So Sorry.

Destroyed computer at BIOS level. Typingk computer message now vi carrier pigeion und Apflel Makintoh.

Klver commenterry und vittty reponses mit fikshun und udder stuff vill resume upn assumoption of better computer forthwith etc,,

SINC.
so solly

IAW

OI!

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I don't feel like writing a single goddamn word today. Not one.

So I'm not going to.

Other than these right here, that I just wrote.

But that's it.

All you're getting.

I mean it.

Really.

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There are a number of discussions and posts and whatnot that I've come across this week, in various places that I'm not going to link to because I'm a lazy, lazy man. Or a bored man or a depressed man or both or all three. The Tripartite Man O' Disaffection, that is I, I, Donkey Hotay.

These discussions and posts and whatnot were about matters that in other times would fire up the blood in my brain...topics like the place and value of religion in the history of humanity and so forth. But there is no heat left in my brain...I see the posts and the discussion threads and I just...don't...care. It's not that I don't have an opinion, necessarily, it's that I'm not motivated to package it up and post it here for the enjoyment or to the consternation of My Public.

Dunno why. But this week has been a dry brainsponge sort of week, and a drier heart sort of week, with little passion for much of anything, and certainly no motivation to taptaptap at the keyboard and Be Interesting.

Fortunately, the weekend is nigh, and maybe after the completion of some household tasks and other activities I'll rebound and feel like regaling you all with Tales Of The New Window or the Gutter That Ate My Ass or what have you. Or not. Who knows, not me!

Sometimes, I feel like Robocop. You know, like in the second movie, after the OCP goons have reprogrammed his brain so that he spouts proverbs instead of kicks ass? "I'm...having trouble," he admits in his stilted RoboVoice, and twitches and whirrs a bit.

Just you wait. Soon I'll be slinging my automatic pistol from its special niche in my mechanical thigh and blowing up bad guys.

Or something.

Grrr.

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I'm often amused by the sheer myopic obsession of certain segments of the polity, who have dedicated themselves to the Bush Is Bad philosophy so thoroughly that the tiniest detail becomes an occasion to celebrate their faith.

Take, for example, this breathless expostulation from Web Presence Cory Doctorow:

IRS has a $1MM tax-refund form How much is Dubya's tax-break worth to the hyperrich? Enough that the IRS has a new form for the electronic deposit of a tax refund of $1 million or more. 28k PDF Link. [emphasis in original]

Trouble is, that form--Form 8302, to be exact--has been in use for awhile.

For example, this older version of the Instructions for IRS Form 1039 document was last revised in May 1995...five years before Bush took office. It refers to "Form 8302, Application for Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) of Tax Refund of $1 Million or More." So do other pre-Bush tax documents.

This means, of course, that the "hyperrich" were getting mammoth tax refunds long before Bush was in office enacting his Tax Breaks For The Wealthy(TM). Imagine that.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go beat my servants.

---

UPDATE:

After receiving a note from me containing the above information (minus the editorializing), Cory revised his post...by crossing out the word "new."

I think he may have missed the point.

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While righteous Arabs were killing less righteous Arabs, thus bringing astute observers closer to the realization that we Westerners are merely proxy targets in an internal conflict, I was having dinner with Gore Vidal.

No real table was set and we had no real conversation, because the meal--a gathering, really, at some nameless large house that I haven't visited before--was the direct result of two hours' worth of Vidal broadcast on WBAI Friday afternoon in lieu of the usual jazz programming due to the illness of the usual Jazz Programmer. It made for entertaining listening on the drive home. Vidal has long possessed in abundance the sort of arrogance that disguises itself as irony ("There is not one human problem that could not be solved," he once said, "if people would simply do as I advise."). But he's witty, and erudite, and when necessary wraps his wackier ideas in civility and culture with that rumbly, measured voice of his. WBAI broadcast talks that he gave in 1981, and I laughed at both his pithy observations and his mistaken prognostications ("America is now permanently behind Japan and Western Europe economically," he intoned). As I sped along the highway Friday afternoon, I thought, "Well, I certainly disagree with him, but he'd be a great dinner companion."

