we're already drafting impeachment articles for perjury. Isn't a lie about heaving stars as important as one about having sex? I started the ballots rolling by helpfully voting for the person who would do the second most harm to John-boy's chances, She Who Must Not Be Named. Yes, I know Sharpton would scare even more voters into sticking with Our Noble Leader, but as Christopher Walken said in one of my favorite movies, "There are some things I don't do." To paraphrase the old Republican slogan from Reconstruction years, "Vote as you scoffed."
Taking an idea from skippy the bush kangaroo, I have put up a poll on my sidebar. While he merely asked, in his inadequately capitalized way, "who would be the best candidate for john kerry's vice president?", I have decided to show how serious this question is by reminding you of what will happen if John Heinz-Kerry should actually win this fall. That's right, we're already drafting impeachment articles for perjury. Isn't a lie about heaving stars as important as one about having sex? I started the ballots rolling by helpfully voting for the person who would do the second most harm to John-boy's chances, She Who Must Not Be Named. Yes, I know Sharpton would scare even more voters into sticking with Our Noble Leader, but as Christopher Walken said in one of my favorite movies, "There are some things I don't do." To paraphrase the old Republican slogan from Reconstruction years, "Vote as you scoffed."
COOKING WITH KANE:
I've previously written how liberal Mad Kane's incessant sniping at Our Noble Leader with her song parodies has lowered her I.Q. so that she has to crib from ever simpler material. Perhaps she has given up now to turn to an even less intellectually challenging career -- game show host. She writes
I've previously written how liberal Mad Kane's incessant sniping at Our Noble Leader with her song parodies has lowered her I.Q. so that she has to crib from ever simpler material. Perhaps she has given up now to turn to an even less intellectually challenging career -- game show host. She writes
I was amused to learn about a new Bush administration goal: It wants to change the name of the Food Stamps Program (since it no longer uses stamps) and is soliciting suggestions from the public. ...the new name I've come up with is "Leave No Stomach Behind." ...as a public service, I challenge my readers to come up with some good names and post them in my comments. If I get suggestions from ten or more people, I'll even award a prize -- $10 in PayPal cash.So far I think the most vicious libels proposed there have been The Talking Dog's "Ronald Reagan Supplemental User Card Kiosk System"" -or simply "Reagan SUCKS" and someone's suggestion of "Faith based obesity prevention initiative". Go see how wildly the liberals flail over a mere pittance at "Rename the Food Stamps Program -- Contest with Prize".
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
STRANGE BARFELLOWS:
Here's the unintended consequence of filing indictments against an unknown rapist's sperm: this will give a major legal incentive to rapists to begin using condoms. This of course is prohibited by those encyclicals. Sure, the criminals are already committing one sin, but why encourage them to add another one by engaging in contraception? As for the claim that use of condoms by rapists might help prevent disease or even pregnancy, the first of those Papal ukases already covered that in typical Vaticanese prose:
I suppose it is too much to hope that at their recent meeting Our Noble Leader asked the Pope to support the ACLU position on this issue. To me it is obvious that the church should make common cause with the criminal apologists just this once. Let the leftist lawyers try to save the body of the elusive rapist from prison decades after their crime, while the priests try to preemptively lessen the darkness of the criminal's soul, sparing them the encouragement to commit still one more sin. It is a temporary marriage of convenience made, if not in heaven, then at least at the Supreme Court building.
The indictments allow cases to be kept open indefinitely, effectively circumventing the statute of limitations ... Using the John Doe DNA indictments, prosecutors bring the charges -- even when they don't know who committed the crime -- against the DNA profile from the evidence they gathered.Naturally the liberals of the ACLU are outraged, claiming the passage of time could make a fair trial impossible years later. This is just more of their usual silliness, claiming you earn a "get out of jail free card" if you can get away with a crime for fifteen years or whatever. But just this once they are actually on the side of the angels, or at least the Popes. Sadly, neither Paul VI's Humanae Vitae nor John Paul II's Evangelium Vitae foresaw such a high tech threat to their teachings.
The approach originated in Milwaukee in 1999 but has spread to counties in Texas, California, New York, and a handful of other states. Last April, Congress passed a bill allowing prosecutors to bring John Doe DNA indictments for federal sex offenses.
