perfidy

This kind of thing sort of belongs better over at vodkapundit, but those dudes have been pretty weak recently so I shall pick up the slack.

ABC news is reporting on an Ohio company marketing a recipe for a sauerkraut martini. Ohhhh...kaaaaay. In truth, I'm sure that a K-Tini, as they have dubbed the concoction, is delicious. Good sauerkraut is phenomenal. But to think that anyone-- anyone-- is going to hit it big hawking partially digested cabbage as a suitable garnish for an ice-cold jigger of Hangar One or Belvedere is just dumb.

Personally I prefer my own recipe for the Filthy Martini. No sauerkraut, but plenty of bacteria. And it kind of looks like what the Department of Public Works calls "brown water":

5:1 excellent vodka
2:1 pepper vodka
1:1 dry vermouth
1:1 green olive juice
1:1 pickle brine from kosher-style lactose-fermented half-sours, lactobacilli alive and well.
Garnish with two green olives and a black olive and a teeny shot of pepper sauce.

Nummies!!

The best music game ever. Type in the name of an artist and see if you can name them there ten songs based on 30-second clips.

I have gone 29 of 30 on Tom Waits, 17 of 20 on the Flaming Lips, and 29 of 30 on Frank Zappa so far (damn you, Rubber Shirt!!). So addictive. So horribly addictive.

[wik] Go ahead... type in anybody. I just played name that song with Reid Paley (who?), Josh Rouse (who!?), the Willard Grant Conspiracy (who?!?!) and Monty Python skits. What a silly bunt.

Two items of note about the death of Dimebag Darrell (and Thanks, Minister Geeklethal, for that copy of Pantera's greatest you sent. They were hard as f***, yea verily.)

• There is a crazed fan aspect to Darrell's death that remains unexplored Although it likely means nothing at all, just the week before the shooting former Pantera frontman Phil Anselmo told a British metal magazine, "He deserves to be beaten severely." More to the point, a longstanding and bitter feud between the former bandmates is a not-implausible contributing factor to the tragedy. Some fans really take that "fanatic" thing to heart.
• At the request of his family, Dimebag Darrell Abbot will be buried in a Kiss Kasket, donated by Gene Simmons. Check that shit out! I want one! The price is right for a casket, and as the website helpfully points out, " 'KISS® Kasket' can also be used as a Giant KISS® Cooler, enabling fans and their friends to enjoy ice-cold sodas and beer served directly from the ice-filled, completely waterproof "KISS® Kasket.' "
   

This week, the Ministry was presented with one example of heartless circumstantial cruelty so profound, so overweeningly monstrous and yet so typical of the dim candles that humanity proudly calls their minds, that it takes center stage in a solo version of our celebrated series, "This Week in Exemplary Human Behavior."

Spotlight Iran: She is a woman severe mental handicaps. She has a mental age of eight. As a girl, she was sold into sex slavery by her mother and passed from pimp to pimp, bearing her first child at age nine and enduring repeated rapes and abuses in the years since. She is now nineteen years old and will bear the emotional and physical scars of her horrible ordeal for life.

In their infinite mercy, the mullahs controlling Iran have looked into their hearts and consulted their Korans and concluded that the only balm for this poor girl's tortured life is to sentence her to death for the crime of prostitution.

We of the Ministry, our hearts hardened and our faces perpetually ensneered, like sometimes to think we have plumbed the very limits of the chthonian depths of the perversity of the human spirit. It is stories like this, fresh outrages every week, that remind us that in truth we know jack shit.

The society that basically invented the giant fighting robot for amusement is now leading the R&D effort to combat them for real. Should they ever come. Which they will.

BBC reports that Toyota is perfecting wearable robotic vehicles. The systems move about on wheels or legs and can operate over different terrain with astonishing agility. Well, for 7' exoskeletons. No word yet on how the electromagnetic weaponry is coming along.

