Silflay Hraka

Auld Aquaintances

Zod: Chex mix?
Check.
Zod: Hoegaarden poured?
Check.
Zod: Tatty long johns, elderly shorts and threadbare sweatshirt donned?
Check.
Zod: Toddler asleep?
Check.
Zod: Pregnant wife asleep?
Check.
Zod: Don’t you think you ought to make some sort of announcement?
They’ll figure it out eventually.
Zod: Okay then. Confirming absolute lack of social life………done. You’re cleared for blogging on New Year’s Eve 2002.
I’m all a-quiver.

Fuk Yor Chikin

Sadly, I cannot find a copy of the commercial, so you’ll have to take my word for it. I’m watching the Peach Bowl, and a Chik-fil-a commercial comes on.

There’s a cow, standing in a construction site. A bulldozer approaches. The cow stands its ground. The bulldozer moves to one side,and the cow blocks it. The bulldozer moves to the other side, and the cow blocks it. Cut to a sign that says “Future Home of Burger World” or something like that. Cut back to the cow, now standing in front of four bulldozers, in an exact recreation of this scene.

Chik-fil-a takes one of the most heroic pictures of all time, from one of the most horrible tragedies of the last 20 years, and uses it to sell fast food. Chik-fil-a won’t sell you a chicken sandwich on Sunday because of their supposedly high moral standards, but the company has absolutely no problem with those standards when it comes to something like this. Classy, it ain’t, and I’ve had my last sandwich from them for quite a while.

I Will Be Your Larry, If You Wish

Silflay Hraka, one of the The Most Intriguing Bloggers of 2002?

Zod: Must have been kind of a lean year. Gonna stuff the box?
Maybe enough to keep us out of dead last.
Zod: There’s a nice attitude. ‘Let me win, but if I cannot win, let me fake the results so I don’t lose as badly?”
When did you stop being id and start being superego?
Zod: It was getting crowded down there. You move in, I move out. That’s how it works.
Stupid poll. Stupid popularity contest.
Zod: That middle school student council race scar you forever, or what?
Dammit, Larry picked his nose in public and flicked it at people! There’s no way I should’ve lost to….I mean, no, no it didn’t.
Zod: No, not at all. The fact that every D&D campaign you ever ran featured a retarded syphilitic kobold by the same name was just a total coincidence.
That kobold’s name was Laeri, asswipe
Zod: Such an impenetrable disguise.
It’s my story, and I’m standing by it.
Zod: As long as you don’t stand on it. It’s far to thin to hold such a vast great bulk as yourself.
Goddammit! I’m not fat, I’m big-boned.
Cartman: Hey!
Zod: You! Out!
You want crowded, I’ll give you crowded.
Cartman: Quit ripping me off!
Badger: Get in line, fat boy.
Highlander: There can be only one!
Zod: Ok, ok! You’re a pleasant, well-adjusted person who isn’t overly competitive.
Badger: Larry?
Zod: Hellooo? He’s starting to froth in here! You don’t want him out any more than I do.
Badger: Are you Larry?
Oh, alright. Larry’s dead, Badger.
Badger: Dead?
Yes, dead. He fell out of a pickup truck that was doing donuts on the football field his junior year, and the back wheel crushed his skull.
Badger: Really?
Cartman: Sweeeeeet.
Yes, you can all go back to sleep.
Cartman: Can I have a candy bar later?
Yes, later.
…………………………
Zod: Well, that was closer than you…
Badger: You’re sure?
Zod: Ahhh!
Yes, I’m sure.
…………………………
Zod: You think that was intriguing enough?
I certainly hope so.

Holidays in Hell

Chris Ruzin had one.

we pull out on the road to cross the bridge, but there?s signs up saying the road is closed. Not knowing what to do, my mother decides to make a U-turn TO THE RIGHT and ends up stopped, facing the wrong direction, blocking the on-ramp to the interstate highway!! I was just about to soil myself expecting at any point to be hit head on by an 18 wheeler trying to get onto the highway. Mother just sat there, yelling that she didn?t know what to do. At that exact moment, my sister in Kentucky calls our cell phone wanting to know where we are. We had brought two cell phones which look alike, don?t ask why. Both were buried under all our stuff, so my dad is flinging stuff around trying to find it before it stops ringing. Mother yells for him to ?just pick it up?, like it?s that easy or something. Sure enough, he picks up the wrong one. Mother decides to start cussing, I guess to make the moment so much calmer and less stressful than it already was.

