Reports: Mosley involved in Nazi sex scandal

I haven’t even read the article yet, but I’m not sure how the hell it’s going to top that. I mean, did Mosley have sex with a bunch of skinheads, or did Mosley have sex with a bunch of Jews, which led to a bunch of Nazis being upset by the scandal? Either way, this has nowhere to go but up.

Fine… I’ll go one paragraph in.

Max Mosley, president of the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile, F1’s governing body, is facing intense pressure to resign from his post after being implicated in a Nazi role-playing orgy according to British tabloid News of the World.

I… uh… ummm… BWAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!! *thump* *thump* *thump*… BWHAHAHAHAHAHAAAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA!!!

(I’ll post more when I regain the ability to breathe.)

(Okay, I’m better now.)

At one point during the video, the man yells “she needs more of ze punishment!” while brandishing a leather strap over a woman’s bottom before striking her with it and counting in German, as other women in Nazi-style uniforms look on.

(I’m out again. Screw this - I don’t need to breathe, right?)

Okay, either this is the best April Fools joke ever, or this is, beyond all doubt, the absolute best news story in the freaking planet. Either way, I’m sold, and I’ll have more of whatever he/they are havnig.

Normally I wouldn’t violate copyright law, but, since the source article is from Australia, I think I can safely start an international incident:

From the actual article:

THEY may wear their dyed fringes long and their threads grungy but, whatever you do, don’t call them emo.

Just as parents get their heads around the emo phenomenon - code for “emotional” - along comes another subcultural movement with its own fashion and music signifiers.

The Scene - or Scene kids - began on the networking site MySpace.

Newcastle teenagers Emma-Jane “EJ” Scott, Kirra Dare and Eliza Coughlan, all 13, identify as Scene.

Their fashion tastes range from tiaras to ripped stockings, leopard print and 1980s band T-shirts. Thick eyeliner and elaborately coloured, back-teased hair are mandatory.

Read the rest of the article if you don’t value your brain cells. Or, just let your mind slowly get turned into formless jelly by staring at the picture. Whatever works for you.

Some quick thoughts:

1. “Scene” kids have been around for a while. My ESO dealt with “scene” kids when she was in high school, and she graduated a solid five years ago. This would pretty well pre-date Myspace.

2. Since when was “dig through your parent’s stuff from college and play dress up with their old clothes like a toddler” considered a style?

3. Apparently, scene kids are kids that dress like emo kids but don’t have the negative attitude. Personally, if I was wearing “girls jeans, the tighter, the better”, I would not be feeling particularly sociable, happy, or, for that matter, comfortable. But, what do I know? I wear guy pants.

One last note…

It’s bad enough that people insist on worshiping the ’60s like it’s some sort of magical decade that fundamentally changed the world for the better, wiping out evil, greed, and permanently defining rock ‘n roll forever. Seriously, that pisses me off in ways that you can’t even begin to imagine. However, as bad as the ’60s were, given a choice between the fashions of that era and the colorblind uncoordinated madness of the ’80s, I’d much rather see us relive the ’60s. Think about it. Which would you rather see…

This…

Or this…

Come to think of it, they both look pretty bad… I give up. People can’t dress themselves. It’s over. I’m moving to the mountains and I’m going to start living off of roots, shrubs, and berries. Screw this.

If this is true, I am so screwed:

A study released this month stated that breakfast is extremely important for kids who don’t want to be fat. A pediatrician interviewed for an article on the study specifically called out Pop-Tarts as not being breakfast worthy, despite their essential vitamins and minerals. Two conclusions can be reached from this: Pop-Tarts will make you fat–which is the same as not eating breakfast–or eating Pop-Tarts is worse than not eating breakfast. I guess it really doesn’t matter–according to Pillsbury, every kid’s school locker is filled with uneaten Pop-Tarts and the kids just end up eating their friend’s Toaster Strudel.

Here’s the problem: I tend to run late for work. By “late”, I mean that my coworkers have repeatedly joked about creating a new time zone just for me so I’ll be on time somewhere. It’s not something I do intentionally or out of disrespect, mind you; I’m just really, really not a morning person. I do make it up in the afternoons, though, which is why I’m still gainfully employed. To mitigate some of the negative effects of my morning sluggishness, however, I’ve taken to buying what I call “emergency deployment rations”, which basically amounts to food that I can quickly grab on my way out and eat on the run. Since going to gas stations or McDonalds eats precious time that I don’t have, I prefer to grab something while I’m getting dressed and take it with me. My favorite morning food is, of course, Pop Tarts. They don’t have to be cooked (really!), they have some calories, they’re theoretically nutritious in some manner or another, and, most importantly, they require absolutely zero thought. It’s a no-brainer. However, if what this person is saying about Pop Tarts is true, I may be eternally damned to either a lifetime of morbid Sunny-like obesity or to a quick trip to the unemployment line.

