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April 30, 2005

WitNit Newswire

01/01/05: 0000
04/19/05: 5000
06/13/05: 10,000
07/30/05: 15,000
09/13/05: 20,000
11/15/05: 25,000
12/16/05: 30,000
02/03/06: 35,000
03/22/06: 40,000
05/12/06: 45,000


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Posted by witnit at 11:00 PM

25-Word Challenge Is On

ash at The Boiling Point is hosting this weekend. An old codger, memories of a femme fatale, an auto-load shotgun. It's happening! Check it out!

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April 29, 2005

The Gunslinger: Chapter Two

oogie has posted Chapter Two! If you missed it, go read Dax's Chapter One. Next week it will be yours truly who's forced to deliver the goods in Chapter 3. I don't think I'll be sleeping much:

Chapter 3 - May 6 - WitNit
Chapter 4 - May 13 - Kelley
Chapter 5 - May 20 - Eric

Chapter 6 - May 27 - Pammy
Chapter 7 - June 3 - VelociGod


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Not the Best Man

ometimes, you'd think a guy would bring up his issue before the wedding:

A honeymooning couple was to return Wednesday night to find their home had been set on fire while they were away, and that police arrested the best man at their wedding and charged him with setting the blaze.
***Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then. Katherine Hepburn

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It Must Be A Guy Thing

y name is Mark Alexander, and I've blown up things. Reading Acidman's confession that he blew up things as a 12-year-old, reminded me of things I did in 6th grade as well. There's something about that age, I guess.

I was born in Nebraska and raised in Kansas until I was 11 years old. We had real fireworks in those days. Remember helicopters? A rubber band tying a single propeller to a cylinder full of explosives that you would light next to a flat cornfield and watch ignite and spin faster than a clothes washer on spin cycle and then SHOOT straight up into the sky and out of sight within a split second?

Remember the real Roman candles that came in rainbow-colored 8-ball shots and 10-ball shots?

We'd divide up into teams with several of the 10-ball shot Roman candles in our overalls, stake out our kingdoms at the ends of a large dirt-clod field ringed by a few mulberry trees, and about 30 minutes after sunset on a warm June night, we'd take up our defensive positions using as our shields steel garbage can lids with the handle welded to the center, then in a coordinated attack begin lighting Roman candles that would SPIT a 3-inch ball of colored fire every 3 or 4 seconds about 100 feet, slow enough to give the enemy plenty of time to deflect the shot as they returned fire and we'd deflect theirs. Our eyes would light up with the colorful splatters of fire. Nobody ever got hurt. Of course you learn fast to hold the candle out so that the rear of the cylinder does not spit back at you.

One summer night my dad was an actor in community theater in The Rainmaker when some kids drove by and tossed a Cherry Bomb over the fence of the theater and it landed on the bench right between my dad's legs and someone yelled just in time so that he stood up when it blew, causing 1st and 2nd degree burns on his inner thighs and butt.

When we moved to California in the summer of 1966, the third 6th-grade school I went to was in Salinas, home of John Steinbeck. I met a rich kid whose father was a doctor. Neither of his parents seemed ever to be home after school, but his dad would allow this 12-year-old to play with Potassium Chlorate. Hell, doctor dad wrote the prescription to acquire it for him.

In those days you could look in the back of Popular Science and Popular Mechanics and see ads for 75 feet of Cherry Bomb fuse for $1. And ads for barrel bomb components minus the gunpowder. Well hell, we had Potassium Chlorate. Anyone could pick up the Sulfur and Charcoal to finish the mix, and we did.

We made barrel bombs by filling the little grey tube with powder, gluing the end caps with Elmer's Glue, sticking in Cherry Bomb fuse right in the middle of the barrel, and burying the little bombs in the back yard. KABLOOIEEE!!!

We found little miniature liquor bottles from his parents European trips and filled them and KABLOOIEEED those as well.

When we ran out of Potassium Chlorate, we would still have yards of Cherry Bomb fuse, so we would play Mission Impossible and light the sucker, after winding it through his sister's dolls and trains and balsa wood airplanes. That gave us the idea to blow up more fun stuff, because hell, his daddy could rewite the prescription.

Ahhh, the days before every damn social reformer campaigned to protect us from ourselves.


*** Somehow I reached excess without ever noticing when I was passing though satisfaction. Ashleigh Brilliant


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April 28, 2005

Flash Me! Flash Me! Flash Me!

hanks to The Cheesemistress for opening the door to all of this. (And there's more for supper at Basil's Blog.) Get ready to spend the weekend playing a few Flash movies. This is a huge collection, and there's lots of fun here. Take your time and enjoy. If you don't see something you're looking for, try DrNO's Fun Site. I've only included a portion.

Some are funny, some are sleazy, some are gross, but I've only included those that seemed to offer some fun or creative value. Ya gotta realize there's lots of lonely computer guys out there with no other creative outlet.

Warning! Not all are work safe!

Under 500kb.

500kb to 2MB

Over 2 MB

Bruno Bozzetto Films

Shockers

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Posted by witnit at 9:24 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

April 27, 2005

Giving Blondes a Bad Name

like some of the movies that Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz have made. They make me laugh. But my Gawd has there ever been a pair who better confirm the stereotype of stupido-liberal Hollywood starlets?

Check out this story courtesy of Gil at A Reasonable Man.

Actress Drew Barrymore, who reportedly earns $15 million a film, told MTV viewers in one episode that after spending time in a primitive, electricity-free Chilean village, "I aspire to be like them more."

Barrymore, apparently enthralled by the lack of a modern sanitary facilities, gleefully bragged, "I took a poo in the woods hunched over like an animal. It was awesome."

