perfidy

No, really.

Triumph the Insult Dog was seen in Quebec replaing street signs with ones that read, "Quebecqueer Street" and "Rue des Pussies."

Alexa McDonough, a legislator for the left-leaning New Democrats, described the program as "racist filth" and "utterly vile" and demanded the government seek the return of the C$1 million subsidy.

"There may be those who would say, 'Isn't this interfering with freedom of expression?' It's not interfering to say we will not publicly fund this kind of vile, vicious hatemongering," McDonough told reporters.

Since I'm always late with this, I'm going to do it ahead of time. Even though I don't have a link yet. I'm guessing, that on Sunday, if you click this, it will take you to the Sunday Comics over at BTD. If not, just click here, and hunt for it. It'll be good for you.

Jonah Goldberg links to this treasure trove of classic 80s games, transmogrified to be playable on the interweb.

We all know how fun web translators can be.

Lately I've been copying quotes from movies, translating them into other languages via Lycos, then translating THAT back into engrish. I dunno, it just doesn't get old to me. It hasn't yet today anyway.

Consider this favorite exchange from "Pulp Fiction", rendered into french and then back:

Vincent: I have a threshold, Jules, I have a threshold for the abuse which I will take and in this moment I am a racecar, man, and obtained you to me in the red. I am stating right, I am STATING right which it is to kiss dangerous to have a racecar in the red foutu, which is all. I could blow.

Jules: Ah, you ready to blow? Well I am a motherfucker depose, motherfucker. Each time my brain of contact of fingers I am Superfly TNT, I am the guns of Navarone. IN FACT, that kisses it am me making in the back? You motherfucker should be it on the detail of brain. Us foutue commutation, I wash the windows and you gathering to the top of this cranium.

Apparently, an indefatigable British geneologist and historian, Dr Michael Jones, has determined that the rightful king of England is some guy named Mike who lives in New South Wales and works on a sheep station. It seems that the father of King Edward IV was not, in fact, Richard the Duke of York. Rather, his mother Lady Cicely Neville was making nasty with a commoner French archer named Blaybourne while Richard was off fighting his cuckolder's countrymen. And as a result, Edward's younger brother Clarence and his offspring should by right be the royal line. It might be a good thing to get a Plantagenet back on the throne, as I think the Hanoverian line has gotten a little, dare I say, inbred and weak.

Unfortunately, King Michael Abney-Hastings has no desire to leave Oz and take up his duties as King of England, Defender of the Faith, etc.

"When they told me I was surprised all right. But I don't think it will worry us too much. Titles don't mean much out here and I have no intention of leaving Jerilderie.

"Why would you want to be king anyway? They can't do anything without someone on their back. This thing will all blow over in a couple of weeks and life will go back to normal."

He does have two sons, though...

[wik] Coincidently, I almost bought this the other day: The Perfect Prince: The Mystery of Perkin Warbeck and His Quest for the Throne of England. This incident happened a little after the incident of bastardry described above, and involved a young man called Perkin Warbeck claimed to be one of the sons of Edward IV, consigned as boys to the Tower of London and supposedly murdered by order of their uncle, Richard III. Invading England with support from both commoners and princes, Warbeck challenged the legitimacy of the first Tudor king, Henry VII.

I'm adding three new blogs to the blogroll. Every single one of these people is depressingly well-informed, ego-crushingly intelligent, and have mad writing skillz. The links below each lead to a particularly fine, recent vintage post.

• Porphyrogenitus, on liberals,
• Wretchard of the Belmont Club on proliferation, and
• Dan Darling's Regnum Crucis on immigration.

Also, I've added another category, for useful resources. The first two entries are StrategyPage and GlobalSecurity.org, both invaluable sources for information on war, weapons, intelligence and strategy. Lots of good reading to keep you busy.

GuitarPicker (Loyal Reader #0011) has tipped us off to the existence of a new website which encourages sponsoring vegetarians. They even have a logo: 

What does it mean to sponsor a vegetarian? It means that you have to find someone in your life who's a really big pain in everyone's ass every time you want to go out to eat, and then you commit yourself to eating THREE times the amount of meat you'd normally consume to make up for all the meat that your vegetarian buddy isn't eating. It's that simple! That way, you can reverse the guilt trip that they've been laying on us for years by not only neutralizing their cause, but making it actually worse by eating more animals than would have ever been eaten had they not chosen to become vegetarians!

What if vegetarians say they don't care because we'll become fat by sponsoring them? I've thought about that already. All you have to do is exercise. I know it goes against the being lazy rule that I advocate so much, but this is so spiteful that it more than makes up for the exercise you'll have to do--which means that if you choose the 3 to 1 plan and sponsor a vegetarian, you're being so spiteful that you can't lose! If you have a choice, eat three separate types of animal to maximize your efficiency! Only offered beef? No problem: visit the zoo and eat a monkey!

