Those kinds of things are illogical policies and they need to be responded to with illogic.
By the way, I hereby declare my office a donut sanctuary.
Category: Decline and fall
Yep
(Via Fillyjonk.)
A few quotes
Maybe pitchforks just aren’t enough.
*****
Thank God they didn’t know about Queen’s Blade…
*****
Gentlemen
Whilst marching from Portugal to a position which commands the approach to Madrid and the French forces, my officers have been complying diligently with your requests which have been sent by H.M ship from London to Lisbon and thence by dispatch to our headquarters. We have enumerated our saddles, bridles, tents and tent poles, and all manner of sundry items for which His Majesty’s Government holds me accountable. I have dispatched reports on the character, wit and spleen of every officer. Each item and every farthing has been accounted for , with two regrettable exceptions for which I beg your indulgence.
Unfortunately the sum of one shilling and ninepence remains unaccounted for in one infantry battalion’s petty cash and there has been a hideous confusion as to the number of jars of raspberry jam issued to one cavalry regiment during a sandstorm in western Spain. This reprehensible carelessness may be related to the pressure of circumstance, since we are at war with France, a fact which may come as a bit of a surprise to you gentlemen in Whitehall.
This brings me to my present purpose, which is to request elucidation of my instructions from His Majesty’s Government so that I may better understand why I am dragging an Army across these barren plains. I construe that perforce it must be one of two alternative duties, as given below. I shall pursue either one to the best of my ability, but I cannot do both:
1. To train an army of uniformed British clerks in Spain for the benefit of the accountants and copy-boys in London, or, perchance,
2. To see to it that the forces of Napoleon are driven from Spain.
Your most obedient servant
Wellington.
*****
As with most political analysis pieces, the Czar will follow convention and ask what are your thoughts? Whom did you like? Whom did you dislike? Although, don’t write in because the Czar doesn’t care what you think.
A few quotes
Next year, instead of buying TurboTax, I’ll just let the Chinese government file my taxes for me.
—J. Greely, in the comments here.
What is slavery? Well let us suppose Jewish rules applied … It is saying, “You can manage my life better than I can.”
What does government tell us these days? “We can manage your life better than you can.”
It’s time to stop privileging sanity.
The real Nightmare
Just when you thought you were safe from the St. Louis Jesuits:
Missa Meus Parum Equus. ((Or something like that; my Latin’s very rusty.))
(Via the comments at Josh’s place.)
Not Tweety Pie
There are still a few glitches, but it looks like I finally have my website back after a botched migration. (Thank you so much, InMotion Hosting, for a most memorable weekend.) To celebrate, here’s Sylvain Chomet to show why I am not a twit, featuring a cameo by President Selfie.
Update: It seems InMotion forgot to repoint both nameservers. Within 24 hours — in principle — everything should be working properly. I’ll believe it when I see it.
Update II: See also Terry Teachout.
Cluelessness, defined
Miscellaneous notes
• While I applaud most efforts to annoy prissy leftists, I’m not all that concerned about the “Sad Puppies.” I’ve never regarded the Hugo award as anything but a popularity contest, no more significant than the Nobel Peace Prize. ((It doesn’t help that they’re named for a lousy writer.)) ((The Nebula awards, which are chosen by writers, are more meaningful, but only slightly: in 1971, Gene Wolfe and R.A. Lafferty, the best writer and the most original writer of our time, both lost to Noah Ward.)) It’s hardly worth all the histrionics.
• A useful term: “gong farmer.” (Via Professor Mondo.)
• Yesterday was the twelfth anniversary of the launch of my first weblog. It was not my first website, though; I’ve had a web presence of some sort since the final years of the last century.
Anagrammatical thought
While reading about Memories Pizza, it occurred to me that what we have here is not so much “Selma envy” as “Salem envy.”
Nightmare fuel
Just 28 days until Walpurgisnacht.
Not an April Fool’s joke
Curious what exactly the “jazz hands” are that feminists demand instead of applause, I searched for the definition. It turns out that it’s a term with many meanings (no pictures, but still NSFW). Yeesh. I think that violent, unrestrained applause would be less upsetting than most varieties of “jazz hands.”
Thinking ahead
Here’s a bumper sticker for next year. You can download a larger version here.
(This is not my own idea, but I forgot who originally suggested it.)
Linkety-link
Some nonsense to pass the time while I wait for the plumber to replace the water heater so I can take a shower for the first time since Friday:
Everyone is linking to this, and so am I: I love the sound of a good fisking in the morning.
31. Ethereal Eggshell: Applied properly, this creates the absolutely vital impression that you do not sweat, menstruate, consume, or digest food.
32. Invisibility Indigo: Have you given birth to a child while not being a duchess? Are you over thirty in a town that is not New York or Los Angeles? Hush, you are a ghost. Ghosts are pretty when they are invisible.
…
42. Shame Scarlet: One of our favorite DIY looks! You can assemble it out of almost anything: fat deposits, acne scars, stretch marks, skin irregularities, makeup purchases, food preferences, and, our personal recommendation, failure to meet expectations compounded by the fact that you weren’t supposed to try.
