perfidy

Because of this totally badass logo:

I don't know what it is, but it's totally sick. It's like a malevolent boar or something. Plus it has "England", which kicks ass. You know it rocks your hole.

(Apropos all the sanctimonious sites that tell me I'm using a crappy browser and should "upgrade" to Firefox)

Any chance they'll now shut their damned cake-holes?

Oh well, even if they don't, Firefox clearly isn't "all that" - as a substitute for whatever else one might use, it's uninspiring, just as uninspiring as considering a switch in the other direction, e.g. to Internet Exploder. At least IE doesn't stake some claim to moral superiority, other than, well, by just working a bit better.

In case you're curious, a transcript of the final moments of Flight 93 is available over at the Smoking Gun.
 

This lyric, from the track, "Killed by Death":

"If you squeeze my lizard, I'll put my snake right on you"

Princess Cat, over at A Swift Kick and a Bandaid, has an open letter for the immigrant protesters that infested our nation's capital the other day.

You see, I noticed you and your clan... and now I hate you ... because it took me an hour and a half to get home today. I watched as train after train, car after car of smug, arrogant, antagonistic protestors waved and taunted those waiting on the platform. You purposely targeted and inconvenienced me during my evening commute, because you thought it would make me contact my Congressman or Senator on your behalf? Isn't there some story about flies and honey that you should be learning right about now?

And while you're at it, go ask Apu why la migra isn't trying to nail his ass to the wall and maybe then you'll learn why he didn't have to protest for his rights.

Sincerely,

The Bitch from the Metro

We had a chat about this yesterday, and I find myself largely in agreement. My commute was made double-plus unpleasant by an El Salvadoran in a floppy hat who had failed to execute an adequate personal hygiene regimen any time in the last week. The protestors on their way home were largely as Cat describes them.

A coworker of mine, a liberal, found to his surprise that he and I agreed completely on the issue. We established that we both believe that anyone who protests on this issue is a complete fathead, or worse. The worst sin here is the conflation of two issues: immigration and illegal immigration.

I am all for immigration, of the legal, above board and it least somewhat competantly monitored sort. I think we should reduce limitations on skilled workers from nearly anywhere. We should streamline the process for getting visas - to make it simpler, and with less bureaucratic hassle. We should implement something like the sojourner idea that Bennett had, to make it much, much easier for people from Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Ireland and Great Britain to come, work, and stay here.

That is one issue. A completely separate issue is the people breaking and entering our national bungalo. The first thing they do when they come here is flout our laws and, in essence, give us the finger. Illegal immigrants do not have the same rights as citizens, or legal aliens. If found, they should be deported. Their employers should be heavily fined. We should stiffen the defenses on the border. Put more agents out patrolling.

Any other reaction is simply ridiculous. Illegal is illegal. Anyone who uses the phrase "undocumented worker" is blowing smoke up our collective ass. Anyone who tries to color everyone who opposes illegal immigration as a bigot is a fucktard. I'm tired of people in the administration and congress not dealing with this problem in anything even approaching a reasonable manner.

Bleh.

In a fascinating series of posts about a spur-of-the-moment road trip - "Hey dude... we're in Turkey... let's drive to Iraq" - Michael Totten says what needs to be said about all the trouble in the world today. Arguing that Islamism only seems like the biggest problem in the Middle East, when it's really only that Islamism is its biggest export (which I guess is kind of like summing up the Japanese by pointing to a Camry), he says with great insight that the real problem is that:

The crackup of the Ottoman Empire has still not settled down into anything stable.

Maybe it's just because I am currently reading an excellent book about the crackup of another ancient civilization - Europe - in Tony Judt's magesterial Postwar but that strikes me as being right on the nose. That area of the world is currently going through its own Twentieth Century, made worse by the fact that it's also living with the cast-off aftermath of Europe's own Twentieth. The near-simultaneous collapse of Austro-Hungary, Russia, Prussia/Germany, not to mention the last of the Mongol monarchs (in Azerbaijan and, I believe, Armenia) and a bunch of other upheavals (Italy, Spain...) gave us two horrific wars, Fascism, Communism in all its multifarious splendors, numerous genocides, and a resulting body count in the high tens of millions, if not higher. Not to mention the disastrous aftermath of messy colonial withdrawals around the world as Europe bled itself white. All because of some some silly little empires.

Anyway. No point to that. Why should there be? This is a weblog! Read Michael Totten's road trip series - here's part one, which links at the end to part two.

Italian police arrest the grand poobah of the international La Cosa Nostra in Sicily. In Corleone. I mean, didn't the guy watch the Godfather?

Well, not really. But the European Space Agency's Venus Express probe appears to have made orbit around our toasty sister planet, and will begin its two-day mission to, well, probe, the secrets hidden behind the ever present clouds. In case you're wondering why the mission is so short, that's Venusian days, which are about five hundred times longer than our pathetic Earth days.

Pretty cool, as this is the first mission to Venus for the Europeans, and the first mission at all in over a decade.