Here's the unintended consequence of filing indictments against an unknown rapist's sperm: this will give a major legal incentive to rapists to begin using condoms. This of course is prohibited by those encyclicals. Sure, the criminals are already committing one sin, but why encourage them to add another one by engaging in contraception? As for the claim that use of condoms by rapists might help prevent disease or even pregnancy, the first of those Papal ukases already covered that in typical Vaticanese prose:
In truth, if it is sometimes licit to tolerate a lesser evil in order to avoid a greater evil or to promote a greater good, it is not licit, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil so that good may follow therefrom, that is, to make into the object of a positive act of the will something which is intrinsically disorder, and hence unworthy of the human person, even when the intention is to safeguard or promote individual, family or social well-being.His Holiness failed to make this turgid sentence any less obscure by supporting it with a footnote reference to the eighth verse of Romans 3, a chapter which seems to argue that Jews are not worthless, because they sin just as much as Gentiles. If the relevance eludes you, allow me to paraphrase: condoms are bad, no matter what beneficial side effects they might have.
I suppose it is too much to hope that at their recent meeting Our Noble Leader asked the Pope to support the ACLU position on this issue. To me it is obvious that the church should make common cause with the criminal apologists just this once. Let the leftist lawyers try to save the body of the elusive rapist from prison decades after their crime, while the priests try to preemptively lessen the darkness of the criminal's soul, sparing them the encouragement to commit still one more sin. It is a temporary marriage of convenience made, if not in heaven, then at least at the Supreme Court building.
GUARDING OUR FLANK:
In Taxachusetts the Democratic legislators are trying a power grab. They want to pass a bill which would provide a special election for U.S. Senator if, God forbid, Kerry wins the White House and resigns. The catch is the bill would prohibit the nominal Republican Governor from appointing a temporary replacement to serve until the election. Obviously they want to avoid having their candidate face an incumbent Republican.Hypocrisy Democratic Party actually supports democracy if that interferes with their pursuit of power. Nevertheless, never let it be said that I agree with Common Cause on anything. There is a very good reason to leave this vacancy unfilled for as long as possible -- the person elected is likely to be a liberal. Even a Republican appointed by that waffler would be too far left by my standards. If I recall correctly, the last Republican Senator from that state was Edward Brooke. 'Nuff said.
In Taxachusetts the Democratic legislators are trying a power grab. They want to pass a bill which would provide a special election for U.S. Senator if, God forbid, Kerry wins the White House and resigns. The catch is the bill would prohibit the nominal Republican Governor from appointing a temporary replacement to serve until the election. Obviously they want to avoid having their candidate face an incumbent Republican.
Pamela Wilmot, executive director of Common Cause, and Secretary of State William F. Galvin, a Democrat and the state's chief election officer, also have called for lawmakers to allow the installation of a temporary senator during the special process. Both had advocated a six-month election process that would allow a wider field of candidates and accommodate federal requirements such as distributing ballots to military personnel. "I am quite sure I'll be in federal court," said Galvin, who said he anticipated civil suits to force a longer election process. "The rights of voters come ahead of parties and candidates."Never let it be said that the
Tuesday, June 22, 2004
MS. SPARTACUS:
In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is not king, but a pariah condemned for his fraudulent claims of imaginary "visions". Statistically unusual eyesight is not the only quality provoking such jealous denial from the less gifted. Anything which calls into question their petty prejudices can lead to vicious personal attacks.
Consider the snarking by liberals at a colleague of mine who happens to share the same initials. When her writing disproved their foolish idea that women are more gentle and kind than men, the estrogen-challenged on the left mounted a Last Stand At Gender Gap, with cleverly Photoshopped allegations, and some notorious Boondocks cartoons, claiming that she had an Adam's apple. The implication was escalated further by Tbogg, writing of a man she had been seen dating, "Jonathan? Sweetie? Have you ever seen The Crying Game? ....Why? Oh, no reason...." It is not surprising that the guardians of feminist political correctness have displayed their usual double standard by not condemning the "sexism" of these cruel ad feminems.
Yet that helplessly beset conservative muse is in fact quite moderate. She was decried for intolerance after 9-11, when all she advocated was killing enemy leaders and forced conversion of their people. I have repeated often that her proposal, though well-intentioned, is not an adequate response. I continue to lobby for massive retaliation with thermonuclear weapons to destroy the entire Islamic world. Lately, as casualties mount in Iraq, I have been delighted to see more bloggers edging toward this idea. As this shift gathers momentum, perhaps it was inevitable that the appeasers would turn their nictitating membranes in my direction. Naturally, their first reaction was to use the same tactic against me which they tried on her.
