About eight months ago the US cruised down to the Philippines where two Americans had been taken hostage by some nutters, and assisted the Philippine government and people in removing this radical group called Abu Sayef who had besieged them for years.

Yesterday Hamas, who has besieged the Israelis for years, blew up a cafeteria filled with college students in a building in Jerusalem named after Frank Sinatra, killing five Americans.

QED?

In NY they call Ground Zero the Big Hole. You can be on the subway and hear the announcer tell you the train will be ignoring it's normal route (a surprisingly common occurrence), and "will stop at 14th street and then on to the Big Hole." Or somebody will tell somebody they've been working with a view of the Big Hole outside: "I've gotten used to it actually, it really opens the view up; I can see all the way to the harbor now."

Arthur Koestler once made the assertion that the human mind had evolved wildly beyond any requirements that nature could have imposed upon it, and that it was therefore an aberration, an affront to nature, a monstrosity.

(Consider a random and extreme mutation bursting into the rough world of savages and caves long before any Dark Age: a moment of glowing self-awareness? an understanding of tools? a recognition of otherness? an appreciation for restraint against the primal urges that ruled the rest of the animals.... or something closer to the opposite, the exalted and exhilarating birth of Will? the Will to conquer, to take and to keep, to protect and to own.)

Certainly the man who shares my office at work is an affront to something (and not just to me). It is every American's dream to one day kill the person he's forced to share an office with. What terrible mockery, to have an office at all, but to share it, and worse to have occupied it second, so that the other has the side with the window attached.

This man clips his nails every day. At work, in our office, the one that we share, he draws forth his silver cantilevered nail-clipper, the kind they sell in drug-stores stocked in big jars, each its own key-chain and glimmering like some mechanical jewel from the gilded age of innovation; draws forth this ingenious little device and gets to clipping his fingernails. And they snap loudly when they go--it's an unmistakable sound, like the laughter of children on a playground or the wash of automobiles outside at night--so there's no pretending he's doing something other than clipping his nails, and there's also no pretending what must be happening to those calcified shards as they part from his fingers: they go flying on random vectors into the office, the office we share, to lie wherever they land until erosion or the cleaning crew removes them.

(How does one control the removal of nail-clippings anyway? Is there some recommended technique or is it all just a rare and momentary acceptance of chaos into our otherwise orderly lives? Is there any means to extracting excess fingernail in a controlled manner? I suppose one could use a file....)

Here's the text of that lawsuit I mentioned earlier. Turns out these guys want $100 trillion USD! Man, even Al Sharpton will settle for a measly billion. But I guess if something's hopeless to begin with, it might as well be spectacularly hopeless. Or at least that's what I tell myself while I chase all those fashion models around. Then again, as Taranto points out today, the lawyers stand to make around $30 trillion if they're working on a typical contingency. So maybe this is just a case of typical lawyer greed mingling with the quickly accelerating Death of Meaning....

This article is about more lawyers trying to sue people who generally define their own laws. While I think it's a great and admirable goal to hurt these "people" in any way possible by any means at our disposal, I question both the practicality and the merit of attempting to export our laws. Isn't that what the crazy Euros are up to with their Uber-Court? Sure it would be nice if everybody followed the same set of fair and just rules, but we as a planet haven't yet agreed on what those rules should be. Unless predicated on some notion of Natural Law (which in my understanding, our legal system does not, and which is pretty much what the wacko-mullahs in Saudi Arabia preach), any concept of right and wrong must necessarily be relative, even the generally agreed upon wrong of massive slaughter of innocent civilians (which the Euros seem to find relative in regard to the Palestinian question).

But I guess none of that matters to the new Empire, which is as much a cultural empire as a military/political one (law as a cultural artifact). I wonder if lawyers will one day take over most of the roles normally performed by governments. Personally, I would be much more fearful of a squad of lawyers at my door than a squad of marines--at least marines can be reasoned with.

There's some irony in this story if you can keep your gut from wrenching out your breakfast long enough to read it. (Sorry for the image--I was forced to watch approx 45 minutes of Freddy Got Fingered last night and I haven't quite gotten de-traumatized yet.) The nutshell around it is that some Record Labels are suing some ISPs for allowing its customers to access a website in China. Ah-ha. Ah-ha-ha. Ah-ha-ha-haaaaaaaa, I'm going back to bed.