Either way, my future does not look promising…

It’s time for me to come clean about something here… I’m a graduate of the University of Nevada, Reno. Consequently, I am honor-bound to hate, despise, loathe, and generally find annoying anything that relates to our southern rival. They cover this during orientation. I’m not quite as fanatic about that as some people I know, but I do experience a certain sense of schadenfreude when I see them do poorly at something.

So, there I was, reading Instapundit as always, when I come across this - it’s a listing of rankings for law schools. So, I click on the link, promptly ignore Glenn’s choice in schools (Does anyone really care about Tennessee?), hit CTRL-F, type in “UNLV”, and I find…

96. (2.3)
Georgia State (77)
Howard (Tier 3)
LSU (88)
Louisville (100)
Maine (Tier 3)
Missouri-Kansas City (Tier 3)
Penn State (77)
Seattle (83)
South Carolina (95)
UNLV (88)
Vermont (Tier 3)
Wayne State (Tier 3)

That ranking puts UNLV just in the bottom 50% (182 schools total - at Nevada, you learn that half of 182 is 91), which gives me that gentle little smile that I needed to get me through the day.

Ah, schadenfreude… I bet UNLV graduates don’t even know what that word means. Heck, they probably think the word is French.

PS: Yes, I know that their overall ranking is 88, which is just barely above 91. However, their peers find them so contemptible that they only got 96th, so it still balances out. In fact, if you average the two numbers (another skill they don’t teach at UNLV, by the way), you get 92, which means that, on average, UNLV is still just below average… and, with that, all is right with the world.

There are going to be some changes around here. Here’s why (comment from yesterday):

Okay first I’m gonna tell you what I told Jennifer Hast this morning, too: get off Blogspot, get your own domain, and use Wordpress. Because I hate these Blogspot comment thingies. If I make it an official decree will you do it?

Second I’m gonna tell you that you’re exactly right about RSS feeds and bloggers who are stingy with them are making a big mistake.

Before I put my RSS feed up, which I did because I got emails requesting it CONSTANTLY, I did a bunch of research. Because I knew that if people were only reading through their reader, I wouldn’t get the traffic to my actual blog and thus my ad revenue would decrease.

So I read a bunch of articles all over the web about this issue and the consensus was TOUGH SHIT.

Because refusing to offer RSS, or even refusing to feed the whole post (by using teaser snippets) pisses people off. And, RSS users tend to spread links around, emailing their friends and such. Also, it is said that a high RSS reader number in a little graphic prominently displayed on your blog can be a form of promotion itself. “Wow, this blog has 500 RSS readers, it must be pretty good, I will read more of it.”

I was convinced and decided to try it, and sure enough, within a few weeks I had several hundred people signed on and my traffic went UP, as did my ad revenue (which wasn’t much to start with but it did go up a few bucks a week).

Anyway. Seriously, get off of Blogspot; it is making me angry that I can’t scroll from my comment up to your post to see what else you said. DO IT. I will help you because I truly do like your blog. Email me if you’re thinking about it and need help.

That’s right - THE Rachel Lucas has spoken. She has given me the Golden Path which, if I dare, will lead me to blogging greatness. We’re talking groupies, women, the works. Oh yeah. Consequently, I have already begun the first phase. If you’ll notice, there is a change in your friendly address bar. That’s right - this blog is now at www.colborne2016.com. For now, Blogger is set to automatically redirect the old Blogspot address to the new domain. If I ever step away from Blogspot, that will go away, so update your bookmarks now.

