To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
In her defense, the former commanding officer at Abu Ghraib says:
In an interview with British Broadcasting Corp. radio broadcast Tuesday, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski said Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller told her last autumn that prisoners “are like dogs, and if you allow them to believe at any point that they are more than a dog then you’ve lost control of them.”
Sounds like the general needs some intuition into the meaning of simile and its relationship to reality.
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In the trial yesterday, officers presented testimony to how they knew Scott Peterson was the one. According to ABCNews.com, the evidence is pretty conclusive:
Officer Derrick Letsinger said Monday that he didn’t smell bleach and didn’t notice any signs of a recent cleaning, he did say that he became skeptical after seeing a crumpled rug, dirty towels on the washing machine and a wet mop behind an otherwise “model home.”
1. Dirty laundry on washing machine, other cleaning utensils near washing machine in a “model home.” That’s pretty damning stuff. But it gets worse:
Another officer, Matthew Spurlock, said there was something else that seemed suspicious: Peterson’s alibi. Peterson told him he had been fishing alone on the bay the day his wife died, but could not say what he was trying to catch.
2. He didn’t have a particular fish in mind when he went fishing. Everyone knows that an angler goes fishing for a specific type of fish each and every time he goes out. Anyone who says he’s just going to catch what’s biting is lying, and a potential murderer. Finally:
During his testimony, Letsinger said Peterson “threw his flashlight down on the ground,” before mumbling a curse word. Spurlock testified he heard what appeared to be an expletive and that “it came through what sounded like gritted teeth.”
3. Throwing a flashlight, cursing through gritted teeth.
Each tidbit is irrefutable, and when combined into a compelling narrative, we can see that Scott Peterson is guilty. Who needs evidence? Let’s burn him!
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Read the new updates to Pop-Up Mocker. It won’t hurt too much.
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This novel certainly doesn’t represent the best of Alan Dean Foster’s work, but it’s an amusing book that hearkens back to the earlier days of science fiction, back when quick, short adventures in Del Ray editions shared a wild story.
When an automated plant that produces AI components becomes accidentally interested in finding higher intelligence than man, it begins building its quest into toasters, lawn care equipment, and other common tools it provides. Meanwhile, on Earth, which has become a park retirement community for residents of the outer worlds, five codgers of the title find an ancient ship of vast proportions which proves that a higher power exists. But what kind of higher power, and what should the oldsters do now that they’re in orbit with the armadas of the different human confederations showing up?
Like the last Foster novel I read, this one represents a short story run long. That’s part of the charm of this type of book, but unfortunately, Foster doesn’t weave the disparate plotlines together well, and some portions of the book run on too long to make the necessary word count for a novel. I think Foster might have found himself bogged down in the writing of the novel; I can even see the point where he followed Raymond Chandler’s advice and had a man walk through the door with a gun. Still, you have to admire a novel that combines a universe-altering cheese sandwich, writing advice from Raymond Chandler, and a hint at the Lovecraft mythos? The book was worth the price, $2.95 at Downtown Books in Milwaukee.
Confession: Gentle readers, given the range and the depth of the titles published with the Alan Dean Foster, particularly his penchant for novelizing movies (hey, I liked Outland!), I had the subtle doubt creep into my mind that Alan Dean Foster might actually be a name owned by a publishing house under which numerous people wrote over the period of the last three decades. Apparently, that is not so.
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I thought I had mocked this story already, but I have not. What’s to mock? What’s not to mock about it? A fetus is an American citizen simply for gestating in this country:
A U.S. District judge in Missouri has blocked temporarily the deportation of a pregnant Mexican woman who is married to a U.S. citizen, calling the fetus an “American” and citing a federal law created to protect unborn children after the high-profile death of Laci Peterson.
Senior U.S. District Judge Scott O. Wright ordered that Myrna Dick, 29, of Raymore, Mo., who is accused of falsely claiming American citizenship, be allowed to remain in the United States for now and told prosecutors and the defense to prepare for a possible trial.
“Isn’t that child an American citizen?” he asked, according to the Kansas City Star. “If this child is an American citizen, we can’t send his mother back until he is born.”
Which might lead on to speculate…how long until states issue driver’s licenses to in-utero-Americans, that persecuted minority, and how soon can they be enfranchised to vote in California?
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Truly, he has a dizzying intellect. Michael Moore’s complaining about a possible R rating for his latest mockumentary. You know, no one under 17 admitted without a guardian.
Moore said: “It is sadly very possible that many 15- and 16-year-olds will be asked and recruited to serve in Iraq in the next couple of years.
“If they are old enough to be recruited and capable of being in combat and risking their lives, they certainly deserve the right to see what is going on in Iraq.”
Dear Michael: Here in the United States, people cannot go into combat at fifteen or sixteen. Thank you, that is all.
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Brian J. Noggle, Internet Pin-Up.
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International Red Cross bleats:
Unless the United States charges Saddam Hussein or releases him from custody by June 30 the nation will be in violation of the Geneva Convention, the Red Cross charged yesterday.
Memo to American Red Cross: distance yourselves immediately or face backlash. I recommend adopting the name American Magen David Adam.
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In a post, we see how Kim du Toit fails his test to attain the 9th Dan of Paranoia:
…we Baby Boomers know all the tricks, and I am even more paranoid than Blackfive.
Listen, students, when your shidoshi of paranoia speaks: You never know all the tricks. You are ready ascend when you realize you must know most of the tricks, and you know that anything you do not recognize as a known trick might, in fact, be a trick.
Doubt even this post, my students.