Why is there a chick on every football show these days? I mean, I love chicks, and I honestly respect many of them--I mean women--but football? That's like a dude on a show about, I don't know, like, figure skating or something, oh wait, well, knitting or something, no screw it, figure skating or something.

Use of the word "literally" to emphasize a figurative statement, as in: "My brother Bob is literally the ugliest man alive."

The authorities--the town sheriff, the local cops, the FBI-- find themselves in a position where their ability to effectively handle or further identify a situation must be augmented or supplanted by the collaboration or guidance of private citizens.

Tritism 8: When Protag and Antag finally have their showdown in the castle throne room, the armies are all still outside.

Tritism 9: The "Who Goes There" guy preventing Protag from entering the Secret Rebel Base will be Protag's fiercest rival, then around 75% towards the end will pull a 180° or die or both, or join the enemy or be revealed an agent of the enemy all along.

The character belonging to the more primitive race or species boasts that his people are (or more often were) "great hunters".

Tritism 11: The dangling live electrical cable that was disloged during the fight has Antag's doom written all over it.

I just encountered the most juvenile and poorly conceived attempt at a book analysis since the days I was forced to listen to the rear-brained scrawlings of potheads and varsity athletes in high school English class. I had idly thought to refresh my memory on the circumstances of Prince Andrei's death in Tolstoy's War and Peace, and in searching I googled up pinkmonkey.com (to which I will not link lest I increase this terrible site's ranking on said search index). I feel convinced this must have been written by one of the high school kids it caters to; if I had turned in such a piece of crap in college I would probably have been kicked from the department. But it reminded me why I could never have been a high school English teacher: I would probably fail every slack-jawed indolent one of them.

High school is almost by necessity taught by those who are not passionate about their subject. They may be passionate about teaching, about posting simple concepts to roomy mind-boxes, but they couldn't possibly care too much about them or else they would go mad. If a student attempted to sum up Pierre's character to me as having "[gone] through the ups and downs of life before achieving his goal," or told me that "the major theme of the novel is 'War and its evil effects'," I would probably smack him. But that's exactly the kind of analysis delivered by students of that age, and probably by the bright ones!

I'm sure if I looked through my old high school English papers I'd find plenty to cringe at; I'm not saying I was any better, just that I find it difficult to endure now (and for a website that pretends to be a "study resource for junior high, high school, college students, teachers and home schooling parents" it's just inexcusable--imagine all the slack-jawed indolent college freshmen using this "resource" as data for their 101 papers and then frowning in dismay at the poor grade they receive in return). But high school teachers endure it every day. It must take a very special person (and by special I mean retarded) to have such little personal investment in the subject they've devoted their life to that they can routinely see it so abused and trivialized.

I remember laughing with some friends from high-school not too long ago about a certain English teacher we'd had who, when asked who his favorite English Romantic poet was, replied that he "didn't really like English Romanticism". Oh yeah.

The Times of India reports today that according to the boss of Russia's Parliamentary Defense Committee, the US may attack Iraq on Sept 11.

1) This is silly. Bush & Co could never weather the political and media fallout by capitalizing on that date in such a manner. This is probably the one day we certainly will *not* attack Iraq.

2) I think the Times of India sometimes tends to either make stuff up or at least exaggerate or bowdlerize their news to the point where they're unreliable. They're like the Hindu Debkafiles over there.

3) Haven't the Russians gotten over the use of the word "committee" by now?

What would be really cool is if all this Iraq noise were just disinformation and deflection intended to draw attention away from the real target (whatever that may be, but I won't keep my fingers crossed for Saudi Arabia or Pakistan or Iran; well, maybe just a little crossed). Bush will have then pulled off the meme-engineering feat of the... er... (hey, what do you say instead of decade or century when it's still the beginning of both?)

Since the media has decided the question of a new Iraq War is so sponge-worthy (and since people keep asking me, "President Blackface, what's your opinion on the Iraq Question?"), I'd might as well let the world know my opinion on it.