This brings up a point…

I’m now starting to get to the point where I need to decide whether I wish to piss or get off the pot, as the expression goes. Basically, I need to decide precisely how seriously I’m going to take this blog. It was all fun and games when it was free, taking only a little bit of my time, and when only 30 people a month were wandering in here aimlessly. Now, it looks like March is going to be strong enough to nearly double my total traffic ever, which is definitely encouraging - people are finally seeing what I write, and, more importantly, are coming back for more. That thrills me to no end. However, if I start to take this seriously, some things are going to have to change… and a lot of them aren’t going to be free for me. It’s one thing when I can stop this at any time since I have no financial stake in its success. It’s quite another to take a bunch of time off when I’m paying $7/month (or more) for hosting, along with the usual domain registration fee. It doesn’t raise the stakes a lot, but it raises them enough to be important.

If I turn that corner and go down that road, here’s what you need to know:

1. It’s not happening right away. It’s going to be at least a month for me to either find a decent hosting provider or decide if I want to just host it myself, try out Wordpress, and figure out what’s going on with it. Since there’s actually a manual for it, among other things, that indicates it’s a little more flexible than Blogspot. This also means it’s probably a little more complicated, so I’d like to play with it on my own for a bit before I start posting on it “live”, as it were. This will work out well since it means that you’ll have plenty of time to update your links, bookmarks, and so on. However, at some point, this blog will probably move, and, when it does, that’ll be the end of colborne2016.blogspot.com. You’ve been warned.

2. I’m going to re-do my categories so they actually make sense. I’ve been playing fast and loose with my categories because, frankly, I didn’t care what they were. If I start taking this mildly seriously, though, I’m going to be cleaning those up.

3. I need to come up with a way to grab all of my posts from the existing blog and put them on the new blog. Copy and paste will work if they have to, but, if there’s an easier way, I’m all over that. Bonus points to anyone who can tell me how to back the existing blog up before I can figure it out on my own.

That’s it for now… more on this later.

Sen. Liebermann has served as the Democratic Party’s equivalent to Sen. McCain for quite a while - he’s been long known as going against his party’s line for quite some time. Then I found this:

It’s not news that Sen. Joe Lieberman, the onetime Democratic VP candidate, is backing John McCain for President. Nor is it news that Lieberman takes a different view of the Iraq War than most Democrats. But what he said this morning on ABC’s “This Week” is certainly news.

Well, I say that the Democratic Party changed. The Democratic Party today was not the party it was in 2000. It’s not the Bill Clinton-Al Gore party, which was strong internationalists, strong on defense, pro-trade, pro-reform in our domestic government. It’s been effectively taken over by a small group on the left of the party that is protectionist, isolationist and basically will –and very, very hyperpartisan. So it pains me. I’m a Democrat who came to the party in the era of President John F. Kennedy. It’s a strange turn of the road when I find among the candidates running this year that the one, in my opinion, closest to the Kennedy legacy, the John F. Kennedy legacy, is John S. McCain.

It dawned on me that I’ve heard this speech before… then I remembered where:

This is the last Republican convention I will address as President. Maybe you’ll see your way to inviting me back sometime. But like so many of us, as I said earlier, I started out in the other party. But 40 years ago, I cast my last vote as a Democrat. It was a party in which Franklin Delano Roosevelt promised the return of power to the States. It was a party where Harry Truman committed a strong and resolute America to preserving freedom. F.D.R. had run on a platform of eliminating useless boards and commissions and returning autonomy and authority to local governments and to the States. That party changed, and it will never be the same. They left me; I didn’t leave them. So, it was our Republican Party that gave me a political home. When I signed up for duty, I didn’t have to check my principles at the door. And I soon found out that the desire for victory did not overcome our devotion to ideals.

For those of you that didn’t click on that last link, it goes to Ronald Reagan’s remarks at the Republican National Convention in ‘88.

Interesting, no?

I’ve noticed that I need to branch out my reading selections a bit - I mean, you can only read Instapundit, Rachel Lucas, and Slashdot for so long before you just have to step out of your comfort zone. Granted, I hit Google News fairly frequently, as well as Fark, but still… something was lacking. I needed a bigger picture of the world. Unfortunately, my mind has a limited memory capacity, and bookmarks just weren’t cutting it - yeah, I could go to the sites, but I never knew if there was anything worth reading ahead of time.

Annoyed by this, I got an RSS reader. It wasn’t hard - since I run Ubuntu, I could just do a nice, quick search in Add/Remove Programs, which is where I found PenguinTV. Works great, at least when it’s not hanging while I try to add another feed… like right now.