Absolutely the Last Post on Cloning…Today, Maybe

You might get the feeling from reading the posts immediately below that I think human cloning is either wrong or impossible, neither of which is true. If I had my druthers, then Eve would be a clone, a happy, healthy one.* Of course, if I had my druthers, then Bigfoot would be real, too. The world would just be a more interesting place all round if all the wacked out stuff I believed in when I was twelve turned out to be true.

But I want the Clonaid kid to be real because I want the cat out of the bag. I want the science of cloning to outpace the efforts to outlaw it, or to regulate it. I want cloning to be as hard to shutdown as file trading is now.

No, I don’t want to create an army of Bigwigs to conquer the world with (not that we couldn’t), and I wouldn’t expect a clone of myself to be anything like me. I don’t need another me, and I’ve already passed on my genes once the old fashioned way. What I do want is a new liver, 30 years down the road, and a new heart, and new set of lungs, and the development of cloning technology is what will give that to me. The only other area of research that might do that for me as well is stem cell research, but that’s already somewhat proscribed.

As far as the law now is concerned, I think that I’ve already got the right to clone myself.** If Roe v. Wade says that up to a certain point, a woman can do as she likes with a mass of cells in her body, then doesn’t that same protection apply to me? After all, they’re my cells, whether or not they are actually inside me. As the decision says;

With respect to the State’s important and legitimate interest in potential life, the “compelling” point is at viability. This is so because the fetus then presumably has the capability of meaningful life outside the mother’s womb. State regulation protective of fetal life after viability thus has both logical and biological justifications. If the State is interested in protecting fetal life after viability, it may go so far as to proscribe abortion during that period, except when it is necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother.

In other words, until potential human life becomes actual human life, current law allows a woman to do whatever she likes with her own cells. Not allowing me to do the same is discriminatory, even if what I do is grow a 19 week old fetus, then harvest it for its organs.

Not that I would do that, though I suspect you might get a different answer when I’m 80 and need a new bladder. Even then I would think that we would have the ability to grow organs without having to wrap them in a fetus, but that will likely depend on how far the science has advanced, and if Pat Robertson and his cronies have their way, I’ll have to piss my undies like the oldsters do now.

*Watch. If it does turn out that Eve is a clone, there will be those pulling for her to grow up retarded, sick and miserable, even if they don’t say so in public. They’ll be the ones who mention the term “against nature” whenever the subject comes up.

**Constitutional scholars may disagree

Update: Andy at the WorldWideRant agrees that people are afraid Eve will be happy, healthy and normal. He also wonders who is crazier;

The person who posits a known science (genetic engineering) with a statistically possible entity (aliens) as the origin of life – or the one who posits an unknown angry sky god on the basis of a 2000 year old book?

The Raelian Hymn

Ok, I was positive someone would have posted this by now, but I am seemingly wrong. Not only are the Raelians obsessed with cloning, they’re obsessed with sex, two themes that Isaac Asimov joined together years ago.

The Clone Song, by Isaac Asimov, sung to the tune of Home On The Range

Oh, give me a clone
Of my own flesh and bone
With its Y chromosome changed to X.
And after it’s grown,
Then my own little clone
Will be of the opposite sex.

Clone, clone of my own,
With its Y chromosome changed to X.
And when I’m alone
With my own little clone
We will both think of nothing but sex.

Oh, give me a clone,
Is my sorrowful moan,
A clone that is wholly my own.
And if she’s X-X,
And the feminine sex,
Oh, what fun we will have when we’re prone.

Clone, clone of my own,
With its Y chromosome changed to X.
And when I’m alone
With my own little clone
We will both think of nothing but sex.

My heart’s not of stone,
As I’ve frequently shone
When alone with my own little X.
And after we’ve dined,
I am sure we will find
Better incest then Oedipus Rex.

Clone, clone of my own,
With its Y chromosome changed to X.
And when I’m alone
With my own little clone
We will both think of nothing but sex.

Why should such sex vex,
Or disturb or perplex,
Or induce a disparaging tone?
After all, don’t you see,
Since we’re both of us me,
When we’re having sex, I’m alone.

Clone, clone of my own,
With its Y chromosome changed to X.
And when I’m alone
With my own little clone
We will both think of nothing but sex.

And after I’m done
She will still have her fun,
For I’ll clone myself twice ere I die.
And this time without fail,
They’ll be both of them male,
And they’ll each ravage her by and by.

Clone, clone of my own,
With its Y chromosome changed to X.
And when I’m alone
With my own little clone
We will both think of nothing but sex.

Gullible Much?

