MM

Monday

Monday

Marmot

Yes, it's Monday.

Marmot Monday

How NOT To Do It

Man who threw feces in courtroom draws 31-year sentence for robbery.

Dude, you're doing it wrong.

The Department of The Obvious Checks In

CNN falls to last place in ratings for prime-time programs.

In other news, water is wet and the sky is blue.

Marmot Monday

Editor?

The Seattle Times has got to find a better headline writer. From today's web edition:

Huskies linebacker achieves his dream, now has torn ACL.

Who dreams of achieving a torn ACL?


Ares

Swine Flu

Marmot Monday

We're Baaack!

Ig-Noble Peace Prize

This best part of POTUS winning the Nobel Peace Prize isn't the award itself. It's the stream of commentary that can be harvested in it's wake. Cherry picked from Instapundit are the favorites thus far:

"How do you say 'jumped the shark' in Norwegian?"

From Richard Cohen of the WashPo: "At the same time, and amazingly enough, the Pulitzer Prize for Literature went to Sarah Palin for her stated intention “to read a book someday.”

More to follow on this developing un-story.

Ares

Working in Government

I am enjoying my current foray into working for the government. The daily brushes with absurdity and Rube Goldberg administrative processes are never ending entertainment. This week's installment was brought to us by the bench outside my office door. The other day we had a group of folks visiting the office. Most were what could generously be called big boned. At one point during the visit four of these endomorphs attempted to wedge themselves onto a bench that was built for two. With predictable results the bench collapsed, leaving one person slightly injured. As a result of this little incident it was decided that the benches are a hazard to persons of this body type and we will not be given a replacement. (Swear I'm not making this up.) I remedied the congnative dissonance by spending many hours watching the Violence Channel with my good friend Frito Pendejo.

Ares

A Question for Steve Jobs

As I'm sure we're all aware that there are algorithms that look at your shopping choices and try to present you with possible purchases up your alley. It is with that in mind that I pose this question to Apple: What in my long iTunes history metal and rock purchases make you think I'm down for some Camper Van Beethoven? Somebody check under the hood of Skynet.

Ares

Tyler Durden Tuesdays

There is a decent reason for the rot and neglect of this space over the past few months. I was engaged in a foreign pursuit: enjoying the hell out of life. Between the pursuit of happiness and the cacophony of stupid permeating the everything I thought it best to keep my trap shut in this space. Sure, there's been lots to comment upon. But I haven't managed more than a “boy, this sucks” conclusion of late, and you already knew it sucks. So for a little bit henceforth I'm gonna throw effort at the silly.

Ares

Marmot Monday

Marmot Monday

News From The Northwest

Or should I say “News flavored product”. Todays installment of the Why The F*** Are You Telling Me This files is courtesy of the ever-classy Seattle Times: Yakima Teacher Reprimanded For Sending 5-Year-Old Student Home With Bag Of Feces In Backpack. Leave it to the Times to make me wish for more stories about Michael Jackson being dead. While we're on this topic I've got a few questions of my own. For those that have issues with my digression on the subject please bear this in mind: I didn't make this a front page story in a major newspaper.

What sort of societal standard should we be hold out teachers to with regard to kids making a grunt sculpture in their classroom?

What would be the appropriate verbiage for telling a parent their precious little snowflake dropped a deuce in public?

Will this necessitate an addendum to progress reports? I.e.: Math B+, Reading C, Deportment Good, Absence of Dookie in Classroom Unsatisfactory.

Should Hallmark come out with a new line of cards to ease the communication between teachers and parents? “Roses are red, violets cost more, Your little angel, took a s*** on my floor.”

I could continue on this line but you get the idea. Personally I'd like to buy the teacher a tall cold one for dealing with this directly. I would have called the janitor (or HazMat) and waited in the hall. The kid's parents need to move right now. If they don't his prom date, and probably his wife, will know about this. As for the Times, the analogies between feces stories and their Port-O-San of a newspaper are too numerous to pluck. They've pretty much succeeded in beclowning themselves on this one.