To be honest, I’ve been playing with it for the past few weeks now. Works great, no complaints… except for one - I can now read way more than I used to. I can now keep track of all of the tech blogs I’ve always wanted to keep track of. I could now keep track of all the other ancillary blogs that I’ve seen that I wasn’t motivated enough to visit daily but which I wanted to keep track of. Sounds great, right? Well, it was… until I received an idea:

I’m going to add every single blog in Rachel Lucas’ blogroll to my RSS feeds.

It seemed only fair. She added me to her roll, so the least I could do is help support my fellow blogroll compatriots by seeing what they have to say. Besides, since she gets a fair amount of her material from those sites, maybe I could preempt her once in a while. It’d be my way of getting inside her decision loop or something.

Sounds great, right? Where’s the problem? Well, there isn’t one… except, of course, that she has tons of blogs in her blogroll, so now I have the better part of 60+ blogs sitting in my syndication list. That’s a lot of blogs to keep track of. I’m at 65 right now and I’m only on the P’s. I’m going to be pushing near 90 by the time I’m done subscribing to them all.

That said, I am discovering something. Most blogs appear to be more than happy to allow RSS feeds, but not all of them. Some of them are “members only”. Some of them require you to send them an e-mail, at which point they’ll send you the feed. Some don’t have a feed at all. I do understand that many of them derive income from ads, so, consequently, they don’t want you reading their blog unless you can view their ads. The key, however, is not to restrict access to the RSS feed - just don’t give away the whole enchilada. Give out the first 100 words or something, but don’t make it more difficult than necessary for others to access your site. That’s only going to hurt your traffic in the long run… I know that because, well, if you’re one of those blogs that plays games with RSS feeds, I’m not going to visit you. I just don’t have time to check on you from time to time. I’m sorry.

Next up: How to back up my RSS feeds… Hardy Heron is coming out soon, and I’m looking forward to trying it. I’m not going to do it, though, if I don’t have some way of backing up all of my data, including things like RSS feeds and the like… I’m sure there’s an XML file sitting in my home folder somewhere.

Thankfully, one of my friends is more than happy to oblige… I bring to you the latest addition to my blogroll:

Cardozaisms

It’s the musings of a college professor who is just so slightly better educated than I am… and a little more verbose. You’ll never see a critique of FDR’s administration like this again.

Enjoy!

Of course, by “cool”, I mean, “geeky as hell.”

Glenn Reynolds, the irascible law professor of Instapundit fame, enjoys throwing little articles like this at his unwitting readership. After digging a little further into the article, I found this…

Lord of the Rings as Property Law

Let’s take a hit of that, shall we?

The novel The Lord of the Rings was a phenomenon. The movie trilogy based upon it has grossed over a billion dollars and won a slew of Oscars.

But what’s really interesting about the work is that it is about property law.

Seems Like a Property Exam

Consider the following facts which seem ripped from a first year property law exam:

1. Sauron holds ownership in the Ring through accession, by working one thing (base metals) into a new thing (a ring of power)
2. He is dispossessed by Isildur, who now holds possession in the Ring.
3. Isildur loses the Ring (he has a manifest intent to exclude others but no physical control) when it slips off his finger as he was swimming in the Auduin river to escape from Orcs.
4. Déagol finds the Ring.
5. He is dispossessed by Sméagol (a.k.a. Gollum).
6. Gollum loses the Ring and it is finally found by Bilbo.
7. Bilbo gifts the Ring to Frodo. Later, Aragorn (the heir of Isildur) tells Frodo to carry the ring to Mordor, making Frodo his bailee.
8. Sam, assuming that Frodo is dead, takes the Ring according to instructions to help Frodo with the Ring in grave circumstances. Sam is acting here as a (fictional) bailee and he returns possession to Frodo after finding him still alive.
9. At the end of the book, Gollum restores his possession of the ring. Seconds later, he and the Ring are both destroyed. At this point all property held in the Ring disappears.

The article then proceeds to explain whether or not Sauron has a legal right to claim The Ring as his property. Go ahead and read the article - I’m not spoiling the ending for you.

This does make me wonder what other novels and pieces of literature can be examined with a purely legalistic mind. Would an examination of the legal constructs of 1984 be compelling? What about a legalistic examination of Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan?

Oooh… I just got goosebumps thinking about that last one. Who, in fact, really owns the Genesis device? Is it Dr. Carol Marcus? The United Federation of Planets? Khan Noonian Singh? Based on that analysis of the LoTR in the above post, it would seem that Khan is merely a possessor. What gets interesting, however, is that the UFP did, in fact, grant resources towards the construction of the Genesis Device (namely, the U.S.S. Reliant, among other things), so, depending on the terms of the grant provided to Dr. Marcus, the UFP may have sole legal ownership of the Genesis Device.

