Lapsus Linguae

Robodramatix

2006-02-25T16:37:00.000-08:00

Les Freres Corbusier, a theatre group in New York, is producing right now a show called "HeddaTRON," a first of its kind. In the famous Ibsen drama, half the characters are actually played by large robots programmed with the dialogue. Now, I admit that some Ibsens I've seen APPEARED to have been performed by robots. Anyway, I have some suggestions for Les Freres for the next text they should tackle in their cyborgian enterprise.

A Doll's Mouse
'night, Motherboard
Barefoot in the Port
The Merchant of Virus
The Rocky Hypertext Show
Three Gigabyte Opera
Riders from the C Drive
Curse of the Silicon Class
Ctrl-Alt-Delete, I Want to Get Off
'Tis Pity She's a Mac
Spam, a lot
iMACbeth(pro)
The Iceman.cometh
Fool for RAM
Uncle Tom's Inbox
Mourning Becomes Electrons
Long Day's Journey into Byte
Suicide in BASIC
Charlotte's Website
Playboy.com of the Western World
Cat on a Bot Tin Roof
Some Like it Bot
Variations on the Death of Botsky
Ibsen's Ghosts (In The Machine)
Waiting for Geardot
Downloading at Lughnasa
The King and IBM
Suite In Press Any Three Keys to Continue
LINUXtrata
C//:gul
Lady Windemere’s Fanbelt
She Stoops to be PC-Compatible
The Stronger (by Strindborg)

Thanks Tina, Dave, Brian, Tim, Lavina, and others.

Top Ten Worst Battlestar Galactica Colonial Convoy Ship Names

2006-02-19T18:29:00.000-08:00

Don't forget to reply to one of the previous two posts to log your BSG Worst Callsigns: when we get to 100 I'll post them as a single entry. As for the ship names, here are some of the plucky freighter ID's you'll rarely see featured in the series, but they're pluggin' along toward Earth just the same:

10. The Irreconcilable Differences
9. The Cash-Up-Front
8. The Slip of the Tongue
7. The Lallapalooza
6. The Home Cooking
5. The Maternity Ward
4. The Runner-Up
3. The Low Gas Mileage
4. The Star Wars Ripoff
3. The Local Franchise
2. The Holy Shit
1. The Shut-Up-And-Drive

So now we have this overheard wireless chatter: "Attention, Colonial Freighter Irreconcilable Differences, this is Viper Captain Nutsack. You have been ordered to rendesvous with The Maternity Ward at 0600." "Nutsack, this is Holy Shit, we have incoming dradis contacts." "Nutsack, Skidmark. Watch your six!" "I can't shake em!" BOOM. "Nutsaaaack! Nuuuuutsaaaack!" [radio cuts out].

Man, I wish I could sleep. This is a terrible misuse of the internet. END TRANSMISSION

Ten More Worst Battlestar Galactica Callsigns

2006-02-13T14:46:00.000-08:00

10. Skidmarks
9. Bookworm
8. Near Miss
7. Pocket Protector
6. Bifocals
5. College Try
4. Wedgie
3. Honorable Mention
2. Guide Dog
1. Miss Congeniality

Thanks again, Tina. Tina obviously doesn't have enough work to do. And thanks to Tin Foil for "Nutsack" and the new ten in the comments from last post. And thanks to L&D for the idea of "Nutsack" being a callsign. Who's got ten more?

Top Ten Worst Battlestar Galactica Callsigns

2006-02-09T09:58:00.000-08:00

10. Yellow Streak
9. Turdblossom
8. Cut-n-Run
7. Nutsack
6. Nancy Boy
5. Care Bear
4. No-Fly Zone
3. Loose Sphincter
2. Librarian
1. Abramoff

(thanks, Tina)

A Holiday Message

2005-12-27T18:08:00.000-08:00

To paraphrase Terry Pratchett in SMALL GODS; Jesus impressed people by turning water into wine. Evolution, however, can turn SUNLIGHT into wine, by way of grapes. Take that, "religion." Happy holidays.

True Story

2005-10-02T07:16:00.000-07:00

Near where I catch the bus in to work everyday, on the corner of Beechwood and Lilac, there's a utility box. The other day I noticed that some wag had glued a little poster to it which read, exactly:

Just think,
You've waisted five
seconds of your life
reading this poster.
-INFEKT

Actually, it took me somewhat less than one second not only to read the poster, but also correct the spelling of "wasted." I'm assuming "INFEKT" is a clever, intentional misspelling for dramatic effect. So I thought I'd write this blog so that both of my readers would share my appreciation that Infekt, whomsoever he or she may be, is lacking one of the primary qualities necessary to be a deep and subversive manipulator of social consciousness: an IQ higher than that of a grapefruit on a warm day. It might take YOU five whole seconds to read and understand a dozen words, Infekt, you mouth-breather, but such a skill bodes ill for your nefarious plans to plant subversion-memes in our defenseless brains so that we will... what? Be more lax in our spelling? Besides, I was waiting for the stoplight anyway, so I really didn't waste, or waist, any time at all.

But then I realized that it took me about FIVE MINUTES to write and post this blog.

You've won this round, Infekt.

Marx out.

O Louisiana

2005-09-05T07:30:00.000-07:00

The horrors of the tragedy in New Orleans are multifarious; they run the gamut from the personal, the national, the economic, to the cultural, the tribal, and the historic. It's obvious that the government, despite ample warning, has failed the people of New Orleans, and by extension the nation and its history, and that instead of saving lives what we've got now is a blame-game between authorities on the local level and those on the national over who is at fault. It's pretty facile and soulless to try to make political hay over a situation like this, and I won't demean those who have lost their lives and those who must try and face a future that is dismal and amorphous at best by joining in the finger-pointing. WE fucked up here, people, all of us, and although the Bush administration is in charge and therefore responsible to do something besides "surveying the damage" or "coming back from vacation," this overall failure to respond reveals a vast system of irresponsibility that we are all guilty of perpetrating. I hope we can see this as a wake-up call that our civilization is beginning to have difficulty responding to internal crises, because this is the sign of its dissolution. The more that the elite of a culture elect to ignore the suffering of its people, the closer the Empire is to its last days.

That said, I'd really like to extend an extra-special Lapsus Linguae to the remarkable number of fuckwads out there who are leaping on this catastrophe to evangelize. One fuckwad in particular, Steve Lefemine, a South Carolina anti-abortion activist with Columbia Christians for Life, said that he perceived the image of a human fetus in the satellite maps of Katrina, and concluded that "God judged New Orleans for the sin of shedding innocent blood through abortion." Muhammad Yusuf Mlaifi of Kuwait wrote in Al-Siyassa that "Terrorist Katrina is One of the Soldiers of Allah," punishing the West. Stan Goodenough, writing for the Jerusalem Newswire, wrote that God had sent Katrina in retaliation for the removal of Jewish settlers from Gaza. And my personal favorite, head of Repent America Michael Marcavage told the Washington Post that Katrina came in divine retribution for an annual New Orleans gay pride celebration, "Southern Decadence." This fuckwad is worth quoting at length:

"We take no joy in the deaths of innocent people, but we believe that God is in control of the weather. The day Bourbon Street and the French Quarter was flooded was the day that 125,000 homosexuals were going to be celebrating sin in the streets... we're calling it an act of God."*

You will notice that the big guns, Falwell and Robertson (who is perhaps taking comfort today that God answered his July prayers to kill William Renhquist... that is, to remove justices from the Supreme Court whose opinions he disagreed with) are being uncharacteristically silent, smarting still, perhaps, from the backlash they recieved when they blamed 9-11 on the failure of the US citizenry to live up to their standard of morality (which includes, in Robertson's case, repeatedly praying for the deaths of their political opponents, I suppose).

Voltaire was famously outraged with a similar response to a disastrous earthquake in Lisbon on November 1, 1755, that drew remarks from various evangelicals who asserted, fashionably at the time, that such disasters were God's will and must therefore be for the greater good. Voltair had this to say in Les Délices, on November 24 of the same year:

"This is indeed a cruel piece of natural philosophy! We shall find it difficult to discover how the laws of movement operate in such fearful disasters in the best of all possible worlds-- where a hundred thousand ants, our neighbours, are crushed in a second on our ant-heaps, half, dying undoubtedly in inexpressible agonies, beneath débris from which it was impossible to extricate them, families all over Europe reduced to beggary, and the fortunes of a hundred merchants -- Swiss, like yourself -- swallowed up in the ruins of Lisbon. What a game of chance human life is! What will the preachers say -- especially if the Palace of the Inquisition is left standing! I flatter myself that those reverend fathers, the Inquisitors, will have been crushed just like other people. That ought to teach men not to persecute men: for, while a few sanctimonious humbugs are burning a few fanatics, the earth opens and swallows up all alike. I believe it is our mountains which save us from earthquakes."

