Wikipedia City Slickers

"The episode makes frequent references to dialogue gaffes in the film, such as Luther Strickland referring to his farm as a 'walnut ranch,' and the gas attendant's pronunciation of 'homicidal' and 'fromokaidal.' "

Them there damn city slickers ain't got no clue nohow. Can't talk shop about no walnut ranching until you've broken in your first walnut.

Ornery little bastards. Have your both hands full just staying in the saddle.

I still remember my first walnut rodeo back in '86. The dust, the sweat, and the blood.

Was that little fucker or me in the end. He broke my leg; I broke hisn.

Had to shoot him. Did you ever try shooting a walnut bucking on three legs?

Emptied a whole mag of .45 ACP at him. Was all over the corral, that fucker.

Government should have bombed Wikipedia long ago. Little bastard commie compadres of that pinko traitor Assange.

Come to my walnut ranch and wrestle some bull nuts before you spread un-American stories about hardworking, taxpaying, god-fearing country folks. You go take yourself a leaf out of Sarah Palin's books. Never seen a cowgirl shoot them nuts quite like she does, no, sir.

'Cept maybe Dick Cheney. And before I had her books read out to me, we never had any toilet paper on the ranch nohow.

Cool Atlas Shrugged Trailer

(HT to Joshua Zader.)

(Should rather be called a freight car than a trailer, 'cause the movie's not about trucking.)



Boy, am I glad they updated this one. With 1950s buildings, trains, and cars, the movie would not only have been uncool, but unwatchable. The plot theme is grim and dystopian enough, and this way there's at least some eye candy to make it bearable.

I don't care shit about the ass pull with the airline bankruptcies. It pales in comparison with the train wreck the alternative would have been.

For all the fan boys who disagree, go read that 1,000+ page doorstopper over and over until you turn into Officer Barbrady. :P

Oh, and it's us who move the world.* Welcome to the twenty-first century.

You could take the Twenty-First Century Limited to get here. But that's another story entirely.

* "Although the nominative case is traditionally required after the verb 'to be', even careful speakers say 'it is me' (or him, her, etc.) rather than 'it is I' in informal contexts."

— Collins English Dictionary

Usage Note:

Traditional grammar requires the nominative form of the pronoun in the predicate of the verb be: It is I (not me); That must be they (not them), and so forth. Nearly every speaker of Modern English finds this rule difficult to follow. Even if everyone could follow it, in informal contexts the nominative pronoun often sounds pedantic and even ridiculous, especially when the verb is contracted, as in It's we. But constructions like It is me have been condemned in the classroom and in writing handbooks for so long that there seems little likelihood that they will ever be entirely acceptable in formal writing. The traditional rule creates additional problems when the pronoun following be also functions as the object of a verb or preposition in a relative clause, as in It is not them/they that we have in mind when we talk about "crime in the streets" nowadays, where the plural pronoun serves as both the predicate of is and the object of have. In this example, 57 percent of the Usage Panel prefers the nominative form they, 33 percent prefer the objective them, and 10 percent accept both versions. Writers can usually revise their sentences to avoid this problem: They are not the ones we have in mind, We have someone else in mind, and so on.

Put that in your pipes and smoke it, grammar nazis.

No grammar for you! Come back one year!

These Boots Are Made for Vegas?

Web page segment to edit: "Shop hoes"

Must have been meant to read: "Shop shoes"

Must have been embarrassing for certain conservatives if they happened to surf to that page.

"Willard Mitten Romney! So you're picking up hookers from the internet now?!"

"I swear, my dear, I was just trying to buy you a pair of shoes for your birthday."

"How stupid do you think I am? I'm leaving you! I'm getting a divorce!"

(Darn freaking interweb. Worse than gambling. I try it once, and my marriage is down the drain. Need to get those intertubes banned ASAP.)

"And don't think you'll ever be president! Don't even think you'll have a chance at any career in politics when this is over!"