And so I had dinner with him, sometime last night while I slept. I don't remember any details about the occasion, only that it happened, and that he was, in fact, a great dinner companion. This, in turn, has reminded me of Michael Barone's recent US News article, "Harshness and Vitriol," concerning the general poor quality of political discourse I and many others have been observing. He writes,

Why this increased harshness? My explanation: It is a baby boom thing. What we are seeing is a civil war between the two halves of the baby boom, the liberal half that basked in national publicity in the late 1960s and the conservative half that smoldered in resentment for many years until its more recent rise to prominence. The first example of such harshness in national politics came in October 1992 in the vice presidential debate between Dan Quayle and Al Gore, the first two baby boomers to run against each other. This was a rock 'em, sock 'em debate--a sharp contrast with the careful, deferential tone that baby boomer Bill Clinton employed toward GI-generation George H. W. Bush.

Like the elder Bush, Vidal is of the GI generation, a year younger than the former President. And even though his views are cock-eyed and, often, downright conspiratorial, there is a degree of civility in his persona, backed up by an undeniable intellect, that allows me to give him a certain respect that so many of those who have attempted to ape him simply do not deserve.

Barone's piece didn't explore the idea that these days, many of the uncultured, rude, moronic bleats of "opposition" from all sides of the amateur political amphitheater aren't coming from Boomers. We've got Boomers like Michael Moore, Rush Limbaugh, Al Franken, Bill O'Reilly, Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman heading up the professional wrestling matches. But the obscene level of willful ignorance found in the comments threads and on the discussion boards of today's political Internet isn't buoyed by folks in their late forties and fifties. No, that particular brand of incivility is the contribution of twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings, of the in-college and the recently-graduated.

On the leftward side of things, there are many such young'uns along the Chomsky/Vidal axis who spout the exact same ideas, tinted with the same sort of loopiness, as their admired intellectual and spiritual fathers. But they have received these ideas as gospel, and when an actual debate erupts and their unsupported facades collapse, all that is left is invective, insult, and ad hominen. Likewise, devotees of the Coulter/Limbaugh style of savage banter adopt that mode of presentation without the rapid-fire facility with language that props up those rightward media stars, with the exact same results. It's embarrassing to watch, in either case.

Perhaps, among the American hoi polloi, it's always been this way. Perhaps the great bulk of the politically-engaged or semi-engaged population has always been rude, and uncivil, and quick to hitch a ride on the coat-tails of those who possess intellectual vigor, and whose ideas they find most compatible with their own prejudices. Perhaps the Information Age has given us all a clearer window onto a scene that has always existed, simply by allowing more people to speak out in the public square, and to be heard by a greater audience. Such an expansion of speech is beneficial.

However, the qualitative trend is not so promising. It's as though, once their public parents began to retire and fade away, politically-minded Boomers of all stripes have given full vent to the same spoiled, adolescent tantrums that were on such raucous display in The Sixties (TM). In the prime of their lives and at the height of their influence, they present us with the disagreeable spectacle of an adult Romper Room. With the most visible portions of the public square scattered with intellectual Lincoln Logs and full of debaters who need nap-time, is it any surprise that the virtual square of the next generation is so well-populated with snark, empty rants, and mayhem for mayhem's sake?

So, to those political and media Boomers who seem to be so intent on working out their politics as neurotically as possible, I say: grow up.

Your kids are watching.

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Several years ago I temped for a summer at a mortgage company in New Jersey. My job was to make copies of mortgage files. If you've ever gone through the process, you know that a mortgage application and its related paperwork are a chaotic mélange of legal-size paper, standard-size paper, checks, check-stubs, receipts, and oddly sized forms, all stapled and paper-clipped together in an unwieldy mass that can be several inches thick. Copying these brown-foldered monstrosities was a real pleasure, as you might imagine. I performed this task during a sudden rate-plunge, much like the one we've been seeing recently. While I was at the company, there were so many refinances and new mortgage applications that mortgage folders were piled two feet high on top of all the file cabinets that hulked along all the walls. Two employees left on disability due to mental stress. And I tried to blow up a vending machine in the office kitchen with a bomb.

I'm still unclear about the exact chain of thought that led me to conclude that yes, it is meet that I blow up this vending machine. I know it didn't have anything to do with the stress that sent two mortgage processors home gibbering and drooling--all I did was copy the applications. This lack of clarity may have something to do with a certain red plastic bubbling smoking device that I had inherited from my good long-haired friend Johnny A., and was using frequently at that stage of my life.

The vending machine in question was an older sort that isn't very common these days. It had a revolving, lazy-Susan style circular column, made up of several round trays, and divided into compartments. A row of clear plastic doors fronted the thing, and you got your item by pushing a button that rotated the circular column. When your item was lined up with one of the little plastic doors, you put in your money, slid the door aside, and got your plastic-wrapped stale-bread and questionable tuna sandwich, or your package of Ritz mini pseudo-cheese cracker things, or your Grandma's Homestyle Molasses N' Monosodium Glutamate cookies. All very Automat.

One day, I pushed the button, spun the column, lined up my food item with the plastic door, and put in my money. But something went wrong. Either the door didn't open, or the item compartment was misaligned, or some other terrible thing. I can't recall. Again, this may be the result of flowery smoky indulgence, or it may be the result of the trauma of a snack denied. But I decided that I'd had enough. The machine had taken my money, and therefore I would destroy it. I would build a bomb. I'd feed the machine a dollar. I'd empty one of the compartments of a snack--the snack which the machine had so smugly denied me--and place the bomb in the compartment. I'd light the device, close the little door, and spin the column around so that it came to rest deep within the machine. Then I'd leave the kitchen, and look as surprised as everyone else when the damn thing exploded. I formed this plan right there, as I stood looking through the clear plastic door at whatever it was that I couldn't get at.

So, I looked up a gun shop in the local phone book, one that offered supplies for loading your own shot, which meant they carried black powder. I left the office and drove 45 minutes to that gun shop. I bought a pound of black powder in a heavy black plastic jar, paying cash. In the hovel-style room that I was stealing from a friend of mine, I had a few loops of stiff green model rocketry fuse. I was going scrounge up a suitable container, fill it with the powder, stick the fuse into it, seal it up a bit with some putty, and drive back to the mortgage company. The deed would be done by three PM.

I made it all the way back to the house, with that pound of black powder on the passenger seat the whole way. I went into my room, sucked down a bong hit or two, then left the powder in my room and headed back to the office. No one noticed that I had taken an extra-long lunch. And no one, certainly, knew how close the kitchen had come to being covered with the shattered remains of vending machine, old tuna, cookies and mushy apples.

For a good hour and a half, I was going to do it. I left work and drove at a high rate of speed to obtain what I needed. I planned how long the fuse would be, where I'd be in the office when the bomb went off. I knew to wipe everything down, to remove incriminating prints. I was ready.

Remembering it now, it's quite clear that I was out of my mind, just a bit. I don't recall, exactly, what else was going on in my life at that time. But whatever my situation, there came a point where destroying a vending machine with a homebuilt explosive device to exact revenge for a snack denied came to seem like a Good Plan That Needs To Be Carried Out Right Away. I'm not sure that my current tension-reduction strategies are any better, although they tend not to involve blowing things up which is, I suppose, progress.

Sometimes, I think that I'm just a very odd fellow, and always will be.

The black powder later appeared as a series of pyrotechnic special effects in a short film, in which I played a much-abused freaky longhair who is given a big fat Book O'Magics by a playground elf and uses his new mastery of the Black Arts to turn his enemies into little girls.

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One of the interesting things about creating original Flash content is how it spreads throughout the Internet.

So far this month, the Miserable Ovoid cartoon accounts for about 27% of my site hits...which is a bit depressing, because it means that my actual readership has remained steady or declined a bit. People like my purty pictures more than my Scintillating Brilliance™, I guess.

And, at the top of my referral log this month is Danni's Hot Box. For those who don't know, DHB is run by Danni Ashe, one of the orginal online pron entrepreneurs and, by all accounts, a savvy businesswoman. A couple of months ago, I got a bunch of referrals from Voyeurweb, another pron site that's been around for awhile and has made its operators ridiculously wealthy. Both spates of pron referrals were because of the Miserable Ovoid cartoon. The Voyeurweb referral resulted in many thousands of hits; I'll wait and see how much the DHB referral is worth.

Which proves what we've probably all known or suspected for quite some time: the real traffic on the Internet is in lust!

Hmmm...maybe I should change up the site format, a bit...add some more lust...mebbe some gluttony...general indiscretion...yeah...

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Kristof on the growth of broad-spectrum political incivility, and how it's making us more like Old Europe:

"Considering the savagery with which the Snarling Right excoriated President Clinton as a 'sociopath,' blocked judicial appointments, undermined U.S. military operations from Kosovo to Iraq, hounded Vincent Foster and then accused the Clintons of murdering him, it is utterly hypocritical for conservatives to complain about liberal incivility.

But they're right.

[...]

Anyone who isn't concerned by the growing political incivility in this country doesn't remember how the antagonisms in Europe became so caustic that they often blocked governance (not to mention triggered civil wars in Spain and Greece). Already, in this country the public vitriol discourages public service."

That last bit is an important observation and a warning, particularly for the upcoming generation. After observing the political theatrics of their parents' generation, many of the younger set are trying their best to surpass them in rude inanity.

Kristof also makes an excellent point about the reflexive derision for religion and religious belief found so often on the far left, and how that is contributing to the marginalization of the Democratic Party. But there's a nuance there that he has missed, I think: the left's derision is for "establishment" religion and belief. I, myself, have found a great deal of tolerance for religious observance in my travels through the leftward side of things...as long as it involved drums, white light, good energy, or other non-Western "spiritual" elements.

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Astonished Head has never had a blogroll. That's because, shortly after I created the site, there was a brief flurry of "delinking" by folks offended by what some site on their list had published, and the whole blogroll thing just seemed like too much trouble...too cliquey, like high school. I've already done high school, and once was enough. There also seemed to be a sort of reciprocity thing going on (you blogroll me, I'll blogroll you) that I didn't really want to get involved with.

Lately, though, I've realized that a fair number of my readers have just stumbled randomly across this site, and aren't really aware of all the fine sites out there. It occurred to me that I might be doing them a disservice, by maintaining this site's isolation in its small corner of the web. And, as Astonished Head is so very me-centric, it makes as much sense to list what I'm reading online as it does to list the books I'm reading, the toys I'm playing with, and the music I'm listening to.

So, finally, there's a blogroll of sorts, over there to the left.

My criteria was simple: if I had memorized the site's URL, and it leapt to mind, I listed it. There are many other sites that I read and, if I thought for a minute or two, I could probably recall the URLs without going to another site that I know has them listed on its roll.

But for now, those few that are at the forefront of my brain are the ones I listed. I'll change the list every so often, as the mood strikes me.

If you're a longtime reader who has blogrolled me and you aren't on the list, please, don't be offended. Doesn't mean I don't care; just means I can't...quite....recall your URL at the moment, and I want to keep the list fairly short.

Also: just because sites are listed doesn't mean I always agree with what's on them. Just means I find them innaresting enough to read frequently.

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If Ted Rall was an Iraqi living in Iraq in 1998, and published a piece of writing as opposed to the tyranny of Sadaam Hussein as this piece is to every effort of the American government, its military, and its President, he would have been killed.

No questions asked.

Here is what Rall, pretending to be a member of the "resistance force," holds up as ethical conduct for members of the Iraqi "resistance":

If someone you know is considering taking a job with the Americans, tell him that he is engaging in treason and encourage him to seek honest work instead. If he refuses, you must kill him as a warning to other weak-minded individuals.

Do go and read the whole thing.

Is he serious? Is it satire? Who knows? As a response to serious issues of human conduct and history, constant, unwavering sarcasm is the refuge of the morally flaccid. If backed into a corner by his own words, the too-clever wordsmith can always claim, "It's satire!" and thus salve his own warped psychology. See, also: Moore, Michael.

We live in a country with a citizenry that is free to write inspirational propaganda for murderers, torturers, and rapists without being murdered, tortured, and raped.

As a result, we also live in a country where the public square is increasingly polluted with the ethically obtuse, who couch their total lack of serious conscience in sarcasm, snark, and what is intended to be "wit."

This would be a fine thing, except for the fact that our educational institutions are ill-equipping our young folk to tell the difference between serious thought and indulgent, masturbatory provocation.

Usually, I'm unimpressed by Rall. But this...it's impressive in its self-serving focus. It's provocative, like laquered dogshit that becomes Art because it's in a gallery under glass, produced by an "artist" who knows the value of a reputation--any reputation--in peddling his particular brand of offal. Rall clearly knows which side of his syndicated pseudo-Marxist bread is margarined, and so continues to present us with his predictably greasy offerings.

I encourage you to visit his website. Have a look around. Ask yourself: what does this person believe in?

Or, ask him: chet@rall.com. I did, with a short, two-line note. "What are you trying to accomplish?" I asked. "I simply don't understand." I await his reply with something less than anticipation, and something more than disgust.

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While I considered Gore Vidal to be an interesting dinner companion, Sullivan considers him a "bilious old snob."

And, reading this recent interview with him, I'm more inclined to agree than disagree. Much of the wit I heard in the 1981 Vidal has vanished in the 2003 Vidal. He is now a man who thinks that "this business over outing the wife of Ambassador Wilson as a CIA agent," which has been dismissed by all but the most conspiratorial "alternative" news outlets, will bring down the Bush administration. His elitist contempt for Americans is no longer couched in amusing asides; it's on flagrant display, without even a clever turn of phrase to redeem it.

He's become a bitter, paranoid old man, of no more interest than Ted Rall.

Ah well. Perhaps we can have lunch next time I'm asleep, Gore...I'll call you. Really.

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From NPR's Marketplace Morning Report, heard this morning while driving to Connecticut at an Amazing Speed:

The trade association that represents undertakers and funeral directors is trying to make the business a bit more hip...a little less of a drag, you know? Apparently we're facing a shortage of undertakers and funeral directors, which, I suppose, means that whole Goth thing that so many of my peers were into in high school was just a passing phase.

National Funeral Directors Association has Tony Randall doing a little speaking tour for them as part of National Funeral Service Education Week (who knew?). "Every funeral begins with fun!" Tony tells us.

As an example of the fun to be had at Today's Modern Funeral, the Marketplace reporter summarized the last rites for a 42-year old named Tom, who died of cancer: miscellaneous "rock music," and a PowerPoint presentation summarizing his life.

Now that I think about it, that's exactly what I want when I die: to be summarized by a Microsoft product, with bullet points and oversaturated colors. Maybe some intriguing wipes from slide to slide, or some animated text. They could play Sousa's Liberty Bell as the mourners filed past my casket by the thousands, and then took their seats in the auditorium for the presentation.

Slide One

He Was:

• A steady producer of written material


• A significant asset to his friends


• Familiar with implementing the "fun" paradigm in various life situations

Slide Two

Now He's:

• Dead


• In that box over there

Slide Three

[3-D chart of goals met in life]

Everyone would get handouts of the presentation to take home with them.

Actually, I'll probably just get cremated and have my ashes clandestinely inserted into thousands of Boca Burger patties.

Why?

I don't know. I just feel like pissing off vegetarians this morning. Maybe it's the McDonald's Heart-Friendly Breakfast™ I wolfed down with one hand while driving to Connecticut at an Amazing Speed.

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Whoa:

"Scientists create a virus that reproduces"

"It's a very important technical advance," says Gerald Rubin, a molecular geneticist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. "You can envision the day when one could sit down at a computer, design a genome and then build it. We're still inventing the tools to make that happen, and this is an important one."

Amuse your friends! Infect and terrify your enemies! It's the VirusBuddy™ 9000!

(May not be legal in all countries. DNA base pairs sold seperately. VirusBuddy Corporation is not responsible for any mutations, ecological disasters, or unstoppable epidemics that turn the populations of entire cities into hideous flesh-eating zombies. Batteries not included. Some assembly required.)

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Tomorrow is my 32nd birthday, which means I have one year to go before I have to start my ministry and get nailed to the wood by the Romans.

Therefore, I will spend the next year living inside my GameBoy, and any other game-related appliances that I can purchase and hook up to my eyeballs. Specifically, I plan to spend as much time in Mario world as possible. Nothing really bad ever happens there. I can race little go-karts, or futz around collecting brightly colored objects, and listen to happy, happy music.

Happy, happy. Fun! Look at me! Et cetera, pax vobiscum, e pluribus unum, and so on.

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"Me, I gots my big slouch on, know what I'm sayin'? Hunkerin' down, me. Got me a hole lined wit canned peas an' cabbage an' potted meat wit no TV or papers or Innernet, got me a hole stuffed wit' kind and a ready-to-hand endless Chee-to bowl. Gonna crawl in it and wait for the rest of you fuckers to figger out what the hell you want t'do wit this planet, anyhow."

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From the Minutes (Reginald Bastard, Secretary):

Well well well well well well well well well how very nice then. Important people like me who talk loudly in restaraunts know the importance of a good bolt of caffeine up the strap in the morning, just to get the old braincase turning over and fire up the old guttiwuts, you know? Speaking of which--excuse me for just a moment.

[leaves podium, exits stage right, heads down hall, turns right, enters loo, enters loo stall, does his business, exits loo stall, exits loo, realizes he's forgotten to wash his hands, re-enters loo, washes hands, exits loo, turns left, heads up hall, enters stage left via some kind of spatial rift, steps up to podium]

Much better; I'm positively buoyant. Which is to say that I now tend to float on a liquid or rise in air or gas, much like a "buoyant balloon," a "buoyant balsawood boat" or "a floaty scarf."

A floaty scarf?

Never mind that.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Board. Colleagues, associates, hired women, stockholders, and members of the clergy. I come before you this quarter with grave concerns, concerns brought to my attention by the dilligence of our accounting staff and several subpoenas. Although Astonished Head has posted profits of nearly eight hundred billion dollars and eight cents for the past two quarters, our marketshare has been declining precipitously in a way that looks rather odd to people who know about this sort of thing. Examine, if you would, this first chart.

Reginald! The slide!

As you can see, our first issue launched with a perfectly respectable market share number thingie of 28.9. This increased to 49.6 during the Afghanistan Campaign, dipped slightly with the premier of Tea Time With Biggles The Hedgehog, and peaked at 89.9 during the Iraq Campaign. This was followed by a precipitous decline after our feature, How To Recognize Different Sorts of Boils. We rebounded slightly with our religious affairs program, Is There A God And If So What Is He Wearing?, declined a bit again with our quiz-show foray, Win A Date With Aldous The Fister, and then it was one long miserable gangrenous slide into a vast pit of excrement with What's On My Shoe?, Essential Pus, and Flatulence Of The Stars.

Finally, we have achieved a historically bad market share of -125.2 with our apparently totally unnecessary offering, My Ass. As you are aware, this means that not only are people not reading Astonished Head, they are actually giving birth to children for the express purpose of increasing the number of people who are not reading Astonished Head.

Clearly, this is an unsustainable trend. At the very least, the cost of rounding up all of those children and raising them in Astonished Head-friendly environments will be detrimental to our bottom line and my expense account. I put it to you: contrary to our best market research, the evidence suggests that the reading public is not interested in things like boils, pus, flatulence, or my ass.

[audience reaction]

I know. I was astounded myself. But facts are facts, except when I've been able to purchase the negatives and destroy them. Our publication needs a new direction. I, for one, suggest heading north for a while, then sort of westwards until we reach one of the Great Lakes, and then plunging down into its watery depths until the pressure makes our eardrums implode or we can nestle safely in the soft, cold, lightless muck of the lakebottom. Either one is good; our research suggests that imploding eardrums will appeal to three-quarters of the reading population, and nestling in the muck will appeal to the other three quarters and to those members of the reading population who are bottom-feeding aquatic creatures of some kind.

Thank you for your attention, ladies and gentlemen. With your help, we can turn Astonished Head back into the towering, quivering mass of gelatinous goo it once was. With determination, grit, hard work, liberal applications of cream for my eczema, and vast infusions of cash from the Colombians, I know that we can prevail!

[applause]

Thank you. Now, please feel free to enjoy the oyster bar and the vodka tub.

[more applause]

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Lesson For Today: it is foolish to turn down free tiramisu.

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Recently, sales of the Proloxil "Big Pharma" mug have skyrocketed. Which is to say, some people bought some, whereas until now no one had bought any. Thus! Skyrocket.

Many thanks for that. All who bought a mug now have collector's items, sure to increase in value because of their rarity. Why? Because the new design has the Astonished Head URL on the back in teeny-tiny letters, and the old design was sans URL and looked exactly like a jen-yew-ine pharmaceutical industry product promotional mug in every detail, such as you might find in your doctor's office or on your local coroner's desk. That was the joke, see.