Katrina, like the Lisbon earthquake, killed the good and wicked alike, and left vast suffering in its wake. To give countenance to evangelical fuckwads who can stand on a mountain of bodies and say "see! Thus God punisheth everyone who doesn't agree with my pet grandstand project!" is to equal the Inquisition in heartlessness. It turns my stomach, and I'm supposed to be the one without any morality.

By the way, you'll all be very happy to learn that the French Quarter was, apparently, spared the worst horrors of Katrina, and that with the pluck and panache that is so characteristic of New Orleans, in the center of all this desolation and death, the Southern Decadence parade did, in fact, go off as planned. Sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Marcavage, you fuckwad nutsack shithead.

One more quote, this one from Voltaire's rival Alexander Pope:

"Know then thyself; presume not God to scan.
The proper study of Mankind is Man."

*please see "Wrath of God, but why gets many reasons" by Alan Cooperman, Washington Post, September 4 2005. Thanks for the great research, Alan.

Sayonara David Hager

2005-08-29T19:53:00.000-07:00

Here at Lapsus Linguae, we have just learned that David Hager (please see the Lapsus of May 19, 2005, entitled "Boom-shaka-laka (the REAL story)" for details) has resigned his post as chairman of the Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Commitee of the Federal Food and Drug Administration.

You may remember, dear readers, that Hager is an obstetrician/gynecologist, who was appointed to the chairmanship of the commitee by FDA senior associate commissioner Linda Arey Skladany, who has longstanding ties to the Bush family. Hager is the author of a book that specifically prescribes prayer and scripture readings to women suffering from migraine headaches and premenstrual syndrome, and Hager refused to prescribe contraceptives to women under his care. He also lied on his resume, saying he was a University of Kentucky professor when actually he had a voluntary part-time appointment to work with interns at Lexington's Central Baptist Hospital, only marginally connected to the University. While on the panel, he specifically opposed Plan B, the safest effective form of birth control yet invented, because he decided it was an abortifacient. And, oh, by the way, Hager's wife has publically admitted that he 1) was incredibly domineering in the household, to the point that he 2) demanded that his wife have sex with him as her duty since he paid for everything, effectively turning her into a prostitute, and that he 3) had an affair with a woman he met in a Bible study group, and 4) took advantage of his wife's recurrent narcolepsy to anally rape her, multiple times.

So long, Hager. In acknowledgement of your contributions to medical science and ethics, I encourage unmarried people of all types to have consensual, unprotected hot monkey sex.

Modern Living

2005-08-16T19:18:00.000-07:00

The thing I hate most about modern living is voice mail. First of all, is every voice mail system in the world mouthed by that same woman? She's like the computer on the Enterprise: she's everywhere! And I think she's getting impatient with me, because she's starting to sound very snippy. "Are you still there? If you'd like to check your messages, press one." Okay, I press one, and then she's still talking about this and that. "Third message. Left. Thursday. At. One. Thirty-two. AM." The message is outdated, so I skip it, then I got to listen to her tell me all about my options. "Please do not hang up. Your phone service temporarily needs you to redail the number you were calling. If you have a mailbox on this system, press pound." Of course I have a mailbox, you hussy, you tart, you incorporeal jezebel, why must you torment me so? To make matters worse, my cell phone service, I won't mention their name, but it sounds like "horizon," has shut down twice in the past month, so I've had to go in and redo all my voice mail settings and listen to all kinds of ridiculous bullshit service messages which explain everything about the crash, but stop short of actually apologizing in any meaningful way or giving me a free trip to Las Vegas to make up for the inconvenience. And while you're checking messages, you're stuck. You can't put the phone down, you can't pause it, because she'll get snippy again and hang up on you. You're stuck there, for the however many minutes it takes, the girl at the Krispy Kreme counter is looking at you in a pointed way and the federal agents who are following you are snickering, and you can't do anything else! And that same damn voice, at work or at home. That voice! That voice! I need to see this woman's face. I think I'm... I think I'm falling in love with her.

And to make matters worse, people are losing human intercommunication ability. You've noticed this. Face to face they'll hardly say word one, but on the email, where I leave a message like "Hey, Tin Foil, this is Marx, just wondering if you found the code that releases the sex scene on the new GTA yet, gimme a call, bye," instead what I always seem to get is:

"Hey Marx, this is Wichita Fats, I just wanted you to know I'm back in town from my wonderful trip to the Bahamas. Man, it was great. I was swimming with dolphins, and drinking mai-tais, and I met this girl who turned out to live on my same street in Pittsburgh, isn't that fucking COOL? Anyway, I had a lot of fun, I'm really relaxed, ready to get back to the grind, am I right? Man, work is hard. Vacationing is fun, though. Oh, I read your blog last week, and I gotta tell you, man, you're funnier when you're not being so political. I mean, I'm with you mostly, but man, rant rant rant. No, your best thing was the Sidekick one. Man that was hilarious. Mowing the lawn, Anyway, I was talking to my friend about your blog, and he was saying that he thought you probably don't get laid enough. This friend of mine, wait, hang on, **** indefinable noises **** okay, I'm back, so my friend, I want you to meet him someday. He's cool, he owns the largest collection of paper party hats in the western hemisphere. Which reminds me, did you see that new cowboy show? Or was it a space show? You know what I mean. It was AWESOME. Well, anyway, I've got to go now, so just call me when you get this and we can get together. Okay. This is Wichita Fats, just calling you to say I'm back, back in town, so, you know, we should, I dunno, get together soon or something. Okay, bye."

Fats, next time, it's this: "Marx? Fats. Coffee shop at 6 pm Wednesday, I'll show you my new tattoo." End transmission. And when we're having coffee, you can tell me all about this girl who lives next door but you crossed half the earth to meet her, and you'll be wasting my time in a much less concentrated way. But my old buddy Fats is habitually better than Momma Marx, who lives against all reason just south of Armpit, Oklahoma, where cell phone service is sporadic at best:

"Next message. Left.... today.... at.... three... fifteen.... PM. Hello, son, this is your mother, the woman who gave you life, I'm just calling to let you know that SSSSSSHHHHHHHHRRRRRRKKKKKKKKK who used to be married to Aunt Milton but SHHHHHSSSHHHHHRRRRKKKKKKK or probably a new car, we're looking forward to SHHHRRKK at SSSSSSHHHHHHHRRRRRRKKKKKK so be sure to have the SSHHHHKKK ready by no later than SSSSSHHHHRRRKKKK and don't forget to SHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRKKKKK or you'll all be eating your babies for breakfast. Love you, bye bye."

Here's a funny thing I just discovered, though. If you DON'T check your voice mail, and the thing is important, sooner or later the person will find a way to get in touch with you directly. Or they'll email you.

Email... Shudder.

You Heard It Hear First, Loser

2005-07-25T02:26:00.000-07:00

Here's a quote from White House Press Secretary Scott McClelland's website, March 17 2004:

" Q Scott, does Secretary Rumsfeld approve methods that Seymour Hirsch is reporting, that includes humiliating Iraqis or using sexual interrogation techniques? Was any of that approved by Secretary Rumsfeld, to your knowledge?

MR. McCLELLAN: I think the Pentagon has already denied the reporting by Seymour Hirsch, and they addressed that this weekend. "

Right. Of course, later it would all turn out to be true, but never mind. It's spelled Hersh, by the way, Scott, you fat bald lying little pimple of a man, you. Hersh, If you don't know, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who does something that most reporters barely bother to do nowadays; find out if the stuff coming out of the White House is actually TRUE, as opposed to reporting the news as Rummy would like it reported, which admittedly better serves the agenda of most of the great media houses of our day: improve stock holdings. See, Hirsch belongs to an old, outdated way of thinking about journalism, which is that it is supposed to help the people, catch the bigwigs in their lies so that they have to start being honest, and find out things that are true.

