Silflay Hraka

I just realized what I want out of the president when it comes to dealing with Hugo Chavez, Iran, Al-Qaeda, et al.

More Niccolo Machiavelli.

“Since it is difficult to join them together, it is safer to be feared than to be loved when one of the two must be lacking.”

And more Al Capone.

I want you to get this fuck where he breathes! I want you to find this nancy-boy Eliot Ness, I want him DEAD! I want his family DEAD! I want his house burned to the GROUND! I wanna go there in the middle of the night and I wanna PISS ON HIS ASHES!

CNN.com - Scatology and satire: 10 years of ‘South Park’ - Sep 22, 2006

I don’t watch a lot of television but what I watch consist almost entirely of episodes of South Park. Little Irish Stout has digital cable with DVR and I set it up to record South Park whenever it comes on. When I go to visit, we inevitably end up spooning on the sofa watching South Park reruns.

LIS had never seen an episode of South Park until we started dating. Now she runs around the house repeating some of her favorite lines to her two dogs. Her favorites lines are typically from Cartman but Butters is her favorite character. The dogs frequently get “yeah I want cheezy poofs!” and “talking poo is where I draw the line!” and “well, I’m pissed off Rick. How are you?”

Most women just don’t get South Park. They just think it’s vulgar and mindless. LIS thinks it’s hysterical. I think she might find it even funnier than I do though. She understands that the boys learn an important lesson in each episode.

It’s terribly endearing.

Researchers find Bigfoot evidence in the High Country

There may be Sasquatches living in Western North Carolina, according to an expedition launched by the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization in Madison County.

After two days of searching with no findings, a portion of the 25 researchers claim to have heard sasquatch noises while camping in a very remote part of Madison County.

What the hell is a “sasquatch noise”? I wonder if it sounds anything like a bear. It could also sound a lot like a pair of drunk, constipated hunter trying to take care of business.

I had a friend in elementary school that spent some of his more formative years in the Appalachian area of Tennessee. He claims to have seen a Bigfoot on a hunting trip in the mountains once. Upon further review, he was always telling tales, but it did make me wonder.

The best part of the article is the photo illustration. It looks like they conned some hair guy to get naked and run through a wooded area. Classic.

Link via MonkeyWatch.

Sainted Wife was unhappy with the progress of the azaleas we had planted in the front of the house a couple of years ago, so last week I obediently dug them up and moved them to the side of the house, where the roses were previously. The roses, spindly things, were exiled to the far back yard, where they will either learn to prosper without constant supervision on their own or die unmourned.

The question is what to replace the azaleas with. Aside from a pair of indestructible mums I planted three years ago beside the front stoop, the front gardens are a mix of unwanted developer installed bushes and a wasteland of elderly mulch, regularly invaded by wiregrass and yellow oxalis, aka sour grass, a plant I enjoyed munching on as a kid but which the sight of now fills me with a rage surpassed only by the goddamn wiregrass. Thanks to a combination of poor soil, several hours of direct sunlight every day and a pair of children who like to play with shovels, every other plant we’ve tried in the front has, like the azaleas, failed to prosper.

For the most part, I blame the wife, who insists on planting various flowers of a fragile nature in ground that turns to concrete after an hour in the sun. What the spot needs is ground cover, not flowers, so at the very least we’re not confronted with an expanse of naked dirt every time we leave the house.

I don’t think the wife is completely convinced of this yet, so I need to present her with a fait accompli come the spring. Thanks to a neighbor, I’ve decided on parsley, which ought to grow thick enough to cover the area as long as it gets watered once a week and can be eaten in case civilization collapses.

It also attracts monsters, always a plus.

Those are the larva of the Black Swallowtail butterfly, found in the aforementioned neighbor’s parsley patch. They are also known, unsurprisingly enough, as Parsley worms, due to their voracious appetite for the stuff. Since the pupae will overwinter, I can collect them in March of 2008, put them in an aquarium, and make the family observe as the butterflies emerge in April.

I’m sure they’ll be aquiver with anticipation.

Postscript::I’ll also be planting milkweed for the Monarchs, seeds for which are available from here for $2.00 and a SASE.

Did the United States, through Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, threaten to bomb Pakistan “back to the Stone Age,” if they didn’t cooperated in the war on terror?

