Is there any subject that can't be examined by a poet? Here we have biology, in a Shakespearian sonnet by English poet John Masefield (1878–1967):

What am I, Life?

What am I, Life? A thing of watery halt
Held in cohesion by unresting cells,
Which work they know not why, which never halt,
Myself unwitting where their Master dwells
I do not bid them, yet they toil, they spin
A world which uses me as I use them;
Nor do I know which end or which begin
Nor which to praise, which pamper, which condemn.
So, like a marvel in a marvel set,
I answer to the vast, as wave by wave
The sea of air goes over, dry or wet,
Or the full moon comes swimming from her cave,
Or the great sun comes forth: this myriad I
Tingles, not knowing how, yet wondering why.

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I just got a spam e-mail from Tom Vilsack, Democratic governor of Iowa, and I presume a future presidential candidate. Don't ask me how I got on his mailing list, I have no earthly idea.

But apparently his PAC has been running a contest for the best ten word slogan to represent the Democratic Party. The contest is now down to the final ten slogans submitted by ten "activists."*

Funny thing about the finalists. Four of them aren't even ten words long. Typical Democrats. Always thinking the rules don't apply to them.

Anyways, I think it's unfair that we conservatives weren't allowed to get in on this contest. Do you all have any ideas for ten word slogans that encapsulize the Democratic Party?

I'll start it off:

"Democrats - because national security makes my head hurt too much."
_______________

* I love that word. To me it's a euphemism for jobless looney.

[cross-posted at The Cotillion]

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I must confess that I've never heard of Bavarian Dingle Loaf. But apparently it's like catnip to a kitten. Or a sex-kitten. The Weekly World News confirms this fact:

HEY, GUYS! You can bed more babes than you can shake a stick at by feeding them a medley of three "sex foods" that drive women wild with desire: Raw oysters, foot-long weenies, and the Old World favorite, "Bavarian dingle loaf!"

"Nothing is 100 percent, of course. But in nine cases out of 10, women who eat these foods are going to come on strong. And they aren't going to care what you look like or how much money you have.

"Bavarian dingle loaf is the icing on your cake. You can buy all the ingredients to make it from scratch. Or you can just do what I do: Buy a can of biscuit dough and knead it all together into a big ball.

"Then roll it out by hand into the shape of manly privates. You can even throw in family jewels on one end if you like."

Bill K., of Franklin, Tenn., says he tried the wonder foods on his female supervisor at work, "a real witch who hated my guts."

"I took oysters and the dingle bread to work, and gave them to her for lunch," he recalls. "The next thing you know we're in the stockroom doing it like Chihuahuas in heat.

"I even got a raise out of it!"

Seriously though. I don't know how scientific this research is. But I'd be willing to bet if you showed up at work with a penis shaped pastry for your female boss, you'd probably be cleaning out your desk before lunch.

Update: In case your interested: Penis shaped cake pans. Or if you really curious, and you're not at work, here are examples of some finished products within that genre.

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Mark Steyn's City Magazine essay [via Hugh Hewitt] is my second must read recommendation for today.

Find it here and read the whole dang thing.

Key passages [all emphases mine]:

If Belgium becomes a nuclear power, the Dutch have no reason to believe it would be a factor in, say, negotiations over a joint highway project. But IranÂ’s nukes will be a factor in everything. If you think, for example, the European Union and others have been fairly craven over those Danish cartoons, imagine what theyÂ’d be like if a nuclear Tehran had demanded a formal apology, a suitable punishment for the newspaper, and blasphemy laws specifically outlawing representations of the Prophet. Iran with nukes will be a suicide bomber with a radioactive waist.

. . .

In 1989, with the Warsaw Pact disintegrating before his eyes, poor beleaguered Mikhail Gorbachev received a helpful bit of advice from the cocky young upstart on the block: “I strongly urge that in breaking down the walls of Marxist fantasies you do not fall into the prison of the West and the Great Satan,” Ayatollah Khomeini wrote to Moscow. “I openly announce that the Islamic Republic of Iran, as the greatest and most powerful base of the Islamic world, can easily help fill up the ideological vacuum of your system.”