So what's this quaint, old-fashioned kinda guy discovered now? Here's a quote from Democracy Now's program of July 19, 2005:

"Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reports in this week's issue of The New Yorker that President Bush authorized covert plans last year to support the election campaigns of Iraqi candidates and political parties with close ties to the White House. Hersh's article cites unidentified former military and intelligence officials who said the administration had gone ahead with covert election activities in Iraq that 'were conducted by retired CIA officers and other nongovernment personnel, and used funds that were not necessarily appropriated by Congress.'"

I'll summarize the interview for you, god forbid you should do any research on your own. Bush, backpedaling fast from his "weapons of mass destruction" nonsense as a pretext for invading Iraq (following Rove's burning a CIA Op because her husband exposed this lie as the great steaming mess of dingo entrails it was), told us that his real agenda for illegally and unpopularly invading Iraq was the "spread of democracy." Now it looks very much as if the administration used oil money from Iraq and retired psy-ops guys to rig the Iraqi elections in favor of the party that would be most supportive of the US presence there. Why all the cloak-and-dagger? Because there is a law (remember law? It used to apply to everyone, not just the enemies of the Bushies) that states that any clandestine action by the CIA must be reported to Congress. It's Congress' money that's being used, after all. So it should be obvious to even the most brain-damaged reporter out there that using oil money (instead of Congressional money) and retired ops (who are not technically members of the government) was an attempt to circumvent this law. And why would they wish to circumvent the law? Well, apparently they tried to rig this election on the up-and-up, fair and square kind of way:

"In response to the article, a spokesperson from the National Security Council denied that, saying the administration rescinded the proposal because of congressional opposition."

See, the idea is that the CIA is supposed to be used to advance our national interests, and it's in our national interest that Allawi gets elected, see, and right now he's running at 3% in the polls, so we need to go rig this election with our spies. And that garnered opposition? Right, specifically from people like Congressional Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Cali), who were horrified to learn that our soldiers had perished in order to "spread democracy" by the establishment of a government whose first act would be to rig an election. So this is the best defense these jokers have: "oh, no, we WERE going to commit this egregious act of dictatorship using your money, but we decided not to because those meddling stop-sign philosophy liberals got ethics all of a sudden."

Yeah, because this administration is always ready to roll over and die when the control-nothing liberals of Congress grab their collective nutsacks and manage to shake their fingers at the Prezzie. Anyway, it looks like they went ahead and did it anyway, funnelling who knows how much moolah into Allawi's campaign (perhaps you are aware that the London Review of Books recently figured, from US govt. reports, that the amount of Iraqi oil money and Congressional appropriation that has "gone missing" now totals twenty billion dollars?). So now Hersh has collected a mountain of evidence of direct intimidation of voters at polling places by Iraqi police, of former CIA agents bragging after the fact about stuffing ballot boxes, that at least 22,000 of the 30,000 Iraqi polling station were not monitored by any poll watchers or journalists at all, and that the results of each precinct reported directly to a central HQ, where, say, 10 votes for Allawi were made into 100, stuff like that. Allawi won the election at 15%, five times what he was expected to get.

This isn't speculation, this is evidence. I'm spinning it, of course, because that's what I do. But I bet you never heard this story before, did you? Find this story on CNN. Find it on Fox. Find it on the so-called Liberal, Bush-bashing NPR. You won't, chuckies, but if you want to read the original article you can find it in the New Yorker for the week of July 17 2005. Thanks, Seymour, there are a few of us out here who really appreciate it. But seriously, American people, how much longer are we going to lie here like a 2-dollar hooker while Curious George gives it to us whatever way he wants to?

Lapsus Clandestinus: Why Karl Rove is Not a Republican

2005-07-15T03:38:00.000-07:00

I haven’t posted for some time, true believers, and for that I apologize, but I’ve been very busy lately. As some of you know, your correspondent (viz., me) was “voluntarily” “helping” some “state officials” with their “inquiries,” and I had to appear before a double super secret no-touchbacks triple dog dare military tribunal. The interrogators were two obvious military bigwigs, one who went by the name General Fiver, the second an odd-looking fellow in a pith helmet who was introduced to me as Colonel Mustard. The third guy never spoke, but it was Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.) in a rather obvious rubber nose and glasses. The scene got pretty hairy:

TRANSCRIPT
COL. MUSTARD: We have heard testimony that on June 3, 2004, you did knowingly and willfully, Mr. Marx, if that is your name—

MARX: Of COURSE that’s not my name. Any more than his name is General Fiver, or your name is Colonel Mustard.

GEN. FIVER: Hazel... the fields... they’re covered in blood!

COL. MUSTARD: -- that you did knowingly and willfully accuse the President, along with the First Lady and our most esteemed Secretary of State, to be, and I quote, “involved in some kind of Mormon-style interracial love nest, snorting cocaine off each others’ nipples while Karl Rove reads aloud transcripts from Hannity and Colmes.” Do you deny it?

SANTORUM: Indecency! Culture War! Home schooling! Pieces of Eight! Wraaaak!

MARX: Not remotely, but I think you’ll find that my article actually refused to accuse them of that, and furthermore, suggested that anyone who DID so was guilty of a lack of patriotism.

COL. MUSTARD: Oh, uh, really? Hm. Rick told me you were a traitor.

MARX: Are we done here?

COL. MUSTARD: I’d like to adjourn this meeting and request that the Senator from Pennsylvania meet me in the conservatory with a candlestick in fifteen minutes.

So dodged a bullet there. Anyway, about four weeks ago while I was preparing for this hearing I started following the Matthew Cooper/Judith Miller story, because it was a story about journalistic ethics and I thought to myself, there’s something I thought was as extinct as Ken Hamm’s moustache. Well, “ethics” turned out to be a pretty grand way of talking about what these “journalists” were up to, since if a journalist becomes a material witness to a felony his information can no longer be protected by the first amendment or any other statute. For instance, if a man is interviewed by a journalist and the reporter says “any plans for summer?” and the man says “why yes, it is my intention to take this pistol and empty it into the heads of those nine kittens,” and then he goes and slays kittens, the interview itself is now evidence of a crime and must be turned over to the kitten police when they come a-knockin’. This is a pretty clear distinction, and very different from the issue of Deep Throat, who did not commit a crime by talking to reporters, he merely blew the whistle on someone else’s crime, so Woodward and Bernstein would be able to protect their sources quite legally and ethically.

All of this was proceeding in a very interesting way, but if you aren’t an avid listener of Democracy Now, you didn’t hear about it at all four weeks ago, because there was a growing sense that some very, very powerful person might be implicated in the notes of these reporters. So, Fox News, nothing. CNN, nothing. Even NPR, which is supposed, according to CPB Chairman and Top-Shelf Asshole Kenneth Tomlinson, to have this raging unfair liberal vendetta against the president. Not a blip. So my journalistic meat-gun started in a-tingling and I thought, I should really get to blogging about this so that the six people who flip idly through my blog every month will be amazed at my research acumen and then, wouldn’t it be amazing if those notes actually DID implicate Karl Rove (who, if you recall, is not a nipple-snorter himself but has been accused of abetting nipple-snorting) or someone like him, then I’d have got a huge jump on the story and everyone could see how tingly and huge my journalistic meat-gun actually is. But no, I thought, the Bush administration will clap a lid on this and lie about it, buy off Special Prosecutor Robert Fitzgerald and we’ll never hear anything about it except a couple of angry lefties bitching and moaning on Democracy Now.

So, let’s just pretend I did do it, okay? Thanks.

Now, I’m no fan of Republicans in general, but Lincoln freed the slaves, Nixon had a great universal health plan idea that got scuttled, and Kissinger had a really rational set of protocols to determine when the United States ought to go to war (basically, only when it is critical to our national interests). Republicans are, mostly, for conservative values, and they have a right to be, they are tough on crime and I happen to agree with them on that, they want to keep the government as much as possible out of private, personal affairs, and they are in favor of fiscal responsibility which I think is necessary to counterbalance the dangers of a large and unwieldy socialist-style government. So let me put it this way; I don’t like Republicans on the whole, but I do very much like a government that is checked and balanced by strong, rational political movements.

The current administration, however, of soi-disant “neo-cons,” are not Republicans. Neo-cons, apparently, are in favor of a large, intrusive government that can arrest you and hold you and torture you for years without giving any reason, of legislating “moral” behavior, of massive irresponsible government spending, of ideologically-motivated wars, and so on. I can’t believe I’m nostalgic for Nixon.

