Twisted Spinster

Arms and the man.

Hee hee: at last, a political party for the Rest Of Us.

Update: logos! (That’s the plural of “logo,” not the Word of God. Not yet, anyway.)

Via Mark Steyn on the Corner, Tim Rutten at the LA Times wonders in his review of some intellectual’s wistful lament on how much better things would have been for the West if we’d been conquered by Muslims:

…it’s fair to wonder why, if that’s true, the West ended up with the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and the Scientific Revolution and the Islamic world got chronic underdevelopment, a pervasive religious obscurantism, Al Qaeda and the trust fund states of the Arabian peninsula?

Silly! I can tell you the answer to that: it’s all our, the Western World’s, fault! See, not letting the Muslims conquer Europe in the long-ago hurt the Muslims’ self-esteem. It made them feel bad. They had no choice but to let their countries become women-oppressing, slave-owning, terrorist-growing dumps.

(Via Ace of Spades.)

The word “blogosphere” is in the Oxford English Dictionary? Shit.

(By the way, Bill Quick is going to be way pissed that his invention of the word is passed off here as “an ironic joke.”)

Fred’s out! His fans are hysterical. Me? “Who needs a quitter” I say. I’m going to do what I usually do in this situation, and NOT CARE. (Yes, I know Flea is Canadian. Foreigners care more about American presidential elections than Americans do. I can’t watch BBC America’s BBC News because all they talk about is… America. It’s CNN with a British accent.)

I wonder what would happen if a majority of people voted for him anyway? Would he have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the White House screaming “Noes! I don’t wanna be preznit!” But it won’t happen. The usual reaction of my fellow Americans to people who withdraw from an election is “Thank God, someone I don’t have to think about anymore.”

PS: more crying and sobbing can be found in many posts at Ace of Spades HQ.

Some welcome news via one of Tim Blair’s regular commenters on his operation.

Update: he’s demanding a laptop. (Scroll down to the bottom of the comments page and click on the link for page 2 and then go to comment #44 — the second page of comments won’t go to permalinks for some reason.)

My God, this website is addictive. I’ve stayed up all night two nights in a row reading it. Sample — from Everyone Is Jesus In Purgatory:

Memories of that overzealous English teacher who forced you to accept that every character, every scene, and every action had a deep inner meaning have led to widespread paranoia, on the part of readers and viewers everywhere, that every tale secretly contains some other story being told in subtext.

The end result of this is a state of mind that, for example, interprets every plot as an allegory for the afterlife and every protagonist as a stand-in for the Christ: Everyone Is Jesus In Purgatory!

Then there are the Warped Aesops:

Degrassi The Next Generation does this a lot. Some of the morals featured on the show include “cutting school is okay because you’ll learn more outside anyway”, and “if a boy breaks your heart and then steals your stepfather’s laptop for resale, wanting to punish him is wrong.”

How about those Epileptic Trees?

A term for wild, off-the-wall theories. Named after a leading tinfoil-hat theory explaining the mysterious Beast on Lost during the first season of that program. The theory? Some of the trees are epileptic.

Epileptic Trees suggested by characters are a sign of Scully Syndrome. When an Epileptic Tree is rendered null and void by the official Canon, it’s said to be Jossed. When an Epileptic Tree remarkably becomes Canon, you may find yourself saying, “I Am Not Making This Up” when you attempt to explain it. When your Epileptic Tree becomes Canon, you’re allowed to say, “I Knew It!”

Oh God, help me.

A tale of two photos. Even now, with the truth about the Vietnam War trickling ever so slowly out into the world, I’ll bet most people still accept the “received wisdom” about these famous photographs. I know I had no idea.

Via The Anchoress.)

Steve H. has the same problem that led me to my very first banning of a commenter in about a year:

When you blog, one of the realities that you face is that people read three lines of every entry and then feel completely prepared to comment.

It’s never a case of they’ve gone carefully through your screed before deciding to hit the keyboard. It’s always to do with the fact that certain words or phrases somehow stimulated their remaining three or four working synapses — in my case “Katrina” (as in, the hurricane) and possibly “NOLA hysterics,” as none of these Einsteins think they are anything but calm and rational. Even when they start emoting about their grandmas who are not in New Orleans and so have nothing to do with the problem I was posting about. One thing I forgot to ask “doctor2ju” — if he’s so worried about his grandma having to live in a town that is still “slabs, tents and trailers” why doesn’t he go and get her and install her in a more aesthetically pleasing part of the US?

Yep, when I read about that “hoax” (oh, ha ha, I’m dyin’ laffin’) 3 quadrillion dollar lawsuit against the government for Katrina damages the experience pretty much obliterated the last scraps of sympathy I had for the poor, victimized, struggling citizens of New Orleans.

Vanderleun’s screed has attracted some resident NOLA hysterics, who are hamming it up with the “shame on yous” and “we don’t need your money anyway, it’s the gummint’s faults.” My two favorite comments so far are from “GentillyGirl,” who hits every demographic cliché in one of her rants, wherein she “thanks Goddess” that “My Betty and I will have our home” — which she claims is now on a 9 foot elevation and can withstand 350 mph winds (oh bullshit, no building on earth can withstand winds of that speed) while being completely “Green”; and one from “Michael,” who compares the numbnuts who refused to get out of the city when there was plenty of warning to Jesus letting himself be crucified. America! The citizens of New Orleans are soaking you for your sins!