Cleverly, they got a "moderate" to fire the first shot in this meme war. A moderate blogger is someone who has a permalink to Instapundit, but not to Little Green Footballs. In this case their designated fire-starter was Dean Esmay. On Monday he posted on his blog a damnation with faint praise of my own. Part of his thrust was to dismiss all my serious suggestions for destruction of the domestic Democratic demons as mere "satire". This reminded me of a lament by Lily Tomlin, about going to great effort to put an important statement about life onto a freeway overpass for the world to see -- and then having some fool with a spray can come along and change it to read "Buick". No, Dean, "satire" was the last dying word of Citizen Gaines. My own métier is uncomfortable truth; Diogenes of Sinope hung up his lantern when he met me.
Esmay's real agenda was in these words:
Last year someone threatened to sue the anonymous leftist blogger Atrios for libel, and to demand his real identity in legal discovery. Insty and even Misha belittled this as unwise and the litigious one relented, but not before a campaign was begun by Billmon of the Whiskey Bar against this abuse of the tort process:
Let's stand this liberal technique on its head. So leftist plotters manipulated Esmay into claiming that two or more people on the blogroll, probably male, are actually me? I suggest that everyone reading this PUBLICLY DENY THAT YOU ARE ME. Say that you're not me here in the comments, say it in the comments at Esmay's own site, and say it in a post on your own site to help spread the word. Let's overwhelm him with denials and kill this vile liberal scheme before it builds up any steam.
In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is not king, but a pariah condemned for his fraudulent claims of imaginary "visions". Statistically unusual eyesight is not the only quality provoking such jealous denial from the less gifted. Anything which calls into question their petty prejudices can lead to vicious personal attacks.
Consider the snarking by liberals at a colleague of mine who happens to share the same initials. When her writing disproved their foolish idea that women are more gentle and kind than men, the estrogen-challenged on the left mounted a Last Stand At Gender Gap, with cleverly Photoshopped allegations, and some notorious Boondocks cartoons, claiming that she had an Adam's apple. The implication was escalated further by Tbogg, writing of a man she had been seen dating, "Jonathan? Sweetie? Have you ever seen The Crying Game? ....Why? Oh, no reason...." It is not surprising that the guardians of feminist political correctness have displayed their usual double standard by not condemning the "sexism" of these cruel ad feminems.
Yet that helplessly beset conservative muse is in fact quite moderate. She was decried for intolerance after 9-11, when all she advocated was killing enemy leaders and forced conversion of their people. I have repeated often that her proposal, though well-intentioned, is not an adequate response. I continue to lobby for massive retaliation with thermonuclear weapons to destroy the entire Islamic world. Lately, as casualties mount in Iraq, I have been delighted to see more bloggers edging toward this idea. As this shift gathers momentum, perhaps it was inevitable that the appeasers would turn their nictitating membranes in my direction. Naturally, their first reaction was to use the same tactic against me which they tried on her.
Cleverly, they got a "moderate" to fire the first shot in this meme war. A moderate blogger is someone who has a permalink to Instapundit, but not to Little Green Footballs. In this case their designated fire-starter was Dean Esmay. On Monday he posted on his blog a damnation with faint praise of my own. Part of his thrust was to dismiss all my serious suggestions for destruction of the domestic Democratic demons as mere "satire". This reminded me of a lament by Lily Tomlin, about going to great effort to put an important statement about life onto a freeway overpass for the world to see -- and then having some fool with a spray can come along and change it to read "Buick". No, Dean, "satire" was the last dying word of Citizen Gaines. My own métier is uncomfortable truth; Diogenes of Sinope hung up his lantern when he met me.
Esmay's real agenda was in these words:
"She" is probably a man or, more likely, two or more people. Just look to her blogroll, it'll probably be one or more of those fellows. ...the guys doing Ms. Clouter (or, really, shouldn't it be "Miss?" I'm sure "she" must be an old maid who dislikes the term "Ms.") ....So Dean claims not only that I am "one of those plural personalities", as the valet said in a classic Fred Astaire movie, but apparently have visited Denmark for surgical transformation as well. That's if we take his comments seriously, instead of as just an attempted libel by a writer jealous over missing one arm of an "X" on the 23rd chromosome. Jung would find it most fitting that it was on the 23rd day of June in 1956 that Walt Kelly depicted my reaction to this in Pogo:
Beaver: "You know who Miss Ma'm'selle Hepzibah really is? She's the lost Dauphin of France!"I shall not fall into the trap described by the late Lyndon Johnson, who said one of the best things you can do in politics is to start the rumor that your opponent copulates with swine (LBJ used cruder language, of course). He went on that you don't expect anyone to believe the story; you just want your enemy to stand up and publicly deny it. Instead, I propose to take a leaf from one of those commie activists who were only briefly silenced by the Hollywood censorship supported by Saint Ronald.
Owl: "Don't that surprise you?"