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Ladies and gentlemen, our first-ever female recipient of the Galls as Big as Church Bells award goes to Suburban Blight’s Kelley, who broke an arm while on vacation in Hawaii and flew home to Atlanta, Georgia, untreated because she did not want to miss her flight.
She’s more man than I am.
I hope there was plenty of liquor available on those flights.
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I found myself thinking of the dashboard in my truck as the interface.
I need IT Intervention.
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From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, in a story entitled Slay, Blunt butt heads over early voting plan:
However, Blunt, the favored Republican candidate for governor, said the law merely set the framework for early voting but did not give statutory authority for it. It also did not provide funding for early balloting, a possible violation of the so-called Hancock Amendment, which requires the state to pay for anything that it is requiring local jurisdictions to do. Early voting would cost about $2.4 million, according to estimates from local officials that Blunt compiled in 2002.
I think this writer is trying to use so-called as a synonym for “law commonly known as”, which is rather funny, since the writer probably doesn’t know it by any other name.
This link was sent to me by reader John F. Donigan, who seems to lament the fact that officials from the city of St. Louis want election day to last two weeks, and might have a law to stand on. Donigan writes:
KMOX ran a story in which the picketers stated that Blunt wasn’t allowing early voting because he was a Republican. Blunt answered with something on the order of “You could come to me as the most Republican-voting city in the state, (not that I can think of one at the moment) and I’d still have to say you can’t do it.” The picketers responded with It’s our right ’cause we want it!
*sigh*
I cannot take an experiential historical perspective to know if these sorts of shenanigans have always been a part of the electoral process; I suspect though that politics now trumps government in ways that it has not before, and in ways that will ultimately lead to the implosion of the Great Experiment.
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Man, talk about a bad year. Now Rush Limbaugh’s getting a divorce from the lovely Marta.
Drug addiction, a jerk-smearer potential prosecution, and a divorce. The only way it could get worse if Marta reveals that Limbaugh cheated on her. With the pool boy. In exchange for drugs.
(Link seen on Drudge.)
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A story I saw on Drudge: Researchers Exposed to Anthrax:
At least five workers developing an anthrax vaccine at a children’s hospital research lab in Oakland were accidentally exposed to the deadly bacterium because of a shipping mistake, officials reported Thursday.
Officials with the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute said none of the researchers has shown symptoms of infection since the first exposure about two weeks ago, but each is being treated with precautionary antibiotics.
The researchers believed they were working with syringes full of a dead version of anthrax, hospital spokeswoman Bev Mikalonis said. Instead, they were shipped live anthrax by a lab of the Southern Research Institute in the Frederick, Md., Mikalonis said.
Parents, does the children’s hospital where you take your children have a research lab where researchers work with deadly toxins better known as weapons of mass destruction? You would assume not, but I guess you can’t be sure unless you ask.
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So an old joke tells us about the child who kills his parents and begs the court for mercy because he’s an orphan, but one woman in Virginia is apparently using it as a defense strategy:
The only woman on Virginia’s death row doesn’t deny that she deserves punishment for having her husband and stepson killed so she could collect insurance money.
But paying the ultimate penalty, says Teresa Lewis, is too much — especially considering the men who actually did the deed will live out their lives behind bars.
“I don’t think it’s fair for the triggermen to get life, and I got the death penalty,” she said, speaking by phone through a glass partition at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women.
Lewis pleaded guilty last year to arranging the slayings of her husband and stepson to collect a $250,000 insurance policy.
The punchline: the caption beneath her photo:
Lewis: “I just feel like I have something to live for. I’ve got a daughter here.”
Apparently, she’s not finished.
No laughs, of course, for the absolute pathology involved in saying she shouldn’t die because she has something to live for, apparently unlike her husband and stepson.
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Former hockey great Mario Lemieux tells Pittsburgh that if they don’t buy his socialist self a hockey arena, he might have to sell the Penguins. Because unemployed steelworkers should provide his millionaireness with benefits to his business.
He claims he has three offers, but I would think he’s bluffing, or he’s counting bar talk. NHL Hockey is not exactly a sellers market these days.
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Zudos to Joe Williams of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch who demonstrates through his review of The Chronicles of Riddick that he truly has dizzying intellect:
In the grand hall of a mothership that resembles a mid-century Chrysler on steroids, the Lord Marshal mentions that the Necromonger army is composed of forced converts from other religions. So maybe “The Chronicles of Riddick” is supposed to be a parable about American imperialism, sweeping other cultures into its maw.
Let’s see, we have a culture that either converts, enslaves, or kills other cultures that do not adhere to its tenets, and that culture represents American imperialism? One man stands against them, but Williams doesn’t enlighten us to whether that one man who fights reluctantly against the hordes illustrates the struggle of stringy-haired Berkleyans, French diplomat sophisticates, or the Arab street. Wholly schnucking deconstructionism, fatman!
His college professors must be awfully damn proud of him.
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Belatedly, Michael Williams learns a devastating drawback to blogging:
One of the difficult things about hanging out with people who (occasionally) read your blog is that they’re already familiar with all of your A-list material (and, let’s face it, I use most of my B- through M-list material here, too).
Reminds me of this one time I stood beside a former rugger who was busy popping the heads off of crawdads….
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A hockey tidbit. Jeff Gordon, in today’s Tip Sheet in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, writes:
How can St. Louis host a diving championship and not invite Tyson Nash?
Meow!
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I’m calling it officially! In November, my vote will cancel out Bruce Springsteen’s in the presidential election! I called it! You’ll have to find your own celebrity to thwart.
Oh, I know how it works. I can’t cancel it out because he’ll vote in New Jersey and I’ll vote in Missouri, and we’ll vote for different electoral college members. But still, symbolically, he’s all mine.
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