I always thought that vegetarianism was extremely selective. Why is it okay to kill animals, and not plants? And why do animal rights activists only want to save the cute animals? And why do they all wear leather shoes? Besides, our ancestors fought and died for millennia to put us on top of the food chain, so how can we spit on their memory by not eating meat?

[wik] Best bumper sticker so far this year: Save a tree. Eat a beaver.

Ladies, gentlemen, and transgendered individuals (pre-op and post-op), I give to you the downfall of Western Civilization, the American family, and life as we know it in these United States.

That's Phyllis Lyon, 79, and Del Martin, 83, a lesbian couple who have been together more than fifty years. Today, they were married in a civil ceremony in San Francisco. The fiends!

Buckethead's worry that gay-marriage advocates may be rushing the issue being well taken, you nevertheless have to say "awwwwww."

[wik] NDR has more on gay wedding in San Francisco, and his analysis is particularly insightful. The nut of the matter:

Cities have few competencies that are completely their own--even utilities tend to be either semi-private or intergovernmental corporations. Even as the US Constitution grants broad and vague powers to the states (all those not reserved for the federal government), it never mentions urban corporations and constitutions or the rights granted to sub-state territorial actors. American federalism is a limited concept that has little application beyond the relationship between the federal government and the states. Furthermore, American political culture is wary of granting autonomy to communal corporations like cities.

The actions of the San Francisco municipal government are admirable. However, their actions will be too easily appealed without referencing the problem of unequal rights. The hotel de ville or the Rathaus, both institutions which have stood as alternative sources of values and authority in Europe, might have the legitimacy to take on the problem of equal rights on their own. But the problem will not be solved by the American city hall.

I just noticed that comments have, for the first time, exceeded the number of posts. This is an important milestone, significant because it indicates that people really, really like us. Only about half of the comments are from Johno or I; and in the early days, we didn't have the technology for comments at all. We have had some very productive and interesting conversations so far, especially considering that we are still only slithering reptiles in the TTLB's great blog food chain. I'd like to thank everyone who has commented, your thoughts were life changing and profound for us. And for all you lazy, shiftless lurkers, start commenting, or the dog gets it in the head: 

As an aside to the recent debate in this space over gay marriage, I had occasion to read the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Something occurred to me. From time to time, Christian advocates attempt to portray the United States as a fundamentally Christian nation, and offer text from the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence as proof. For example, the Declaration reads

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. . . .

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Note the appeal to "divine Providence." Some people take this, and constructions such as "In the year of our Lord..." as conclusive proof that the USA is at its root a nation established under the auspices of Christian doctrine.

Okay, but I beg to differ.
The Constitution contains far less of the God-talk than the Declaration. This suggests that by the time they got around to the second try at national government, a conscious decision had been made to protect religious pluralism by minimizing the particular Christian-ness of the Constitution. If they'd have done otherwise, we'd probably know:the Constitution is admirably clear about big-picture means, ends, and groundrules, and the Bill of Rights takes care of the rest. Religious pluralism is the first guarantee in the First Amendment.

Besides, a precedent existed if the framers had wanted to use it. If they had really wanted to clearly establish the country on Christian doctrines and grounds, they could have taken a cue from the Massachusetts Constitution, passed in 1780. The original of that document states

Article II. It is the right as well as the duty of all men in society, publicly, and at stated seasons to worship the Supreme Being, the great Creator and Preserver of the universe. And no subject shall be hurt, molested, or restrained, in his person, liberty, or estate, for worshipping God in the manner and season most agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience; or for his religious profession or sentiments; provided he doth not disturb the public peace, or obstruct others in their religious worship. [See Amendments, Arts. XLVI and XLVIII.]

Article III. [As the happiness of a people, and the good order and preservation of civil government, essentially depend upon piety, religion and morality; and as these cannot be generally diffused through a community, but by the institution of the public worship of God, and of public instructions in piety, religion and morality: Therefore, to promote their happiness and to secure the good order and preservation of their government, the people of this commonwealth have a right to invest their legislature with power to authorize and require, and the legislature shall, from time to time, authorize and require, the several towns, parishes, precincts, and other bodies politic, or religious societies, to make suitable provision, at their own expense, for the institution of the public worship of God, and for the support and maintenance of public Protestant teachers of piety, religion and morality, in all cases where such provision shall not be made voluntarily.

Instead, the US Constitution makes only one reference to God, "divine Providence," etc...

Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth In witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names, [big buncha names]. . . .

Big difference. I'm not claiming that the Christian tradition in which the framers of the US Constitution were raised didn't inform their thinking, and I'm not claiming that the United States hasn't been predominantly peopled by Christians since the beginning. But it seems to me that if the United States were established on explicitly (and exclusively) Christian grounds, the US Constitution would read more like the Massachusetts one. It's just not in there.

Not that anyone asked me, or anything.