Those lovely eyelashes are what originally drew me in.

If the face rings a bell…

Mr…?

Baba. Ponda Baba.

Am I the only one who found the ratings page for X-Men: Last Stand a little odd?

All the rest of you: be honest with yourselves; it’s time for you to admit defeat.

I got a break-barrel air rifle instead of a repeater, or something easier to load, for the intersection of two particular reasons.

1. It only fires one shot at a time, then you have to crack it open with serious effort, carefully feed a pellet, close it, and snap a very noisy safety to off.
2. Blood lust isn’t some alien disease impossible for mankind to understand, it’s in-built and once it’s on, even reasonable, professional people start doing fucking stupid shit like firing wildly when they have no aim or idea what’s 50 yards behind the target; here’s just one example.

Responsibility starts before you’re in the middle of a thing. For the younger readers who might have enough uncorrupted gray matter to accept this as axiomatic—if you live this, you will live long and large, your way.

A lesser pantheon fan I’d linked posted on his site some pictures of dead song birds he’d shot. I removed all links on Sedition·com to him within 5 minutes. Why?

Shooting songbirds is illegal, I believe in all the US. They are protected. But beyond that, there is not one good reason to shoot one unless, and this is debatably reasonable, you’re a taxidermist or a natural history curator. You can’t eat them. A blue bird could in no manner be considered a pest or vermin. He shot them, presumably, just to show off his aim. Oh, and because someone called him a pussy. Killing a couple of totally innocuous 3 ounce animals out of peer pressure doesn’t make you a man. It makes you the kind of perdedor who will end up in real trouble someday because you can’t stand up for yourself.

You know why I miss Neil so much sometimes? Because when I called him a pussy the first time he didn’t go start a fight with his girlfriend, steal from his roommate, or shoot a bird. He lunged for me. I hook-kicked him in the face. He rolled me right the fuck over anyway.

This fellow, indeed a male, got on the bird feeder one time too many today.

But, but Ashley… but you just said… but I thought you loved animals. How could you?!

I do love animals. I love them more than you could guess because I haven’t published the story this is from yet–

I’ve cried over birds, snakes, dogs, cats, the works. Even a pet tarantula who took a spill from a height.

So, how could I? That rat, and his family, ate the electrical wiring in my wife’s car; not once, because I let that slide, not twice because even that didn’t garner a killing, but three times. Then they ate the fuel line on my car. Then they ate the baby birds in a nest of house finches I’d been watching in the ivy on our chimney. Left the bones. Chewed the flesh off the chicks. At least two (one, two) of the rats have died in the walls of the house and stunk everything up while producing clouds of flies inside. One thousand dollars of car repairs and a stack of dead song birds bought that little guy a .177 caliber wake-up call.

Bad as that picture might look, it was all over in 5 seconds for him and he never knew what was going on. The impersonal stuff is far worse. Traps—takes days to die, usually of starvation/dehydration. Agony. Poison—it’s an anti-coagulant that makes you bleed to death from the inside, plus the squirrels or other animals I’ve got no beef with might get into it.

Why post the picture, now you cry? There are more reasons than you might expect.

Nature is bloody, vicious, painful, and awful. Awful in the original sense really. I don’t know how valuable it might be for humans to escape the animal but most of you seem to have forgot that you have any at all. That’s a dangerous illusion. You believe yourself so eager to love and protect nature, yet you’re so utterly disconnected from it and ignorant of what it means.

You think you’re not a killer. You are. Walking down the street, you kill animals. Taking a shower, you kill animals. Rub your eyes. You just killed animals. Even the painfully empathetic who lean all the way to vegan are mass killers. A bag of produce which wasn’t sprayed with pesticide is loaded, loaded, with bugs. Harvesting the produce and grains kills by the million. Harvesting it at all causes mass starvation of the survivors. It’s not a zero sum game but you might not have time to make your own chair before the music stops.

You should use what you kill. It’s a nice photo. It’s a jumping off place. A note on that point—that rat didn’t die to give me something to write about. He died so we could afford to own a car. This piece and photo are reuse.

That’s a Chinese animal with no business in this environment. I advocate shooting, where it’s legal, domestic cats too. For the crybabies who think Exxon is the Devil, your tabbies and seal-points do more damage every three weeks than the Valdez did.

Heart shot, you’ll notice. No scope. The break-barrel only affording one chance at it. The rat only allowing two seconds to try.

Thousands of GIs cope with brain damage

The war in Iraq is not over, but one legacy is already here in this city and others across America: an epidemic of brain-damaged soldiers. The Associated Press, Marilynn Marchione

Also, since it’s Christmas time–

Do you like honey? I do. Do you know what honey is? I do.

It’s insect vomit.

Do you like bee barf? I do.

The number varies a bit depending on the timing and headlines but 54% of Americans would like to see Vice President Dick Cheney impeached.