Anyway, the Lapsus Linguae award for this month goes to Karl Rove, obviously, for his slip of the tongue in intentionally leaking the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame to the press where douchebag Robert Novak would eventually publish it as an obvious form of recrimination for her husband’s, Ambassador Joe Wilson’s, refusal to back the administrations trumped-up yellow-cake uranium from Niger story, which was the central pillar of their justification for the Iraqi War, which has so far resulted in the deaths of nearly 150,000 humans. So what? I’ll tell you.
1. Burning the cover of a CIA operative is a felony.
2. Revealing Valerie Plame’s identity put her life at risk, which is an act of moral turpitude and egregious disregard for human life, which these guys profess to value so highly.
3. This act destroyed a CIA covert operation, which is an act of treason against We the People of the United States of America.

All of this from a man who was appointed, not selected by voting.

Republicans cannot in good conscience continue to support this dickhead, and it will be very interesting to see how Curious George makes with what is shaping up to be two Supreme Court appointments and the designation of a political successor to himself, with his, in his words, “political capital,” what little there is of it left, caught up in the defense of Rove, his bestest buddy and strap-on brain.

That’s all I got to say about that. END TRANSMISSION.

My Profile

2005-05-19T20:35:00.000-07:00

NOT me.
.

So I finally got sick of all of my loyal readership out there constantly asking to see a picture of me. I mean, come on, guys, I'm only human, I can't resist the dozens upon dozens of emails you people are constantly sending, asking for a taste of my 1940's-era-movie-star good looks. Well, as some of you already know, I can't post a photo of myself, because the flimsy pseudonym is all that protects me from being identified and beaten to death by the evangelical neocon oligarchs who are threatened by my journalism. Besides, there are some "proceedings" still pending and if the general public knew who I was, it might compromise the cheerleaders and would certainly embarass the chicken, and lord knows she's been through enough already. So instead of my picture, I am posting a drawing of my most favorite celebrity, Spider Jerusalem. If you don't know who Spider is, then get your head out of your ass. Thanks, Warren Ellis and co.!

The REAL story (boom shaka laka!)

2005-05-19T20:05:00.000-07:00

NOT David Hager.
.

The sexual agenda of the Evangelical Christianist Right in America has long been very confusing to me. But you know what? I think I'm starting to get it. Consider this. Gay marriage BAD, forcing a 13-year-old girl in Florida to have a baby GOOD. Birth control BAD, abstinence-only sex ed programs (which don't work) GOOD. Condoms BAD, pharmacists who refuse to fill birth control prescriptions GOOD. David Hager, doctor and biblical scholar who was picked last year to advise President Bush on women's health issues, has used his pull with the FDA to scuttle the safest, surest form of birth control ever invented, on moral grounds. Get it yet?

THEY DON'T WANT US TO HAVE SEX FOR FUN.

Yeah, imagine what a fucked-up world it would be if we all started having sex for fun. Hager, by the way, according to a powerful expose in the most recent issue of THE NATION, took advantage of his former wife's narcolepsy to anally rape her while she was unable to resist, and had an affair with some girl he met in Bible study school. Keep studying, Dave, you'll get it someday! Now HE'S fun. There's an evangelical, Christian, moral neo-con you'd like to have at your birthday party, but, and I cannot say this strongly enough, DO NOT LET HIM GET YOU DRUNK.

Because this is my first entry on sex, I did NOT post a picture of David Hager. You're welcome.

Keeping the Faith

2005-03-15T19:54:00.000-08:00

Arcoloa: Smiting Mediocre Fiction
.

This from our friends at the BBC:

The Roman Catholic Church in Italy has spoken out against what it says are "shameful and unfounded lies" in the best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Archbishop of Genoa, broke the church's official silence on the controversial book. Its story about the Church suppressing the "truth" that Jesus had a child with Mary Magdalene has convinced many fans. But the cardinal's spokesman denied reports that the clergyman was asked by the Vatican to hit back at the book. Carlo Arcolao told the BBC's News website that it had been the cardinal's own decision to make a public statement about the book. Mr Arcolao confirmed that the cardinal told an Italian newspaper: "It astonishes and worries me that so many people believe these lies."

Yeah, your eminence, it astonishes and worries ME that a senior official of the most powerful religious organization in the world is wasting his time with this twenty-four carat bullshit. What Dan Brown didn't lift bodily for his contrived, boring, infantile little book from Umberto Eco's FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM and about a thousand other legends relating to the "cup of Christ" being a child of Jesus that certainly date back as far as the Templars, he ripped off completely from the Steve Jackson Games card game, ILLUMINATI, NEW WORLD ORDER. Oh, come on, people, anyone who's played the game could see that, and Lord knows I have! Dan's just been spending too much time playing Illuminati online. I can't believe that you're raising him on par with Gallileo or Da Vinci as a thinker whose writings are actually threatening to you. Hey, I know, let's have an auto-da-fe for the Teletubbies, while we're at it! On second thought, that'd it be worth it, just to see some burning Teletubbies. Meanwhile, Dan Brown, who is not a great writer but is certainly a rich one, is getting richer. More power to ya, Dan! Out of respect for your accomplishment in making Cardo Arco miffed at you, I WON'T put your picture up. End transmission.

Lapsus Atomica

2005-03-15T19:24:00.000-08:00

Mr. Ismail: "What radiation problem?"
.

This from the BBC:

The Sudanese government had a nasty shock this week, when it read on a US Congress website that the Americans had conducted nuclear tests in the country. A House of Representatives committee report mentioned tests conducted in Sudan between 1962 and 1970. However, when alarmed Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail raised it with US officials in Khartoum, it turned out to be a typing error. The report should have said Sedan, a test site in the US state of Nevada. "There is nothing that makes us so far doubt the explanations we have received from the US Administration," said Mr Ismail. He said he was very relieved to find that it was a simple error. "Our first concern of course was for the people of Sudan," he said. The American embassy in Khartoum issued a statement confirming that the US had never conducted nuclear tests in Sudan. The minister, however, remains determined to make completely sure. "Our investigations, which are already under way, will continue until we get to the bottom of this matter," he said.

Well, what a relief! The minister's tone here is telling, que no? He's not ruling out the possibility that the US did in fact conduct dangerous and illegal nuclear testing in the Sudan. I've included a picture of Mr. Ismail at the press conference, so you can see that everything is both hunky and dory. Still, my award goes to the Pentagon for top lapsus of March, and frankly I think this might be a contender for the Golden Lapsus of 2005.

Boy Wonder My A$$

2005-03-09T18:54:00.000-08:00

TOP TEN WORST THINGS ABOUT BEING A SIDEKICK

10. Drawing fire with your brightly-colored costume while your exemplar lurks in the shadows
9. While your exemplar christens cruise ships, you christen mall openings.
8. Snide remarks from other sidekicks after the TV news shows your exemplar patting you on the butt
7. Singing harmony on the Christmas Album
6. Casting the deciding vote in the event of a Senate tie.
5. Being called "chum."
4. Mowing the lawn in front of the Hideout. "Well, it ain't mowin' itself, chum!"
3. Dating your exemplar's rejected lovers
2. Having to eat at the kids' table at your Supergroup's Annual Company Potluck
1. Being called "chum."

Now THERE'S A Surprise

2005-02-16T19:41:00.000-08:00

s040_010
Originally uploaded by Mickey Marx.

This is where Mickey Marx sits in the political spectrum, according to the Quiz! Go try your luck! Find out how your nuanced and complex outlook can be boiled down to a bright red dot on a grid. It doesn't seem to have a vector for your bile-spitting hatred index.

Puzzling Evidence

2005-02-09T19:42:00.000-08:00

Explain THIS with your so-called "science!"

Here's a piece of evidence of dinosaurs and humans co-existing. This oughta add a bit of gravitas to the Intelligent Design theory and Ken Ham's self-amusement park (see LAPSUS SCIENTIA below).