Ares

McKinney, Redux

McKinney still held on ship of activists detained by Israel.

KEEP HER!

Ares

Recently Encountered

One Time Offer

Sad news: TV pitchman Billy Mays is dead. On a brighter note, the family has said his organs will be donated. Call in the next 15 minutes and you get the second kidney or lung for free! In other news, police have announced there is now an APB out for the ShamWow! guy.

Ares

Jesse To The Rescue

Jesse Jackson: Family wants 2nd autopsy. Because every situation is improved upon with the arrival of Jesse Jackson. Nice to see he's found himself a gig after that whole "Wanna cut his nuts off" thing during the election. Stay classy there Jesse. Wonder if he'd be pitching in if Lenny Kravitz had kicked the bucket?

Ares

I Could Have Told Them

Just in case it was a mystery, website TripAdvisor did a survey in which Atlanta came in dead last of preferred destinations. In other news water is wet and the sky is blue. Of course, the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau took issue. Nobody wants their house publicly referred to as a privy. I've got a comeback campaign slogan for the Atlanta Convetion & Vistors Bureau: "Yea it sucks but we're working on that piss smell".

Ares

Things You Already Know

You're well aware that gas prices are on course to follow last year's take-us-to-the-cleaners run. As Americans, we're all intimately familiar with getting screwed with out pants on. In the midst of this turd in a teapot gas price thing we get another in depth analysis from the news-flavored product factory called CNN. We'll set aside the obvious point that oil prices exist outside the economic laws of supply and demand. Apparently there is a third dimension:

"Considering that supply seems ample and demand is weak, the fact that oil is going up looks kind of weird," says Adam Sieminski, chief energy economist at Deutsche Bank. "But those factors are being overwhelmed by a huge sigh of relief that we're not going to have the Great Depression."

I see. The mere fact that people are exhaling forcefully has caused an increase in oil prices. Maybe, and I'm just spitballing here, the reason the entire system got crashed is because we let guys like Adam Sieminski craft apologist explanations for the largest corporations on the planet bleeding us like butchers. The article also says the U.S. economy is using 2.5 million few barrels per day this year than in 2009, but that actual fact can't complete with the force of a huge sigh of relief.

"Meanwhile, there are signs that a demand recovery could be on the way in Asia."

Actually, no, it's not. I keep hoping there are adults paying attention somewhere. For all my pseudo-anonymous ranting this actually a little important. If were are going to construct a future society that unplugs us from fossil fuel dependence there has to be time to actually construct it. Letting the corporate crack addicts continue to take a crowbar to our knees is another stitch in the coffin lining of that idea.

Ares

Sign Of The Times

Good piece on CNET about the utter lack of coverage on the major networks, especially CNN, of unrest in Iran. I sincerely believe it stems not from conspiracy but astounding incompetence. CNN is becoming to news what MTV has become to music: Not a content conduit but a culture delivery device.

Ares

It's Not Natural

Gay penguin dads in German zoo hatch their first chick. Not to worry, the voters of California will outlaw this soon. I'm certain that with the penguin's well-known powers of critical thinking and highly developed cerebellums they chose a homosexual lifestyle solely reap the benefits of minority status in penguin society. It's all a part of shoving the radical homosexual penguin agenda in our faces.

Ares

VeJo the Ho

Oh please oh please oh please. Vernon “VeJo” Jones has publicly dropped the clue that he's considering a run for governor of Georgia. There are few reasons why reading those words brought glee into my teeny, tiny heart. First, I no longer reside in Georgia so I'll be rolling in blooming fields of Schadenfreude. (Visualize the closing credits of Little House on the Prairie and you'll have the correct image of my mental state.) Second, you just don't get big, fat, juicy comedy pitches thrown right into the strike zone every day.

