One More Before I Go

Before I head off to the Heart of Ditto Monkey Land, I wanted to leave something here:



I know I’ve linked to a few articles on the web that might have been a little critical of the way Americans treat their Canadian brethren, and I’m truly sorry that it has had to come to this in order to point out to some (who may still not listen to this gentle reminder) that they should show better manners when dealing with other cultures on the world stage. And I mean that sincerely.

Now that the previous paragraph could be roiling about in your melon somewhere, go look at this. Yes, I mean you, Ann Slanders. Make sure you have RealPlayer installed on your PC before you do. And make sure that you are prepared for gales of laughter to emanate from your midsection.

Some more updates to the links zone have taken place. I took down some of the pretty pictures over there because I didn’t want it to take forever to load up over a 56K (or less) dailup connection. It probably still takes a long time to get all my little trinkets loaded into your temporary internet file folder. We here at the Funny Farm appreciate your willingness to spend the few extra seconds to appreciate the goodies available to you here. Enjoy!

Sweet Justice

My old nemesis, Aaron Brown (R-Media Whore), got the red-ass from Daniel Ellsberg earlier this week. Thanks to Atrios for the news, and Busy, Busy, Busy for the synopsis. I was so happy I decided the write a post in Atrios' comments section for this post at his site:

-------------------------------------------------------------
Hahahahahaha! Looks good on him...

Q: "Aren't the protesters helping Hussein?"

A: What the hell are you smoking? Do you always talk out of your ass?

Q: What? You can see the smoke coming out of my ass? No way!

A: Can you ask me a real question now?

Q: I can't believe you wouldn't answer my question? Why are you such a peacenik?

A: I can't believe I have to explain this crap to you. When did you stop being a journalist? Can you spread 'em any more than that? When will America know the truth about -

Dr. Ellsberg, I'm sorry to interrupt, thank you for your time and we appreciate your joining us tonight.
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Why don’t you put that in your Blackberry Wireless, hotshot? Maybe next time you’ll pay attention to the millions who disagree with the war propaganda coming out of the Conservative Neocon Network these days.

And maybe monkeys will fly out of my butt...

Late Breaking Update: Iraqis get the food they bought with oil as "humanitarian aid". How nice of us to give the starving enemy the food that they already bought with the oil we've been pimping pumping (swear to Koresh, Freud must have pulled my fingers on that typo) since the Fraud-in-Thief took over the controls. D'oh!

Some Baubles and A Canadian Treasure

The best cartoonist in the Great White North is named Aislin. You can find him in the revised Funny Farm links zone, along with a couple of other long time favorites – Barry Crimmins (actually, his CrimQuips page, but if you know what you’re doing you can get to his home page too!) and Steven Wright. Won’t you check out what they have to say to us all?

I saw this in a comments post at Atrios:



I strongly recommend you check this out. Scary stuff, kids!

You'll have to excuse me. I have some PigSqueal to put into the archives. Have a pleasant tomorrow!

Random guerilla blogging may take place at unspecified locations throughout midwest North America over the next few days.

Please take a moment or two and send some positive karma towards the plight of those less fortunate than ourselves. Especially those who have come in harm’s way through no fault of their own.

Those Wacky Canajuns!

This article, which I found on a blog called pedantry goes a long way towards providing an understanding of the relationship between Canada and the Unites States. Please take a moment from your hectic schedule and listen to what sam has to say.

For the record, I am a border child – Ma was American (but was pressured into renouncing her American citizenship after some of us were born) and Pa is Canadian. So my American relatives refer to me as ‘that damn Canadian’ and the Canadians call me ‘that damn American’. Plus, my little brother has started referring to the United States as ‘the Great Satan’. I tried making a humorous reference to the situation at work Monday. Unfortunately, a card-carrying member of the God Squad and a fiercely patriotic conservative (not quite a Ditto Monkey – this guy actually has some rationality behind his conservatism, even though he’s wrong) were there at the time, so the joke didn’t go over too well. At least they didn’t call in the Thought Police to haul my ass away...

Letters! We write letters!

Occasionally I manage to be coherent enough to get a point or two across. And, you always have to be quick and careful around a guy who is continually swinging the Hammer of Truth.

Which is to say, I saw this at Bartcop:

Subject: Be Careful

In a discussion at the NY Radio Message Board, the question was asked whether the Al-Jazeera network is in violation of the Geneva Convention by showing our soldiers captured and killed by Iraqi troops. It is unclear whether they are in violation since they are showing video from Iraqi TV. Apparently Drudge does not feel that this is a violation since he has still pictures from the video posted on his website.