(Must get this hell spawn banned now.)

Groundhog Day 2011 Prediction

Staten Island Chuck has seen Ayn Rand's shadow.

That means at least six more months of heavy tea party effect precipitation.

Happy Ayn Rand Day!

Assange vs. the Galactically Stupid

There's this galactically stupid letter on Julian Assange at The Atlasphere.

…

The government has a legitimate interest in the secrecy of negotiations, of its estimations of foreign leaders, things like that, because sometimes secrets like this are in our national security interest or help the government achieve needed goals.

Assange's wanton release of this information will do what he wanted, embarassment [sic] and damage to America's foreign policy endeavors — some of which are critical to our nation's very survival, such as the efforts to find allies against Iran's nuclear ambitions.

(Insulting your allies behind their backs and then hoping it stays secret is a good way to find allies?!)

As all things in the universe are connected, everything is remotely connected to national security in some way. By this fascist (or rather objecto-fascist*) "logic," the government could do anything, confiscate anything, kidnap anybody, assassinate anybody, as long as it cries "national security" while doing it.

BTW, the government would not even have to prove the tenuous connection to national security. The proof, you know, is secret, too.

By this "logic," the government might just as well shoot random people in Times Square that "look Iranian" because "they might be carrying nukes under their coats." That would serve the cause of nuclear security about as well as kidnapping or assassinating people who publish "secret" information on hopelessly inept government negotiations that may or may not tangentially concern nukes.

That's how today's neo-fascism or, in this case, objecto-fascism works: Blind fear of terrorism and nukes, blind faith in the government's ability to do something about it, and a willingness to give said government carte blanche every time it cries "national security." Disgusting.

As an added bonus, here another letter that is not quite as stupid and fascist, and that asks a question that deserves to be answered:

"Does Assange ever release secret documents from our enemies?"

Well, I guess Assange releases whatever he gets hold of. So why doesn't he release documents from axis of evil governments?

Probably 'cause he ain't got any. Why ain't he got any?

Probably because those governments are even more fascist and better at silencing, kidnapping, and assassinating whistleblowers than the US government, by several orders of magnitude. So the US government is several rungs in hell above virtually any other government. Does that mean that it should be given leeway to kidnap or assassinate an odd dissenter every now and then, just because other governments do it regularly?

Finally, for fascists' favorite fervor, the "hundred Afghans," whose identity and collaboration with US forces the leak allegedly revealed to vengeful taliban, and whose blood accordingly is according to Palin et al. on Assange's hands:

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said there is still concern Afghans named in the published documents could be retaliated against by the Taliban, though a NATO official said there has been no indication that this has happened.

…

The defense secretary said that the published documents do contain names of some cooperating Afghans, who could face reprisal by Taliban.

But a senior NATO official in Kabul told CNN that there has not been a single case of Afghans needing protection or to be moved because of the leak.

And…

Administration officials said they were not aware of anyone who has been attacked or imprisoned as a direct result of information in the 2,700 cables that have been made public to date by WikiLeaks, The New York Times and several other publications, many with some names removed.

…

A Pentagon spokesman, Maj. Chris Perrine, said Thursday that the military was not aware of any confirmed case of harm to anyone as a result of being named in the Afghan war documents.

Of course it would have been better if WikiLeaks had redacted those names. But as long as this kind of thing goes on, your average soldier of whatever affiliation — and every yahoo rooting for them like a Palin — has more blood on their hands than Assange.



The fascists didn't care shit about collateral damage among Iraqis and Afghans while US troops did the killing. Again, the core idea(l) of statism at work: States may cause any number of carnage, casualties, and collateral damage they want; an individual may cause none.

But morality does not come in numbers. Just because there are 300,000,000 of you, that does not mean you collectively have any more right to harm or kill anyone than any lone dude has.

Sarah Palin said: "Julian Assange has blood on his hands!"