This morning, against my better judgement, I picked up a Time magazine while waiting at the methadone clinic to discover that only 68% of Americans even know that the Vice President of the United States is Dick Cheney.

So… assuming the Venn is properly aligned and those positively answering question A belong to the set of those bright students in the know regarding question B–

80% of Americans want Dick Cheney impeached.

Dick, Dick, Dick… you’ve got one chance left, my negro. There is one, and only one, political avenue open that leads to Redemption Gdn for someone in your position. It has turned some of the worst, least popular Presidents into heroes. And just think of the great company you’ll have when you’re greeted by Abe and Johnny ’neath the Italian signage.

Just another lazy day in the backyard pulling knotweed.

And though my pastor tells me I shouldn’t do it, and my sponsor warns against this sort of relapse… ducks.

Do you know who the biggest asshole in the world is?

The dickweed who knew I wouldn’t want to get up early, even though I needed to, and moved the alarm to the other room last night so I’d have to get out of bed to turn it off.

Three French cats went sailing in a bathtub and do you know what happened?

Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq.

I bought the dual G4 I’m typing on right now for three thousand bucks two weeks before Apple announced the new G5s which were better computers and cheaper along with the improved specs.

iPhone? $200? Pardon my French but y’all are a bunch of fucking crybabies.

Not to rub salt in it but I feel now is the time to remind you that AT&T, the only carrier for the iPhone, gives phone records to the government without so much as an if-you-please, let alone a warrant.

You know what I was thinking about yesterday and don’t have the energy to expand into a real post? Ah, to Hell with that. Post away, Merrill.

Absurdism, especially in the political realm, is a sort of uber-cynicism. Where cynicism still leaves room for hope, and being hurt, absurdism defies it all. When I realized this I figured a couple of things 1) it’s the next literary wave (rewave really, I never forget my Brautigan), 2) it means I’m more of a snob than I realized. 2.1) Some “people” should quit egging me on. Face.

But another realization that came with it is that forward similarities aside there is a tremendous difference in the back-end—as we say in IT and I hear is said in the odd Turkish bath—between a clown and a jester.

I never noticed how intensely orange some of their eyes are till I caught this guy. Put him right back unharmed.

_   /|
\'o.O'
=(___)=
   U    ack!

Did you hear someone is writing a Java version of ack? Yeah, it’s called jack and I want to let everyone know because I keep hearing that Java developers don’t know jack.

The Biblical context Pulp Fiction jokes require knowledge of ancient Egyptian to enjoy.

NYT: “The Myth, the Math, the Sex”

The lede is something only a woman or a wounded gay man could have written sure enough that it didn’t need even the pretense of science or citation. We’ll take Ms Kolata at her word in regards to gender.

Everyone knows men are promiscuous by nature. August 12, 2007, Gina Kolata¹ for The NY Times

Her article goes on to show it has been mathematically proved that men do not have that much sex.

It is about time for mathematicians to set the record straight, said David Gale, an emeritus professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley.

“Surveys and studies to the contrary notwithstanding, the conclusion that men have substantially more sex partners than women is not and cannot be true for purely logical reasons,” Dr. Gale said.

Ah, UC Berkeley. No finer shopping mall for mind-altering substances in the world. Ask any emeritus looking to get some press to heat up his speaking engagements and chances for an eponymous wing on the new maths building. I might add, speaking as a rock musician, it’s about time to set the record straight in regards to how much horizontal horseplay mathematicians get: slim to none.

Now, maybe I can barely follow the goodies that drive the Diffie-Hellman but I’m pretty sure that unless everyone is having sex—and with the assumption of an equal number of hetero men and women—it’s just not that simple. Take our own case–

The rough and ready conclusion being that more women are getting some but some men are getting more. There’s your soundbite. Now can we please stop all this talk of logic? If not we then follow the above graphic with its implications.

I recently opined that soon prison camps would be the new black. Comedy. And that cynicism, by the light of the interrogator’s lamps, makes a poor defense against that which makes one cynical.

I propose that the safety of the cynicism—the safe parties being those in office, etc—can be maintained by easing into it. No need to boil us all at once. If you do it one American at a time, you’ll get there. The key to making investment work for you is just to be consistent and patient. You can avoid armed revolution easily if you do this in baby steps.

The best way to approach this is not to stuff the gays into prison camps, though I know you’d like to. Nor the Asians, among whom lurk the only consistent terrorists in the world outside the parking spot known as Israel. Nor even those who collaborate with Arabs.

I propose instead that we round up a palatable combination of these, making it entirely unobjectionable to the voting herd by its very focus. The first ones in prison camp will be gay Asians who have worked with North African Arabs. In fact, let’s even do a warm-up and make it only those Arab-friendly, gay Asians who have actually been in an American prison camp before. There are issues of recidivism and possible desire for revenge for being locked up for no reason the first time.

In short, I propose George Takei is the real danger to America and should be locked up before the smoking gun is whatever kind of cloud cobalt bombs and photon torpedoes produce.