Fox: "Somehow it don't surprise me half as much as it's gonna surprise Ma'm'selle Hepzibah."
Last year someone threatened to sue the anonymous leftist blogger Atrios for libel, and to demand his real identity in legal discovery. Insty and even Misha belittled this as unwise and the litigious one relented, but not before a campaign was begun by Billmon of the Whiskey Bar against this abuse of the tort process:
So fuck you, Stalker Luskin, AND the lawyer you rode in on. Or, to paraphrase one of my favorite gladiator movies: I'm Atrios!The reference is to a film with Kirk Douglas, based on a novel by old blacklistee Howard Fast, about the slave revolt in ancient Rome. In one classic scene someone demands to know which of the slaves is Spartacus, and soon dozens of them are all claiming to be him. Likewise, dozens of bloggers were soon claiming that they were the real Atrios.
Let's stand this liberal technique on its head. So leftist plotters manipulated Esmay into claiming that two or more people on the blogroll, probably male, are actually me? I suggest that everyone reading this PUBLICLY DENY THAT YOU ARE ME. Say that you're not me here in the comments, say it in the comments at Esmay's own site, and say it in a post on your own site to help spread the word. Let's overwhelm him with denials and kill this vile liberal scheme before it builds up any steam.
Saturday, June 19, 2004
BE VERY AFRAID:
Nemesis
?? Which Of The Greek Gods Are You ??
brought to you by Quizilla
[Found at Silent Lucidity.]
Nemesis
?? Which Of The Greek Gods Are You ??
brought to you by Quizilla
[Found at Silent Lucidity.]
WHISTLING IN THE NOIR:
Apparently the voters, who gave us Republican control of all branches of our national government, are "blindly following guys with the mentalities of The Sopranos, sans all the acumen", according to resentful liberal Kevin Hayden of The American Street. Actually it doesn't take a lot of acumen to be in a crime family, just ruthlessness, paranoia, and severe myopia.
Machiavelli wrote "it is much safer to be feared than loved", but his humor was far above the heads of the petty tyrants he addressed. The truth is that if you live by intimidation, you are never safe. Once you get on that treadmill, you can't safely step off. Any sign of weakness, such as refusing to stomp on underlings or innocent bystanders for not showing you "respect", causes the carnivores in your compound to contemplate conspiracy.
It's like the children's game called King Of The Mountain. You have to be constantly on watch on all sides. The only way to "win" that game is to have a time limit, and declare the one teetering on the summit when the clock stops to be the champion. One reason so many people fall into this trap and join The Family You Can't Ever Quit, is the notorious short-sightedness of the criminal mind. Studies show them to have a serious lack of ability to imagine the long-range consequences of their present actions. They don't try to picture what happens after they scramble to the peak.
Real life, however, is not like a gangster thriller that has to be wrapped up for the closing credits. It is much more like Alan Moore's Watchmen. In that very timely and prophetic graphic novel, a conscienceless tycoon decides to save humanity from themselves. He gets conflicting nations to unite in opposing a greater threat, by faking an alien attack on New York City. Only the scale is different from 9-11, since this attack kills a thousand times more people. In the third-to-last scene he asks a character who truly can see the future, "I did the right thing, didn't I? It all worked out in the end?" The ominous reply is "'In the end'? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends."
So why is Our Noble Leader acting like that cliche character, the climbing egotist headed for a fall who says "I don't have to be nice to people on the way up, because I'm never coming down"? Retaliating against a diplomat by leaking that his wife was a CIA agent has already started a chain of revenge by The Company. Their latest attack was letting the world know about Rummy's illegal incarceration of some Iraqi terrorist, who wasn't even worth interrogating twice. Can you smell their set-up here? Why provoke such predictable backlash by the vengeful spooks?
The clue is, like The Purloined Letter, right there in front of the ignorant liberals who have misunderestimated him again. Those elitist secularists just refused to take him seriously when he said how he came to power. Now The Sideshow asks:
Apparently the voters, who gave us Republican control of all branches of our national government, are "blindly following guys with the mentalities of The Sopranos, sans all the acumen", according to resentful liberal Kevin Hayden of The American Street. Actually it doesn't take a lot of acumen to be in a crime family, just ruthlessness, paranoia, and severe myopia.
Machiavelli wrote "it is much safer to be feared than loved", but his humor was far above the heads of the petty tyrants he addressed. The truth is that if you live by intimidation, you are never safe. Once you get on that treadmill, you can't safely step off. Any sign of weakness, such as refusing to stomp on underlings or innocent bystanders for not showing you "respect", causes the carnivores in your compound to contemplate conspiracy.