Clonaid has announced that DNA test of it’s supposedly cloned baby will be headed by former ABC News science editor, Michael Guillen.

His credentials are just the ones Clonaid needs.

In 1997 as the science correspondent for ABC Good Morning America, Guillen did a three-part series, ?Fringe or Frontier?.Of precognition he concluded ?these guys are not flakes?; on astrology, ?I think we?re just going to have to suspend judgement?; on psychokinesis, ?you have to take it seriously.” Indeed, Guillen covered everything from James Patterson?s cold fusion cell to Kirlian photographs of the human aura with the same credulity.

That series won him James Randi’s Pigasus* Award in 1998, awarded to the scientist who said or did the silliest thing related to the supernatural, paranormal or occult in that year.

Obviously feeling that he had not yet plumbed the depths of his own will to believe, Guillen later returned with a gushing look at human auras.

*Pigasus, a horrid pun on the flying horse of myth, Pegasus. In other words, the award is given out for things that will be science “when pigs fly”

Update: The Grey Lady also mined this particular vein.

Less than a week after condemning NC boy made good Doug Marlette for his political cartoon depicting Mohammad driving a bomb-laden truck, Cair has flexed its mighty political muscles and convinced the Guilford County Republican Party to remove a link to Islam Exposed. It made a small splash here in NC, but it doesn’t seem to have crossed the radar horizon for the rest of the country.

You can see a cached version of the old Guilford County Republican Party website here. Of course, if they had bothered to respond to the e-mail fellow blogger Mark Kleiman sent them back in October, none of this would have happened.

As for Islam Exposed, make your own call, I suppose. They’ve got some sort of Illuminati thing going on, and the quotes identified as “hate speech” in the N&O article

But Muslims are still outraged that the county’s Republican Party would direct users to a Web site with a stated objective to “expose one of the greatest evils on our planet — Islam.” The Web site, www.islamexposed.com, goes on to say, “We have the evidence and materials to prove that this false religion is nothing more than a barbaric occult invented by savages for savages.”

“It’s disturbing to say the least,” said Shafiq Mohammad, president of the Islamic Center of Greensboro. “We’re really surprised that a political party of national stature would do this. I don’t know what the justification was for that.”

are actually kind of mild when compared to some of the other pages there. Hate speech by lunatics is still hate speech, I suppose, though I hesitiate to call anything “hate speech” unless it’s asking people to go out and start shooting the targets of that speech. By that measurement, Islam Exposed doesn’t qualify.

It’s a pity no one thought to ask Shafiq Mohammad about the hate links on his own site, such as the one to Shariah. Here’s a typical bit;

In America, we see that the government has actually become affected by the greatest sickness of human disease. This disease is a sickness which has its roots in the time of the great Prophets such as Musa (AS) and Isa (AS). This disease is hypocrisy of those who say we believe, yet in their hearts they believe not. And Allah spoke of this disease and its carrier in many verses when speaking about the Jews. We find that again, the Jews have landed to spread corruption. When they come into a land, you will find that corruption at first begins slowly, then escalates until they are handed over power with others out in front. This is the ways of the Jews, and it has not changed since Rome at the time of their plot kill Isa

Shariah.net is associated with the notorious Finsbury Park Mosque and it’s Sheikh Abu Hamza, who praised the 9/11 attacks.

Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Masri, another outspoken Islamist, heads an organisation called The Supporters of Sharia?a, based in North London. Al-Masri is wanted in Yemen for his involvement in dispatching eight British Moslems to perpetrate terror attacks against Western targets in Yemen. After the 11 September attack, Al-Masri declared that “there are many exultant people now. America is a crazy country and whatever we perpetrate against it, is done in self-defence. If the perpetrators of the attack were Moslems, justice is on their side.”

Then there’s Khilafah.com, an online Islamic newsmagazine which has as its goal a world-wide Islamic state governed by sharia law.

On the September 23rd of 2001 Khilafah told Muslims that Alliance with America is a great crime forbidden by Islam.

As for what relates to the Arab group and some Asian states, including Pakistan, that will be classified under ‘demands’ or orders’. America will not negotiate with these states, rather she will say categorically, ?Are you with America or with terrorism??
O Muslims! The Shari’ah obliges you to reject this American demand, which looks down upon you with disdain and contempt. America has no high values so as to lecture you on who you should support and who you should fight. You are the people who have a divine Message. You are the ones who carry the Guidance and Light to mankind.

Apparently Shafiq Mohammad is a devoted follower of the moral principle of “Do as I say, not as I do.”