Then she removed her hands out of the caribou carcass.

Not that caribous are humans, but that bitch really got a lot of nerve.



And finally, here the latest proof that truth beats secrecy:

The latest WikiLeaks revelation — detailing a memo which suggests that the British government advised Libya on how to secure the release from jail on compassionate grounds of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing — opens a can of worms on both sides of the Atlantic.

First, it puts David Cameron under renewed pressure. He has consistently adopted the line taken by the last Labor government that the devolved Scottish government took the decision to release Abdelbaset al-Megrahi in August 2009 independently and without pressure from London.

Today's leak appears to blows a hole in that story.

Second, it surely forces American politicians to rethink their view of Julian Assange.

US politicians — led by four senators from New York and New Jersey, where many of the families of the Lockerbie victims live — have been pushing for an inquiry into their deeply-held suspicions that the Labor government encouraged the release of Megrahi in order to open up trade with Libya.

If, as seems likely, today's leak pushes Cameron closer to such an inquiry, will Capitol Hill begin to realize that WikiLeaks can be a force for good?

Take that, dumb bitch, pee king, and all the other galactically stupid among you.



* Objecto-fascism is the use of objectivist arguments to promote fascism or in a way that might as well be used to promote fascism.

Quote of the Day

"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."

— Voltaire

Oh, That's How Obama Does It

In case you're wondering, the movie is The Ghost Breakers and yes, Bob Hope really said it. It's not dubbed or anything.

BTW, there used to be another line, "America has got Bob Hope, Stevie Wonder, and Johnny Cash; [insert socialist slave state as applicable] has got no hope, no wonder, no cash.

With the ballooning deficit and two of them dead (and the same year, too) I'm beginning to wonder…

God forbid that anything happens to Stevie Wonder.

Because even with Hopenchange in the White House (or more precisely, particularly with Hopenchange in the White House), America needs some sort of a wonder to get hope and cash back.

The Secret of the Lost Tribe, Chapter Two

Begin with the beginning.

Chapter Two

The Hotel California

It was dark. It was night. It was late. At least too late to be riding around a highway winding through some Indian reservation, without any definite idea where they were going.

Before nightfall, Jennifer and Traynor had visited another tourist attraction, El Morro National Monument, also known as Inscription Rock. It was another ruined Anasazi village, this one atop a sandstone promontory that was covered with inscriptions left by the Anasazi, the Spanish, and American pioneers. However, tourist attraction or no tourist attraction, now the highway ahead and behind them was deserted.

"Where the hell are we?" cursed Jennifer over the country music wailing from the radio of the roadster.

"On some kind of a road or a state highway or some such thing called 53, according to this map," Traynor replied wearily.

"We might already be in Albuquerque if not for that stupid pileup and detour on the Interstate. Welcome to Gallup — The Drunk Driving Capital of America."

"So much for Amarillo by morning. But on the Interstate we'd have missed that El Morro Anasazi thing."

"Fuck the Anasazi."

He grinned. "Wasn't that funny when that ranger told you that you need 'sturdy walking shoes' for that trail? I'm not the kind to go, 'I told you so,' but I told you so."

"Shut up." She looked straight ahead.

"I mean, there's nothing funnier than two government agents duking it out. Former government agent, in your case. Can you tell me who exactly of you two had the monopoly on the legitimate use of force back there?"

"Shut up."

"Do you think he should have shot you for your own good when you simply ignored him and walked up that trail anyway?"

"Shut up."

"To play the devil's advocate: What about property rights? Doesn't the government get to make the rules on government property?"

"Shut the fuck up."

"Best thing is that the Interstate's got to already be open again. Otherwise we'd have more company. This is the only road paralleling the Interstate."

"Do you want me to turn around?"

"No. Sooner or later we've got to end up on the Interstate again, according to the map."

"To hell with your stupid map."