It's like the children's game called King Of The Mountain. You have to be constantly on watch on all sides. The only way to "win" that game is to have a time limit, and declare the one teetering on the summit when the clock stops to be the champion. One reason so many people fall into this trap and join The Family You Can't Ever Quit, is the notorious short-sightedness of the criminal mind. Studies show them to have a serious lack of ability to imagine the long-range consequences of their present actions. They don't try to picture what happens after they scramble to the peak.
Real life, however, is not like a gangster thriller that has to be wrapped up for the closing credits. It is much more like Alan Moore's Watchmen. In that very timely and prophetic graphic novel, a conscienceless tycoon decides to save humanity from themselves. He gets conflicting nations to unite in opposing a greater threat, by faking an alien attack on New York City. Only the scale is different from 9-11, since this attack kills a thousand times more people. In the third-to-last scene he asks a character who truly can see the future, "I did the right thing, didn't I? It all worked out in the end?" The ominous reply is "'In the end'? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends."
So why is Our Noble Leader acting like that cliche character, the climbing egotist headed for a fall who says "I don't have to be nice to people on the way up, because I'm never coming down"? Retaliating against a diplomat by leaking that his wife was a CIA agent has already started a chain of revenge by The Company. Their latest attack was letting the world know about Rummy's illegal incarceration of some Iraqi terrorist, who wasn't even worth interrogating twice. Can you smell their set-up here? Why provoke such predictable backlash by the vengeful spooks?
The clue is, like The Purloined Letter, right there in front of the ignorant liberals who have misunderestimated him again. Those elitist secularists just refused to take him seriously when he said how he came to power. Now The Sideshow asks:
Could the end-timers who seem to worship him really be unclear on the obvious similarities between Bush and The Beast? Or do they recognize those similarities and want to join forces with The Beast himself in a deliberate attempt to bring on Armageddon?An admitted witch at The-Goddess links to a revealing report:
According to freelance journalist Wayne Madsden, "George W Bush's blood lust, his repeated commitment to Christian beliefs and his constant references to 'evil doers,' in the eyes of many devout Catholic leaders, bear all the hallmarks of the one warned about in the Book of Revelations -- the anti-Christ."So, if those frightened liberals are right about him, then our President is like a child playing King Of The Mountain, who knows that mommy's shortly going to yell that it's supper time. He doesn't need to worry about staying on top for long, because he knows the game is about to be called. It would have been very easy to calculate. He could just read the report from that pollster on Patmos, presented in Revelation 13:5:
Madsen ... says that people close to the pope claim that amid these concerns, the pontiff wishes he was younger and in better health to confront the possibility that Bush may represent the person prophesized in Revelations. John Paul II has always believed the world was on the precipice of the final confrontation between Good and Evil as foretold in the New Testament.
And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months.That would have told him that his administration, which began on January 20, 2001, will be over this July, one week before the scheduled start of the Democratic National Convention. Will it end by impeachment, resignation, or rapture? Mark your calendars and watch.
Monday, June 14, 2004
CALL ME A PROPHET:
I wrote about Mad Kane, in "Liberalism Lowers Your I.Q.", that "all that leftist venom has shrunk her brain power so much that she has to use much simpler raw material, like old folk songs. ... If this dumbing down continues, what will she have to use next? Nursery rhymes?" Never say I can't spot a trend. Her latest attempt to post lyrical graffiti against Our Noble Leader does just what I suggested. Go snicker at the evidence of her continuing decline at her new "Dump Bush Song".
I wrote about Mad Kane, in "Liberalism Lowers Your I.Q.", that "all that leftist venom has shrunk her brain power so much that she has to use much simpler raw material, like old folk songs. ... If this dumbing down continues, what will she have to use next? Nursery rhymes?" Never say I can't spot a trend. Her latest attempt to post lyrical graffiti against Our Noble Leader does just what I suggested. Go snicker at the evidence of her continuing decline at her new "Dump Bush Song".
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN BLYTHE:
Today they unveiled portraits of the hosts of that game show which recently played at the White House Theatre, "2922 Days of Sodom". Of course I declined my invitation to attend. I was tempted by the thought of Grace Slick's inspiration during the Nixon administration: slipping acid into the punch. My variant would have been to see what happened if She Who Must Not Be Named had some garlic spilled on her. I restrained myself because of the nightmare idea that her Governor might appoint that weaseling liberal Giuliani in her place.
The Clenis made me wonder if he'd been sampling some of Grace's party mix himself, with a typically incoherent remark: "Made me feel like I was a pickle stepping into history." Perhaps he was feeling nostalgic, or maybe Sigmund was right, and sometimes a cucumber is just a cucumber. On this return visit, was he careful not to step in that steaming pile of history he left on the rug?