I recently posted a little “spot the girl” quiz. Here’s another, more challenging one.
No, I don’t know which one she is, either.
Top Ten Unreleased Gaelic Whisky Names:
9 – Laphroaig Tigh-Eiridinn Loisgeach
Burning Hopsital – Intended for one of their special Feis Isle bottlings. But the producers felt that given their already pretty complicated distillery name the customers might be overchallenged by the pronunciation.
Tolkien’s original translation is justly famous and beloved. He treeherds an unwieldy ancient text into lyrical modern English and captures the vast scope and romance of the epic.
It is also deeply flawed.
Tolkien refers to Quendi people as “elves,” a common term in his time, but considered highly offensive today. And while Tolkien was a great scholar of the Quenya and Sindarin languages, his command of Late Vulgar Adûni was rudimentary at best, and his translation of the Red Book suffers for it.
Peter Jackson to film the Silmarillion, in 72 parts.
Sylvain Chomet, the creator of The Triplets of Belleville (recommended), tells the story of La Vieille Dame et Les Pigeons.
An evening with Richard Thompson:
Like curious thoughts
Apropos of nothing in particular, Lord Dunsany.
IN ZACCARATH
“Come,” said the King in sacred Zaccarath, “and let our prophets prophesy before us.”
A far-seen jewel of light was the holy palace, a wonder to the nomads on the plains.
There was the King with all his underlords, and the lesser kings that did him vassalage, and there were all his queens with all their jewels upon them.
Who shall tell of the splendour in which they sat; of the thousand lights and the answering emeralds; of the dangerous beauty of that hoard of queens, or the flash of their laden necks?
There was a necklace there of rose-pink pearls beyond the art of the dreamer to imagine. Who shall tell of the amethyst chandeliers, where torches, soaked in rare Bhyrinian oils, burned and gave off a scent of blethany?
(This herb marvellous, which, growing near the summit of Mount Zaumnos, scents all the Zaumnian range, and is smelt far out on the Kepuscran plains, and even, when the wind is from the mountains, in the streets of the city of Ognoth. At night it closes its petals and is heard to breathe, and its breath is a swift poison. This it does even by day if the snows are disturbed about it. No plant of this has ever been captured alive by a hunter.)
Enough to say that when the dawn came up it appeared by contrast pallid and unlovely and stripped bare of all its glory, so that it hid itself with rolling clouds.
“Come,” said the King, “let our prophets prophesy.”
Fifty shades of puce
Did machines write Fifty Shades of Crap Grey? Perhaps.
For those who missed it, here’s Dave Barry’s review of the book.
… Why was this book so incredibly popular? When so many women get so emotionally involved in a badly written, comically unrealistic porno yarn, what does this tell us? That women are basically insane? Yes.
A further depressing note: I spotted some “Fifty Shades” etc. wine this morning. Um, no thanks. (I was tempted to pick up a bottle of “Bourgeois Pig” on a different shelf for the sake of the label.)
Advisory
If the FEC makes rules that limit my First Amendment right to express my opinion on core political issues, I will not obey those rules.
For background, see Patterico and Dustbury.
I hope it doesn’t come to this, though. I’d really prefer not to discuss politics here more than absolutely necsssary. If I did, I would sound a lot like Mean Lizzie in her recent rant, and I’m already on blood pressure medication. I’d much rather post pictures of pretty girls cosplaying as battleships than contemplate old wrecks like Hillary.
What kind of monster?
(Via the Borderline Boys.)
Metallica may be a Big Name in metal, but I’ve never been able to take them seriously. ((When I do listen to their songs, I prefer Apocalyptica’s covers to the originals.)) Severian also finds them a bit silly, in an academic way.
Art or vandalism?
Whoever was working on the project across the street either finished the job or got bored, and it looks like this is its final state. It’s too ugly to be graffiti, so it must be art.
Today’s quote
The superior should rule and guide the world’s development.
Who said that? Was it a) a member of the president’s cabinet, or b) a bad guy in a very silly anime? The answer is below the fold.
Bubble vision
I assumed that I would spend the latter part of my life listening to Bach, sipping scotch and watching western civilization slowly decline through a pleasant silver age. However, stories such as J.G. Ballard’s “The Garden of Time” (pdf) and Gene Wolfe’s “And When They Appear” often come to mind these days. It’s possible I’ve been too optimistic:
Paradoxically, the key strengths of civilizations are also their central weaknesses. You can see that from the fact that the golden ages of civilizations are very often right before the collapse.
The Renaissance in Italy was very much like the Classic Maya. The apogee was the collapse. The Renaissance status rivalry between cities through art and science and warfare and architecture was a beautiful disaster, and it only lasted about 150 years. The Golden Age of Greece was the same thing: status rivalry with architecture, literature, and all these wonderful things—along with warfare—at the end of which Greece was conquered by Macedonia and remained under the control of foreign powers for 2,300 years.
We see this pattern repeated continuously, and it is one that should make us nervous. I just heard Bill Gates say that we are living in the greatest time in history. Now you can understand why Bill Gates would think that, but even if he is right, that is an ominous thing to say.
(Via Isegoria.)