Update: According to this story, Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Masri is accused by the U.S. government of being linked to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network. He’s also tied to 2 al-qaeda members arrested with with documents in their possession about how to poison the country’s water supplies.

Sources say the Ujaama brothers and Osman are all tied to a prominent radical Muslim cleric in London named Sheikh Abu Hamza Al-Masri. Al-Masri is a one-eyed mullah who is often seen preaching at Finsbury Park’s North London Central Mosque and is wanted in Yemen on terrorism charges.
Investigators say they have evidence indicating that Al-Masri supplied the information about poisoning water supplies to both James Ujaama and Semi Osman.

More Update: The Islamic Center of Greensboro has since removed its links to Islamic hate sites. Cached versions of the islamic center’s links page can be seen via the Way Back machine. Note that none of the previously linked speech was ever repudiated on the Islamic Center site, just delinked.

We’re back from the wedding, having successfully reduced the number of Ngnat’s maiden aunts by one. More about that later. TSA spokesman Brian Doyle sent me an e-mail addressing the questions I sent the TSA regarding the Nick Monahan account of abuse at the Portland airport.

Here’s his response;

Dear Mr. Bigwig*,

Sincerely,
Brian J. Doyle
TSA Public Affairs

Initial Notes: Including, training in various ethnic and cultural differences which may appear different to the average public. – I so don’t want people treated differently based on their ethnicity or culture, unless their ethnicity or culture gets them more attention from security than they would otherwise receive.

It is TSA procedure to have a private screening option available at each airport, and if a person is required to take off clothing, they are escorted to a private area at their request.

So it appears that the TSA will consent to a private search, but only at the request of the detainee. I wonder if they advise a person of that alternative before the search begins? My guess is no. Just as an aside, in a more innocent time when the sainted wife and I were married, her underwire bra set off the alarm at the courthouse, but once the wand search narrowed the search down to the boobal areas, the elderly and by now rather embarrassed guard asked her if she was wearing an underwire bra, and that was that.

The video of the checkpoint in question is maintained by the Port of Portland and the resident Port of Portland police. They do not destroy images, but it records over itself every three to seven days, depending on the image rate.

Every time I ask about the videotape, the Port of Portland sends me to the TSA and the TSA sends me back to Portland. My guess is that they realize their policy is weak on this point, and are eager to move me along. I don’t mind that, particularly, it’s the nature of bureaucracy. What does bother me is that any suspicious person who arrives via the Port of Portland will have all evidence of his arrival wiped out after at most a week. That seems like far too short a time, especially now that digital storage media is so cheap.

*No, he didn’t call me bigwig

Update: One more thought, before moving on tonight. It is against policy to comment on any litigation or pending litigation. – I may be misinterpreting this, and if so maybe one of the law bloggers can help me out, but doesn’t “pending litigation” cover an awfully wide area? If “litigation” means that someone is suing you, does “pending litigation” mean that someone might be thinking of suing you, or that you suspect someone might be thinking of suing you? If so, does saying “It is against policy to comment on any litigation or pending litigation.” mean that you’ll never have anything to say, no matter what the subject, ever? And this is a stated policy of a Federal Department? When did Omerta become official government policy?

Merry Christmas, from 1953

Ngnat awoke on Christmas morn to find that not only was Santa fat and jolly, he was hell bent on enforcing the rule of the patriarchy, and a girl’s place within it. She got Barbies, costume jewelry, a Fisher Price Cook and Clean Kitchen. “Your all-in-one stovetop microwave refrigerator washing machine and ironing board, now with sink and towel rack,” and a toy pink vacuum cleaner, at the sight of which she threw her arms up in the air in joy and ecstatically screamed “LAWNMOWER!”

Don’t look at me, I got her a Wiggles DVD, a book of anime art and a tent. All of the the patriarchal gifts this year came from the matriarchy.

So, Ngnat mowed the carpet while wearing her costume jewelry, and occasionally announced that she had to “do my housekeeping“, whereupon she enthusiastically ironed everything on the Cook and Clean Kitchen, then made everyone a nice steaming bowl of soup.

What kind of soup?” I asked her.

She thought. “Ummmm……bubble!”

The Sainted Wife, as well as her mother and sister, regard her joy in housekeeping as a perfect defense of their gift choices. It was hard to argue with them in the face of Ngnat’s obvious happiness in what Santa brought.

So I ate my bubble soup, and watched my child as she put Barbie’s clothes into the washing machine, and began turning the handle.

“All clean,” she announced.

I’m considering a nice brace of pistols for her birthday.