The main reason I stayed away was fear of losing my breakfast at the pious hypocrisy required at such events. Amazingly the Democratic national Stool, Terry McAuliffe, was honest (no doubt by oversight), saying "Everyone loves everyone equally here today." Since the same two negative numbers are indeed equal, this was the literal truth. But I could not have kept a straight face hearing Mrs. "Dances With Words" say "Finally, it is a somewhat daunting experience to have your portrait hung in the White House." I could only recall Bob Munson's line to Crystal Danta in Advise And Consent: "The last time you were impressed was in the third grade."
Our Noble Leader himself was required by protocol to gush with courtesy for his predecessor. The most gag-producing example was when he said "We're glad you're here, 42." [That ominous number convinces me that Douglas Adams must have miscalculated. His Hitchhiker's Guide was quite accurate about the real task of the Commander in Chief. ("The President in particular is very much a figurehead .... His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it.") But that author obviously wasn't very good at math. The answer to the Ultimate Question could not possibly have been what he suggested. But I digress.]
This numerological nomenclature reminds me of the line from Get Smart!, when Agent Ninety-nine said "You're worth two 43s, Eighty-six." I'm sure snarky liberals would claim that even Maxwell Smart was twice as smart as our current President. He certainly has misleadered them about his vast intellect. Even that seems to shrink in comparison to the obvious strength of his ability to repress the barfing reflex. Hopefully he kept someone guarding all the keyboards until after His Isness departed once again.
Today they unveiled portraits of the hosts of that game show which recently played at the White House Theatre, "2922 Days of Sodom". Of course I declined my invitation to attend. I was tempted by the thought of Grace Slick's inspiration during the Nixon administration: slipping acid into the punch. My variant would have been to see what happened if She Who Must Not Be Named had some garlic spilled on her. I restrained myself because of the nightmare idea that her Governor might appoint that weaseling liberal Giuliani in her place.
The Clenis made me wonder if he'd been sampling some of Grace's party mix himself, with a typically incoherent remark: "Made me feel like I was a pickle stepping into history." Perhaps he was feeling nostalgic, or maybe Sigmund was right, and sometimes a cucumber is just a cucumber. On this return visit, was he careful not to step in that steaming pile of history he left on the rug?
The main reason I stayed away was fear of losing my breakfast at the pious hypocrisy required at such events. Amazingly the Democratic national Stool, Terry McAuliffe, was honest (no doubt by oversight), saying "Everyone loves everyone equally here today." Since the same two negative numbers are indeed equal, this was the literal truth. But I could not have kept a straight face hearing Mrs. "Dances With Words" say "Finally, it is a somewhat daunting experience to have your portrait hung in the White House." I could only recall Bob Munson's line to Crystal Danta in Advise And Consent: "The last time you were impressed was in the third grade."
Our Noble Leader himself was required by protocol to gush with courtesy for his predecessor. The most gag-producing example was when he said "We're glad you're here, 42." [That ominous number convinces me that Douglas Adams must have miscalculated. His Hitchhiker's Guide was quite accurate about the real task of the Commander in Chief. ("The President in particular is very much a figurehead .... His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it.") But that author obviously wasn't very good at math. The answer to the Ultimate Question could not possibly have been what he suggested. But I digress.]
This numerological nomenclature reminds me of the line from Get Smart!, when Agent Ninety-nine said "You're worth two 43s, Eighty-six." I'm sure snarky liberals would claim that even Maxwell Smart was twice as smart as our current President. He certainly has misleadered them about his vast intellect. Even that seems to shrink in comparison to the obvious strength of his ability to repress the barfing reflex. Hopefully he kept someone guarding all the keyboards until after His Isness departed once again.
