Silflay Hraka

Movin’ On Up

Nothing like being talked about, except perhaps being immortalized in song;

Three folks outside their boxes blogging now as Silflay Hraka
Are ?W?, ?K?, and Bigwig (keep the title, but ?tain?t caca).
There?s writing fine ?n beer divine, for more just use your mouse ta
Click out to pleasing essays by three jacks of weblog Owsla.

Run in circles, scream and shout
The wild hares you?ve all heard about!
Sing Ho! for the Blogosphere!

Along with Susana, Lileks, The Captain, and assorted others a league or two above us.

He Done Told You Once, You Son Of A Bitch, He’s The Best That’s Ever Been

Charlie Daniels then;

In America

Well the eagle’s been flyin’ slow
And the flag’s been flyin’ low
And a lot of people sayin’ that America’s fixin’ to fall
Well speakin’ just for me
And some people from Tennessee
We’ve got a thing or two to tell you all
This lady may have stumbled
But she aint never fell
And if the Russians don’t believe that
They can all go straight to hell
We’re gonna put her feet back
On the path of righteousness and then
God bless America again

And you never did think
That it ever would happen again
You never did think
That we’d ever get together again
( We damn sure fooled you )
Yeah, we’re walkng real proud
And we’re talkin’ real loud again ( In America )
You never did think
That it ever would happen again
From The Sound up in Long Island
Out to San Francisco Bay
And everthing that’s in between them is our own
And we may have done a little bit
Of fightin’ amongst ourselves
But you outside people best leave us alone
‘Cause we’ll all stick together
And you can take that to the bank
That’s the cowboys and the hippies
And the rebels and the yanks
You just go and lay your hand
On a Pittsburgh Steelers’ fan
And I think you’re gonna finally understand.

Charlie Daniels now, at his blog.

I remember, as a kid, first listening to “In America” non-stop, then being ashamed of having liked it so much once I grew older. Now I think, damn, nice guitar work.

And yes, I know exactly what Europe would think of Charlie.

Screw ‘em.

Link via Rantburg, kinda sorta

Update: There’s a discussion of Charlie and some of his less appealing thoughts over at a small victory, and Cold Fury also found the whole letter.

A Valley Girl Analyzes the Jewish Situation

You know, it’s just me talking, and I don’t know anything, but don’t you think that maybe it might be time to rethink the whole “God?s chosen people” thing? I mean, ye-ah, it does appear that he has chosen you, but not really in a good way. It seems to me that it’s more like a big fat mean kid on the playground kind of way. I think he like, wants your lunch money?

So, um…..o.k, there was the whole slaves to the Pharaoh thing and that icky green mist that made the bald guy totally mad at Charlton Heston, and all those years where Moses couldn’t be bothered to stop and ask for directions, and Nebuchadnezzar, and then the Romans, and then the whole Jesus thing, and probably like a bunch of other guys. I know… Masada? is in there somewhere. Not to mention being kicked out of Spain, and pogroms, and Hitler, and the monthly exploding Palestinian lottery. That’s bad enough, but there’s kind of a pattern there, don’t you think? And this fits right into it.

Don’t you think maybe you could try and to persuade him to pick somebody else as his chosen people for a while? Like maybe the French?

Like, that totally grody link? It was from Poet and Peasant.

On the Borders of Kurdistan

On the borders
Where throats are
Choked with good-byes
And eagerness is
Suspended in the eyes
And people asked
When.. where are we ? why..?!
Here a child dies..
There a baby lies, and
Another face-down cries:
My wound is hurting
My breath is hurting
My stomach is hurting,
Mother: Am I to die ?
And my white pigeon ?!
Are we going to die ?