I’m stopping now.

The Newspaper Association of America announced today that total print advertising experienced the worst drop in 50 years last year (via Instapundit).

According to new data released by the Newspaper Association of America, total print advertising revenue in 2007 plunged 9.4% to $42 billion compared to 2006 — the most severe percent decline since the association started measuring advertising expenditures in 1950.

The drop-off points to an economic slowdown on top of the secular challenges faced by the industry. The second worst decline in advertising revenue occurred in 2001 when it fell 9.0%.

Of course it’s an economic slowdown - the newspapers say so. Based on the numbers, they would know it’s an economic slowdown better than anyone. After all, their economy just contracted by 9.0%. It does make you wonder how much recession reporting there would be if their advertising numbers went up, though.

One interesting quote, however:

There are signs that online revenue is beginning to slow as well. Internet ad revenue in 2007 grew 18.8% to $3.2 billion compared to 2006. In 2006, online ad revenue had soared 31.4% to $2.6 billion. In 2005, it jumped 31.4% to $2 billion.

As newspaper Web sites generate more advertising revenue, the growth rate naturally slows.

For those of you that are wondering why I’m pointing this out, let’s take a look at the numbers:

2005-2006: $2 billion to $2.6 billion (+$600 million)
2006-2007: $2.6 billion to $3.2 billion (+$600 million)

Yep - it’s slowing all right. Online revenue grew $600 million more than the previous year in 2006, and it grew $600 million more than the previous year in 2007. Since the second number is less than the first number, you can see that growth is definitely slowing, in much the same way that, if I’m doing 60 MPH for 100 miles, then do 60 MPH for 100 more miles, I’m going slower in that second stretch of 100 miles than I was in the first stretch. Makes sense, right?

(Leave inflation out of this, damn it! I’m trying to make a point.)

Having apparently solved the emo problem, Mexico’s government is moving on to the next big task - cleaning up drug-related crime on the US border. How to do it, though? Will they build a wall? Stage protests? Start a neighborhood watch?

Of course not. This is Mexico we’re talking about. They’re sending in the military.

Personally, I think this is a mistake. It’s clear that their intelligence on the presence of weapons of mass intoxication is highly faulty. Furthermore, invading Juarez will lead to the unnecessary loss of life and will simply lead to a quagmire. This intervention is obviously the work of Mexiburton. They’re just in it for the oil… or, y’know, whatever it is they have in Juarez. According to Wikipedia, they have narcotics, engineers, and a bunch of factories. I guess Mexiburton or Negrowater or whatever multinational consortium they have down there really needs some drugs, factories, and engineers. Yeah. That’s right. Think about it.

Thanks to Instapundit, I watched Fitna… and you can, too:

Note - scroll down to the bottom to actually view the video. If you want to find out why LiveLeak pulled it, feel free to press play at the embedded video here.

I just finished watching it, so my thoughts still aren’t quite set in stone yet. I can tell you that it is an extremely persuasive video. It makes its point well - there are a lot of militant Muslims and their beliefs are supported by the Koran. Of course, there are plenty of other non-Muslim groups that have beliefs backed up by scripture, too… like these guys:

There is a very distinct and profound difference, though… well, actually, two differences, though they are both interrelated. First, the Westboro Baptist Church, “fine” organization that it is, still hasn’t killed anyone or blown anything up. They’ve done just about everything short of that, mind you, and believe me when I tell you that I take great pride in the fact that they have chosen Reno, my home town, for special consideration. The second difference, though - and this is the most important - is why they haven’t blown anything up. It’s because they’re the fringe and they know it. They know that, if they try any sort of serious terrorism, the entire culture of the United States will come down on them with a power and a fury that will turn their little group into a sad historical footnote. The trouble with Muslim fundamentalists, especially in Europe, is that they either are the fringe and nobody’s bothered to tell them or that they really aren’t the fringe. In the end, it really doesn’t matter - the end result is the same. They kill people, blow up buildings, engage in “honor” killings, mutilate female genitalia, and all the other stupid, barbaric things they do because nobody has stopped them.