Today many people in the West don’t take that any more seriously than Gorbachev did. But it’s pretty much come to pass. As Communism retreated, radical Islam seeped into Africa and south Asia and the Balkans. Crazy guys holed up in Philippine jungles and the tri-border region of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay who’d have been “Marxist fantasists” a generation or two back are now Islamists: it’s the ideology du jour.

. . .

With the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, a British subject, Tehran extended its contempt for sovereignty to claiming jurisdiction over the nationals of foreign states, passing sentence on them, and conscripting citizens of other countries to carry it out. Iran’s supreme leader instructed Muslims around the world to serve as executioners of the Islamic Republic—and they did, killing not Rushdie himself but his Japanese translator, and stabbing the Italian translator, and shooting the Italian publisher, and killing three dozen persons with no connection to the book when a mob burned down a hotel because of the presence of the novelist’s Turkish translator.

IranÂ’s de facto head of state offered a multimillion-dollar bounty for a whack job on an obscure English novelist. And, as with the embassy siege, he got away with it.

. . .

[I]n the 17 years between the Rushdie fatwa and the cartoon jihad, what was supposedly a freakish one-off collision between Islam and the modern world has become routine. We now think it perfectly normal for Muslims to demand the tenets of their religion be applied to society at large: the government of Sweden, for example, has been zealously closing down websites that republish those Danish cartoons. As Khomeini’s successor, Ayatollah Khamenei, has said, “It is in our revolution’s interest, and an essential principle, that when we speak of Islamic objectives, we address all the Muslims of the world.” Or as a female Muslim demonstrator in Toronto put it: “We won’t stop the protests until the world obeys Islamic law.”

Back when nuclear weapons were an elite club of five relatively sane world powers, your average Western progressive was convinced the planet was about to go ka-boom any minute. The mushroom cloud was one of the most familiar images in the culture, a recurring feature of novels and album covers and movie posters. There were bestselling dystopian picture books for children, in which the handful of survivors spent their last days walking in a nuclear winter wonderland. Now a state openly committed to the annihilation of a neighboring nation has nukes, and we shrug: CanÂ’t be helped. Just the way things are. One hears sophisticated arguments that perhaps the best thing is to let everyone get Â’em, and then no one will use them. And if IranÂ’s head of state happens to threaten to wipe Israel off the map, we should understand that this is a rhetorical stylistic device thatÂ’s part of the Persian oral narrative tradition, and it would be a grossly Eurocentric misinterpretation to take it literally.

[W]e face a choice between bad and worse options. There can be no “surgical” strike in any meaningful sense: Iran’s clients on the ground will retaliate in Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, and Europe. Nor should we put much stock in the country’s allegedly “pro-American” youth. This shouldn’t be a touchy-feely nation-building exercise: rehabilitation may be a bonus, but the primary objective should be punishment—and incarceration. It’s up to the Iranian people how nutty a government they want to live with, but extraterritorial nuttiness has to be shown not to pay. That means swift, massive, devastating force that decapitates the regime—but no occupation.

I think our main focus (while we still have the luxury of time) should be on fomenting internal opposition to the regime -- even what you might call internal strife. Take the mullahs minds off the outside world. Make them fear for their own survival. Promote a viable alternative to religious fascism, then give the people of Iran a gentle shove in that direction.

Sure, the days are gone when a Kermit Roosevelt could overthrow Mossadegh with about five guys, a pickup truck and 100 grand in "walking around money." But we can do it, with a little more of the same applied skullduggery, 21st Century style. The New York Times would have to be kept out of the loop, and I'm not sure that's possible when there's a whistleblower around every pentagon corner who thinks he's a hero with a book deal on the way.

Really though, as Steyn's article makes clear, there shouldn't be any debate about the stakes in this newest incarnation of the Great Game. And somebody needs to get on it.

