Yankees Defeat Angels

This is the only thing that separates them from Lucifer.

ALCS Game 6; Yankees 5, Angels 2.

Remember, folks: It’s not the Yankees who deserve a painful and lonely death, it’s their fans.

Logic and Intelligibility Are Unmistakable Signs of Being A Lizard Person

Barack Obama is the unwitting stooge of our reptilian overlords, apparently.

While doing nothing particularly productive today, I trawled across a lovely bit of twisted prose:

The word ‘evil’ is much overused and I don’t say it lightly; but we are dealing with evil in the sense that the word is the reverse of ‘live’.

Evil as horrifying moral concept = said lightly

Evil as anagrammatic non sequitur = not said lightly

The author of this choice bit of verbiage is David Icke. The mass reversal of ‘live’ he’s referring to is . . . well, it’s the plot by our  lizard people overlords to finally genocide away the bulk of the human population by way of the H1N1 flu vaccine — which isn’t a vaccine at all, but a cocktail of lethal poisons — and wrangle the survivors into slavery.

As far as I can tell, he is serious about this.

David Icke is not simply a conspiracy theorist; he’s a conspiracy theorist whose conspiracies are so extreme and implausible as to compel other conspiracy theorists to label him a disinformation agent of the Illuminati. Top among these is that shape-shifting reptilian aliens from the star Alpha Draconis landed on Earth long ago, genetically engineered our forebears to serve as their personal race of slaves, and today orchestrate all dynamics of human activity from the very highest echelons of power.

Icke has a website, but I don’t recommend you visit it — not because it’s really bad or it will poison your mind or anything like that, but because, like most conspiracy theorists, Icke has that special combination of long-windedness and an incapacity for website management that has allowed him to dump the entire voluminous breadth of his paranoia right there onto his homepage, turning his website into a complete fucking memory drain and enemy of browsers everywhere. (Icke seems to regard his lack of brevity as a selling point; an advertisement for an upcoming talk in London boasts, “David will be making his biggest presentation yet with four sections totalling [sic] 8 hours and more than 1,000 illustrations.”)

More on this to come.

Where Would Jesus Eat?

But, let me guess, you're his favorite.

Dear Texas business owners: why do you want to talk to me about Jesus?

While I applaud your efforts to remind the flighty denizens of Austin that they are encased in a super-sized dungeon of drawling evangelicalism, I’m just not sure I want to have this conversation with my pizza parlor (to be frank, I’m not sure I want to have any conversation with a restaurant that offers “Pig Wings,” whatever the hell those are).

In any case, you should know that you’ve gotten your quote wrong. It actually goes, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Which is a perfectly nice line, from a literary standpoint, but not as nice as this one:

Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.

Ezekiel 23:19-20, ladies and gents.

Liveblogging Margaret Cheney’s Biography of Tesla: Episode 1

Well, that didn’t exactly work out, did it?

I had forgotten I’d even planned to do this, until just now.

In any case, I got halfway through the book before my check-out expired. By then, another card-carrying member of the unemployed masses (see what I did there?) had reserved the tome, and I couldn’t finish it. Oh well.

Good read if you can get your hands on it. Cheney’s a fairly pedestrian writer, but she knows her stuff, and Tesla is a worthy topic.

In pursuit of some kind of redemption, allow me to post the Handsome Family song that piqued my interest in Mr. Tesla. He led a very strange and wonderful life, that fellow, and so he is an apt target for Rennie Sparks’ eye for the strange and wonderful. She, in turn, does him full justice.

(Okay, well WordPress [wtf? they even filter out lower-case 'p's in their name?] wants to charge me for the privilege of opening your hearts and minds, and The Handsome Family’s label don’t seem too keen on letting their studio stuff get out and about. All I could find were two crappy live shows. So, here, follow this link to a playable audio file, then donate to my legal defense fund after I’m abducted by jack-booted thugs and sued for a gajillion dollars.)

btw, it’s all basically true. My favorite is the reference to a “camera to photograph thoughts.” This idea grew out of hallucinations that Tesla had, in which the inventor saw unfamiliar (and sometimes reputedly prophetic) scenes superimposed over his field of vision. Because these images were purely visual, and layered over his normal, physical ken, Tesla believed they existed tangibly inside his brain, and that he could figure out a way to project them, and all mental images, onto the exterior world.

At one point in the book, Cheney remarked that, had Tesla been born today, he would certainly have been diagnosed schizophrenic and been medicated and counseled until he stopped dreaming his otherworldly dreams. Then where would be be? On direct current, probably.

Again, strange and wonderful.

Well Thank You Huston Street for Ruining My Entire Autumn

I sure hope you're withering in the grim chill of a million crushed dreams, and not just checking for ticks.

Maybe next time you’re in town you could swing by and kick me in the nuts.

Did you see this game? I mean, did you see it? Heartbreaking. After riding seven innings in the ruts, the Rox went up 4 to 2 in the eighth by virtue of the absolutely most astonishing play this postseason. Running headlong into what should have been an easy double play, Dexter Fowler — who looks more like a track star than a ball player — just went ahead and jumped over Chase Utley on his way to second.