Lapsus Scientia: "Intelligent" Design

2005-02-09T19:24:00.000-08:00

Both Extinct: T-Rex, and Ken Ham's moustache

You're tuned to the Lapsus Linguae show, kids, where it's the unflagging duty of our team of crack professionals (well, crack aficionados, at least) to point out slips of the tongue in public life, so you don't have to! Today's special friend is Richard Thompson, a lawyer representing the Dover School Board right here in sunny Pennsylvania, the global headquarters of people who seek meteorological advice from groundhogs (thanks, Phil!). Seems the good people of Dover aren't satisfied with the explanation of biodiversity offered by Darwin, and want the science teachers of the Dover School District to read aloud a statement in support of "Intelligent Design," a theory which proffers that life is so complex it could not possibly have been an accident, and goes on to extrapolate the existence of God. The science teachers, because they are trained to teach "science," refused to read the statement, and this has caused a backlash that has, surprise of surprises, reached the point of litigation.

Enter Richard, who refuses to allow the liberal media to suggest that this is a battle between science and religion:

"This is science versus science, where scientists looking at the same data come to different conclusions," Mr Thompson said.*

Well, that's cute, isn't it? Lets see what "science" has to say.

In the final analysis, the biochemical hypothesis of intelligent design fails not because the scientific community is closed to it but rather for the most basic of reasons -- because it is overwhelmingly contradicted by the scientific evidence. --Kenneth R. Miller**

Intelligent design theory has no "positive evidence," meaning there is no data to back up the explanation, while evolutionary process has mountains and mountains of data. That's probably enough for most scientists, and also most rational people, who feel that Intelligent Design theorists are at best lacking in imagination and scientific curiosity (lots of very smart people CAN imagine natural systems to account for such complexity); at worst, they are intentionally misdirecting and falsifying "scientesque" "data" for the purposes of advancing a moral and theological agenda, one, I might add, which suddenly seems bolstered in connection with the first election of George Bush, which occurred in 2004, and which he's been paying people off to advance for him.***

But don't let THAT run-on sentence fool you. Rational people are getting scarce. Enter Ken Ham, a Kentuckian who has just blown $25 million on a museum which will show the Garden of Eden where humans co-existed with dinosaurs."Who's gonna win this culture war, between secular humanism and Christian morality, or as one of the newspapers put it, between Godly America and Worldly America?" Mr Ham asks.* Take that, "science!"

Right. This is really about Spongebob Squarepants being gay, isn't it? There's national policy issue of immeasurable cultural importance.

Anyway, I'm happy that Ken Ham is blowing his Christian wad on rubber dinosaurs, so long as he's not just sitting around the house playing Bible-themed video games all day. I'm thrilled that Dover kids will be sharing scientesque Christianity in place of "learning." More seats free in my university classrooms for actual participants in society. Let the rest of us get on with human progress and the struggle for equality in peace. While you're at it, why don't you abandon the rest of science as well? It's not like there's enough flu shots to go around without you God-botherers hypocritically gobbling them up.

Anyway, today's Lapsus for Richard Thompson. Rich, you misspoke. When you said "this is science versus science," what you meant to say was "this is science versus the Inquisition." Today's Lapsus comes with an all-expense paid trip to Jurassic Park, where you can see how much fun it is to co-exist with dinosaurs. Mmmm-mm! Now that's what I call survival of the fittest! For Lapsus Linguae, this is Mickey Marx.

*Pannell, Ian. "US School's New Challenge to Darwin," BBC News, 9 Feb 05 2/8/05

**Intelligent Design?Â a special report reprinted from Natural History magazine 2/8/05

***see LAPSUS MORALIS: MIKE MCCANUS 2/4/05

The 2004 Golden Lapsus Linguae Award

2005-02-08T01:01:00.000-08:00

The Love Bush...soon will be making another run
Originally uploaded by Mickey Marx.

From NYmetro.com April 20, 2004:

At a recent dinner party hosted by New York Times D.C. bureau chief Philip Taubman and his wife, Times reporter Felicity Barringer, and attended by Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Maureen Dowd, Steven Weisman, and Elisabeth Bumiller, Rice was reportedly overheard saying, "As I was telling my husband," and then stopping herself abruptly, before saying, "As I was telling President Bush."? Jaws dropped, but a guest says the slip by the unmarried politician, who spends weekends with the president and his wife, seemed more psychologically telling than incriminating. Nobody thinks Bush and Rice are actually an item. A National Security Council spokesman laughed and said, "No comment."?

Well, this is certainly the #1 Lapsus Linguae of 2004. But I think I won't comment on it further. I refuse to assist those smutmongers who profit from implications of warm feelings between Condie and Curious George. I categorically absent myself from any suggestion whatsoever that Bush is involved in some kind of threeway Mormon-style interracial love nest at the ranch with Condi and Laura, snorting coke of each other's nipples while Karl Rove reads aloud transcripts from Hannity and Colmes. That would be unpatriotic.

Lapsus Moralis: Mike McManus

2005-02-04T22:29:00.000-08:00

Why are these bourgeois pigs smiling?
.

Welcome back to the Lapsus Linguae show, kiddies, and boy do we have a slip of the tongue for you today. Seems Mike McManus has been putting his tongue places it shouldn't go. You see, kiddies, Mr. McManus is a syndicated newspaper columnist, which means he has an ethical code not to take kickbacks from the subjects of his news stories. See, if columnists did that, well, you just wouldn't know who to trust in the Fifth Estate, would you? And "journalism" would become "advertising." Now, you might argue that happens all the time, but here's what's curious about ol' Mikey. Mikey accepted at least $10,200 from the Department of Health and Human Services to further the wacky, nefarious $300 million Bush initiative (read "scheme") of pushing marriage to unwed couples who are having children (Mike confesses this on his very own government-backed "Marriage Savers" website: www.marriagesavers.org/Columns/Current.htm. Mike obliquely justifies this blatant conflict of interest by pointing out that his program appears to have a coincidental relationship with the fall in divorce rates in the US). See, George doesn't like "non-traditional" families, like the ones with two daddies or two mommies, or the ones where daddy and mommy don't want to get married, or the ones where mommy and daddy come from different ethnic backgrounds or have different skin colors. Come to think of it, George doesn't take much of a shine to anything that's "non-traditional," which is why this country is starting to feel a bit medieval around the edges, if you ask me. Now, what's really so unusual about McManus' taking a little honorarium from his ol' buddy the Department of Health and Human Services? Not much, since syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher was caught with her hand in the HHS cookie jar last month to the tune of 21,500 cookies, and columnist and TV pundit Armstrong Williams collected a cool $240,000 from the Education Department to plug the "No Child Left Behind" legislation. That legislation deserves its own Lapsus, but back to business. Actually it turns out that last Wednesday the House Committee on Government Reform revealed in a report that Bush's cronies spent a grand total of $88 million on government-funded public relations contracts like these (thanks for those figures, Nancy Pelosi D-Calif). See, when a syndicated columnist gets paid by the GOVERNMENT to secretly push a political agenda, it's not "advertising," it's "propaganda." Say it with me now. "Prop-a-gan-da." Rhymes with "mil-i-ta-ry au-to-cra-cy."

And this week's Lapsus Linguae goes to Mike McManus, for his weekly pro-marriage web column, entitled "Ethics & Religion." Slip of the tongue, Mike. I think the word you're looking for isn't "Ethics," it's "Corruption." I've included a picture of Mike McManus and his lovely wife Harriet. They're smiling because your tax dollars built them a new wing on their house.

So Long, F-- I mean, Tucker Carlson

2005-01-12T19:35:00.000-08:00

Enjoy the "jobless recovery," dick.
Originally uploaded by Mickey Marx.

Big news today is that CNN's head Jonathan Klein has finally axed media whore Tucker Carlson, a conservative pundit who co-hosted Crossfire. It's not news that Crossfire, which has been on the air since 1982, has experienced a 21% drop in ratings since Tucker Carlson came on to lambaste liberals with his own wacky brand of misdirection and lyin'. Now, Jon Stewart was on the show in October, and called poor Tucker a number of names I'm sure he'd never been called to by his trust fund stewards. My favorite is this exchange:

TUCKER: I do think you're funnier on your show, just my opinion.

STEWART: And you know what's interesting? You're just as big a dick on your show as you are on any show.

It's worth watching: http://homepage.mac.com/duffyb/nobush/iMovieTheater231.html if you'd like to see it.

Now, insiders are saying that Tuckie's axing is due to his conduct in response to Stewart's one-man smackfest, which embarrassed CNN. What do we conclude from this? Jon Stewart is single-handedly saving America, one simpering bow-tie wearing idiot at a time. Bye-bye, Tucker. We'll miss ya.

Woke Up This Morning...

