Tuesday Miscellany

Instead of actual content, a placeholder, in the form of happy and sad links from around cyberspace.

Part of the reason I don’t have time for real entries today is that tonight is poker night, and the first link I’m bringing you is something that would be a definite hit with the poker fools–it’s kind of like alcoholic Di Di Mau.

Russian Roulette is a Dutch brand of vodka shooters, but billed as a party game. Inside the octagonal box, designed to resemble a gun cartridge, are four bottles of shooters.

One of the shooters contains a harmless substance that causes your tongue to turn green.

The mind hesitates to consider what might happen if these things were
circulating late on a tournament night, much less what might happen to people
with less age and dignity than we…

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On a weightier note, if you think I am being paranoid about private security forces in some of my posts over the last week, allow me to direct you to a much more thought-out posting on the subject from the always classy Body & Soul. Just reading posts over there, I can hear Lady Day in the background.

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As I sit here, with a deep fear in my bowels about the long term ramifications of Bush being able to appoint 2 Supreme Court justices, there are other people who are still focused on some of the very important issues to arise from the nomination process for the first one.

A taste:

Though he remained calm and composed while addressing members of the Senate judiciary committee, Mr Roberts refused to provide unambiguous answers when asked about the one of the most controversial questions even pondered by Congress.

Proceedings quickly became acrimonious Tuesday morning, as Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) openly challenged Robert’s claim that he “had not made up his mind” on Logan v. Wayne. “With all due respect, I find it frankly unbelievable that, in 30 years of public service, you could not have formed an opinion on this matter,” Kennedy said. “So I would again ask that you simply answer the question: who would win in a fight, Wolverine or Batman?”

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Ian McEwan tries to give away books, and concludes that women are just smarter than men–or something very similar to that. Stupid men.

Is there any other conclusion to be drawn from this?:

As in the 18th century, so in the 21st. Cognitive psychologists with their innatist views tell us that women work with a finer mesh of emotional understanding than men. The novel – by that view the most feminine of forms – answers to their biologically ordained skills. From other rooms in the teeming mansion of the social sciences, there are others who insist that it is all down to conditioning. But perhaps the causes are less interesting than the facts themselves. Reading groups, readings, breakdowns of book sales all tell the same story: when women stop reading, the novel will be dead.

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Ignatius J. Reilly offers advice on post-Katrina affair to GWB. (Yes, Toole is still dead. Read it anyway.)

For starters, I have watched your goings-on for some time now. The fin de siecle appearance of your administration, especially after the rampant degeneracy of that satyr Clinton and his panting ilk, was a most welcome disruption of the general malaise of things. You effected revolutionary and deleterious change on the rosy status quo. How I hated that corrupt, fallen status quo. (Incidentally, this falls rather in line with a scheme I posited—which you no doubt have noticed in your readings—wherein pederasts and degenerates would be encouraged to gain high office—the presidency, perhaps—which station they would then neglect as they attended to their sexual and narcotic appetites. There would be no more war, because there would be no one to start the wars—everyone flitting off to parties and such. Your scheme, however, one of sustained, systemic breakdown, appears to be the work of quiet genius, even if it has had the regretful, short-term effect of increasing the incidence of war.)

You stemmed this people’s lemming-like rush after prosperity, you marshaled lagging school children, and you brought zealous religiosity again to the national discourse. You rebuked the Old World! You felled Babylon the Great! (The lazy masses, the picayune media [those bankrupt souls], might raise captious and frivolous objections to these deeds, but I, Sir, say to you [as even God himself might say]: WELL DONE.)

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I have always enjoyed reading Christopher Moore’s books (although I must admit the most recent is, in my eyes, the weakest), and from reading them it’s pretty obvious that there is something seriously wrong with the way Moore’s brain is wired. Wrong in a way that is entertaining for us, of course.

However, I am now convinced that travelling around with Moore would be hilarious to the point of bodily breakdown.

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I believe I have mentioned the joy that the notion of the Complete Calvin & Hobbes brings to my soul?

So soon. It will be mine. Oh yes, yes it will.

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As a person who eschews pants, and indeed has structured his entire career to minimize the amount of time I need to spend wearing pants (yes, that’s right, it’s NO PANTS TUESDAY!) the idea of a machine that scans a person and decides what pants they should be wearing is kind of offensive. Indeed, the Jeansotron, or whatever they are calling it might be considered my nemesis.

Damn those Levi people and there space age weaponry. At least they haven’t found out about that Hitler clone in the heart of the sun thing.

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My damn-I-haven’t-seen-her-in-a-long-time pal Gwenda has emmigrated from blogspot to typepad, and given herself a lovely redesign in the process. (I’ve updated the link in my sidebar). Check out the book recommendations on the left.

There’s always lots of interesting book-type stuff there, for instance I just learned from Gwenda that Jonathan Lethem has received one of the McArthur “genius” grants for this year. Interesting. You know, I once read a script of Gwenda’s that spun on the notion of the McArthur grants…

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And finally, my favourite link on the Internet today: an oldie, but a goodie.

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada
This work by Chris McLaren is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada.