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The Virginia Race

In a news release and list of quotes posted Friday on the Drudge Report Web site, Sen. George Allen accused his opponent, former Navy Secretary Jim Webb, of “demeaning women” and “dehumanizing women, men and even children” through his fiction writings. At least two of the listed passages include children in sexual situations. Allen’s campaign did not include the press release and list of passages on its Web site, where press releases are generally posted. There was, however, a Thursday statement from Chris LaCivita, general consultant for the Allen campaign, saying some references in Webb’s novels are “disturbing” and “portray women as servile, subordinate and promiscuous.

You know, the press has some culpability here. They are the ones responsible for reporting this as actual news that matters, and because they do that, it matters to people who don’t know any better.

Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny: Official Movie Site

Well, I can’t wait.

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Baghdad security plan ‘failing’
Mr Bush acknowledged that the escalation of violence “could be” comparable to the 1968 Tet Offensive against US troops, which helped turn public opinion against the Vietnam War.

The next several days’ worth of backpedaling would be funny if it weren’t so horrific.

As you know, I have been trying to find an old several-panel comic strip about cavemen since the late eighties. Surely you knew that. In this strip, a caveman has caveman friends, a canine huppy dod companion, and gets pelted with rocks by a pretty rock trone gul. The strip was in an English Lit book from some forgotten freshman class from long ago that I was required to buy.

Googling “rock trone gul” doesn’t get one very far. It didn’t get me very far in the nineties, and it didn’t get me very far in this millenium either. Weird. But I’ve tried, fitfully, to google little snippets of caveman-speak every few months, knowing certainly that someone, somewhere, would type the appropriate caveman words into their blogs or whatnot, and my decades long quest would finally bear fruit. Rock trone gul. Huppy dod. Issa Ip. Hom tink issa hig. It would happen.

It was the holy grail of googling. Never any hits, but the strip was so good that I knew in my bones that eventually something would pop up. And it has.

“Ip Gissa Gul,” by George Booth. It was a combination of apt search phrases, apt cache searches, and apt Wayback lookbacks that cracked the nut. The catalyzing clue came from a spanish archive of the alt.motorcycles newsgroup. Somebody, for a message or two, used brief snippets of caveman-speak as his signature: “Whu Ip doon huppy dod?” “Hom tont ho.” “Hom tink issa gul!”

It was the break I was looking for. Mostly, it showed that I hadn’t hallucinated the whole thing. An hour later I was rummaging through The New Yorker archives looking for an image. I didn’t find it, but I did find confirmation of the strip’s existence, the strip’s Booth-ness, and the strip’s availability in a giant outrageously expensive compendium that I’ll wait several years before buying. Hell, I’ve waited this long.

I’m a goddamn genius. The only thing that could ruin it is if someone were to say to me “I knew that; why didn’t you just ask me?” because that would require me to curl up into a fetal ball for a week, maybe ten days.

Do you tire of fishing dead toads out of your pool day after day?

Do you fear that your pet might fall in one day while you are busy elsewhere and drown? Your pet, I mean?

Perhaps neighborhood toddlers climb your backyard fence from time to time to gaze into the pool’s enticing but deadly waters.

Well, fret no more! McNeely’s Amazing Toad Ramp could well be the answer to your various nightmares!

Merely clamp McNeely’s Amazing Toad Ramp onto one of the poles of the ladder in the deep end of your pool, and kiss unwanted dead toads, dogs, frogs, hogs, hamsters, and children goodbye!

The secret lies in the gentle-angled, non-skid surface that rises out of the dark waters and curves neatly to the dry pool edge. With McNeely’s Amazing Toad Ramp ratcheted firmly in place, toads and frogs now might conceivably drift into a position where they could grab the rough coating with their nimble froggy hands and haul themselves out of the chlorinated water– before the various chemicals degrade their nervous systems to the point that they seize up and float lifelessly into the skimmer! Boisterous puppies, cavorting perilously close to the pool edge and falling in while their master is inside drinking beer or shitting, perhaps, could extricate themselves from certain watery death merely by keeping their cool and swimming to McNeely’s Amazing Toad Ramp before they drowned from panicky exhaustion! And the same goes for toddlers, except for the froggy hands part!

You owe it to yourself to audition McNeely’s Amazing Toad Ramp. More than that, you owe it to all the little creatures around you which would otherwise die unspeakably horrible deaths if you don’t. Best of all, it’s guaranteed!*

McNeely’s Amazing Toad Ramp is only $49.95 (ratchets, non-skid surfacing, and surface sold separately).

WHAT. A. GAME.