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I just got a spam e-mail with a new twist. I'm sure you have all gotten those poorly written e-mails from Ojibwe Mumbojibwe of Nigeria, asking for your assistance in an "urgent matter." Well now they've gotten wiser. Here's the twist:

Good day,

My name is Sgt. John Crews Loius, I am an American soldier, I serve in the Military of the 1st Armored Division in Iraq, as you know we have being attacked by insurgents everyday and car bombs. We where lucky to move funds belonging to Saddam Hussein?s family hopping it was a bomb in the box, later we find out it was a fiscal cash .

The total amount is US$25,000,000 Twenty Five Million United State dollars in cash, mostly 100 dollar bills which is still in our co sturdy at the military base camp, now we find it as a Big Risk on us if our commandant nor the Iraqis People get to find out about this box of money because we are not allowed to have any money in our position for that We are seeking for a trustworthy foreign business partner who can help us in receiving this box of money

so that He/She may invest it for us and keep our share for banking. This is our plan of sharing my partner and I will take 55%, you take the other 45%.

No stress attached, for we have made all necessary arrangement for shipping it out of Iraq, Iraq is a war zone. We planed on using diplomatic courier service for shipping the money out in one large silver box declaring it as family valuables using diplomatic immunity.

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Wretchard posted a story [from I do not know where], which is simply horrifying.

During the Iran-Iraq War, the Ayatollah Khomeini imported 500,000 small plastic keys from Taiwan. ... After Iraq invaded in September 1980, it had quickly become clear that Iran's forces were no match for Saddam Hussein's professional, well-armed military. To compensate ... Khomeini sent Iranian children ... to the front lines. There, they marched in formation across minefields toward the enemy, clearing a path with their bodies. Before every mission, one of the Taiwanese keys would be hung around each child's neck. It was supposed to open the gates to paradise for them.

At one point, however, the earthly gore became a matter of concern. ... Such scenes would henceforth be avoided ... Before entering the minefields, the children [now] wrap themselves in blankets and they roll on the ground, so that their body parts stay together after the explosion of the mines and one can carry them to the graves."

These children who rolled to their deaths were part of the Basiji, a mass movement created by Khomeini in 1979 ... And yet, today, it is a source not of national shame, but of growing pride. Since the end of hostilities against Iraq in 1988, the Basiji have grown both in numbers and influence. They have been deployed, above all, as a vice squad to enforce religious law in Iran, and their elite "special units" have been used as shock troops against anti-government forces. In both 1999 and 2003, for instance, the Basiji were used to suppress student unrest. And, last year, they formed the potent core of the political base that propelled Mahmoud Ahmadinejad-- a man who reportedly served as a Basij instructor during the Iran-Iraq War--to the presidency. ... He regularly appears in public wearing a black-and-white Basij scarf, and, in his speeches, he routinely praises "Basij culture" and "Basij power" ... A younger generation of Iranians, whose worldviews were forged in the atrocities of the Iran-Iraq War, have come to power, wielding a more fervently ideological approach to politics than their predecessors. The children of the Revolution are now its leaders.

Clash of civilizations my eye. If that actually happened, those are the acts of barbarians -- worse than barbarians -- and not anything near civilized men.

Posted by: annika at 10:23 AM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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E.M. proves again why she is a daily must read.

Daily, mind you.

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Just be patient with me. I'm sure this PPTSP obsession is just a phase I'm going through. Or maybe it's my true calling. Who knows?

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I just read an interesting article about John Updike. I've never read him. Are there any Updike fans out there? Should I give him a try?

Correction: Actually, when I was in undergrad, I tried to read Memories Of The Ford Administration, but it was pretty boring, so I never finished it. But I'm wondering if the Rabbit books are better.

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Happy Easter everybody! Here's your Sunday comic.

[Not that you asked for a Sunday comic. But seriously, if I hadn't forced myself to finish my taxes and other errands yesterday I would have posted like twenty of these.]

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Addictive, ain't it?

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1 Annika, I've made a few of these myself, but when I right to click to save my "art", there's no "save as" feature. Wtf? What to do?