In order to stop people like this, you have to be willing to accept the fact that you and your culture are, in fact, superior to theirs in every conceivable way. You have to make it clear to them that they may say whatever they want (I mean that, by the way - they must be able to do that) but they have to play by the same rules as everyone else. If they try to engage in “honor” killings, you charge them and convict them with murder. If they try to mutilate a woman’s genitalia, you lock them up for (if nothing else) practicing medicine without a license. If they try to teach their kids how to hate, you take their children away from them. In short, you make it very clear that they can make as much noise as they want, but the instant they go one step past that, they will be dealt with.

It’s the only way.

EDIT: It would seem that LiveLeak has taken the video down. Thankfully, Google has rescued us from ourselves once more:

I installed Safari 3.1 for Windows today on my work PC.  I’m not going to say too much about it since there are other, better reviews out there already.  Besides, I’ve only used it for all of about an hour now.  Here are my thoughts thus far:

As I write this, I’m at hit 697 for the month. By tomorrow morning, I’m sure I’ll be at 700, and the month isn’t even over. Why is this momentous, you ask? The answer is simple.

The total hits to my blog in every single month preceding March add up to 889 total hits. We’re talking from June ‘07 to February ‘08, inclusively, and that includes one Instalanche in December. In one month alone, I’ll have nearly doubled the number of hits I’ve received at this blog. How is this possible, you ask? Again, the answer is simple.

Rachel Lucas.

Courtesy of Instapundit, I stumbled across an article from Power Line titled Higher Education in Minnesota. There was one line, however, that really caught my attention:

7 p.m.: Dr. Ward Churchill, genocide scholar, ”Genocide and the Dakota People”

Genocide? I’m not sure it qualifies as a genocide when I drive one. Seriously. We also haven’t killed off the Comanche or the Cherokee, either. Of course, it does make me wonder… does Volkswagen make a mid-sized truck called a Jew? ‘Cause that would be hilarious if they did… y’know, in a dead baby joke sort of way. Come to think of it, though, I guess it would be a VW Juden… hmm… that reminds me of a darkly funny joke I heard - it starts with, “How many Jews fit into a Volkswagen?”

(Note: New rule, effective immediately - No posting on latent caffeine rushes past midnight. I’m liable to piss myself off, to say nothing of the dozens of people that read this thing.)

(Another note: I’m going to try to keep my Holocaustic wit to myself from here on out.)

God, I love AltaVista… it’s the only way I can pretend to know a foreign language.

Today was looking so slow. I wasn’t sure what I was going to blog about. I wasn’t feeling the whole Obama thing, I didn’t feel like bashing on Hillary’s slipping hold on reality… in fact, I was tired of politics in general. Then, my boss sent me this:

Mexico’s Emo Witch Hunt: mob attacks in Mexico City and Guadalajara… Televisa VJ’s rants inspire violence… Emo kids fight back across the country…

With that, it feels like there’s a bright ray of sunshine in an otherwise dark, dreary, gray existence…

Earlier this week, Miss Rachel Lucas set us up by stating that it doesn’t matter whether you’re black or white - all that matters is if you look like an asshat. In Mexico, looking like an asshat (or a “sombrero del asno”, in the local parlance - have I mentioned that I love AltaVista?) is apparently punishable with fire, fisticuffs, and frequent kicks to the groin. Naturally, I find this completely hilarious, totally justified, and horrifically barbaric. It’s as if the entire country of Mexico stood up and said, “You cut that out RIGHT NOW, or I’m going to GIVE you something to cry about!” Wait, no… that’s not right. What they’re really saying is, “¡Usted corta eso hacia fuera AHORA, o voy A DARLE algo gritar alrededor!”

(God, it never gets old!)

One thing is certain - I have a newfound respect for Mexicans, their beliefs, and their culture of beating the living tar out of emo kids. Now, if we can just get them to work on hippies, we’ll be in business…

That’s right, folks - she posted yet another edict. Usually, she’s good for one of these a week, but she’s been rather prolific lately:

And lastly, Rich Jordan is today’s Favorite Commenter because he gets my art. Flattery will take you everywhere on Rachl Lukis dot com. Of the latest humptastic pic, he says:

What a lovely picture! It so captures the intent glint in Maggie’s eyes, the tripartite layers of satiny color in Sunny’s coat.

It expresses so well the reaction to an affront from behind, the difficulty in formulating and performing an appropriate response.