Since Drudge is the favorite of our right wing friends, I doubt he will suffer any repercussions from printing these pictures but I am advising you not to print these pictures. Bush would come after you and "redirect" your readers if you print these images. U.S. networks have declined to air the footage but Drudge feels it is OK to show gruesome pictures of our troops being tortured. I'm sure if asked, our friends on the right will support Drudge rather than ask for him to be jailed, as I would. Of course, even if someone would call for Drudge's head, the right would support him. I'm also sure that if accused, Drudge would pull a "Limba" and blame it on an underling. I do not want to see those pictures on Bartcop.com.

(withheld)

and so I wrote this:

Subject: Being careful

Hey Bart!

With regards to being careful:

You can't show any pics yourself. Are you (legally) able to link to a site that does, or is that considered 'aiding and abetting'? I'd like to make sure I don't cross that line myself...

I would like to know if you had heard of the three minutes they broadcast of the Usurper-in-Thief primping before loosing the dogs of war. Apparently a BBC station was carrying a feed from in the room, and people say he was, shall we say, not as 'compassionate' a 'conservative' as he is publicly thought to be? Could you (legally) provide a link to something like that? Perhaps something like that would be extremely effective in bringing down this junta?

Or should I just fix myself a margarita and finish reading BartCop?

Rhetorical question. Never mind...

TTFN - LLAP

(: Tom :)

I wrote a letter to the Rush Transcripts group today, after our regular mp3 provider forgot to record today's episode of the Rush Limbaugh program, and questioned his own reliability:

Drew!

Don't sweat it, dude... I would have to say most people are having problems in the reliability area these days...

Besides, we can't even get two shows a week done! Our turnaround time is getting better, but it's 5 days since our last scribe, and there's still 4 chunks outstanding! If it wasn't for Kim the Scribing Machine, we'd probably still be working on the third show!

But we are getting better. And I, for one, would actually like to cut down on how many chunks I have to take, and see a few more than seven (or less) names in the daily scribe list. We don't have anyone else who could even do one or two chunks with only a minute or two of actual blathering to unscramble?

It's a frelling drenny mess of kimchee, but there are some unbelievable nuggets to be had. I personally have just heard El ChupaCabra thank Gore for keeping his mouth shut over the last few months. Maybe someone could bring that to the President-in-Exile's attention?

Anyways, - just enjoying a rare weeknight off. Listening to jazz from my home station in Waterloo, Ontario through the magic of the Internet. With all that’s going on, it’s nice to be able to tune in to a familiar voice or two. Especially after listening to Pigboy for what seems like an eternity each day (how can ditto monkeys do anything after listening to that crap for three full hours? It boggles the mind), but turns out to be no more than 15 minutes after you take out the adverts. Of course, (cough) I have been cherry picking the ends of the hours. You just have to imagine the joy of writing Ari Fork Tongue spins for the junta when I hear the rancid snake come on their national sound bite almost every day. At least, the ones I am transcribing, it seems.

I hope you guys are in it for the long haul. The Attila the Hun chair certainly won’t be slouching off towards Bethlehem anytime soon. And if it does, we can scribe the dross from here!

TTFN – LLAP

(: Tom :)

You Go, Mike!

They're getting the cell ready in Gitmo even as we speak:

Director Moore Scolds Bush from Oscar Stage. Thanks, Common Dreams!

Secret Broadcast from the Maelstrom

Due to some places being unable to access the incomparable Neal Pollack (if you click on the link and are blocked, you’ll know what I mean), I present this piece of wonderful satire:

Around the War Horn -- 3/23/2003

Hello, everyone. Hope you're enjoying the war. I know that I am. However, I'd like to apologize for the words accidentally posted on this page over the weekend. They weren't mine. Roger, my beleagurered manservant, has access to my computer, and for some reason, he's against this war to liberate the Iraqi people. I told him, Roger, whatever you do, don't write that U.S. bombs are killing "thousands" of innocents, because that could never happen. Sure enough, I was right, and he was wrong, and his mistaken post has been removed. Now he'll spend the next three days in the wine cellar, with nothing to eat or drink but wine. Let's see what his opinions are after I "liberate" him.