Vernon's real tragedy, his real lament in life, is that he didn't have a big enough kingdom to loot. He desperately wants to level up to where the big money and prizes reside. And before you reject the idea out of hand remember that Marion Berry was re-elected after being caught on video smoking crack. Cynthia McKinney got re-elected after acting like a crack head. With these stars to steer by, nothing is out of reach for VeJo. For those residing outside Dekalb County let me give you a visual of what life in Georgia would be like under VeJo: Imagine post-Katrina New Orleans only without the hurricane. Georgia under the current governorship of the feed salesman moves only as a result of inertia, not competence. VeJo would bring levels of graft and entropy difficult to comprehend. By reading the comments section of the AJC article this apparently isn't lost on potential voters.

So here's the official Ares and Athena prediction for VeJo: He'll fall flat in his run for governor. He'll bide his time and make a shot at the 4^th U.S. Congressional district. Given the 4th's voting record he's got a pretty good chance. He will not, however, fade from political life. He's too incompetent to hold an actual job and his ego will tolerate nothing less than a personal sequel. This will be fun to watch, from a distance.

Ares

Hummer Time

A frightful idea has crossed our bow. Seems a Chinese company may acquire GM's Hummer line. (Side thought: How far have you fallen as an industry when Fiat is considered your white knight?) This sends a shiver down my patriotic spine. What's next on our tour of domestic economic decay? Little Debbies made by Hezbollah? Omaha Steaks outsourcing to India? An F-16 assembly line in Syria? Jimmy Dean sausage moving to Mecca? First they came for the Hummers......

Ares

Congressional Birthday

Ares and Athena News Alert: Tuesday is International Whores Day. Celebrate appropriately by sending best wishes to your elected representatives.

Ares

Bacon Lives!

From Amazon's Al Dente blog. Hard to top this, so I'm just gonna re post it below. God bless America.

Bacon Maple Bar Saves Part-Time Vegetarian

by Martha Snodgrass on May 11, 2009

After a cleansing five-day intense yoga retreat at Breitenbush Hot Springs, where the menu is strictly vegetarian, I was feeling clean, strong, healthy, and in desperate need of protein. Figuring I'd be home around dinner time, I planned to continue my healthy streak with some tekka maki from my local sushi restaurant. But as the evening rush hour began to waylay our progress, and my carnivorous hunger began to kick-in, I thought I better sate my need before I started to eat my own fingernails. Fortunately for me, as we cruised through Portland, we happened past VooDoo Doughnuts, the home of the Bacon Maple Bar.

I was a little concerned about what this intense shot of sugar and fats would do to my thoroughly cleansed and hyper-relaxed system after nearly a week of a meat-free, low-fat, zero refined sugar diet. I also had to consider that I still had five non-stop hours in the back of a small car to go (making intestinal distress disastrous).

Once we entered Voodoo Doughnuts, a Pepto-Bismol pink former Denny's restaurant, I searched the display case and there past the Voodoo doughnut dolls (which come complete with frosting-painted grimace and pretzel voodoo pin impaling their little doughy hearts), vegan doughnuts (exactly NOT what I needed), doughnuts covered with Coco Puffs and Captain Crunch, I saw one maple bar topped with two strips of crispy bacon. Hunger and nutritional need drove me to pull out my wallet.

Now, my aesthetic sensibilities started to kick in and I noticed the bacon fat had cooled, congealed, and turned white. Suddenly I lost my appetite. I think it was CJ, the most experimental of our quintet that dove in for the first bite. After seeing the satisfied roll of her eyes, my curiosity overwhelmed my hesitation and I dug in. It was pure syrupy pancake and bacon bliss. This was the breakfast I'd yearned for each morning I'd woken up to tempeh and eggs.

While I wouldn't recommend making a trip cross-country for this doughnut, if you find yourself in Portland, it's definitely worth a five-minute trip out of your way to try it. Also, if you happen to be at breakfast with all the makings nearby, drop a strip of warm bacon on a maple bar and you'll have an even fresher experience than mine.

Ares note: Gotta go, on my way to Portland.

They're Baaaaack!

Simplicity Itself

As usual in life, the best solutions are the ones that are the least complicated. With that in mind I came across the following idea today, posted a blog whose name I've since forgotten. Sheer genius.