In tears she said:
There beyond the border posts..
Only days: we won’t die
For us, God will try..
Again, the child cries:
Will my pigeon die ?
Mother: I love her..
She is my life
Because I love,
She does not deserve to die
I love her…
All broke in tears
Dear.. your pigeon died
When the planes pried
And she broke in tears
My white pigeon was gassed ?!
My Kurdish pigeon died
Mother.. my hair is falling
why ? Am I to die ?
Some water please..
W-a-t-e-r …

The only legitimate excuse for opposing the removal of Saddam Hussein, the only one, is that you hadn’t yet realized how immoral your position actually was.

Link via the Feces Flinging Monkey

Killing Vivendi

Giving up French wine, cheese and Perrier is easy. It’s even having an effect, but how much are you really willing to do to boycott the French? Are you willing to do the stuff that’s actually hard to do? Can you boycott the largest company in France? Can you boycott Vivendi?

It would mean giving up the Sci-Fi channel, and the USA network.

That’s right, Les Chameau own USA. Vivendi owns dozens of companies.

It would mean not buying games from Blizzard Entertainment, Sierra, and Universal Interactive, and not going to Universal Studios the next time you were in Orlando.

It would mean refusing to buy books published by Houghton Mifflin, or cd’s from, among others, Ashanti, Erykah Badu, Mary J. Blige, Andrea Bocelli, Jimmy Buffet, Bon Jovi, Sheryl Crow, Eminem, Amy Grant, Johnny Hallyday, Enrique Iglesias, Insane Clown Posse, Jay-Z, Elton John, Ronan Keating, Diana Krall, Limp Bizkit, Ludacris, Lyle Lovett, Nelly, No Doubt, Florent Pagny, Luciano Pavarotti, Sandy & Junior, Shaggy, Sting, George Strait, Smashmouth, Texas, Shania Twain, U2, Russell Watson, Weezer, Rob Zombie and Trisha Yearwood.

Downloading songs from these artists would still be allowed. In fact, downloading mp3′s from these artists and passing them around should probably be encouraged. Yep, I figure Kazaa is the patriotic thing to do, here.

Can your struggling startup company refuse venture capital from Viventures?

Can you make it through the day without visiting the websites of MP3.com, EMusic, FlipSide, Education.com or Rolling Stone? (I won’t link these, to make it easier for you.)

Can you boycott these movies, and others, when they come out, and refuse to by the DVD six months later?
The Hulk (Meryl?)
The Cat in the Hat
Bruce Almighty
Seabiscuit
Van Helsing
Meet The Fockers

Because if you can, not only will you impact the overall French economy, you can help pry some of the artists and companies listed above out of Vivendi’s clutches.

Vivendi is in serious financial trouble, so much that they’re looking to sell off $7.7 billion in assets this year.

When’s the best time to boycott a company? When it’s already hemorrhaging money.

Boycotting these properties will not only drive Vivendi’s earnings further down, it will make each of them less valuable, meaning that Vivendi would have to sell even more assets to balance the books, assets that you could then support, as they would no longer be owned by a french company.

Besides, if I have to give up German beer for the foreseeable future, I want others to feel a little more pain than just boycotting Georges Duboeuf and brie will bring them.

Update: “Edward Boyd” of Zonitics suggests that if one really wants to see the Hulk, one should buy a movie ticket for a movie other than the Hulk, and then sneak in, which is really an excellent idea.

Zod: So, drinking French wine is okay, as long as you stole it?
I’m thinking yes.
Zod: I see I have my work cut out for me here.

People Just Don’t Care For the French

Ok, the Bumper stickers just went to their third printing. The first printing took about a week and a half to sell out. The second printing took less than a week, and there were lots more multiple orders, like for 6 bumper stickers, or 8, or 10.

I find myself in a strange position. The more the French act up, the greater my liking for them.

$3 bucks each, which includes shipping. Use the Paypal button on the right.

And as long as I’m on the subject of France and Frenchmen, this quote, from Penrod, by Booth Tarkington has always bothered me.

“I tell you he’s a lunatic!” Mr. Schofield would have said the same thing of a Frenchman infuriated by the epithet “camel.”

Can anyone tell me why “camel” was once such a deadly insult to the French? I’d like to revive that tradition, if I could.