2005-01-10T20:19:00.000-08:00

...with this recitative intro to A3's "Peace in the Valley" running through my head:

"For whatever reason you refuse to feel this space we're in, to know its insanity, really know it; whatever your particular anesthetic is, that you hold onto so desperate (the thing, I mean, that makes you think you know who you are); whatever that thing is you allow to keeps you sane, your ace in the hole, the psyche that keeps you trying to guess what your pimp has in store for you; whatever keeps you from screaming out at this very moment in absolute and sheer horror; whatever you fuck your brain with; whatever that is— whatever that is— It's a lie. It's a lie."

What's your lie? Really, I wanna know.

Mine's that I can see it's all a huge cosmic joke. No foolin', I really can! I can see where the punch line is written. It's a good joke, too. Problem is, it's on us. Problem is, I need to have a nice house and a nice job and a nice family and live in a place that's not swamped by tsunamis where I can buy a wrought-iron baker's rack if I want it whenever I want it with my online credit card purchase in order to keep seeing it.

Not that I need a wrought-iron baker's rack. Not right now, anyway.

This is the first January in four years I'm not looking for work. This is the first January in four years I can sleep nights, because I'm not worrying about how I'll feed my family in the coming fall when my contract runs out. Sleeping at night: that's worth a lot, when it comes to chuckling at the cosmic joke.

Nighty-nite.

Lapsus Liberales

2004-12-26T10:04:00.000-08:00

Today's paper reports that the Democratic Leadership Council is worried that the reason the Dems lost the 2004 election to such a big group of corporate demogogues, free trade schills, evangelist warmongerers and royalists is because the Democratic Party Platform is the party's failure to "court moderates and find a way to compete in the Midwest and South."*

So let me get this perfectly straight. The reason that the party that threw its weight behind Joe Liberman for VP in 2000 and John Kerry for Pres in 2004 is, if I'm getting this right, "too liberal?"

WAH HA HA ha ha ha ha ha hah haha ha ha ha ha ah ha ah..... WAAAAAAh ha ha ha ah ah aha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hah ahaha aha ha ha hahaaha..... AHHHHHHHH ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha a hah a a ha hah a ah ah ah ah ahah a hah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah hahah ah ah ahah ah ah a hahah ....

Oh, mercy. That's a good one.

* Sirota, David. "Debunking 'Centrism,'" Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 26 DEC 2004, J-1. Rock on, Dave!

Cogitate and Masticate

2004-12-13T18:43:00.000-08:00

Something to think and chew on from H. L. Mencken in "Smart Set" Magazine, December 1919:

"The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to he conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are."

I used to think about this quote with real gusto, to think that I am the dangerous man, or I should strive to be. But these days I'm not so sure. On the Daily Show the other day the guest was Seth Mnookin, author of HARD NEWS, former journalist with NEWSWEEK and general smug pundit flavor-of-the-week. But Seth said something that struck me, which was that part of the reason journalism in America is currently paddling down diarrhea drive is because the news-consuming individual of the USA is now so politically polarized that he can't stand to see, read, or hear anything on the news that doesn't confirm beliefs he's already holding. Or she. Or they/it to my buddies at Coney Island. Anyway, my reaction to this was "yeah, those fucking conservative tight-asses." But then it hit me: it's me too, of course. That's why even NPR was starting to seem right-wing to me for a while. That's why I tend to believe only the news I get from the Daily Show, even though I know damn well it's just a parody show.

And I thought of Mencken: the keyword in this quote is that the dangerous man is dangerous to ANY government. That means that EVERY government rules by lies, innuendo, fictive constructs covering those inevitable gaps that inexorably crack and split in the gulf between actual material reality and the nationalistic idealism necessary to run a state. Get it? So the dangerous man, who can think for himself, sees the insanity in the government, and if he tries to change it, he's a romantic. An idealist. Naiive. Deaf to real-politik. Because whatever system he put in the place of the one he tore down would be just as false, just as fictive, and just as prone to balderdash to shore up its ever-weakening facade.

So now I see Mencken's dangerous man as a position on a cycle: the more he realizes that it is systemhood itself that is eminently fucked, the more he realizes that the intolerability of his government is inevitable. And government is also inevitable. Inevitable, but intolerable. When he realizes that he stops trying to change things, and instead breeds discontent among other romantics.

I really think there's only one way to stop this. Anyone who wants to hold a high public office like President or Senator, from now on, should be immediately disqualified from running. Only people who DON'T want the job should be allowed to do it. Well, forced. I mean, you'd have to.

Well, that's all from "Mencken's Corner." And now back to our correspondent in Terebithia for our continuing 24-hour war coverage of the Sucralose Crisis.

Evidence of a Disturbing Trend?

2004-12-02T20:50:00.000-08:00

churchsign
Originally uploaded by Mickey Marx.

Took this photo of a church in my neighborhood. Is it too late to retract all those mean things I said about our President?

Now Tell Me This Ship Ain't Sinkin'

2004-12-02T19:26:00.000-08:00

Today on the bbc:

"As Mr Bush build a team for his second term, US ambassador to the United Nations, John Danforth, has resigned. The former Republican senator only took on the UN job in July, after the previous US envoy, John Negroponte, became ambassador to Iraq. Mr Danforth's announcement came as a "complete surprise", according to a US official quoted anonymously by Reuters news agency. Officials from the US delegation at the United Nations said Mr Danforth's decision to go was not related to any UN matter, nor events in Washington. The ambassador simply wanted to spend more time with his family in Missouri, officials said. "

A lot of that going around, lately. Seems like family pressures have dessicated the top chairs of Commerce, Energy, Homeland Security, Justice, and State, and now the Secretary of Agriculture, Ann Veneman, has quit, to be replaced by some guy who grew up on a dairy farm (ain't that cute?), Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham has quit, Secretary of Education Rod Paige (to be replaced by someone who wants to put warning stickers on books about evolution) has quit, all wanting to spend more time with their families. Needy fuckin' families! And Danforth was appointed in JUNE. His leather chair doesn't even has his ass groove yet! But good news! Tom Ridge's replacement's been selected, and who does Georgie nominate to fill the position of Big Brother? Someone who will have all our lives in his hands? Someone who needs to outwit the wickedest intellects on the planet?

Highschool dropout Bernard Kerik. Give it up, everyone! It's Bush's America, where you don't need an education to wield immense power! Take that, East Coast Liberal Intellectual Elite! At least, until his kids start to miss him.

Does anyone else have a vaguely undefinable but growing sense of "we're really, really fucked?"

Tom Ridge, Porter Goss, and the Search for Noah's Ark

2004-11-30T21:25:00.000-08:00

In 1992, I played a small role in a film called "The Search for Noah's Ark." Don't look for it on IMDB, as it ain't there. The film was about a 19th-century expedition to the Mount Ararat region of Turkey which is fabled to have actually discovered the Ark, described it in detail, and then was never able to find it again nor to adequately relate its location to anyone else. I played two roles in the film; the first as Ham, son of Noah, who pleads for the lives of Noah's wicked neighbors as the flood waters rise. "But Father, they're dying!" was my only line, as the actor playing Noah clenched his fists in pain and explained he was doing as God commanded. I tried to put a reaction on my face that summed up everything about Ham, what he thought of his father and his God, and why as soon as the boat hit dry land, Ham ran off to Africa to start civilization, and never looked back nor visited his father over the holidays. It was cut from the final film, of course. The other role I played was that of a Kurdish villager hauling dirt around a 19th-century Turkish village. Ah, the rustic life of the Kurdish dirt-carrier! Who can hear of it and not weep? Anyway, the premise was the film was going to re-create the fabled expedition, follow it up the mountain, witness the discovery of the Ark and its subsequent concealment by an incredibly ambitious glacier which apparently covers the Ark up so you can only see it periodically (this is why none of the thousands of commercial and military airline flights or GPS satellites over the region have never discovered the Ark. apparently. Ice.).