Dear Mr. President:

Please find below my suggestion for fixing America's economy. Instead of giving billions of dollars to companies that will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan. You can call it the Patriotic Retirement Plan:

There are about 40 million people over 50 in the work force. Pay them $1 million apiece severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:

1) They have to retire.

A· Forty million job openings.

B. Unemployment fixed.

2) They have to buy a new American CAR.

A· Forty million cars ordered.

B. Auto Industry fixed.

3) They have to either buy a house or pay off their mortgage.

A· Housing Crisis fixed.

It can't get any easier than that!

Ares

Who Needs A Warm Up?

Here's something that makes pandemics and global warming feel good by comparison. Seems Russia is going to build floating nuclear reactors above the Arctic Circle. There is so much wrong here I don't know where to begin. Russians operating nuclear reactors gives me apocalypse nightmares. Add the word "floating" to the descriptor and I want to stock up on canned goods and iodine. Now let's throw in the possibility of a China Syndrome in the Arctic ice and it's a perfect Book of Revelation stew. Here are words I never thought would cross my keyboard: I wish to god they had a Sierra Club chapter in Russia.

Ares

Big Goodbye

Another installment of the Vay Con Dios Files. J.G. Ballard, who lived large in genre that was eventually labeled Transgressive Fiction, has gone to the great beyond. I supposed I would write a lot of f'ed up fiction too if my childhood had been like his. The movie and novel Empire of the Sun is based on his experiences as a child in a Japanese prison camp during the second world war. Aside from Empire of the Sun, a select few weirdos in this world are familiar with his book Crash, which is about car crash fetishists. I won't begin to explain that one. He definately slaughtered a lot of the sacred cows of fiction (and normalcy for that matter) and paved the way for the Chuck Palahniuks and Trent Reznors of this world. Adios amigo, it was weird knowing you.

Ares

Hopefully We're All Going To Die

Let the salivation begin. Pavlov has rung the bell and on cue the media outlets have begun to drool. There's a multi-national disease outbreak in the larval stages. Death and suffering that's photogenic soon to follow. “Flu outbreak could become pandemic” proclaims my local rag in that same voice that teenagers hoping to get laid use. Act I is people wearing surgical masks in public. Act II will be hospital shots and government press conferences. Some network, somewhere, will show the movie Outbreak before next week is out. My spam inbox will start piling up ads for antibiotics. Never mind that this particular organism has a very low mortality rate. Disregard that over 36,000 people die every year in this country from regular old fashion flu. Twice that many die from hospital screw ups. The rational medical professionals will get very little face time in the coming weeks. Reason, logic, and facts don't make for good numbers. Instead of specialists we'll get journalists that have written books providing prediction.

My favorite quote thus far: “How quickly can Swine Flu make you sick? About 90 minutes of CNN should do it.” Second favorite: “The virus does not travel at the speed of Tweet.” I'd love to sit here and pontificate some more but I've got canned goods to stockpile and money to hide in a mattress.

Ares

Tea

I have to admit I'm having fun watching people debate about what the debate means with regard to the Tea Parties. Because if there is one thing Americans are good at, it's talking about thinking about how the conversation is going. On the one hand you have legions of people that have only in the last 4 months found their voice about government spending, as if it all began in the middle of January. On the other hand you have people that six months ago were saying dissent is the highest form of patriotism, now rummaging through their Thesaurus to find new derisive descriptors. Running through all of this you have the media (sans Fox) conspicuously either avoiding coverage or deriding protesters. Anderson Cooper's indulgence in teabagging references dug the credibility hole even deeper. And as over half a million people protested on April 15th the New York Times did it's Marcel Marceau impression. Somebody tell the Gray Lady she ain't wearing any clothes.

I'm not pimping for either side here. I think everyone here is sufficiently infused with enough bullshit to strain credibility. The bigger worry is that with every corner of the national discourse propping itself up on foundations of sarcasm, hyperbole, and worst-case-scenarios how are we going to recognize authentic truths when they make an appearance?