Traynor looked up from his stupid map. On the radio, Emmylou Harris observed, "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues." He looked around. Obviously, Emmylou was right.

He cocked a brow. "Not the end of the world. But if it weren't dark, we could see it from here."

If anything, the darkness was emphasized by the light of the full moon. It only made one think what might lurk in the shadows between the silvery silhouettes of trees and bushes. Ahead, beside the road, a butte rose steeply into the sky. On its apex, outlined against the white disk of the moon, stood the black silhouette of an Indian horseman, like a ghost from a time long gone by. Despite the deceptive moonlight, Traynor was sure it was an Indian, not a cowboy from a nearby ranch. The figure did not wear a war bonnet like a plains Indian, but he did not wear a cowboy hat, either. Traynor thought he got a glimpse of the savage garb. Most tellingly, however, the shadow held a bow instead of a rifle.

Traynor nudged Jennifer. "We've got company."

She blinked her eyes in fatigue. "Huh?"

He pointed out the silent, immobile figure in the sky.

She shrugged. "It's a reservation, after all."

"We've got to be a couple miles out of that reservation already."

"So do you wanna climb up there to tell Chief Moth Eaten he's out of area?"

"Not necessarily. It's a free country."

"By the way — how the hell did he get up there?"

"Maybe there's a path on the other side." He grinned wryly. "Still, a bit creepy with that bow — one would think today's Indians pack rifles. Like he's on the warpath, ready to command some unseen army to attack…"

That moment, a flaming arrow burned through the windshield of the Auburn, hitting Jennifer's eye. At least that was what she felt. As the automobile sped towards the needle of light, the needle grew into a speck, then into white neon letters advertising: "Hotel California." The sign sat on the roof of a single-story building. In front of it was another light, a flashing blue neon sign announcing: "Vacancy." It was not actually a hotel; Motel California would have been closer to the truth. From a row of rooms sprouted a more spacious wing, probably the office and maybe a restaurant, with two gas pumps and a diesel pump in front of it. That was all. Jennifer pulled into the parking lot between the vacancy sign and the motel.

"Gas. Food. Lodging." Traynor frowned. "Not exactly the Plaza."

"Let's get that real straight right now. I'm about to fall asleep at the wheel. And you're not exactly the world's greatest driver. You'll understand that I'm not too keen to have you drive my Auburn at night. So we're kind of running out of options. Either we'll be sleeping in my car, or we take a chance on this Hotel California."

There did not seem to be too many guests. Only a handful of other vehicles sat in the parking lot in front of the rooms. Jennifer stopped the Auburn in front of the motel office.

When they entered, they found a middle-aged couple behind the front desk. Both of them stood a bit taller than either Jennifer or Traynor. Apparently, they were discussing some business matter. As Jennifer and Traynor checked in, the four of them got involved in a conversation. It turned out the other couple owned the motel. They said their names were Irv and Maxine Goldman. Eventually, Jennifer and Traynor realized they were not only very tired but also very hungry.

"Well, I've already closed the kitchen for tonight, but I can get you some apple pie," offered Maxine.

"That would be wonderful," Jennifer sighed.

They moved to a booth in the diner. Now the New York couple saw that there was more to this wing than just front desk, office, and diner. A spacious room next to the diner was a veritable general store selling souvenirs to tourists and groceries to the few locals living out here. This place had to be the supply depot and gathering place for ranches far and wide.

While Maxine got the apple pie, Goldman volunteered to mix them drinks. Some strands of his receding gray hair escaped from under his Stetson. His face was tanned like leather, and his stout frame was dressed in a flannel shirt and worn blue jeans.

"You guys are Eagles fans?" asked Traynor.

"Eagles? Oh, you mean because of Hotel California?" Maxine brought the apple pie and sat down at their table.

Her hair was still black — possibly dyed. However, the first thing one noticed about her were her big, questioning eyes that seemed to wonder at something inexplicable. She looked a little slimmer than her husband, although that was hard to tell due to her flowing floral-print dress.