Posted by: Mark at April 15, 2006 12:38 PM (Vg0tt)

2 if you're using stripcreator, you have to open an account to save it. Otherwise do a screen print and save that file to your photo editor.

Posted by: annika at April 15, 2006 12:46 PM (fxTDF)

3 Yes, I just checked under the FAQ section and found it. THANK YOU!

Posted by: Mark at April 15, 2006 12:50 PM (Vg0tt)

4 MS Paint doesn't want to cut images which are bigger than the screen. How do you reduce size, etc? Microsoft. *Sigh*

Posted by: M at April 15, 2006 01:14 PM (Vg0tt)

5 MS Paint? That's like the stone ages, Mark. I thought everybody had photoshop. Need any windows 3.0 tips? How about Wordperfect 5.1, i can help you with that maybe. Did you try loading it onto your 5¼ inch floppy? i'm a little rusty on my DOS commands, are you getting a correct C: prompt? ; )

Posted by: annika at April 15, 2006 01:38 PM (fxTDF)

6 That was helpful.

Posted by: Mark at April 15, 2006 02:48 PM (7ukDp)

7 I love it when my girl gets harsh, lmao.

Posted by: Casca at April 15, 2006 05:32 PM (2gORp)

8 Casca, I'm a Mac-head, so Annie was speaking a foreign language as far as I was concerned. Kevin

Posted by: Kevin Kim at April 15, 2006 11:48 PM (1PcL3)

9 GIMP is a good image manipulation program, free at gimp.org

Posted by: will at April 16, 2006 05:46 PM (h7Ciu)

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Vonski obtained some frightening video of a terrorist training camp.

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What can I say? I'm a slave to my art.

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I'm taking a break from doing my taxes, so I can bash the mainstream media yet again. I'm just in that kind of mood.

Here it is, April 14, 2006, and it looks like we're on the verge of a second Holocaust. The Iranian madman, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said the scariest shit today that's probably been said since the Wannsee Conference.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called Israel a "permanent threat" to the Middle East that will "soon" be liberated. He also appeared to again question whether the Holocaust really happened.

"Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation," Ahmadinejad said at the opening of a conference in support of the Palestinians. "The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm."

. . .

He did not say how this would be achieved, but insisted to the audience of at least 900 people: "Believe that Palestine will be freed soon."

"The existence of this (Israeli) regime is a permanent threat" to the Middle East, he added. "Its existence has harmed the dignity of Islamic nations."

That should make everybody worried.

On this day after Passover, this Good Friday, this Easter weekend, I think we all should take some time out to pray very hard. Pray for Israel. Pray for ourselves. And pray for civilization. Because there is a madman out there who wants to finish the job Hitler started.

And I don't want to hear about how it's all rhetoric, and we shouldn't worry because the Iranians would be foolish to attack Israel. Just listen to the man, and then try to tell me he doesn't want to be known as the guy that killed all the Jews.

This is also the week we found out that they've successfully enriched uranium, by the way.

And yet... and yet! Time magazine tells us we should be worrying about global warming. Even though scientists don't even agree whether it exists. Talk about sexed-up intelligence reports! Talk about fake threats! Those guys need to pull their heads out of their asses and smell their own shit.

Ahmadinejad has been going crazy since at least October of last year, and do you know how many cover stories Time has done about Iran?

Zero.

In fact, Time has not done a cover story even remotely dealing with Iran since 1991, when the title piece was called: "Ollie North Tells His Story: Reagan Knew Everything."

Just out of curiosity, do you know how many times global warming has made the cover of Time since 1987? If you guessed nine (twice in '87, once in '88, twice in '92, and then again in 2001, 2002, 2005 and most recently this month), you were right.

This is not surprising. Time is after all the news organization who brought us "the whistleblowers" as persons of the year. But I think it's "time" they actually started paying attention to what's really important, and putting it on their cover.

Or not. Either way, I won't be buying that rag.

