Department of WTF?

From one of those throw-away in-flight magazines:

"Poison Oak" Tree Sculpture

The ancient spirit of "Poison Oak" springs to life in a pliable composite that wraps around your tree, adding mystical character and spirit to your very own forest.

This work is so realistic, your guests will think your forest is springing to life!

What on God's green earth does "realistic" mean in this context? What part of reality does this thing purport to accurately depict? And what is the "ancient spirit" of "Poison Oak"? Does this have something to do with modern prayers directed to the Great God Cortisone, while our forebears, in the twilight of civilization, could only resort to the laying-on of cow dung?

My guests will think . . . .what??!?? My guests will begin muttering to themselves about dosage modifications for my medication. That's what my frakkin' guests will think.

Kerry in Wonderland

Some photographs just don't need captions, such as this one of John Kerry once again selling out his country. But in case you feel the need for captions, there's always THIS.

Mark Your Calendar

Muslim is the new Gay

Mark Steyn opines:

This month, the CBC launches a new sitcom, Little Mosque On The Prairie. That’s a hit title, but I kinda wonder if the show itself will be quite as funny. I’m all for “edgy” “dangerous” comedy that “explores” “controversial” territory, and the interaction of Islam and small-town Canada would appear to offer rich and highly topical possibilities. But I wonder if in practice the joke won’t – nine times out of ten – be on the “irrational” fears and woeful ignorance of the white-bread hicks while the Muslims are droll and amusing about the deplorably provincial prejudices. In other words, if the mullahs will forgive me, Muslim is the new gay. A decade or so back, sitcoms began introducing gay characters who get all the sharpest wittiest lines. They’re curiously desexed gays (butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths, never mind anywhere else), just as these will, I’d wager, prove to be curiously deIslamized Muslims. But the intended impact is the same: to make Islam something only uptight squares fret about.

What About Frenchmen?

The Herald Sun (Australia) reports:

A ROW has erupted over Muslim-only washrooms at La Trobe University that can be accessed only with a secret push-button code.

Muslim students have exclusive access to male and female washrooms on campus, sparking claims of bias and discrimination.

The university and Islamic leaders have defended the washrooms as vital to Muslim students' prayer rituals.

[snip]

Victorian Muslim community leader Yasser Soliman said the washrooms were necessary.

He said the separate facilities were also due to concerns from non-Muslim students.

"Muslims need to wash their feet before prayer and in the past there have been complaints about them washing their feet in sinks, so this is a happy medium," he said.

Mr Soliman said most universities provided Muslim-only prayer and washrooms for students.

A La Trobe University spokesman said the washrooms were established with the advice of senior Muslim religious leaders.

[snip]

La Trobe University Christian Union vice-president Richard Thamm backed the washrooms.

"It's part of their religion, they need to wash in a special way before they pray," he said.

And I need to paint designs on my ass with three colors of lipstick before I pray. Surely that's more alarming to the local yokels than mere foot-washing. And what about those peculiar Frenchmen, who seldom bathe, but use a bidet?

Muslims, like everyone else, just want to come to the West for the economic opportunities, for religious and cultural freedom, and to live peacefully and harmoniously with their new countrymen of whatever race, religion or ethnic origin.

So long as they don't have to use the same public restrooms.

Maybe I'm Simple-Minded

I grew up on a poultry farm, back in the day when the chickens were out on a range with little houses in which they could roost at night. Not often, but once or twice, a local dog would decide he had a taste for chickens and take to killing a few every night. There was only one solution to that sort of destructive behavior: The dog would have to be put down.

So what are we to do with this:

Iraqi schoolgirls taking their midterm exams were the target of a mortar attack Sunday morning that killed five of the students and wounded 21, an Iraqi interior ministry official said.

Insurgents fired at least three mortar rounds at the al-Khulood girls secondary school in western Baghdad, the official said.

The girls who were killed were between the ages of 12 and 14 years.

And while you're pondering my simple-mindedness, explain to me why killing such animals has, according to John Kerry, made the United States an "international pariah?"

Killing mad dogs who kill school girls is behavior so beyond the bounds of reason that . . . . that what, John?