The lush greenery against which the lasses are profiled so perfectly sets off the warm coloration of their fur, and the calming earthtone of the decking, while the nearly stark white of Maggie’s bib, blaze, and paw draw the viewer’s eye away from, and therefore in reaction towards the tiny glint of Sunny’s pearly tooth, truly symbolic of her attempt to respond, the small flash that may lead to canine shining.

Yes, yes…yes. When I capture the reins of power over Earth, you will be my official Crafter of Dog Pic Explicative Descriptions.
- An answer and a question

I made sure to copy most everything so her edict would be quoted in context. One thing I never want to be accused of doing is quoting Rachel Lucas out of context.

This just in - the mayor of the worst city in the country is being charged with felonies:

The civic soap opera engulfing Detroit Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick took a new plot twist Monday when a county prosecutor charged the onetime rising political star with obstruction of justice, perjury and misconduct in office, all related to a romantic relationship with his former chief of staff.

Facing political catastrophe and a long prison term, Kilpatrick defiantly vowed to fight the civil felony charges, which grew out of an $8.4-million settlement of a lawsuit against him by police officials and the leaking of steamy romantic text messages between the mayor and longtime aide Christine Beatty.

So, let me see if I get this straight… the mayor of a city that is so abysmally run that every grocery store chain left months ago is criminally incompetent? Wow! I am in shock! Shock, I say! Shock and awe!

I’m a pretty libertarian-leaning guy most of the time, but, when it comes to immunizations, I’m definitely willing to embrace a bit of state-induced coercion to get the job done. You see, when it comes to communicable diseases, your choice to not vaccinate your children leads to my children getting sick, and I’m not okay with that. In fact, I’m of the firm believer that more is better when it comes to immunizations. I don’t care what it is - if they find a successful vaccine to the common cold, I’m there. I don’t care if it’s made out of pure mercury in a solution of U-235 derived from the stem cells of SIDS-downed babies. I don’t care if it makes me grow boobs. If it means that I won’t be getting sick for at least a week every winter while my customers play “hero”, I’m in. Besides, if I had boobs, I’d never have to leave the house.

Instapundit has been dealing with immunizations today, both pro and against, albeit definitely with a pro-immunization lean. In the “against” column, we have Michelle Malkin. She’s not “against”, exactly, but she’s definitely preaching a bit of caution:

The New York Times published a piece today about parents choosing not to expose their children to certain vaccines. This prompted blogger condemnations of those parents as “Bobo socipaths” and a recommendation from Glenn Reynolds that “we should make clear that parents who, with no genuine medical reason, forego vaccinating their kids are bad parents, and bad citizens.”

Well, what constitutes “genuine medical reason?” And which vaccines are we talking about? All of them? For all time? Not all vaccines are equal. And if you leave it to the medical establishment and Big Nanny public school officials to determine the definition of “genuine medical reason,” then any parent who questions any vaccine administration at any time in a child’s life will be deemed a “bad” parent and “bad” citizen. (emphasis mine - DC)

Well, yeah. Exactly. That’s because you are.

A coworker of mine once said, “Never attribute to malice that which can easily explained by stupidity.” A lot of people, however, insist on seeing malice in everything, backed by large, scary bureaucracies. It happens in every stripe of political life. Liberals have Big Corporations. Conservatives have Big Government. What’s fun about the vaccination-skeptical crowd is that it combines a little of both - it’s Big Pharma in conjunction with Public Education! It’s the same unholy union that brought us Ritalin! They’re killing our children!

Umm… no.

Here’s the deal - vaccinations aren’t subject to personal belief. Being a God-fearing Christian doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get your daughter an HPV vaccine. Sure, you raised her well enough to not sleep around, but that doesn’t mean you raised her future husband, now did you? Besides, do you really want your daughter getting cervical cancer because she dared to do something against God’s will? Same goes with Hepatitis B - the chances of something going wrong with a Hepatitis B vaccination, though greater than zero, are a heck of a lot less than the chances of actually getting Hepatitis B, and Hepatitis B is significantly worse and more debilitating than most of the possible side effects of the vaccine. Granted, the chances of getting Hepatitis B as an infant is low, but that’s the point - if you’re already engaging in high-risk behavior, it’s probably a little late to be getting vaccinated. But, of course, the only way to get Hepatitis B is to engage in risky lifestyles, right? Needles? Unprotected sex? Drug use? Hmm… what happens if your kid gets raped? What if your kid gets curious and starts playing with the biohazard cans at your local pediatrician? What happens if your kid goes to a park and somebody leaves a sharp little something lying around? What if your kid decides to engage in a “blood oath” with a friend? The list goes on and on and on… and it’s a heck of a lot easier to immunize a child before they can engage in anything that might even remotely lead to exchange of bodily fluids.