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I know there's no M in NBC. You try coming up with clever titles all the time.

Anyways, I had the misfortune of watching NBC's Nightly News tonight, which is something I haven't done in quite a few years. After spending the first couple of segments building their case against Rumsfeld, the network turned its evil eye on the legendary 10th Mountain Division, currently in Afghanistan hunting Taliban.

Here's a transcript and link to the video.

What seemed odd at first, later became annoying, then maddening. Jim Maceda seemed to spend at least as much time talking about himself as he did talking about the 10th Mountain.

An example:

. . . gunmen sprayed our campsite with machine gunfire, just as we prepared to sleep, sending me digging for cover. Two insurgents were wounded, fleeing into the mountains. It was my closest call in 30 years of reporting. [emphasis mine]

Another example:

At dawn, we began the grueling 4,000-foot descent. I carried a 50-pound pack. My cameraman, Kyle Eppler, had that plus a 50-pound car battery, for power.

Interestingly, Maceda did find it important to mention the four soldiers who needed medical care after the march. I suppose he did that to show how macho he was by contrast.

Maceda couldn't resist adding one more reminder of the hardships he endured to bring us "the story." In closing, he says it's

an often forgotten war that is hard work for the military and the media covering it.

I appreciate Maceda's effort, but I do not need to know about it. In fact, I thought the reporter was not supposed to be part of the story. Instead of hearing about Maceda and his cameraman, I would rather have known a few more relevant details like: How many bad guys have we blown away and/or how many rat-holes have we flame-throwered?

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Fresh out of the inbox:

hi, i read ur email and dam it ihave a crush on lindsay so could u pleasetell me her phone no nd email id please i promise i'll not misuse it.please hope u wont ditch me this is pretty serious and i am serious while writing this.I promise to never misuse it andif i do so kill me cause now i cant live without her if some how i get an oppurtinity to go to america i'll definately will proposeher my name is [redacted] and i am frm India.Thanking and waiting for ur support please.

Your Faithfully
       [redacted]

Aaron Carter, Wilmer Valderrama, Chad Michael Murray, Adam Levine, Sean Lennon, and finally... [redacted] from India.

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Step two: Introduce new characters.

Step three: Develop storyline.

Step four: Establish conflict.

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Listening to talk radio, I got the impression that bookstores are run by sneaky liberal kooks whose sole mission in life is to corrupt our minds through product placement. Which may be largely true, but not in all cases.

Cameron, of Woody's Woundup recently discovered that an anti-LDS book was being featured on an Easter display at the bookstore where he works.

Irked, he wrote a letter.

The book is Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven . . . . It is not a happy or religiously inspirational book to read, certainly. The back cover alone, which describes the Mormon church as "Taliban-like", would be amusing in some other context. The book itself is less amusing, arguing that Mormons - all Mormons, and not just a few polygamist nutjobs - are potentially violent, perhaps murderously so, precisely because of our religion. (Yes, I am Mormon.)

Well, Krakauer is certainly free to have such a view and to write it, just as B&N is free to sell his book in an open market place.

What I want to know is, how did this book end up on two - count them, 2 - different displays on Barnes & Noble's display tables? And, in regards to at least one table, I'm talking about Store List books, books that some yahoo in a cubicle in Marketing at B&N's headquarters has decided need to be displayed on specific tables or endcaps in the store.

Under the Banner of Heaven appears on both the "Religion & Inspiration" table and, amazingly, the Easter table.

It boggles the mind. Unless I missed one, Krakauer's book is the ONLY negatively-themed book on BOTH tables. As it is frankly a sloppily-researched attack on a major religion, what is it doing on these displays?

B&N wrote back.

You are absolutely correct. Under the Banner of Heaven should never have been included with the Easter display we are glad you took the time to bring this to our attention. It was an oversight on the buyers end, and we hope you accept our apologies. It is never our intention to insult our customers or our Booksellers.

There is a message that went out on BN.Inside today instructing the stores to remove the title from the Easter table and place it in Trade Paperback Favorites.

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