Moran at Dumas

“Here at Dumas we know people are fascinated by tug boats.”

I was googling for a law office with the unfortunate name of “Dumas & Moran,” but this is as close as I got.

Bunnies left for dead…Deep in Butterfield Canyon…Unknown assailants…Bunnies “beautiful”…at least the 3rd case…more news as story develops…

$1 million for arrest of American al Qaeda charged with treason - CNN.com

“A charge of treason is exceptionally severe, and it is not one we bring lightly,” McNulty said at a news conference in Washington. “But this is the right case for this charge.”

I’ve never been comfortable with charging civilians with treason, as if there’s some higher calling everyone feels because they were accidentally born somewhere. If this idiot were a US soldier who turned bad I’d feel different. But he’s not. He’s not even a soldier for the other side, notwithstanding how George II feels, because there IS no “other side.” There’s just a bunch of murdering thugs with money.

He’s a thug. Treat him like a thug. No need to go all HMS Bounty on me.

Al Gore at TED

It’s like a swing score. You know: the Saints, instead of pushing the ball into the end zone, fumbled on the one, and some bastard ran it back 99 yards for a touchdown. So the play wasn’t worth 7 points; it was worth 14. That’s where we stand today.

What if the world was constructed in such a way that, at some point, you were required to make a decision about how you would experience pain? I mean, you have a certain individual allotment of pain you are ordained to experience in your life; you are asked to decide how you want to experience that pain. Do you want to take it as it comes? Do you want to get it all over with in a day? Do you want to spread your pain out evenly over all the days of your life?

I imagine that spreading it out evenly would result in some kind of low-grade malaise, an out-of-sorts kind of feeling, that would be with you always. At the other end of the spectrum, you could elect to take it all in over a 24 hour period: a pain nova, but after it’s over, physically you’d experience no more pain during the rest of your days. I know there are sound physiological reasons that we experience pain, but I imagine that alternatives could be put in place. For instance, if a person who never has to experience pain again touches a hot stove, instead of pain, he experiences a sudden winter freeze in Fargo, or cows mooing. Something of that nature.

I imagine that I would pick the pain nova. I imagine also that the election would be a big deal, like getting your driver’s license or having sex for the first time. Friends and acquaintances would dissect your decision. Those that elected to feel out-of-sorts for the rest of their lives, I imagine, would be few, as would the 24-hour electors.

I would like to live in a world wherein that decision could be made. I’m not in pain now; I’m just sayin’.

CNN.com - Experts predict one more Atlantic hurricane - Oct 3, 2006
FORT COLLINS, Colorado (AP) — Hurricane expert William Gray downgraded his forecast for the 2006 Atlantic storm season again Tuesday, predicting one more hurricane, two more named storms but no intense hurricanes.

He also has an amazing 95 percent accuracy in predicting how many dumps he’ll take during any given day! His 11:30 pm “Daily Dump Forecast” is eerily accurate.

Bonehead.

Follow up to this and that.

CNN.com - Marijuana may stave off Alzheimer’s - Oct 5, 2006

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) — Good news for aging hippies: Smoking pot may stave off Alzheimer’s disease. New research shows that the active ingredient in marijuana may prevent the progression of the disease by preserving levels of an important neurotransmitter that allows the brain to function. Researchers at the Scripps Research Institute in California found that marijuana’s active ingredient, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, can prevent the neurotransmitter acetylcholine from breaking down more effectively than commercially marketed drugs. THC is also more effective at blocking clumps of protein that can inhibit memory and cognition in Alzheimer’s patients, the researchers reported in the journal Molecular Pharmaceutics. The researchers said their discovery could lead to more effective drug treatment for Alzheimer’s, the leading cause of dementia among the elderly. Those afflicted with Alzheimer’s suffer from memory loss, impaired decision-making, and diminished language and movement skills. The ultimate cause of the disease is unknown, though it is believed to be hereditary. Marijuana is used to relieve glaucoma and can help reduce side effects from cancer and AIDS treatment. Possessing marijuana for recreational use is illegal in many parts of the world, including the United States, though some states allow possession for medical purposes.

“Those afflicted with Alzheimer’s suffer from memory loss, impaired decision-making, and diminished language and movement skills” is funny, see, because pot does the same thing, only less permanently. Well, I thought it was funny.

from GYWO:

CNN.com - Beer drinkers beware: 4 percent of U.S. hops crop burns - Oct 3, 2006YAKIMA, Washington (AP) — Federal investigators were set Tuesday to begin an investigation into a fire that ruined about 4 percent of America’s yield of hops, used as flavoring in the brewing of beer and ale.

A moment of silence, please.