The day of the filming comes in July and I get into the producers' van and drive out to a strange little place in the middle of the Great Salt Lake called Stansbury Island. It's not a pretty picture. The lake is all that remains of a dinosaur-era collosal inland sea, so saturated with the leftover salt that it's very difficult to think within miles of it. I mean sink. Only brine shrimp and algae can live in it, each preying off the other in an elegant but boring dance of survival. Brine shrimp are what you used to order in the mail as "Sea Monkeys," remember them? The little packets of nothing you would put in water and wait for hours until nothing happened and you dumped the whole thing in the sink? The shrimp eat the algae, the shrimp live exciting and imaginative lives, the shrimp die, and the algae feed on the little corpses. Something about this process generates a gawdawful stench. Or maybe its the half-century of copper mine tailings and toxic runoff that the Kennecott mine regularly dumps into it. Anyway. Stansbury Island is in the middle of it, accessible by a dismal causeway. Apparently this island used to actually indeed be a bleak and windswept mountaintop, sometime in the Jurassic period. Now it rose about 300 feet above the surface of the lake. The chief amazing thing these film guys had done is covered one slope of the hill with artificial Astro-Snow which, as was explained to me, on film looks more like snow than actual snow. "Don't eat it," they added. It smelled like styrofoam but ironically it made good snowballs. On top of the hill, they've actually reconstructed the Ark of Noah, apparently exactly according to the description of the explorers, which matches the biblical description perfectly, of course. At the base of the hill, about 200 feet from the Ark, is a replicated Kurdish village street, fronts only, of course. So I mosey over to the extras tent with the other Kurdish villagers (in Utah, you mosey a lot. I don't know whether you moseyed in 19th century rural Turkey. I imagine so). These are two Mexican guys, one Armenian guy, and two Navajo gals. I guess the producers figured any brown person, even slightly beige like myself, would do to represent the Kurds. These were fun guys and gals. We had a good time being turned into Kurdish villagers, wearing the exact same thing you can see Turkish Kurds wearing today, and later we went out and had beers and laughed about what came next.

What came next was the four white actors playing the roles of the intrepid explorers who discovered the Ark. British heroes, all. They're wearing tweed walking outfits with knicker-pants and pith helmets. Yes, pith helmets, in Asia Minor. Anyway, these Brits come into the village and we villagers are all supposed to be going about our business, which is hauling big baskets of dirt around from one end of the village to another, as if a band of British short-pants-wearing maniacs looking for Noah's Ark happens every day. Well, the Brits find the Kurdish headman, who speaks English perfectly, and he tells them, more or less, "oh, sure, Noah's Ark? Up there. Hang a left at the yeti and you can't miss it. Don't forget to stop in at our gift shop on the way down."

So off they trot, and the next scene is them heading up the mountain. For this, the producers have brought in gigantic fans which blow the simulasnow around into a very convincing simulablizzard, through which the simulasplorers pretend to discover the simulArk. By this time we Kurds are laughing our heads off and the director is giving us dirty looks so we wander off to throw simulasnowballs at each other until it's time to go home.

Six months or so later I'm told the movie is going to air on the PAX network so I dial up a plateful of sukiyaki, grab a Sapporo, and settle down to watch the fun. I call my Mom, too, because Moms live for this stuff. So I watch the film, and a sickening realization begins to dawn on me. This isn't a historical recreation film. It's a documentary. Apparently the producers were a subsidiary of the LDS Church, and the film is an extravagant showpiece done to give credence to the Mormon understanding of the Noah story. Mormon theologists take the Bible as a historical document, you see, so they have a deep and abiding urge to find scientific proof for every damn allegory the Bible has to offer. And we're not talking about just the Books of Moses, but the Book of Mormon, a text discovered by the 19th-century New York prophet and flim-flammer Joseph Smith, a man who single-handedly kept the tar-and-feather industry alive for years until he found religion and convinced a whole bunch of very brave, very stupid people to follow him to forge a polygamous utopia on the poisoned shores of the very stinking lake in the middle of which I was to play a Kurdish guardian of the Ark's secrets. This book is full of absurdities that make the contradictions of the Bible seem like cute little riddles. For one thing, Jesus came to America during his lifetime, where he hung out in a huge city called Zarahemla. The Church spends millions on archaeological expeditions looking for Zarahemla and so far has found nothing except a plastic fork, which doesn't disprove the authenticity of the find but only proves that plastics technology actually existed much earlier than previously thought.*

So the entire movie is full of honest-to-God fully credentialed "scienticians" who swear on a stack of Bibles that the story of the explorers is utterly true, every word, that pack ice exists on the top of Mount Ararat year round, plenty to conceal an Ark, and goes on to create this whole fantasia about how the Earth used to have a Venus-style cloud cover which all precipitated down one day and caused the flood. It gives a lot of geological data about how mountaintops used to be sea beds and all that, but didn't, I couldn't help notice, explain where all that water went when it drained away. Must have dropped off the edge of the earth, I guess. Anyway, the footage from the movie is used to illustrate the points of the scienticians in an intellectually dishonest but not very clever way, and I'm chugging Sapporos to counter the growing sense I'm feeling that my talents, such as they are, have unwittingly prostituted themselves to this sad affair, and another part of me is laughing my fool head off.

This is when the call from Momma Marx comes. I thought she was going to razz me. Didn't happen. She said the following thing:

"Mickey, did you see this? THEY'VE FOUND NOAH'S ARK!"

I'm too shocked to answer.

"THEY'VE FOUND NOAH'S ARK!" she says again.

"Mom, no," I manage to say. "It's just a movie. It's all a big lie."

"Mickey," she says in that tone she reserves for educationally subnormal people who ought to know better. "I'm looking at it right now. People are climbing on it."

"Mom," I'm pleading now. "That's a model, it's out on the Lake. Mom. It's still there, we can go see it tomorrow! Mom, I was IN this movie and I climbed on the Ark myself."

"There's no convincing some people," said Momma Marx, and hung up.

I'm telling you this story because Tom Ridge quit his job as Homeland Security Advisory today. Tom Ridge, who gave up a cushy job squeezing Pennsylvania's testicles in his trickle-down voodoo vice-grip to become Master Chief War Pig, High Commander of the Panopticon and Big Brother. He's the guy on the pirate ship who set up the cannons and always had one or two pointing at the DECK.

Now, it's not unusual to be loved by anyone, and it's not unusual for a re-elected President to shake up his War Pigs.. I mean, his cabinet a little. I mean, Richard Clarke, just couldn't take it, not handy enough with the kneepads and the mouthwash to survive in Bush's White House. Colin Powell, who stepped down from his position as Secretary of State, no surprise, right? Obviously he couldn't swallow George's spunk fast enough, and some dribble leaked from the corners of his mouth as this good man lied to the UN and then had to scramble all over the world putting out the fires set by Dubya's hamfisted fer-us-er-agin-us foreign policy. Don Evans, the Commerce Secretary, well, his resignation was enough to make a certain percentage of Americans sit up and ask this question: "Who's Don Evans?" Never mind. But the list goes on. John Ashcroft, Attorney General, who let the eagle soar and crap where it would, a master of fellatio to his seniors, steps down leaving America feeling like a crack whore, dazed while he wipes himself on our dress and tosses a five-spot on the counter, laughing, "don't spend it all in one place, bitch." Why would he leave? Well, he's the first draft choice to replace Chief Justice Renfield (hee hee hee hee) who is right now mainly concerned with keeping his ass out of the Eighth Hell. That must be it. But then, Stephen Kappes, Chief of the Clandestine Unit of the CIA and his deputy, Michael Sulick, both quit. Michael Scheuer, former head of the search for Bin Laden in the CIA, quit. John McLaughlin, replacement for George Tenet, who quit, quit, after Porter Goss explained his new "tough love" policy for the CIA. We know about "tough love." Chomsky explained it to us. It means love for the wealthiest Americans and tough for the rest of us in the world. Following this, two ultra-mysterious high-level figures, supposedly operating in the recruitment of foreign spies and overseas clandestine work, quit. All of these positions are being replaced with Bush loyalists, yes men like Condi and Porter who won't seek to balance the White House's arrogance, but enforce it.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said such turnover was to be expected as new leadership takes over. "The aggressiveness with which we will continue to fight the war on terror for freedom and liberty and democracy throughout the world will not be affected in any way by any sort of personnel changes here or any sort of reorganization of the intelligence functions of entities here," said Fristy.**

Yeah, that's one option, certainly it's one I'd like to believe. But it reminds me of Momma Marx. Momma Marx is no fool, people, but I guess that what with one thing and another, a bit of cinematic sleight-of-hand to bring the Ark back from its mythic tomb, a flashy show, and a genuine real-and-for-true hope that in this crazy mixed-up world of trickery and deceit there could emerge something ancient and pure and true, like the Ark of Noah, it was just easier for Momma to believe what she saw, despite the vast truckloads of evidence to the contrary in the form of me telling her it was all a sham.