And besides the technology's immediate applications in defending humanity from the mechanized menace, we also get yet another example of life:

Imitating art:

... comments have been turned off. But fear not! The pasty troglodytes with big foreheads, laboring away in the dim recesses of the Ministry's poorly funded and unheated research labs have come up with what they promise is a solution. Over the next couple days, the Ministry will be abandoning the battered and defenseless castle that is pMachine (which replaced the leaky and utterly defenseless shelter half that was blogger) and moving to the high-tech, art deco furnished, impregnable and ne plus ultra of security that is the Expression Engine underground bunker.

Until the move is complete, and the ministers are enjoying cosmopolitans, rob roys, and manhattans (or in Minister GeekLethal's case, Budweiser) in the air conditioned elegance of the new Ministry underground lair; comments will remain painfully absent. To you, our loyal readers, we apologize. But think of the joy that awaits, when you will be able to comment without fear of inducements to offshore online gambling, interweb porn, or penis enlargement.

When the migration is complete, there will be announcements, mandatory celebrations and all the pomp and ceremony that typically attend great events in Ministry history. So, have patience, and remember that we do it all for the children. Somebody has to to.

There's a post I was going to write about the murder of "Dimebag" Darryl, but didn't.

I had a little intro about the first time I heard Pantera, in a barracks in 1992. I tied that experience into broader themes in my life at that time and, after a re-read, had to cop that the intro was really just a vehicle to talk about myself and therefore highly inappropriate.

I planned to touch on the music, but had to be careful not to come across as a wanna-be. I have some Pantera records, but to me Far Beyond Driven is still their new record; I don't know anything about Damageplan. Still there were some half-decent turns of phrase: Dimebag could "bring the sweet but never sacrifice the sledge" with his playing; or, how his sense of harmony and melody was never drowned by his heavy riffs- anything he wrote would never be confused for something by those two cute lesbos from Nelson. I was even going to title the piece something like "Sure, the Vibe Awards but a metal show?!" to prompt an initial cynical snicker.

But I realized a couple things, and they were enough to derail the initial post.

I realized that there will be no shortage of half-assed tributes in the coming days: from your local rock station that likes to think it really rocks and maybe played a couple Pantera singles in 1993 and now broke out the black scrim in the studio to be in mourning over the terrific loss of this guitar player that those jocks sort of heard of once and that their 14-year-old sons explained that they should express feeling loss over; to MTV, which will likely have some sort of extended commentary about Pantera or Damageplan and we're all supposed to forget that MTV became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hip-Hop Marketing, Inc many years ago and couldn't pick Darryl out of a lineup where the other suspects resembled NBA players. There was other coverage as well, from Howard Stern, the most influential man in broadcast radio who didn't even now who the guy was and made no apologies for it; and Howie Carr, right-wing Boston blowhard who spent an hour referring to the victim as "Dirtbag" and to Pantera as "Pantload". Carr's a real hoot.

So I think I did the world a favor by sparing it one more opinion, one more explanation of his contributions, one more defense of his existence, one more half-assed tribute.

And I realized something else. As of this writing, three other people were killed by the gunman, and the shooter himself was killed by police. But most of us were really only interested, beyond that initial five minutes, because we lost Dimebag. That's a goddamned shame, because it's not about one picker from one metal band; another overdosed junky or ugly plane crash or singer who drank himself to death. It was no accident. It's also about three dead fans, all gone for nothing and forever. Because of one goofy fucker with a gun. And who in one final "fuck you" moment to the world didn't surrender to police but let himself be killed, denying us the satisfaction of his becoming some thug's wife in prison.

I'm upset that we normals have to share the planet with the unpredicatble and dangerous goofy fuckers. And I'm disappointed that the kid just didn't off himself, instead of all these other people.

And I'm sorry.

And I guess that's all.

In which attention is paid to the stupid, and makes the petty feel better about themselves.

For the week ending 7DEC04

Spotlight Bangladesh: In the face of threats from an Islamic group, Bangladesh cancelled its national women's swimming competition. The group, which carries the unintentionally hilarious moniker "Anti-Islamic Activities Prevention Committee" decided the event was un-Islamic. And it wasn't the first time; last year the same group shut down the women's wrestling event as well. Because God HATES wet women and chick fights.