Eat Food

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

"That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy. I hate to give away the game right here at the beginning of a long essay, and I confess that I’m tempted to complicate matters in the interest of keeping things going for a few thousand more words. I’ll try to resist but will go ahead and add a couple more details to flesh out the advice. Like: A little meat won’t kill you, though it’s better approached as a side dish than as a main. And you’re much better off eating whole fresh foods than processed food products. That’s what I mean by the recommendation to eat “food.” Once, food was all you could eat, but today there are lots of other edible foodlike substances in the supermarket. These novel products of food science often come in packages festooned with health claims, which brings me to a related rule of thumb: if you’re concerned about your health, you should probably avoid food products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a good indication that it’s not really food, and food is what you want to eat."

From "Unhappy Meals" by Michael Pollan in today's New York Times.

Some Skinny, Nerdy 11-year-old boy . . . .

. . . . who never has to worry about getting a date -- the chicks will be lining up:

I'm Winston Wolfe. I solve problems.

Blogging has been light of late, as I have been called upon to devote a lot of time to a project at work. What sort of project? Remember Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction?

Pretty much this sort of project:

Animal House

We remain steadfast in our belief regarding the next popular selection from the buffet of sexual perversion. Now that deciding to be gay, bisexual, transgendered, or Episcopalian is viewed as akin to deciding between loafers with tassels and those with that little slot for pennies, it is our prediction that sex between men and boys will be the next big thing. We'll hear all the same arguments about personal decisions, freedom, absence of victims, Greeks, narrow-mindedness, famous artists and the like. And, ultimately, the State will step in with classes for middle-school boys in how to wisely choose a sugar-daddy, if that's what you little tykes decide to do. Because they're just going to, don't you know?

But despite our views on the subject we are not so dogmatic as to insist that there is no competition for the honor of being the next rest stop on that great turnpike to Gomorrah. No indeed. The Los Angeles Times reports:

"Zoo," premiering before a rapt audience Saturday night at Sundance, manages to be a poetic film about a forbidden subject, a perfect marriage between a cool and contemplative director (the little-seen "Police Beat") and potentially incendiary subject matter: sex between men and animals. Not graphic in the least, this strange and strangely beautiful film combines audio interviews (two of the three men involved did not want to appear on camera) with elegiac visual re-creations intended to conjure up the mood and spirit of situations. The director himself puts it best: "I aestheticized the sleaze right out of it."

No doubt.

What?

DON'T PANIC!

The BBC reports:

Seismologists have revealed that the Boxing Day earthquake in Dumfries was the strongest to have its epicentre in the region in more than 200 years.

The effects were felt as far away as Glasgow and Paisley.

[snip]

The British Geological Survey said it was the biggest quake in Dumfriesshire since records began in 1775.

We now ask that our California readers make sure they've finished swallowing anything liquid, and chewing anything solid. Remove lit cigarettes from mouth.

The quake's magnitude? A whopping 3.6 on the Richter Scale.

HERE is a list, maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey, of measurable quakes in Northern California, over the last seven days. More than 60 are listed, most pretty small, but there was a 3.8 last Friday.

We suppose it's all what you get used to.

If we ask nicely, we can perhaps induce the Hired Hand to tell us about his first experience with a quake in Northern California, shortly after arriving from the East to attend school. Within a few days of his having been left goggle-eyed by a ground wave that the locals mostly didn't notice, a series of thunderstorms -- unusual for NoCal -- rumbled through. It was then the turn of the Cali natives to panic, while the folks from the East tried to figure out what all the fuss was about. Those hardy San Franciscans (and not a few of the nonchalant fellows from the east coast) would have been even more alarmed had they noticed that their brethren from the Great Plains automatically had scanned the sky for funnel clouds.

What if we're the Baddies?

For those who attended public school, HERE is a Waffen-SS officer's uniform, including the totenkopf.

I Don't Even Know What To Say.

I don't know what this is, and I don't even care to ask. Try to look at this for more than 5 seconds and not wet your pants laughing. That's all.

Iraq

The President has a plan. It may be a good plan, a bad plan, a successful plan, or not really much of a plan.

Then there's the other party, whose plan is reviewed by Victor Davis Hanson:

After listening tonight to Wesley Clark, Dick Durbin, Tom Vilsack, Nancy Pelosi, etc. I still can't for the life of me learn what they want to do. Not one will support Ted Kennedy's cut-off of funds. Apparently the party line is that we can't win, but we're afraid to pull out in case we do, and so we will equivocate as we watch the battlefield and make the necessary rhetorical adjustments just in time.