But my desire for self-promotion has won out over my desire to perpetuate the perfect satirical fraud. So, hang on to those old-style mugs, folks! Someday, your grandkids will be on Antiques Roadshow, amazed that their grandparent's foresight will put them through college.

By the way--the ChristHanuKwanzaa gift-giving cycle is fast approaching...why not give that special someone a Proloxil mug or T-shirt? Let them know you care enough to suggest a course of fictional psychiatric medication!

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To implement Management's plan for making Astonished Head into the world's premier provider of things, we've come up with some staggeringly original never-been-done-before ideas that are really stupendously smashing and great.

For starters, we equipped our company Secretary Reginald Bastard with a microphone, a camera, a box of sandwiches, and a small-caliber pistol and sent him out to talk to the Viewing Public.

This week's Man On The Street question: what's your compulsion?

-----

Walter Taylor, Retired

"Masturbation. I can't stop myself...watching the television, driving the car, feeding the cat, bingo at the church...if I wasn't on medication, it would be very embarrassing."

Dan Haggler, Beer Mechanic

"I kill strangers who ask me questions. Do I know you? I don't think I know you."

William Algernon Taffy-Machine, Mattress Tester

"I am compelled to keep a rodent in my pants at all times. At the moment, it is a Eurasian red squirrel, but later this evening I am going to the pub, and so will switch to a Djungarian dwarf hamster, as they are easier to manage whilst visiting the urinal."

Edith Winkle, Masseuse

"I would have to say...violence. I'm always breaking people's teeth with conveniently-placed objects, like this brick."

John Smith, Meat-on-a-stick Vendor

"Compulsion? I have no compulsions whatsoever. None. In fact, If I were to rate my compulsiveness on a scale of one to 520, I would first wash my hands, then head down to the corner store for a pint of milk and a pint of cream, then over to the laundry for a packet of soap, then back to my apartment, where I would write the numbers one to 520 on the wall with a periwinkle crayon, and then stand on my head while reciting selected passages from Chilton's Guide to Small Engine Repair."

David H. Byars, Portrait

"I'm a painting. Stop talking to me."

-----

And there you have it. Next week, our man Reggie Bastard will hit the streets with a jar of pickled herring in sour cream and a bayonet to ask the Viewing Public about gardening.

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From today's New York Times:

Senate Approves Sweeping Medicare Bill

"WASHINGTON, Nov. 25 — The Senate passed a sweeping Medicare bill today that would add new prescription drug benefits for millions of seniors as part of the biggest revision in the program since it was created in 1965 as a cornerstone of the Great Society.

The debate over the bill in the Senate was contentious right up to the end. On Monday, Republicans beat back two major challenges to the bill. This morning, Republicans and Democrats continued to spar over whether the bill was the right way to go, and Tom Daschle, Democrat of South Dakota, vowed that he would continue to fight what he said was deeply flawed legislation. Daschle emphasized his statements by punching Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, in the eyeball.

Earlier, Senator Edward Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, threw his shoe at Senate Majority leader Bill Frist, but Frist dodged the attack and Senator Kennedy was pummelled into submission by several members of the Subcommittee on Public Health, which Frist chaired before becoming majority leader.

That was met with a spectacular response from Kennedy's Labor and Human Resources Committee, a melee which eventually involved dissenting Republican Senators Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Trent Lott of Mississippi, Don Nickles of Oklahoma, and John E. Sununu of New Hampshire. Senators Lott, Sununu and Nickles were eventually removed from the chamber on stretchers after being beaten into bloodied incoherance with conveniently-placed folding chairs.

This morning, an all-night fillibuster cage-match led by Senator Kennedy was ended with bipartisan support, and the matter came to a vote, passing the Senate 55-44.

Senator Frist hailed the results. "Today is a historic day and a momentous day," he said. "We have demonstrated that we can put the smackdown on whoever we choose, whenever we choose to do so, and Seniors now have the drug coverage they desperately need and deserve. And Sununu...I'll remember you. You don't try to stab the Fristman in the back and just forget about it."

In a statement released after the vote, Senator Kennedy said that "My boys and I remain ready to bring the pain. This is a minor setback."