Ares

Crack and Taxes

Brief aside here. Just read that former D.C. mayor and professional victim Marion the-bitch-set-me-up Barry owes $277,000 in back taxes. My first and last question is this: How does a city councilman that's legit make enough money to owe that much in taxes to begin with. Something tells me that crack smoking aside I made some wrong decisions about careers.

Ares

Tasmanian Devil Tuesday

Thought we'd change it up a bit.

Athena here: we loves 'em, truly, but is that thing wearing a diaper?

Marmot Monday

Marmot Monday

Marmot Monday

Who knew there were so many pictures of marmots out there?

Separated At Birth

More like separated in elderly life.

Marmot Monday

Job Market

Man the job market is getting rough.

Ares

Marmot Monday

Jamie's Magic Palace

Apologies for the overly long rant that's to follow. I feel if I don't hammer this out it's going to fester like a cognitive zit begging to be pinched. There was finally a ray of hope on the evening television lineup. Tonight's NOVA was about the National Security Agency and it's role “post-9/11'. (By they way, we took a vote and decided that 'post-9/11' is the most abused and overused term of the decade.) Unfortunately for me and the thinking public they gave James Bamford the keys to the show, letting him write and direct it. You may remember Bamford from such hits as his 1982 book The Puzzle Palace, or such ditties as The Agency That Could Be Big Brother in the New York Times. Bamford has fashioned himself a career by selling the NSA as the boogey man to fear in our technology-laden society whilst pandering to the dark reasoning of people that go out of their way to believe the worst about this country.

I don't have a problem with Jamie B believing what he wants to believe about the world or the government. The distressing issue was his soiling a once great brand (Nova) with his personal neuroses. On a plate that cries out for balanced reasoning and thoughtful analysis we were served slick visuals and multiple money shots of his books. The first half of the hour touched on a few of the 9/11 hijackers and what they did inside the US. Bamford posits that based on their communications the NSA should have intercepted the plot and therefore stopped 9/11. Mind you, the communication Bamford references are calls made from within the US, so there's that whole pesky 4^th Amendment issue. Also, prior to 9/11 I'm not sure they actually broke any law by calling a house in Yemen. Mere association doesn't get you on the domestic legal system dance floor in a pre-9/11 America. It did, however, usually get you a date with a deportation hearing and a one way ticket home. That is, if the NSA is allowed to tell INS, which they aren't. The truly asinine aspect of the issue was the FBI had agents assigned to the NSA, and NSA was aware that some of the hijackers were associated with Al Qaeda. But due to legal restrictions, put in place by the Clinton administration, those FBI agents were forbidden from telling the FBI about the hijacker's existence. Never mind all that, says Bamford. Someone should have known what was going to happen and broken the law to bring the hijackers to the FBI's attention.

I think at this point I actually yelled at the TV. Because of Bamford's book The Puzzle Palace even cave-dwelling Koran thumpers are well aware of the NSA's collection methods and capabilities. As a result of this the hijackers and their overlords never discussed operational matters via telephone or e-mail. The communication restrictions are even outlined in the Al Qaeda training manual. So what, exactly, was the NSA supposed to know if no one talks about anything related to the plan?

The second half of the hour glossed over, from about 10,000 feet, how the NSA has changed 'post 9/11'. Of course, Bamford trotted out how it was wrong, wrong I tell you, for the NSA to ignore FISA. Mind you, the intercept targets that circumvented FISA were calls originating overseas from 'known associates' and NSA was doing so under Executive Orders. Those were facts that clogged up Bamford's well rehearsed speech...I mean show...so he didn't bother introducing them. There was a repeated tone of indignation at the idea the NSA would monitor calls inside the US. (Whereas it was this exact failing that was trotted out in the first half our as Bamford's reason why 9/11 happened.) Somewhere around this point in the program Mrs. Ares, who is by all measure a layman on this topic, saw the distinct nakedness of the show's intellectual emperor.