Here’s the important part, though - what if my kid engages in some of this behavior and, because the vaccine wasn’t infallible (few man-made things are, by the way) and you didn’t vaccinate your child, my child now has Hepatitis/Measels/Chickenpox/Whooping Cough/whatever? That’s the problem here. It doesn’t matter what choices my child or I might make, if you make the wrong choice, we’re still screwed. In short, your freedom ends where your fist hits my nose, and, in the case of communicable diseases, your fist hits my nose awfully fast.

I’m going to have to apologize to everyone today - I didn’t get much sleep last night. By the time the ESO and I returned home from visiting her family, it was pushing 11 p.m. and, by the time I was done putting my notes in from work so I would get paid for last week, it was pushing 1. Since I get up around 6:30 every morning, you can see the conundrum.

Meanwhile, on a more personal note, things have become somewhat interesting financially, and not in a particularly good way. For those of you unaware, the ESO and I have a son on the way - he’s due in July. We’re very happy about that and are quite certain we’ll be able to raise him in a positive and loving environment. That said, we ran the numbers and discovered a couple of very unpleasant truths:

1. I have way too many expenses right now. Between child support, monthly trips for visiting my first son, and student loans, I’m basically living off of half of my monthly after-tax salary. That’s not quite as bad as it might sound - I’m not making peanuts here - but it’s still not great, especially since the ESO has a classic student worker position with classic student worker hours and classic student worker wages. Of course, I realize that all of these problems are highly self-inflicted, but it’s still a little unnerving when you figure that, due to some poor choices in my early 20’s, I’m basically financially hosed for the next 20 years (i.e. until I stop paying child support and pay off my student loans). Needless to say, I’m not particularly thrilled. The moral of the story here? Even when you’re fresh out of high school, your choices matter - big time.

2. My current ride is a 15-year-old Dodge Dakota that gets about 18 MPG highway and runs on premium due to some problem with the fuel-air mixture. Right now, premium in Reno is selling for about $3.70/gallon and is going up precipitously. Since I put over 30,000 miles on that truck each year, I’m in a bit of a bind - I need something with much better gas mileage. However, because of point #1, the only way I’m going to be able to pull that off is to sell the truck via private party and buy something at auction (i.e. someplace where I can pay close to wholesale). This is all fine and dandy and, in fact, is one of my favorite ways of buying cars. However, there is a catch - generally speaking, most cars I find at wholesale need a bit of work. The nice thing about my truck is that I can actually fix it - it’s easy to get to everything, most everything in there calls for a regular set of wrenches and a socket set… nothing out of the ordinary. Most cars are a bit more hit and miss; I’ve had good luck with Dodges on that front (hence why I’m a Dodge guy), but even newer Dodges are a bit out of my league on that front. Consequently, whatever money I might save on gas would be lost in car repairs, which is, to put it mildly, a bit annoying.

Spent Easter weekend with the ESO’s folks - no complaints. Got some decent food, had some decent company, and I got to install a router that disables the Internet at predictable times so my ESO’s kid sister actually has one less reason to not do her homework at night. Good, good times. Of course, after a couple of days of that, I decided that, before I went to bed, I’d take care of my Rachel Lucas fix… and what do I find? That’s right - two new entries to the list…

Rupert reminded me to keep my sense of humor about all this, so I’ll close on this note: I hereby declare March 23 as Punch A Hippie In The Nuts Day. All you have to do to celebrate it is find a hippie, ask him how he feels about the military, and if he says anything other than “I love it because those guys make it possible for me to be a worthless hippie”, punch him right in the nuts.
- Deep breath.

Anyway, I held a high-level cabinet meeting with myself, and it was decreed that this blog requires a new category for an internationally influential new feature: The Daily Dog. I figure, if I want to take over operational management of Earth, the smart first step clearly is to exploit my pets on the web. I can think of no better path to overlord status. Thus every day there’ll be a new picture of one or both of these two furry retards.
- I’m gay for my new camera

So, let’s see here… punch uncooperative hippies on 3/23 and exploit her pets daily. Sounds like a plan, fearless leader!