How Many Heads in the Commentarium? (1)

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During a conversation with a co-worker and fellow 9/11 survivor (which covered, among other things, the unnecessarily funereal September 11 Memorial Contest finalists, all of which lack any creative focus on the national ideals that came under attack on that day, favoring instead a grimly microscopic focus on the dead), I opined that the Terrorist Menace, with its recent spate of astoundingly complex attacks on heavily fortified places such as synagogues, hotels, and the Red Cross headquarters, has lost much of its capability. Her reaction was interesting: essentially, Shhh! You'll jinx us! A freely admitted superstition, to be sure. But she told me that she cringes every time Bush boldly mentions al-Qaeda's diminishment.

And now, via Instapundit, this post from new-to-me site Arx Americana. He lays out some evidence, both Federal and otherwise, that our enemies might be planning a set of co-ordinated car-bomb attacks in America, and have been using the similar attacks in Turkey and elsewhere as practice runs.

According to the professionally alarmist DEBKAfile,

...a message published over al Qaeda’s electronic channels and websites declared that the countdown has begun for the biggest operation ever carried out in the United States. “The big blow will fall very shortly. It will consist of a series of surprise attacks that will cut America off from communication with its armies in Muslim countries.”

Stateside, we communicate with our troops overseas primarily via satellite links.

This can only mean one thing: al-Qaeda has access to space travel!

They're going to hijack a rocket and crash it into all of our communications satellites.

Oh, we are so screwed.

Actually, this kind of threat just makes me think that those who made it are a bunch of goat-fucking morons. I feel the same way I did when I saw some "commemorative" drawings and sand sculptures made of the Twin Towers exploding by some gibbering asshole yahoos somewhere in the Middle East. The buildings were tall, but blocky and stubby, because the tiny minds that drew and built them had never seen a building bigger than a 10-story apartment block, and had no real conception of how magnificent these products of an advanced industrial culture actually were.

At the last, there's one thing that lends a kind of grim comfort: they may kill some of us. They may even kill me. But, when push comes to shove, they will never, ever win. Forgive me for saying so...but if they push us far enough...we'll kill them all, in so many different ways and so thoroughly that they'd have be serviced by their black-eyed virgins with a spoon. We'd kill a lot of other unfortunate bystanders, as well, but if we had to, we could.

I'm not sure, exactly, what it would take for us to reach that point. Quite a lot, I think, and it's probably a good thing that our enemies don't have the technology to push us that far (yet).

This sort of ignorant chest-pounding bullshit pisses me off...not really sure why. I guess I'm just angered by the fact that a human being with a perfectly usable three-pound brain can waste his whole damn life--and try to end mine--over one single book, a full twenty percent of which a sensible Koranic scholar will tell you is flat-out nonsense. Ooo! Allah says we can blow up this radar dish in Virginia and cut them off from their armies!

Yeah? Just try it, Hasan al-Fucktardi or whatever multisyllabic Islamolutionary moniker you've adopted for yourself this week. Eventually you'll get one of these crammed so far up your ass you'll turn into a MOAB condom just before you vaporize.

Grrr. Stomp stomp.

How Many Heads in the Commentarium? (8)
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I had a dream about that a few nights ago. Just thought I'd share it.

Not that I give any particular damn about either of them or their May-December Having A Good Bang With Each Other thing. The dream was just so spectacularly odd. Sometimes, if you're watching the news, maybe with the sound too low to hear, a picture of some recognizable famous person will pop up over the anchor's shoulder, with their last name underneath...a particular sort of picture, of a certain size, and when you see it, you know right away: OK, this person's dead now, or had a limb chopped off in a blimp accident or something.

In my dream I was watching the news and two pictures showed up, with "Kutcher" beneath one and "Moore" beneath the other. Now, anybody who's even remotely aware of what goes on in the vast Romper Room that is modern Hollywood, would think dreamwise: hey, they got married.

Not me. I immediately thought, I bet he's killed her and then shot himself. That whole thing with Cameron Crowe pushed Ashton over the edge. And, sure enough, when I turned the sound up, that's what the reporter said.

Anyway.

You heard it here first.

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I'll be away for a few days, getting stuffed. Then I'll be put in an oven at around 350 degrees or so for about ten hours hours, and when fully cooked I'll be slapped onto a platter and served with all the usual crap that you find tables groaning 'neath the weight of this time of year.

In any event. I won't be writing much.

Because I'll be, you know, dead, and eaten.

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