So I'd like to believe the Frister, I really would, in the face of what appears to be a massive amount of evidence suggesting something else. Rats, it is well known, only leave a ship in droves, as the War Pigs are abandoning Georgie, for one reason. If you don't know what that reason is, why then, I've got an Ark to show you.

* I am sorry if this statement offends any Mormons, but I had to live in your city for 23 years so I feel entitled to hold a bit of a grudge.
** This from CNN.com, "Top leaders of CIA's clandestine service resign" by David Ensor

NPR Film Reviewers Can Eat Me

2004-11-24T07:32:00.000-08:00

It's bad enough, frankly, that NPR caved in to the whole "let's report the news exactly as Donald Rumsfeld wants us to" craze, where the media is hesitant to state a fact critical of the administration and so presents it as "liberal opinion," case in point being the loss of weapons from the Al-Caca munitions dump.

But, and I hope I can get a shout-out here, the film reviews on NPR eat my pinched-out cholesterol-laden Cleveland Steamers (apologies to may all-time favorite film critic Kevin "Tom Servo" Murphy; I don't mean you. You're awesome). Here's Bob Mondello on June 13, 2003: "The science-fiction action film THE MATRIX and the animated MONSTERS INC. may belong to different genres, but they have a striking similarity: both tell the story of an alternate universe fueled by the efforts of humans who are unaware that they are doing the fueling."

What's the problem with this? For one thing, Bob didn't figure this out until he was walking out of FINDING NEMO and ran into the exiting audience of MATRIX RELOADED in 2003! Now this is two years after MONSTERS INC was released, and four years after THE MATRIX was released. This is because Bob Mondello, is, unfortunately, an utter berk, and he's lucky to know his right foot from his left. The rest of us, that is, those of us who are not educationally subnormal, or have been actually participating in popular culture instead of sitting alone in a locked vault on the bottom of the Marianas Trench with our eyes closed and wads of wax stuffed in our ears whacking off to nude pictures of Tinkerbelle for the last ten years, have been watching with interest the explosion of films with exactly this theme that goes all the way back to BRAZIL (1985), and includes 12 MONKEYS (1995), THE TRUMAN SHOW (1998), (DARK CITY (1998), THIRTEENTH FLOOR (1998), and of course the sub-genre of movies that provide much-needed work for the non-union letter Z: EXISTENZ (1999), and ANTZ (1998). We've even been discussing it. We've even been writing about it. We've even been holding university-level classes about it. With grades and credit and everything, Bob. In fact, if you wanted to take a look at what we hoity-toity East Coast intellectuals call "history," you might even discover that people like Plato, Jesus, and the Kabbalists have been bandying these ideas about for CENTURIES. So take your goddam finger out of your fucking ass, open what we nasty elitist East Coast intellectuals like to call a "book," and pay attention to what's going on before you call yourself a culture critic. There's nothing I hate more than some yahoo who once looked for a long time at the cover of Pop Smear thinking he's the new Aristotle. Congratufuckinglations, Bob, you hit on an idea everyone already had, and you did it ALL BY YOURSELF. Now see if you can learn to cross the street when the little man appears.

Why am I writing about this now? Because this morning's film review of ALEXANDER, by Oliver "Boring" Stone by Kenneth Turan, who has already proven himself to be an Olympic-class goofus, makes the rather banal statement that Oliver Stone is trying to BE Alexander the Great. He even comments on the eagle Alexander uses as an emblem without commenting on the fact that, since it's a bald eagle, it's actually an emblem of the modern US. These kinds of movies legitimize conservative foreign policy by embodying a fallacious mythic precedent. Alexander, the film argues, was right to conquer the world, specifically the Middle East, because he brought the divinely-ordained Greek civilizing process to this ravaged world. I grant you, Alexander's accomplishments were impressive: he was the last guy to successfully establish a stable government in Afghanistan, for instance. Alexander's triumph, then, legitimizes the neo-con crusade to "bring civilization" to the Middle East, whether those know-nothing third world filth-eating fez-wearers (who, by the way, invented algebra, the number zero, and reading) want it or not. The eagle is just a dead giveaway.

Don't you guys know what a "critic" is?

Bush's Anti-Intellectualism

2004-11-12T10:18:00.000-08:00

In 2001 Lynne Cheney, wife of the V.P., and senator Joe Lieberman, as founding members of the academic watchdog group American Council of Teachers and Alumni (ACTA) sponsored the Defending Civilization report, a McCarthyesque blacklist of American professors, students, and others in the academic community who spoke out against the war or the administration (you can still read it at goacta.org/publications/Reports/defciv.pdf). The report is vicious in its condemnation of American professors, who displayed a hatred of America, apparently, when they: “sponsored teach-ins that typically ranged from moral equivocation to explicit condemnations of America. While America’s elected officials from both parties and media commentators from across the spectrum condemned the attacks and followed the President in calling evil by its rightful name, many faculty demurred. Some refused to make judgments. Many invoked tolerance and diversity as antidotes to evil. Some even pointed accusatory fingers, not at the terrorists, but at America itself.”

To be sure, there was indeed a segment of the American people who opposed the President’s reaction to the 9-11 tragedy, and a percentage of that population that was hesitant about marching in lock-step with the President was employed in the academic profession. Some of these professors may even have crossed the line into absurdity in their passionate reactions, but the ACTA report explicitly targets professors who “advocated tolerance and diversity,” who “refused to make judgments,” and who “demurred” from joining the President’s suspicious, underthought “Crusade” (this was his word). Professors earned places on this list for comments as innocuous as “we should build bridges and relationships, not simply bombs and walls,” “I deplore those who are deploying rhetoric and deploying troops without thinking before they speak,” and “an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.”

Universities came under criticism in the report for allowing teach-ins, antiwar speakers, or providing a diversity-based curriculum. Included in the report is a quote from a speech Lynne Cheney gave on October 5, 2001: “to say that it is more important now [to study Islam] implies that the events of Sept. 11 were our fault, that it was our failure… to understand Islam that led to so many deaths and so much destruction.” Over the following three years, this document was used to isolate and frighten professors whose patriotism was deemed insufficient, to discourage the creation of nontraditional courses, and to silence academic dissenters with vague threats.

The report was used to target reprisals as professors across the US were reprimanded, harassed, humiliated, flamed in email, threatened with violence and even fired for espousing strong anti-administration views, and came to a head in 2003, when HR 3077 brought the Title VI provision under review. Title VI mandates that programs receiving federal money train their graduates for careers in national service. ACTA, acting on behalf of the White House, advocated the creation of an “advisory board” which would monitor these programs to ensure they met the federal mandate; the clear purpose of this board was to evaluate whether universities were representing conservative foreign policy. It could recommend pulling funding from programs that employed professors critical of the administration. Historically the Bush White House is known for stocking such advisory boards with unqualified corporate schills or demagogues to ensure a particular agenda. Such boards have been instructed todistort and suppress scientific data and other findings (a recent example of this was the 2004 appointment of W. David Hager, a pro-life activist who advocates a “biblical” approach to medicine that has flown in the face of scientific understanding, to chair the FDA’s Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee).

Such a climate on the academic side encourages the proliferation of organizations like Campus Watch, which puts out inflammatory and misleading dossiers on professors critical of the Bush administration and advocates anti-Muslim ethnic cleansing in America. Such a climate legitimizes the work of conservative activists like David Horowitz, whose “academic bill of rights” is the centerpiece of an ongoing effort to silence liberal voices on American campuses.

These facts are not in dispute. The administration is open about, and proud of, its actions against the intellectual community. What should make America’s professoriat, conservative and liberal alike, quake in its penny-loafers about the fact that the architects of this anti-intellectual movement have won a second term in office is that this win is an honest one. We can no longer dismiss Bush as an accident of a loophole or star-chamber manipulation of the election. If our President truly reflects the values of America, apparently these values include the silencing of critical thought, retarding of scientific progress, and transformation of our universities into nationalistic theological seminaries. Now that Bush has his so-called mandate, we can certainly expect the next four years to bring an intensified chill on academic discourse, an increased sense of fear among our nation’s intellectuals to speak and write freely, and a significant “brain drain” as the next generation of thinkers thinks twice about entering such a vilified profession.