Yeah. Jumped over him.

Which set up bargain-bin juicer has-been Jason Giambi for an RBI single and delightfully named Yorvit Torrealba for a two-RBI double and there you have it.

And then what happened? Well, Huston Street, Austin-area native (no joke: my sweetheart went to high school with him, derides his Spanish comprehension), decided he wanted to do something other than be a shitty closer and — well, no, he just went ahead and kept being a shitty closer. And gave up three runs.

NLDS game 4. Phillies 5, Rockies 4. Rox are outta the playoffs.

There is only one way this gets worse: A Yankees-Dodgers World Series. Ugh. Go Angels, I guess.

Maybe it’s true; maybe a total ball, farm-reliant team like the Rox just can’t hack it in a league of big-swinging, big-market all stars. Fuck it — I’ll move to Cuba.

UPDATE: Video evidence of Fowler’s hurdling prowess below (til it gets pulled by MLB), replete with obnoxious, trite Kris-Kross soundtrack.

What Kind of Orwellian Logic Leads to An Obama Peace Prize?

Just in case you didn’t think the Nobel Peace Prize was total bullshit when they gave it away to Al Gore for making a derivative Keynote presentation about pollution, now they’ve given it to a guy who’s fighting two wars simultaneously and whose covert agents continue to abduct and detain foreign nationals, in secret, from any country in the world and without that country’s knowledge.

Before you know it, they’ll be giving the Nobel to known terrorists.

War is Peace.

UPDATE 10/13: I just watched Rachel Campos-Duffy, who is an idiot, say something kinda smart on idiot Sean Hannity’s idiotic show. She said Obama won the prize for not being George W. Bush.

It’s true!

But then she said Gen. David Petraeus shoulda won it, and dumbshit Hannity said Ronald Reagan — or at least George W. Bush — shoulda won it. So nevermind.

Bye Bye Les Paul (1915 – 2009)

I had heard of Les Paul before I heard Les Paul. I knew about the line of Gibson Guitars he inspired and lent his name to, beginning with a stupid little poster depicting the Les Paul that wept in Eric Clapton’s hands for George Harrison’s chilling lament. I saw Les Paul in a TV commercial for some useless thing and thought, Oh, hey, Les Paul is real and apparently famous.

And then I heard the famous recording of “How High the Moon” on the Casino soundtrack and I thought, Holy shit! Who is this sorcerer who conjured up reverb and the high-energy rock before the heydays of rhythm and blues or guitar gods?

A few years later, I stumbled upon the estate sale for a recently passed elderly woman, and there in pristinely kept stack of LPs, amid nauseating heaps of Dean Martin and Herb Alpert and Anne Murray, was a solitary compilation of Les Paul and Mary Ford, which I purchased for a dollar, and still consider a crown jewel of my collection.

Paul, in case you don’t know, basically invented the solid-body electric guitar, as well as multitrack recording. Without him, some other freethinking genius would have had to make all modern rock ‘n’ roll possible.

One of my favorites:

Funny — even before I saw this video, I also sang this song while handling flora.

RIP Les Paul.

What the Hell Is Wrong with My Country?

Don't be fooled -- none of them are on your side.

And don’t give me that “It’s filled with people like you who hate America” rap either, ’cause I see through that nativist bullshit.

On Saturday, the New York Times reported that Leon Panetta testified to Congress that Dick Cheney had ordered the CIA to withhold information about a secret anti-terrorism program from Congress. Today, the Times reports that the program’s objective was to hunt down and assassinate enemies of America using covert paramilitary units. For eight years the CIA has been sitting on this, though it’s worth noting that the program was never actually implemented.

With all his blustering about protecting America and all that, why would Cheney want to hide such a noble endeavor from the Congress?

Some will will tell you it’s because we cannot just give that information away, as it would benefit our enemies. These people are either partisan bullshitters or pernicious criminals with something to hide, since federal law requires that the CIA must report such programs to the so-called Gang of Eight — the leaders of both parties and ranking members of the intelligence committees in both houses — who are sworn to secrecy.

So it might actually have something to do with the purpose of this law, which was written in response to CIA abuses of the 1970s that went on covertly for years and were kept secret on account of their “sensitivity.” The idea here is that Congress, as the direct representative of the American people, ought to be informed of the nation’s intelligence activities, regardless of their sensitivity, to ensure that horrendous and illegal things aren’t being done in the name of the people.

So while Cheney probably does not think it’s a horrendous thing to dispatch roving death squads across the world to secretly murder vicious people, he probably does think it’s illegal. And since he perplexingly believes that the constitution grants unlimited power to the executive, he probably thinks lying to Congress is not illegal.

The fact that Dick Cheney is, at best, well-intentioned criminal or, at worst, a shadowy villain is an old frustration. What really infuriates me this time around is that, despite an ostensible new era of governance, political hackery continues to cloud our national reckoning of the Bush administration’s abrogation of several core American values.