The apple pie smelled delicious. However, Traynor knew that that meant nothing. But when he tasted it, it proved to be delicious, without that chemical aftertaste of factory pastry.

Goldman served the tequila sunrises Traynor had ordered, got himself a beer from the refrigerator under the counter, and joined them. "No, we were actually on our way to open a hotel in California when we came across this here place. The guy who had built it wanted to get rid of it badly, so we bought it for a song, and opened our hotel here instead of in California. But we named it for our formerly promised land. You know, we're originally from Chicago. As the saying goes, we saved our pennies and saved our dimes — to build our own hotel someday."

"Maybe we should have moved on… After all, when we found out why he had to sell…"

"Shush, Max."

"But…"

"Let's not worry our guests."

Jennifer frowned. "But? What is it?"

"Nothing. Nothing at all."

"Irv, you know it's one of these nights…"

"Max! Enough is enough."

Although he was curious himself, Traynor thought it more important to avert marital discord. "That reminds me… Could I get another tequila sunrise?"

Jennifer rolled her eyes. "Take it easy, desperado…"

Buy the full story.

A Fully Fascist-Free Airport

Had enough of the jackbooted airport thugs? Try this:



But then it's a German model airport, so I bet they have miniature nazis somewhere in there.

Cool, though.

The Secret of the Lost Tribe, Chapter One, Part Three

Begin with the beginning.

Some miles down the highway, Traynor was looking at the road map. "There are supposedly some kind of Indian ruins at the end of that dirt road over there."

"Yeah. Read about them in my guidebook last night. Wanna have a look?"

"Sure, why not?"

Jennifer turned onto the dirt road. "They were called the Anasazi. The Indians, I mean."

"How do you spell that?"

"I-N-D-I-A-N-S."

"Very funny. The other guys."

"A-N-A-S-A-Z-I."

"You sure that's not supposed to rhyme with nazi?"

"Quite sure. After all, I'm the language expert here. Anasazi means 'enemies of our fathers' in Navajo, I think."

"Yeah, I read about them. Some mysterious Indian tribe that vanished during the Dark Ages. They left ghost pueblos all over the place, but no one really knows anything about them: who they were, what they did, what they believed, how they lived, why they vanished, where they went, or what became of them."

Traynor unzipped the black leather jacket that protected him from the airstream. It was late fall, but unseasonably warm. When Traynor and his friends had busted a terrorists plot some months before, one of the instigators had confessed that he had invented the global warming hoax as a ruse to guilt Americans into submission to the world community. Now, Traynor was wondering whether that son of a bitch had merely been bragging. In any event, if this was global warming, he loved it.

They left the Auburn at the end of the dirt road and walked along the winding footpath that had to run to the ruins. The path meandered up to the saddle between two hills, overlooking the ruins on the barren moonscape. It was a fairly large complex of interconnected hovels or rooms, different shades of orange, brown, and sand in the sunlight. Their roofs gone, all the hovels were open to the sky. The walls, some of them half-collapsed, had been heaped up from thin stone slabs of irregular size. A perimeter of roughly rectangular rooms protected round ones in the center like shrines. They walked on, down to the ruins.

In her Indian outfit, Jennifer looked like one of the hippies who infested Indian ruins to seek some kind of ersatz spirituality. Like a vulture, one of the requisite gurus taking advantage of them swooped down on her. This specimen was a rather seedy old man with a white beard; he was wielding a pendulum.

"May I introduce myself? I'm Grunzgurk — Dr. Gregory Grunzgurk, energy scientist. I'm in charge of the archeological dig here. May I give a lovely lady like you a tour of the place?"

"You may," Jennifer replied icily, taking Traynor's arm.

Grunzgurk appeared a bit disconcerted at this turn of events. He looked from Traynor's cowboy boots up his blue jeans to his open leather jacket revealing a white cotton shirt — and a glimpse of the holster holding his .45 Colt M1911 pistol. Traynor sure was no hippie.