I spent the weekend trying to get embedded, which is why I was away from my blogpost. Why didn't anyone tell me about this fabulous embedding procedure before the war started? Of course, all the good slots were already taken. The Coast Guard offered to embed me with a reserve unit in Seattle, but since that's a largely antiwar city, I refused. After all, my role as America's leading internet analyst of current events is more important .
Of course, I had to be away during the biggest news weekend of all time. But now I will, as I promised in the heading of this post, go around the war horn. This should get me, and the 2,000 people who depend on my website as their primary source of daily news, caught up.

1. I attended the Geneva Convention, and had a pretty nice hotel room, so I'm well-qualified to comment on the hideous pictures of American POWs broadcast this weekend on Al-Jazeera. The Geneva Accords specifically state that it's illegal to air photographed images of POWs for propaganda purposes, unless, and I quote, "the images were taken by television cameramen embedded with military units of the invading country." Further, the Accords state that if the POWs are taken by the "army of a cruel, repressive tyrant, as opposed to a benign democracy run by good Christians," then the soldiers who took them are war criminals who can be tortured and executed in secret. Americans came to Iraq to "fix broke stuff." Maybe the antiwar defecators in San Francisco should chew on that for a while.

2. I'm so angry at the antiwar protesters that I want to round them all up, put them into detention camps, and beat them within a centimeter of their lives. Their stupidity has become that severe. But, as a lover of liberty, I will instead pound them insensate with words. And I invite you to do the same. Readers, I ask you to participate in this week's contest. Find the stupidest thing said by an antiwar protester, either real or fabricated, and send it to me. The winner will get to eat lunch with me at a time of my choosing.

My first nominee comes from this New Yorker, who calls himself "Gary Peacenik," quoted in yesterday's New York Times: "I'm sorry our soldiers are dying, I really am, but they wouldn't be if we hadn't invaded Iraq in the first place based on forged evidence and in defiance of international law."
Are you really, sorry, Gary? Or are you secretly glad that the "evil" empire is taking the inevitable lumps that go along with fighting a just war? I think the latter.

3. I've been speaking out against the tyrannies of Saddam Hussein since last Tuesday, but it appears that the BBC still isn't coming around. A reader sent me the transcript of the following BBC broadcast, which he says someone emailed him based on something he'd heard from someone else. Read this, and decide on which side of the fence YOU want to stand: "Nighttime. Baghdad in flames. The bombs are dropping and a few people are dead. U.S. and British forces are roaring across the desert, meeting little resistance on their march toward Baghdad. Soon, Iraqis in the street tell me, they will be free from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein."
When will the pro-Palestinian bias of the BBC, or, as I call it, the Bumbling Bastard Company, ever end?

4. Was that really Donald Rumsfeld on Meet The Press Sunday, or one of his many body doubles? Not that it matters, particularly, because all versions of Rummy acquit themselves beautifully, with moral grace. Still, I must ask the hard questions.

5. I don't want to criticize the U.S. military, which has conducted this campaign like a ballet, but without dancing. Nonetheless, one has to wonder if they shouldn't screen their soldier candidates more carefully. For instance, they might want to ask, "Are you a Muslim?" or "If we invade a Middle Eastern country, would you ever do anything crazy like attempt to kill your commanding officers with a series of grenades?" I've long advocated, in this space, the jailing of all Muslims for an unspecified period of time. Maybe now my plans will come to fruition.

6. An Oscar note to Michael Moore, whose time of final imprisonment is near: George W. Bush, who from here on in this column will be referred to as The Liberator, is not a fictitious President to those of us who voted for him and worship the Star Creator. And I wonder if the families of the victims of the helicopter crashes, or the British plane accidentally downed by one of our missiles, or the guy in the tent that the guy threw the grenade into, or those mechanics being held in direct violation of the Geneva Convention see this as fiction, or real? Did the platoon of soldiers ambushed by the sneaky unfair Iraqi cowards who were pretending to be a mariachi band think they were taking part in a fiction? Well, the answer is no. And also, Michael, who needs the Pope and the Dixie Chicks when you've got Tony Blair and Travis Tritt? Ah, who cares? I'm writing this from a "private" post-ceremony party at Diane Lane's house. Diane and I have had an on-again off-again affair since I was a consulting screenwriter on Streets Of Fire. Tonight, it appears, as the war rages, that we're on. I haven't had sex in nearly seven days. Let's face it, all this gunplay makes a man randy.

That's all for now. Keep tuning into this space for the most decidedly objective nonideological commetary available anywhere on the Internet. And I leave you with this. Antiwar people. They're so silly!

If you could see his website when you clicked on the link above, here’s a permanent link to this essay.