It’s hard to say. Armitage says he didn’t. President Gen. Pervez Musharraf says he did.

Both have incentive to lie. Armitage might have been a loose cannon, overstating a message that wasn’t as harsh as he would have liked. Or he might have been stating the message exactly correctly, and is simply lying to improve his and his country’s position in the court of public approval by denying it now.

Musharraf is in a sticky situation. He has committed to aiding the United States, in spite of the fact that a goodly number of his constituents would love to see us die in fire. A strategic lie of this nature might help him save some face with the lunatic fringe/majority back home.

Who do I believe? It doesn’t much matter on this one.

If we presume that Pakistani aid has value, and we will, the continued presence of Musharraf also has value to us. If he needs to throw the occasional bit of red meat to keep his jackals at bay, let him do it.

As for threatening to bomb the uncooperative, it doesn’t really upset me. Threatening to bomb the uncooperative and not following through — that would upset me.

If you haven’t checked out Emusic.com, you really should. I joined three months ago and I keep telling myself that I really don’t want to spend the $9.99 per month. Every time I think about cancelling my subscription, however, I decide to stick with it another month. I just can’t get over what a deal it is.

For $9.99 a month, I get to download and keep 40 tracks. For the math challenged among you, that’s just shy of $25 cents per track. ($.249 cents. I had to use a calculator for everything but the rounding up.) The best part is that the songs are all free of digital rights management software. This means that you can do whatever you want with the music. You can play it on any MP3 player, including the iPod. You can burn it to as many CDs as you’d like. You can have it on as many PCs as you’d like. You can share it with friends and if you ever cancel your subscription, the music is still yours.

As if that weren’t enough, there are also hundreds of free tracks you can download. I’m sure I’ve downloaded at least 1 free track for every track I’ve purchased, effectively cutting my price per download to something like $.12 cents. (I didn’t have to use a calculator for that one.)

The music isn’t major label stuff, but it’s not bad music. There is plenty of good music by “name-brand” artists to be had. I’ve already downloaded good stuff from Ray Charles, Ryan Adams, The White Stripes and one of my Pandora finds, Pernice Brothers. I currently have 51 albums saved to download later from artists like Jay Farrar, Dwight Yoakam, Bob Mould, Lucero, Colin Hay, Old 97’s and Cracker. I just put aside an album from Plain White T’s that I’m sure I’ll download when my subscription renews next month. I’d rather pay $.12 cents per track to listen to those guys than pay $.99 cents per track to download the latest song from Shakira or whatever artistically bankrupt crap the major labels are dishing out these days.

Rather than canceling my subscription, I’m thinking about actually upgrading to the $19.99 a month package. That would allow me to download 90 paid tracks per month at a cost of (pulling out the calculator) $.22 cents per track before adding in the freebies. 50 more tracks per month would certainly let me clear my backlog of downloads a lot faster. Hell, I might just buy the annual package and get a free 1GB MP3 player in the bargain. I’m not even going to attempt to do the math on that one.

Anyway, if you haven’t checked it out, you should. Maybe if enough people join the major labels will get the message that people want DRM free music.

***

Nah. I don’t think they’ll ever get that message.

Update: I talked myself into it. I got the annual subscription with the MP3 player. I needed a new player anyway. I had a Rio Cali 256 but haven’t been able to hear it well lately. I think I rusted the earphones running in the rain.

Yes, I know it’s cheaper to just replace the earphones, but that’s not my style. My style is to replace things wholesale when one inexpensive part breaks. If the battery in my car ever dies, I’m in trouble.

Well, no matter what, it looks like there will be an edition of the Carnival of the Vanities here next week. I already have nine submissions and that, in my mind, is enough to have a Carnival. It’s also not so many that I can’t read them all and maybe choose the best. It’s been mentioned that the Carnival needs some form of editing and at least one submission looks like it might be thinly veiled marketing.

Thanks to all those who’ve already submitted entries. If you would like to submit an entry for next week’s CoTV, please email me at kehaar at this blogs domain name or visit Blog Carnival and use the submission for there. I am now getting those entries thanks to Zeuswood.

Carnival of the Vanities may be severely wounded, but it’s not dead yet. Thanks, all, for the continued support.