Friday, June 11, 2004
"SAW THE HEAVENS FILL WITH COMMERCE":
Some fuzzy-brained lefty polemicist from Porlock sent me an article from Our Noble Leader's home state, asking if I don't think this represents an unconscionable redistribution of wealth:
Some fuzzy-brained lefty polemicist from Porlock sent me an article from Our Noble Leader's home state, asking if I don't think this represents an unconscionable redistribution of wealth:
Businesses are shouldering a smaller share of Harris County's tax burden, leaving homeowners and residential property owners to pick up the slack. ... Figures from the state comptroller's office suggest a similar trend across the state.Quite the contrary. I applaud efforts to shift the entire tax burden from business to what Leona called "the little people". Companies are your friends. I think the best description of how wonderful they are can be found by taking those famous words of Dr. Susan Calvin in that lefty sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov's collection I, Robot, and substituting "corporations" for all her gushing references to "robots":
There was a time when humanity faced the universe alone and without a friend. Now he has creatures to help him; stronger creatures than himself, more faithful, more useful, and absolutely devoted to him. Mankind is no longer alone. ... But you haven't worked with them, so you don't know them. They're a cleaner better breed than we are.Corporations have another advantage over mere human beings. They are immortal. For most of us being part of a company is the closest we will ever get to lasting forever. Again this was expressed well, though unintentionally, by a pulp fiction pontificator, in this case in an interview with Ray Bradbury in Oriana Fallaci's If The Sun Dies. Asked why we should go to space, he said:
Don't let us forget this: that the Earth can die, explode, the Sun can go out, will go out. And if the Sun dies, if the Earth dies, if our race dies, then so will everything die that we have done up to that moment. Homer will die, Michelangelo will die, Galileo, Leonardo, Shakespeare, Einstein will die, all those will die who now are not dead because we are alive, we are thinking of them, we are carrying them within us.That self-centered writer, whose most horrible vision of the future was a world where his own products were burnt (I will give him points for the reports that he resents Michael Moore's cribbing the title of that novel for his latest movie), misses the possibilities for all of us. To phrase it in his terms, if the Sun dies, but we do go to other stars, then Microsoft will still live, AT&T will survive, Exxon will continue, because corporations never die. They dwell among us as manifestations of Platonic perfection. Taxing them is worse than lese majesty; it should be seen as an act of hubris just short of lese divinity. A further quote from that same article is right on point:
Jim Robinson, chief appraiser of the Harris County Appraisal District, said the property tax burden has become "oppressive" to Harris County homeowners. "Quite frankly, from an overall viewpoint, the property tax is too high," he said. "But taxation is the price we pay to live in a free society and have the services we have."No, you visionless hack, taxes are what YOU and other merely biological persons should pay, so that corporations can thrive. A price is something you pay voluntarily; taxes are what we make you pay. Remember that, as you look up in awe at those shining skyscrapers on the hill. Console yourselves as you pick their cotton, that you're footing the bill for legal persons who will outlive even the wildest dreams of the Pharaohs. Their freedom is your monument. Now stop carping and cough up to support them.
Thursday, June 10, 2004
QUILL PENS ARE MADE FROM WHITE FEATHERS:
As the power of the last Roman emperors waned, some did not just stand at their posts, but went over to the other side. Such failures of nerve also occur at the beginnings of new world regimes. Several wimps are now jumping over the rails, resigning so that they can sell their lies to the looming Democratic barbarians they see as inevitable winners. We are carefully knitting their names into our register for the reckoning after November 2.
The latest outbreaks of cowardice (a word of appropriately French origin) have been sparked by ongoing revelations about U.S. policy on "torture" in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and Guantanamo. In a typical leftist rant about these, Digby of Hullabaloo quotes the self-impressed George F. Will, who plays a pundit on TV, turning on his masters, in a piece called "Time for Bush to See The Realities of Iraq":
As the power of the last Roman emperors waned, some did not just stand at their posts, but went over to the other side. Such failures of nerve also occur at the beginnings of new world regimes. Several wimps are now jumping over the rails, resigning so that they can sell their lies to the looming Democratic barbarians they see as inevitable winners. We are carefully knitting their names into our register for the reckoning after November 2.
The latest outbreaks of cowardice (a word of appropriately French origin) have been sparked by ongoing revelations about U.S. policy on "torture" in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and Guantanamo. In a typical leftist rant about these, Digby of Hullabaloo quotes the self-impressed George F. Will, who plays a pundit on TV, turning on his masters, in a piece called "Time for Bush to See The Realities of Iraq":
This administration cannot be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to think and, having thought, to have second thoughts.That's just the sort of Hamlet-like second guessing that liberals would like to see us wallow in. Our Noble Leader remains close enough in the polls for Diebold to cover the spread, because the American people want someone who is not full of self-doubt, and who won't change his mind based on the latest scandals from those plagiarizing Tabloids for the Elite, like the New York Timorous. No, he doesn't have to "re-think" anything, because his policies are like the piano concertos of Grieg and Gershwin (in A minor and in F, for those who care): each wrote only one, because they got it right the first time.
Wednesday, June 09, 2004
MONEY LAUNDERING:
Self-proclaimed would-be infant inundator Grover Norquist, as well as some members of Congress, have called for putting the late Saint Ronald's face on U.S. currency or coins. As usual, those wimpy moderates don't go far enough. Republicans are now in charge of every branch of national government, yet we continue to plaster images of traitorous dead Democrats on the very money their intellectual heirs seek to seize from the public with high taxes. We need to change the law so that ALL our coins and currency display only Republican faces. For "anti-materialist" leftists to denounce this would be nothing but pious hypocrisy.