And this is happening from all angles of the political spectrum. For example, Liz Cheney, the evil overlord’s very daughter, said on MSNBC today that all this looking into alleged shadow governance and whatnot is really just a way of scoring political points against a prominent Republican and deflecting attention from Nancy Pelosi’s continuing drama with the CIA. But so far I have heard no prominent voices refuting the claim (unless you count George Will, who somehow doesn’t think such a thing would be illegal), just a gaggle of blowhards trying to impugn those who would ask questions about a very serious matter.

Meanwhile, the other blowhards are giving them lots of ammo. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, recently opined that Panetta’s revelation vindicates Nancy Pelosi’s claim that the CIA lied to her about its interrogation practices, an assertion I have heard repeated by a number of liberal pundits.

No. No it does not. The program in question has nothing to do with that debacle. At best, this incident gives Pelosi a political advantage in characterizing the CIA as deceitful and uncooperative, but if that exonerates her in your mind, you are clearly more concerned with protecting your ideological coreligionists than with defending the principles of American democracy.

All of this could be cleared up, of course, with a comprehensive, non-partisan investigation of the Bush Administration’s anti-terror policies, a full disclosure of the scope and nature of all laws broken and powers expanded. At the very least, the citizenry deserves that, though holding the offenders accountable would do us one better.

But the one person who could make that investigation a reality, Barack Obama, refuses to do so. His rationale is that he wants to look to the future rather than rehash the past. Most likely, he senses the opportunity to lead the country into a new political era, wherein the political center shifts to the left and the Democratic party holds dominion over the public discourse in much the same way the Republicans did during the cold war. To go hunting for Republican war criminals risks the appearance of settling partisan scores, potentially alienating the moderate conservatives whose conversion is needed to realize a national political makeover.

Of course, retaining the unprecedented authority he inherited from the last administration wouldn’t exactly hurt Obama either.

Yes, the Texas Wildlife Is Freaking Me Out

It’s 101° out there, and it plans to stay 101° until Thursday, when it may drop to a balmy 99°. But that doesn’t bother me. In fact, I kinda like the extremity of this Texas weather.

What I don’t like is the fact that I spent hours last night trying to comfort my traumatized sweetheart after she was attacked by a FLYING COCKROACH! This only hours before my late evening cigarette was disrupted by a menacing kamikaze cicada — this ugly green extraterrestrial beast that hissed terribly while flying frantically into everything in its path at full speed. And then I discovered six water roach carcasses (one suspiciously decapitated) while reapplying a borric acid perimeter to my house this afternoon.

And what hellish offense to God is this?!

Update 7-14:

This hellish offense to God, it turns out, is the nymphal skeleton of a Giant Cicada, the very beast that nearly murdered me dead on Sunday night and the proprietor of the ominous sibilating I wrote about earlier.

The cicada is apparently born this ugly, before molting out of its catskin as the horrifying winged marvel we all know and fear. The dead shell remains clung to whatever surface the monster chooses for this process, usually the bark of a tree or, as in this case, the handle of my goddamned recycling bin.

This knowledge is actually quite a relief to me, since I initially concluded from the creature’s hollow interior that it must have some even more terrifying predator that sucks its insides out through its skull!

The Giant Cicada is actually a very fascinating animal. My less squeamish readers can find an animated .gif showing the molting process on its wiki page.

The Absurdist Theater We Call the Senate Judiciary Committee

Lindsey sez: " . . . this is mostly about liberal and conservative politics more than it is about anything else." It's time to move on from all that comprehensive judicial philosophy bullshit.

Did you see this? Lindsey Graham told Sonia Sotomayor that she was basically a shoe-in for confirmation, which was okay with him. But then he said he resented that she was a crazy liberal, and that he wanted some other Mexican-ish person to be on the court, and that he just hoped that all the crazy liberals remember this moment when it comes time to confirm a crazy right-winger to the bench.

So Graham has basically admitted that, for him, confirming the abortionist commie Sotomayor is really about confirming some fascist judge in the future. Our Senators are all petty children.

Also, Pat Leahy is apparently a Deadhead. Get a job, hippie!

Addendum:

I should point out that Obama is basically using his Dem majority to cram a liberal judge down conservative America’s throat, and I can see why they’d be resentful of that. But then again, Samuel Alito.

Was there ever a time when the SCOTUS was not an exalted partisan menagerie?

(Also: Sotomayor is absolutely qualified to be on the court, and she was absolutely selected to satisfy a political debt.)

Update: Hey, that’s Al Franken I hear lisping periphrastically about Ted Kennedy and some dead guy! And that appears to be a gang of Young Republicans heroically jeering him!

Also, he just admitted he doesn’t know shit about the Supreme Court, ’cause he’s not a lawyer, he’s a clown.

Oh, and Arlen Specter thinks the proceedings of the court should be televised, presumably because everyone is entitled to this kind of grandstanding.