If you don’t use Paypal, there’s always ebay.

Fight!!! Fight!!!!

Apparently John Walker Lindh (obviously guilty because of the usage of all three names) was roughed up in prison. I’m so surprised. I mean, the guy weighs a whopping 130 pounds soaking wet, I’m surprised he was hurt at all. One sentence we will probably never hear JWL say is, “You think I’m hurt? You should see the other guy.” My guess is that he can expect more of the same. For some reason it seems as if some high profile criminals receive a certain amount of justice in prison that could never be administered outside of those walls. Like Jeffrey Dahmer (freaky site) getting killed, or child molestors getting the shit kicked out of them. It is as if, once imprisoned, some prisoners take moral stands (it’s all relative) on certain issues and believe it is their right to beat the hell out of people who commit crimes that “cross the line.” Sounds fine to me. Whoever bitch slapped JWL just did what the rest of us wanted to. Don’t put him in solitary confinement, instead give him a carton of smokes and an extra hour outside.

Multiculturalism Is Bad For Antelopes And Other Living Things

It’s possible that the Saiga Antelope, a species whose population numbered in the millions less than a decade ago, may be extinct in the wild in less than five years.

Who’s to blame? Well, if you pay attention to some people, it’s impossible to tell. Fortunately, there are other sources of information.

The slaughter is embarrassing for conservationists. In the early 1990s, groups such as WWF actively encouraged the saiga hunt, promoting its horn as an alternative to the horn of the endangered rhino.

The World Wildlife Fund’s choice to promote the horns of the male Saiga Antelope as a substitute for rhino horn in traditional Chinese medicine is directly responsible for the current sorry status of that creature. The WWF even commissioned a study at Hong Kong University that showed saiga horn to be just as effective as rhino horn in fighting fevers, that is to say, not at all, except possibly in very high doses, and only then in rats, not humans, and only in conjunction with other herbs, herbs that produced the exact same effect when administered in a mixture sans horn.

Needless to say, the WWF study didn’t bother to state that Rhino horns are composed entirely of keratin, the exact same thing fingernails are made of. If ground up rhino horn actually did reduce fever, then rhinos would have never been killed for that reason, because we would have known long ago that chewing fingernails did the same thing, and are far cheaper.

They’re also closer to hand.

But did the WWF point any of this out? No. Rather than offend delicate Chinese sensibilities with rude facts (mustn’t stir them up, Heather, you know how they get), this protector of nature decided that a better course of action would be to have a more numerous species slaughtered instead. And now, surprise, that species is now almost wiped out.

Timber companies aren’t to blame for the demise of the saiga. Oil companies aren’t to blame. McDonalds isn’t to blame, and me not recycling my beer bottles isn’t to blame. The World Wildlife Fund is to blame. The type of thinking that embraces crystal healing and feng shui is to blame. The World Wildlife Fund relies on basic science for it’s decisions about as often as Appalachian snake handlers do, perhaps even less. And I’m supposed to believe them when it comes to global warming?

If you want to strike a blow for scientific environmentalism, send your dollars to the Nature Conservancy. Don’t give the WWF anything other than your finger.

No, Not Fetishes, You Freaks

I was researching a post, and ran across this picture.

Anyone care to guess what I was looking up?

Skipping = Protesting??

Apparently there is an organized protest to take place across the country at a number of institutions of higher learning. Organizers are asking students to skip class in an effort to protest the potential war against Iraq. WTF??? This is one of the dumbest ideas I have heard. If you are going to protest, do it for days on end, turn the damn thing into a big party and hang out for a week, don’t just skip one class.

Do you know what this means? This means that I was one of the biggest protesters during my college days. Perhaps if I had been more organized in my efforts I could have saved the whales, ended hunger in Africa, banned Milli Vanilli from ever getting a record contract, or ended Apartheid a bit sooner. Instead I just got drunk way too much, failed Spanish twice, met Bigwig, and barely graduated. If I had only known the power.