I do NOT think we should attack Iraq under the present publicly known circumstances. This is a list day, so I'll enumerate the reasons:

1) The stated opponent of the current military campaign is "terrorism", which by corollary (and according to the so-called Bush Doctrine) targets those governments and organizations which by policy provide support for terrorists and terrorist activities. This is a just cause, therefore a justifiable aggression: our nation is attacked by a decentralized but not unknown enemy, and we respond in appropriate measure. Iraq, while under the rule of a problematic and potentially dangerous dictator at odds with our values and way of life, has not been demonstrated to fall into this category.

1a) Certainly, Hussein openly provides financial support for terrorists in the form of payments to the families of Palestinian child-bombers, but in this he is not unique, and to rely upon it as a cause for war is to implicate many other nations, many of which we have no interest in attacking, and some of which are financed by us, thus implicating ourselves.

1b) The hypothesis that evidence will eventually be revealed that Hussein was in part responsible for attacking the US on Sept. 11 and therefore warrants reprisal is not a logically sound argument.

1c) The fear that Hussein is developing WMDs (with the ambiguous assertion that he intends to use them) is not a sufficient justification for attack. Again, there are other such nations (including Saudi Arabia). But more importantly, until these weapons are used against us or a formal ally (in which case the weapons must first exist), we are not entitled to wage war. If China were to attack Taiwan because of the weapons the US provided them, would China be justified?

It is an internationally accepted principle that a sovereign nation is entitled to develop and store weapons (and a military to use them) in order to help ensure its self-defense. Indeed, this is an important part of the American ethos, and a principle upon which our nation was founded. When these weapons are used in an aggressive manner, then the weapons' masters are to be held responsible. Guns don't kill people, etc.

1d) The comparison between Iraq and Nazi Germany offered by Bush & Co (primarily through Condoleezza Rice) is spurious at best. The argument here is apparently that if one can foresee a nation becoming a threat in the future, then one should act preventatively to stop it. The implication is that Britain and France should have attacked Germany before it invaded Poland. If such had been the case, wouldn't history record the British and the French as the aggressors in WW2? (It's not a complicated equation: if you hit me I will hit you back, and you will be held responsible for the fight.)

Furthermore, the justification for the War on Terror is rendered somewhat hypocritical by endorsing this line of reasoning. Hasn't al-Qaeda stated that the US is a threat to World Whatever and must therefore be attacked? And don't we also supply Iraq with a defensible position for attacking *us*, given that we are by far the largest foreseeable threat to it?

2) It is not and should not be in the American character to attack without clear provocation. It is not in the interest of the Republic to conquer others. Response to attack will and must be devastating (and I mean like bat-shit off-the-hook no-place-to-hide mind-blowing wreck-your-universe kind of devastating), but otherwise we must hold and wait. We must always remember and adhere to the advice of Teddy Roosevelt (the thing about the big stick).

3) In order for the War on Terrorism to be effective, it must remain focused, it must adhere to clear guidelines and criteria, and it must not be overshadowed by a parallel campaign. To use it as an excuse to attack Iraq is to jeopardize its chances for success.

3a) One of the goals of this war is to sufficiently prove to terrorist-harboring nations and organizations that they must change their policies or accept responsibility for them. Attacking Iraq is contrary to this goal, since it muddies the qualifications for a target nation.

3b) Wars consume resources, political will, and public support. These all exist in limited quantities, and they should be spent where they are most needed.

3c) Attacking Iraq furthermore engenders animosity toward us and thus sponsors the potential for more terrorism. It is therefore a contrary end. It also endangers the support of our Euro allies, whose often unfathomable politics are clear on this issue. (And it incidentally increases Euro dislike for Americans, which is annoying for me since I like to visit there.)

4) Destabilization of Iraq and the surrounding region risks giving our known enemies opportunities that were previously denied them. Hussein is an annoying and possibly sociopathic man, and he rules his country in a barbarous manner. Our nation has a long and tangled history with him, and he can rationally be considered an enemy. However, unlike the militant Islamists and jihadists he is an enemy that is easily understood: greedy, power-hungry, narcissistic; whose actions may be easily predicted: self-advancement and self-preservation are his two guiding principles. Iraq's is a secular government that forms policy based upon those qualities of its leader, and not upon the mad ravings of a thousand mullahs with agendas and neuroses that are difficult if not impossible for the Western mind to comprehend. If Iraq were to fall to the Islamists, then it would be become a much greater threat in time.