Again, I don't give a snot if Bamford believes what he cares to believe. But tonight Frontline and an infomercial had a baby and it was called NOVA. I know that the P in PBS stands for Public. But given that PBS is taxpayer funded can't we call down some thunder against X-Files rejects dressing up like smart people and beclowning the good name of NOVA? PBS is supposed to be the last refuge of thinking Americans that actually still turn on the television during prime time. It's our 10 acres of palm tree-covered beach in an ocean of American Idol and Desperate Housewives. And thanks to Jamie Bamford, it just went condo.

Ares

Marmot Monday

Rendition

Interesting little blurb percolated its way out today. Seems the Obama administration has issued an executive order allowing the continuation of the practice of rendition. For those unfamiliar, rendition is where you turn a terrorism suspect over to a third party government for interrogation. The practice actually goes back to the Clinton administration, but we don't like to talk about that. The interesting part of this little development has been the silence that has met the announcement. The New York Times and Washington Post, two outlets that flogged the last president for the practice, are conspicuously silent on the new ruling. I guess it's only bad when someone you don't like is ordering it.

Ares

Update: Someone with way more time and smarts than I followed through on this. Professor Hutchison of the Dissenting Justice blog posted some before and after statements by Human Rights Watch. This is the before:

The US government should:

Repudiate the use of rendition to torture as a counterterrorism tactic and permanently discontinue the CIA's rendition program;

Disclose the identities, fate, and current whereabouts of all persons detained by the CIA or rendered to foreign custody by the CIA since 2001, including detainees who were rendered to Jordan;

Repudiate the use of "diplomatic assurances" against torture and ill-treatment as a justification for the transfer of a suspect to a place where he or she is at risk of such abuse;

Make public any audio recordings or videotapes that the CIA possesses of interrogations of detainees rendered by the CIA to foreign custody;

Provide appropriate compensation to all persons arbitrarily detained by the CIA or rendered to foreign custody (emphasis added).

This is what was issued after by Human Rights Watch:

"Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place" for renditions, said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "What I heard loud and clear from the president's order was that they want to design a system that doesn't result in people being sent to foreign dungeons to be tortured -- but that designing that system is going to take some time."

Note to Human Rights Watch: Turn off the lights & lock the door. You're now hacks instead of advocates. Mind you, I'm actually in favor of the practice of rendition. But when a group that advocates something as basic as human rights twists sideways in it's seat merely because of who occupies the Oval Office they've ceased to be useful. Co opting is it's own form of corruption.

Pox Populi

Like everyone else in this fair land I've been a passenger on this ride we call America for the past few months. Thus far the most intolerable aspect of this entire Tilt-a-Whirl hasn't been the economy or the election. It's the incessant yapping of just about every corporate news source. Those who frequent this humble space know this has been one of my whipping boys from the start. But as I've said before, we seem to be exploring new ground. The sense of masturbatory glee, emanating from the endless exploration of the possible permutations of how each new development is going to make your life worse, is reaching a pitch I've only seen previously in church revivals. Earlier this week the Seattle Times (it's superiority to the AJC in skill and class can be measured in Angstroms) ran a front page picture of a Depression-era shantytown and went elbow-around-the-ass to tie it in to current events. Not to be outdone, a local television station dedicated the lead that night to the “Deepening Financial Crisis”, then spent 10 minutes waxing about how it was going to make your life worse. If the media were a religion right about now we would all be wearing Nikes, holding pudding cups, and searching the heavens for the comet. To which I ask one of my million rhetorical questions: What are they going to do when life doesn't cease to exist?

Meanwhile, I've been dedicating my unemployed time to self-productivity. Aside from playing a lot of Call of Duty: World at War I've been reading & researching. I recently finished Cool It, an updated and Cliff Notes version of The Skeptical Environmentalist by that modern Martin Luther, Bjorn Lomborg. Lomborg uses a phrase I absolutely love, Catastrophe Porn, in describing the fascination/fixation with doom, death, and destruction. Talking to people about Bjorn Lomborg reminds me of the Christians I knew growing up that abjectly refused to read Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not A Christian. Speaking of religion, up next on the reading stack is Heavy Metal Islam. Report to follow.

On the research side I've spent some time digging into the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, better known as the stimulus that is currently making its way through the governmental large intestine that is congress. Kinda pathetic overall. I think I would entitle it the No Lobbyist Left Behind Act, but that title was already taken. High points: $1000 payroll tax cut for couples (gotta have a job for that to kick in), $7500 tax credit for first time home buyers (good luck getting financing), $102 billion for welfare/unemployment (probably gonna wear that one out), $30 billion for highway construction (doesn't buy a popcorn fart's worth of infrastructure, beside we did this x10 4 years ago), $19 billion for clean water & flood control (could always use that), $20 billion for health care information technology (so much for the private sector making it's product better), and $6 billion for weatherizing modest income homes (does that count condos that have been flipped a dozen times & can now be bought with a Sears card?). Those are just the high points. I'm sure there's a hemp research grant or interstate visitor center buried somewhere in there. One other key point: Only about 10% of the money actually gets spent in 2009. The rest over 2010 & 2011. Overall it doesn't give me a warm fuzzy, and I'm not alone. Rasmussen puts the latest approval for the plan at 42%.

And finally, lest we look too serious, we here at Ares and Athena offer a glimpse of our kinfolk. Just to clarify, our familia is the guy on the mower, not the cop.

Ares

Marmot Monday

One Last Kick

Economists Warn Anti-Bush Merchandise Market Close To Collapse

Marmot Monday

Marmot Monday

Refuse to Elaborate

Porn industry seeks $5 billion federal bailout. So many double entendres, so little time.......

Ares

Non sequitur

A very curious turn of phrase crossed my path this morning. I was doing a drive-by of iTunes, looking for song that's been stuck in my head. After selecting the song for download a lawyer-length disclaimer popped up that I had to agree to. Being unemployed and having a surplus of spare time I actually read the disclaimer. Towards the bottom I found the following sentence:

You also agree that you will not use these products for any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture, or production of nuclear, missiles, or chemical or biological weapons.

Alright, I surrender. How is some Barry White gonna be reengineered into a solid fueled, multistage rocket with a 600KT warhead sitting on top? My Chemical Romance can't be turned into Sarin, although it might feel like it when you're unwillingly subjected to the former. Is someone somewhere worried about Kim Jong Il's Touch being used to build bigger Dong's?

Ares

Don't Let the Door Hit You

Good tidings to pass along here at Ares and Athena. Vernon "We-gotta-darken-this-place-up" Jones is unemployed. This is change I can believe in. Joining the swelling ranks of the unemployed, Vernon said he plans to devote more time to his hobbies of kitten stomping and hamster baseball. Don't worry, though. Like a case of electoral Herpes Vernon will reappear from time to time in political life. He's too corrupt and base to actually hold down a legitimate job. Maybe he can get together with Cynthia McKinney and form a Coalition for the Socially Inept and Politically Autistic. (Possible branding suggestion: They could have the acronym pronounced 'septic'.) One thing that will definitely be on VeJo's agenda will be a driver's ed refresher. After being ferried around the county by a platoon of Praetorians for the last 8 years he's going have relearn basic rules of the road. As for the picture above, I couldn't resist. One good Photoshop deserves another.

Ares

Marmot Monday

Humna Humna Hamas

For the latest in deep thinking about the Israel/Palestine soap opera I point you towards the erudite Michale Totten. Personally, I think Hamas' biggest complaint is that they're getting their asses slapped around like a blow up doll at a steroid convention. All the money in the world via Iran and Saudi Arabia and they can't produce a single decisive victory. Makes me think they kind of enjoy the beatings.

Then there's this from Totten friend and regional guru Noah Pollak:

From the JPost:

[IDF officials] said that it was likely that a number of senior Hamas operatives and terror chiefs were hiding and conducting their operations from within Shifa Hosptial in Gaza City.

“Hamas operatives are in the hospital and have disguised themselves as nurses and doctors,” one official explained.

Now the Israelis have done it — they’ve forced Hamas leaders to dress up like nurses. Zionist cruelty knows no bounds.

Ares