My son told me a story this morning. I took a break from disinfecting my computer and acted as scribe for young Hemingway:

Once upon a time, a sleeping dragon in a cave dreamt of scaring people. When he woke, the dragon (whose name was Dragon) slithered to John's house. There, he asked if John could come out and play. So John and Dragon went into the backyard and played in the sandbox.

The End

My mom, bless her heart, sent me the following via the internets. No doubt you've seen things like this before. Maybe even this one. Your relatives back home probably sent you one. But fear of repetition has never held back the Ministry. Never. If we give into fear, then the terrorists will have won. And you don't want that, do you? Do you?

So here it is. The top arbitrary number of reasons you will know you are from Cleveland (with commentary, thusly):

• You don't really know any homosexuals; you just know that there are a lot of them in Lakewood. Hence the nickname, "Flakewood." But they don't hate gays, they just envy them their formidible interior decorating powers. Which you would understand if you saw the interior of any house in Parma over by Rt. 42.
• You know you don't really have an accent, the rest of the world does. Every newscaster in the country sounds like they grew up in Cleveland. It's true.
• You hate country music, don't know anyone that does like country music, and yet WGAR just won the music station of the year. I didn't like country music until I moved to the East Coast. Still hate WGAR, though.
• You take credit for Cedar Point even though it is 2 hours away. Why not? The best amusement park in the world is closer to Cleveland than anywhere else, except Toledo. And Toledo doesn't count.
• You honestly believe that Cleveland is the best city in the world. It is.
• The Tri-C jingle "students for life" scares the hell out of you. I think Cuyahoga Community College had some sort of perverse kickback scheme set up with all the guidance counselors in the region. No matter whether you were a valedictorian with a 1600 SAT or some poor schlub who couldn't pass woodshop, the advice was the same: Tri-C.

• You take Dead Man's Curve at 60 mph holding your breath. I never held my breath.
• You know about the Eastside/Westside rivalry, but don't really understand it. Much like the Blue and Green factions in medieval Byzantium, there doesn't need to be a reason for violent rivalry.
• Your neighborhood schools went without sports because all the senior citizens refused to pass the levies. Fuckers
• You actually know how to pronounce Cuyahoga. I imagine that back in '68 when the river caught on fire, national news announcers dreaded the Cleveland reports.
• You can tell Brook Park, Brooklyn, and Old Brooklyn apart. Actually, they all look alike to me.
• You see Christmas lights still up in July. Why save all the fun for winter?
• You love BW-3, but have no clue what the heck weck is. It's a kind of grain.
• You find yourself singing "Garfield 1-2323" in the shower. Even though I have never in my life wanted a patio enclosure, I know exactly how to get one.
• You're still dumbfounded by the Leaping Fountain in Tower City. It's like the Abyss done by Busby Berkeley.
• You have never ridden in a taxi. At least, never in Cleveland.
• You wear shorts the first day of the year it isn't below 30 and snowing, just because you can. If it ever got below 30 in DC, I'd do this when it warmed up again.
• You have gotten 3 speeding tickets, and they are all from the mile long stretch of a suburb named Lindale. My personal law enforcement nemesis was Montrose Township, also on I-71, but a bit south. Five tickets.
• You hate Baltimore and you have never been there. I've been there, and it's a nice town. But I still hate it.
• St. Patty's Day is your number one holiday, and you aren't Irish. Not really confined to Cleveland, at all.
• You're still relishing 1987 when we ALMOST made it to the Super Bowl. Really took all the fun out of that year, and cast a pall over graduation and going to college.
• You counted down with the monument in Tower City to the exact second in 1999 when the Browns came back? Yep.
• You know Tower City isn't a city at all. Yep.
• You're Polish. Yep. Well, in spirit.
• Stories of Little Italy still send chills down your spine. Stories of Hough are worse, though.
• At least half of your wardrobe is Tribe apparel. Even though I have not lived in Cleveland for six years, and my son has never lived there, half of his wardrobe is Tribe apparel thanks to his grandma.
• You measure distance in minutes. Still do, but only because in DC, actual physical distance is not even remotely relevant to how long it takes to get somewhere.
• You've had to switch from "heat" to "A/C" in the same day. Yep. Once I saw the Savings and Loan time/temperature sign drop forty degrees in half an hour.
• You end your sentences with an unnecessary preposition. Example: "Where's my coat at?" Yep. I also say things like, "needs washed."
• You install security lights on your house and garage and leave both un-locked. Yep. I really ought to change that behavior now that I live in DC, and have a stalker.
• You think of the major four food groups as beef, pork, beer, and Jell-O salad with marshmallows. Yep.
• You carry jumper cables in your car. Yep. Doesn't everyone?
• You know what 'pop' is. My mom confused the hell out of my son by saying "pop" - the boy had no idea what she was talking about. All he knows is "soda." Then she accused me of raising my son improperly.
• You design your kid's Halloween costume to fit over a snowsuit. In Cleveland, you have to.
• Driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled with snow. True.
• You think sexy lingerie is tube socks and a flannel nightgown. No comment.
• The local paper covers national and international headlines on one page but requires 6 pages for sports. Which is saner, when you think about it.