Here's a modest proposal to make American money reflect modern moral, i.e. partisan political, values. Keep Lincoln, the first Republican President, on the penny, the first coin. Follow him on increasing denominations with each following GOP statesman who occupied the White House. (Andrew Johnson, a Democrat elected on a wartime unity ticket, doesn't qualify.) That leaves us with this new list:
CURRENT COINS:
01 Lincoln
05 Grant
10 Hayes
25 Garfield
50 Arthur
100 B. Harrison
This has the added advantage of removing a silly semi-legendary tribute to political correctness from our dollar coins.
CURRENT CURRENCY:
1 McKinley
2 T. Roosevelt
5 Taft
10 Harding
20 Coolidge
50 Hoover
100 Eisenhower
That's all the paper money currently issued, but there are several older larger bills which we should release updated versions of. This will conveniently allow every deceased Republican CEO of our government to have his face on some piece of our money.
FORMER CURRENCY TO BE REISSUED:
500 Nixon
1000 Ford
10000 Reagan
So instead of putting him on a trivial ten or twenty dollar bill, we thus give the highest fiscal honor of all to the man who actually won the cold war. Previously that went to Wilson, a typically foolish Democrat who failed to press on to occupy Berlin after WWI and democratize Germany. Thus he (and his party) were really to blame for the rise of Hitler and World War II, and it's long past time for us to take him and his fellow appeasers off the still most universally loved symbol of our country.
Self-proclaimed would-be infant inundator Grover Norquist, as well as some members of Congress, have called for putting the late Saint Ronald's face on U.S. currency or coins. As usual, those wimpy moderates don't go far enough. Republicans are now in charge of every branch of national government, yet we continue to plaster images of traitorous dead Democrats on the very money their intellectual heirs seek to seize from the public with high taxes. We need to change the law so that ALL our coins and currency display only Republican faces. For "anti-materialist" leftists to denounce this would be nothing but pious hypocrisy.
Here's a modest proposal to make American money reflect modern moral, i.e. partisan political, values. Keep Lincoln, the first Republican President, on the penny, the first coin. Follow him on increasing denominations with each following GOP statesman who occupied the White House. (Andrew Johnson, a Democrat elected on a wartime unity ticket, doesn't qualify.) That leaves us with this new list:
CURRENT COINS:
01 Lincoln
05 Grant
10 Hayes
25 Garfield
50 Arthur
100 B. Harrison
This has the added advantage of removing a silly semi-legendary tribute to political correctness from our dollar coins.
CURRENT CURRENCY:
1 McKinley
2 T. Roosevelt
5 Taft
10 Harding
20 Coolidge
50 Hoover
100 Eisenhower
That's all the paper money currently issued, but there are several older larger bills which we should release updated versions of. This will conveniently allow every deceased Republican CEO of our government to have his face on some piece of our money.
FORMER CURRENCY TO BE REISSUED:
500 Nixon
1000 Ford
10000 Reagan
So instead of putting him on a trivial ten or twenty dollar bill, we thus give the highest fiscal honor of all to the man who actually won the cold war. Previously that went to Wilson, a typically foolish Democrat who failed to press on to occupy Berlin after WWI and democratize Germany. Thus he (and his party) were really to blame for the rise of Hitler and World War II, and it's long past time for us to take him and his fellow appeasers off the still most universally loved symbol of our country.
Tuesday, June 08, 2004
I'M BACK:
Computer problems have prevented new posts since May 29. After one dead machine and several shuffles, I am finally back on line just now. It'll take a while to get back up to speed reconstructing bookmarks and lost files, but I'm on the watch again. Could it all have been a liberal plot of some kind? As Peggy once said (I believe it was about The Clenis), it would be irresponsible not to speculate. Be forewarned that frustration over being out of touch so long may leave me in a very paranoid mood. As a bumper sticker I saw read, "Don't mess with me today; you know how I can get."
Computer problems have prevented new posts since May 29. After one dead machine and several shuffles, I am finally back on line just now. It'll take a while to get back up to speed reconstructing bookmarks and lost files, but I'm on the watch again. Could it all have been a liberal plot of some kind? As Peggy once said (I believe it was about The Clenis), it would be irresponsible not to speculate. Be forewarned that frustration over being out of touch so long may leave me in a very paranoid mood. As a bumper sticker I saw read, "Don't mess with me today; you know how I can get."