I think that's just about right. It would not be entirely unfair for Democrats to say:

This is the President's war, and it has been conducted as he thought best. What he's done has not worked, and we have no confidence that what he proposes will work any better. We don't have any better ideas, but as Commander-in-Chief it's his job to come up with ideas about making war. We'll give him six months, at which time we'll pass a resolution calling for him to bring the troops home with all deliberate speed. Three months later, if withdrawal is not proceeding apace, we will vote to cut off funds for the Iraq war as of three months later.

Nothing like this will happen, of course, because it would involve taking responsibility, something Congressmen and Senators are allergic to.

College Life

When we were in school, we took courses with titles like "Accounting," "Microeconomic Theory," "Theory of the Firm," and "Production Management." In law school there were edgy subjects like "Contracts," and "Negotiable Instruments." But then we attended state schools, where the principal attraction was the price, and our primary purpose was to acquire some knowledge, skill, or credential that might be translated into rent money.

If money is no object, and neither knowledge nor skills your goal, there are today other choices.

Occidental College, for example, is a small, private, liberal arts school located in darkest Los Angeles. And it has something called a "Department of Critical Theory and Social Justice," which is offering some pretty interesting courses. First there's CTSJ 342:

342. THE PHALLUS.

A survey of theories of the phallus from Freud and Lacan through feminist and queer takings-on of the phallus. Topics include the relation between the phallus and the penis, the meaning of the phallus, phallologocentrism, the lesbian phallus, the Jewish phallus, the Latino phallus, and the relation of the phallus and fetishism. Prerequisite: a 200-level CTSJ class. Emphasis topic: Queer Studies.

If you're not sure that you're ready to find out just what a "lesbian phallus" might be, or how to work "phallologocentrism" into your small talk, you may want to opt for Critical Theory and Social Justice 286:

286. WHITENESS.

This course seeks to engage the emergent body of scholarship designated to deconstruct whiteness. It will examine the construction of whiteness in the historic, legal, and economic contexts which have allowed it to function as an enabling condition for privilege and race-based prejudice. Particular attention will be paid to the role of religion and psychology in the construction of whiteness. Texts will include Race Traitor, Critical White Studies, The Invention of the White Race, The Abolition of Whiteness, White Trash, and Even the Rat was White. Prerequisite: a 100-level CTSJ class. Emphasis topic: Critical Race Theory.

Do you suppose they mean "designed" to deconstruct whiteness? Or do they refer to some professor who doesn't have to play defense? While we're all for "enabling conditions," we're a tad fuzzy on what "the construction of whiteness" would entail. Personally, I was born; but perhaps others were assembled from pale items acquired via mail-order.

More to our taste is CTSJ 180:

180. STUPIDITY.

Stupidity is neither ignorance nor organicity, but rather, a corollary of knowing and an element of normalcy, the double of intelligence rather than its opposite. It is an artifact of our nature as finite beings and one of the most powerful determinants of human destiny. Stupidity is always the name of the Other, and it is the sign of the feminine. This course in Critical Psychology follows the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, Gilles Deleuze, and most recently, Avital Ronell, in a philosophical examination of those operations and technologies that we conduct in order to render ourselves uncomprehending. Stupidity, which has been evicted from the philosophical premises and dumbed down by psychometric psychology, has returned in the postmodern discourse against Nation, Self, and Truth and makes itself felt in political life ranging from the presidency to Beevis and Butthead. This course examines stupidity.

We're not making this up. The catalog entries are HERE, HERE and HERE.

H/T to the Young America's Foundation's "The Dirty Dozen: America’s Most Bizarre and Politically Correct College Courses."

And, we can't help but point out, the deconstructionist critical thinkers at Occidental have misspelled "Beavis and Butt-Head."

p.s. No -- we have no idea what "organicity" might actually be, let alone what these folks think they mean. And, yes -- we also know that "normalcy" isn't actually a word (they mean "normality"), although Mr. Harding thought that it was.

A Public Service

We present this wildlife documentary as a public service to our readers. You may have seen it in high school:

You had no idea . . .

. . . . how glad you'd be that you'd given up booze months before you watched the Rose Parade.

From the San Francisco Chronicle.

Grim Milestone

The New York Times
Time Magazine
CNN
The CBC
The Los Angeles Times

Pillars of journalism. If one but had the time to consult with all these independent news sources, one would have a truly broad and complete view of world events.

Or not so much.

January 1, 2007