The witch doctor pointed out the round rooms. "We believe kivas were temples — our physicists found they were important shrines radiating concentrated fields of electromagnetic energies."

Grunzgurk waved to a busty brunette in rumpled shorts and a brown deerskin jacket similar to Jennifer's. "May I present, Laura Popoff, the renowned investigating physicist — and fortunately, also my assistant."

The "investigating physicist" nodded a welcome to the visitors, then produced a dowsing rod, pretending to investigate something.

Grunzgurk continued his narrative. "All natural stones are polarized by the magnetic field of the earth. If they are assembled haphazardly into a building, this results in an unhealthy environment. Look at the size of these stones. Kivas are huge generators of negative energy. Sensitive people can feel that. In their hands, a pendulum will swing clockwise or counterclockwise, depending on the prevailing polarity of energy — positive or negative.

"I believe kivas were used for healing. Hundreds of people would assemble in them to radiate energy to the sick. The negative radiation of disease would go out, and the sick person's battery would get recharged."

Traynor snorted. "If the Anasazi were such great, um, engineers and such great, um, doctors, why didn't they even manage to build new towns when they had to move from here due to drought?"

"It was their own technology that did them in. Hundreds of kivas created a great energy updraft over the valley, which dispersed clouds, leading to the widespread drought."

"Surely, a supply of tinfoil hats would have saved them, poor things."

Grunzgurk gave him a quizzical look. "I don't believe that that would have helped in this particular case. Be that as it may, when the drought came, the Anasazi lost faith in their priests who had failed to predict the times for planting and harvest — and to preserve harmony with the gods. They lost faith in their religion."

"They lost faith in their religion? At least one step in the right direction."

"Do you think so? After all, it was their knowledge that failed them. They learned that nature is unpredictable. They found that their culture had grown too complex. They were afraid they had created a monster they could not control, and therefore they returned to a simpler way of life. There seem to have been numerous cultural collapses of this kind in America."

"Why don't you talk turkey? Whatever theories you come up with all amount to nothing more than to: Give up, give up, give up, give up. You're gleefully wallowing in the failure of the Anasazi 'civilization' and praising them for returning to a simpler life — to the primeval muck. You're insinuating it's happening again. You believe all that nonsense because our culture — which by my standards is not yet very complex — is too complex for a nitwit like you. The moral you're insinuating is that we all need to return to a simpler way of life — because you don't wish to confess to yourself that you're the only one who is so primitive that he has to return to a cave. In other words, your motivation for making up all this hocus-pocus is that you're an idiot too stupid to live."

Offended, Grunzgurk turned to Jennifer. "We can test that scientifically. Stretch out your arm horizontally — yes, like this — and make it very strong. You see how strong the field is here? Very strong!"

The "scientist" led Jennifer into a ruin. "Now make your arm strong again. You'll see here it collapses completely, upon the slightest touch, because of the negative field… I said it collapses completely!" The "scientist" tried to push Jennifer's arm down with all his strength, but could not make it budge.

"Doesn't work if I don't play along, huh? Maybe you can do that with your suggestible assistants, but not with me. Listen, you big wuss: You're not a doctor. You're not a scientist. You don't feel anything of any consequence. And people don't have batteries."

The big wuss still kept pulling Jennifer's arm, his pendulum oscillating frantically. "I'll show you, lady."

"Let go of my arm."

"Just another second," he smiled.

"Don't touch me."

"Don't worry. It won't hurt."

"It will hurt."

The big wuss gulped.

Traynor was steering the Auburn down the highway at speed. He looked into the rearview mirror. No highway patrol. He glanced for a second at Jennifer, who sat sullenly beside him. "I guess you had to make him swallow his stupid pendulum?"

"Shut up and drive."

Read on…

Or buy the full story.