Boyfriends Do More Housework Than Husbands

Well, it’s like they say. Once you buy the cow you don’t have to drink your orange juice.

Also, husbands are more likely to work places which don’t pay a cut of the tips at the end of shifts.

A recovering Johnson remains determined

Expects to be out of bed and moving about erect soon.

AP Poll: God vital to young Amercians

Among America's young people, godliness contributes to happiness. AP

The punchline being, my young Jedi, that you are, in light of fact, very, very unhappy. Can hardly wait for the melt-downs to begin when all y’all start turning 35 or so.

Vladimir Putin demonstrating how totally not gay he is.

Fish lips: Putin kisses sturgeon

The world was atwitter with sexual orientation speculation when Putin’s topless fishing picture made the rounds last week. He’s finally found a way to silence the gossip; as this new photo could not possibly make him look less gay. I hear that this has no bearing on his knickname in Moscow club scene: Vlad the Impaler.

It’s all about context. That’s why they call me the juxtaposeur.

Marine tells of order to execute Haditha women and children

CAMP PENDLETON, United States (AFP) - A US Marine was ordered to execute a room full of Iraqi women and children during an alleged massacre in Haditha that left 24 people dead, a military court heard Thursday…

“I told him there were women and kids inside there. He said ‘Well, shoot them,’” Mendoza told [the] prosecutor.

“And what did you say to him?” Sullivan asked.

“I said ‘But they’re just women and children.’ He didn’t say nothing.”

Rob Woollard. AP

I’m going to point out a couple of things about this that make it more wrong than you might have already figured out.

1. Mendoza’s reaction to Marine, Lance Corporal Stephen Tatum telling him to shoot seven women and children he found cowering in a bedroom wasn’t, “US Marines don’t kill innocent human beings.” It was, “Maybe US Marines shouldn’t kill women and children on purpose. I’m just saying, you know?”
2. …

Number two was my sociology teacher, Bobby Anaya. A hell of a man I wish I’d known better. Peaceful. Supportive. Kind. Willing to teach us kids things the school system didn’t directly approve of, like sex ed, and probably the first detailed, helpful explanation of menses that most of the 14 year-old girls in the class had ever heard.

Mr Anaya’s arm barely worked. You could see the scars up and down it and the obvious lack of musculature and missing tendons that made his hand half-claw.

Like a lot Vietnam vets, he didn’t talk much about the war. I have no idea how his arm got hurt, for example. He never said a word about it. Could have been a shop accident but somehow you and I both know it wasn’t.

What he did tell us one afternoon in the bunker-like cement halls of Taos Junior High School was that after his squad rounded up a village of Vietnamese civvies and put them in a bomb crater as an ad hoc holding cell his platoon leader swung by to order him to drop a grenade in with them on the way out of Dodge.

Fortunately Bobby was a fuck of a lot smarter, and I suspect more honest, than Humberto Mendoza. He didn’t say, “No.” It was business as usual. If he didn’t do it, someone else would. Women and kids were killed for sport. Looting and torture were just another pass time. That’s what war is.

Bobby waited till his platoon was ostensibly out of frag range and he tossed that pineapple in the bushes instead of the bomb crater.

Did you know half of the animals we call crabs aren’t? Or that woodlice are crustaceans? Or that George W Bush is going to Hell when he dies?

Well, two out of three ain’t bad. …Though 66% is a failing grade in many schools.

Just wanted to let you know I won’t be doing a post today. I’m… uh, really busy and stuff.

HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!! I’m that guy now! I suckered you in with 9 years of content and 5 years of posts without so much as a “tagged questions” “meme.” I earned your trust carefully, painfully; like dating a gang rape victim, I was the perfect gentleman with the right answers; eternally patient, understanding, willing to wait all this time for what I really wanted. And now BAM!!! This is how the currency is spent, baby!

I feel positively presidential.

I would have tackled this like so much runaway co-ed summer camper but I was distracted, my lap kittens, by the first day of work behind a real desk in a couple of years. Don’t weep for me. Ask instead for whom the closing bell tolls.

Re: ’Berto G. You guys didn’t win anything. This is a staggering loss (see also). He was rendered toothless by the scandals. His office was a joke. His employees the subject of total scrutiny. Now that the house is cleaned, anyone might take over and start not crippled but full of vim and the appearance of innocence, ready to build on his predecessors’ considerable accomplishments. Also–

PS: Don’t fuck with George Bush. I learned my lesson the hard way this afternoon. Moments after the SS helicopter scanned my office window for snipers three blocks from where he was appearing today my afternoon bus was cancelled. Teach me the price of dissent. Was interesting to hear how much talk on the way to the bus, at the bus stop, and on the bus focused on speculation about the price of lead. I didn’t start any of it neither.

I wish the American people had but a single ass I could leave out in the cold. Atlas Shrugged (Unabridged Version)