People's Theocratic Revolutionary whatever of Iran: Iran's supreme court upheld an adultery conviction and approved the death penalty be applied in the case, but in a fit of conscience did commute an associated prison term for the defendant AND disallow she be hanged. So she could be stoned instead. The noose does still await the other defendant, a 17 year old boy. When remarking on the recent spate of lady executions in Iran, a female parliamentarian made some sort of weird remark about killing prostitutes that didn't make alot of sense, so won't repeat.

Spotlight Thailand: In an effort to defuse simmering inter-religious tension, Thai PM Thaksin Shiawatra approved airdropping 100 million origami birds across the largely Muslim south as a message of peace. Officials, volunteers, and schoolchildren folded each of the tiny cranes. And within hours of the gesture,

"the owner of a tea shop in Pattani was slain by gunmen, grenades were thrown at the homes of two policemen in the same province and arsonists set fire to a state school in Yala and a teacher's house in Narathiwat."

Gestures really only work if all parties understand the symbols at play. Lovingly crafted paper cranes might mean peace and reconciliation to me, but there's no reason why I should assume they WOULDN'T mean "react with arson and explosives" when others were faced with origami.

Spotlight every frat stereotype: A frathouse at the University of Georgia was the venue for a "Revenge of the Nerds" reenactment, when Ogre burns the frat house down. Except instead of the whole house, some dupe burned himself badly enough to wind up in the hospital after an accident with open flame, an oil lamp, and 190-proof alcohol. There was also a nod to "Dr Strangelove" ("Mandrake, have you never wondered why I drink only distilled water, or rain water, and only pure-grain alcohol?"), every zombie flick ever (the burned victim's "skin was hanging off his fingers, chest, abdomen, side and back"), "Animal House", and every school principal you ever heard ("to make sure these types of accidents don't happen again.")

Spotlight Massachussetts' fat ex-wife: Police and workers at an Auburn, Maine food bank are trying to figure out how a 20-pound bale of weed got into their shipment of watermellons. The most puzzling part of course is the choice of venue. Sure, you'd expect a 20-pound bale of weed in a big shipment of cookies, say, or Cheez-its, but watermellons? The cops and DEA exhibited exemplary behavior by harshing everyone's mellow and confiscating the bale, in clear and blatant violation of both the Constitution's Finders Keepers clause AND common goddamned decency. C'mon guys...if a fella has to get his food from the food bank, at Christmas even, you can't let him have a little extra in his stocking this year?

Sick and tired of guns in our streets, performing horrible crimes and threatening the children, a group of concerned volunteers has formed the Coalition to Prevent Assault Weapon Violence.

Their site includes an informative FAQ and, most importantly, a bona-fide assault weapon monitor. With vigilance, we'll be able to see the warning signs in advance, before these instruments of slaughter can create more mayhem.

Doubleplus bonus points if someone can explain what an "assault weapon" is.

For centuries, before gunpowder dominated the battlefield, the trebuchet was the most powerful siege weapon known to man. Essentially, the trebuchet is a gigantic seesaw. A 250 pound rock projectile sits on one end, and on the other, an immense counterweight. The longer, missile end of the trebuchet is winched down; and just like when you were sitting on the seesaw and the fat kid jumped on the other end, when it is released, the counterweight flips the missile hundreds of yards to (hopefully) hit the target.

A group of enterprising engineering geeks have endeavored to create a trebuchet simulator. With this nifty timewaster, you can adjust the mass of the projectile and the counterweight; and change the launch angle, counterweight height, wind and even gravity. Test your engineering and medieval geekiness against the distance, power and accuracy challenges.

I had the opportunity to play with a very small but nevertheless very real trebuchet a while back, and this is almost as fun. Though it doesn't throw watermelons or footballs. Thanks to A Voyage to Arcturus for the link.