The 32-year-old Diaz, who earns a reported $20-million a movie, boasted that the cow-dung slathered walls of a Nepalese village hut were "beautiful" and "inspiring," and she called the primitive practice of "pounding mud" with sticks to construct a building foundation "the coolest thing."

And don't give me guff that the news site is presenting biased reporting. I've heard both of them interviewed about politics and this is clearly representative of their cluelessness.

*** Gather round like sheep and ye shall be herd.


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Posted by witnit at 2:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Lazarus Emerges from the Tomb!

incon, Georgia (WitNit Newswire) -- Rob "Acidman" @#$%&* of Gut Rumbles committed resurrection today, admitting that "Okay, I am over my temper tantrum now and I'm going to blog again."

Awe-inspired cliquesh cheerleaders rushed to his feet, breathlessly awaiting his humbling words and rants.

"He's back, he's back, oh my Gaaaawwwwd, he's back," cried CalTechGirl.

"All right. Now do we get the Carnival of the Crappers?" shouted Velociman.

"Shoulda used a club instead of a pin," mumbled Silk.

Here is an unretouched photo of Acidman immediately after his resurrection:



This reporter is relieved.

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April 26, 2005

Hearts, Brains, and Guts

ho would've guessed? You know, I like to make people laugh. I try to find the humor within the pain. And I suppose that despite appearances, I do wear my heart on my sleave. And I'm not the only one.
Your Brain is 46.67% Female, 53.33% Male
Your brain is a healthy mix of male and female

You are both sensitive and savvy

Rational and reasonable, you tend to keep level headed

But you also tend to wear your heart on your sleeve



What Gender Is Your Brain?

[Via Dash who stole it from Kathy who nabbed it from Sheila.]

Blogs mislead us into thinking we're talking from behind a wall. So we can let down walls and tell everyone in here things we don't tell our friends and family out there.

And we think others are talking from behind their walls, so it's just fine to throw out all the monkey shit we want. We talk tough and cynically and sarcastic because those are ways to ignore the fact that as writers we can't help but wear our hearts on our sleaves.

We're all to some extent Hemingways, in one way or another battling the melancholy that we rarely like to admit is constantly pressing inside. Wondering where our home really is. Thinking we might find a room of it here.

Ruth (Freudian Slippers) slipped out on us. Rob (Acidman) found the straw that broke his camel's back.

I can't say I know what my point is. All I know for sure is that a lot of what I think is funny is often an excuse to keep from feeling pain.


Update: Ruth's back. New place. Can't afford to lose precious BabeWits!
Update: Acidman's back. Same place. "Need adoration. Will write."


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April 25, 2005

Revenge of the Meme

o apparently life is like a boomerang. You throw out something, it comes right back at you, smacking you in the teeth. Karma. It never forgets.

Apparently there is a blogger called TeeFiz who recently decided to murder all memes with the ultimate toxin of a meme, what he calls Turd in a Punchbowl. Update: It seems TeeFiz is merely an accomplice to murder. The real culprit is Elisson.

Now, I always tried to create a positive, interesting, entertaining meme. And I thought I was getting on the good side of the Divas, especially Silk, who willfully, maliciously, and actionably tagged me with this meme.

(And exactly how many of these BabeWits are lawyers, past, present, and future? Or is it my you-need-help-bubba-only-$400-per-hour personality?)

Okay. I take the pledge. I will destroy my genetics lab. No more meme creation! Trust me. I'm a man.


So, here are the rules:

Simply compose a four-line poem and post it on your blog. The first and third verses of the poem should read “Turd in a punchbowl.” Verses two and four may be about any subject (including turds!) but they must rhyme with each other.

Here's my poem:

Turd in a punchbowl
I'm down on my knees
Turd in a punchbowl
Forgive my memes, please

In the spirit of this poem, I tag three bloggers telepathically. Please let me know if you get the message.

*** I would like to add my own thoughts to the ongoing debate about Telepathy...


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April 24, 2005

Classic Blog Post Meme

his is a bit of a selfish meme, simply because I'd like a shortcut to all that I've missed over the last few years and want some way to catch up.

This meme is also unique in that you send it to only one person who you know will continue it within the next 24 hours. That way, anyone who comes upon it can track forward easily. (If the tagged blogger fails to come up with a post within 24 hours, then a new tag is required.)

The question is simple: Name two classic blog posts that deserve to be read and remembered. My preference is humor, but don't let that limit you.

Copy the list below, add your two on top with brief descriptions, and tag the next person. That way we build a classics list (and I can get the wheat after others remove the chaff).

Here are my two:


24: Terrorism and Torture - A classic parody for fans of the series 24 at Wuzzadem.
Your blog and its privacy policy - Hope at Humor Hangout gives sage advice to bloggers.

I tag: Sadie at Fistful of Fortnights. Cause she's loves memes and hasn't had enough lately. (Memes, that is.)

UPDATE: Everyone seems to be reading past the part where they add to the list, so I will keep it up here. Heck, I want to read all of them anyway.

12) Back when Kim was much more unknown than he is now...back when he wasnt the subject of quite so much love and adulation from the teeming minions, just over a year ago, he wrote a post about his mother-in-law called Outlaw Territory. [Mr. Helpful]

11) If you want to know heartbreak./If you want to know a soul stripped bare in agony./If you want to know tortured pain./Then go and read this....My words simply cannot do it justice. [Mr. Helpful]
10) First up is my friend Sluggo?s post entitled, ?Calling Max Bialystock,? ... This well-crafted post manages to tell what is ultimately a sad story in a most amusing way. [Jim]

9) Next is a post by my Cousin Jack of Jack Bog?s Blog, entitled, ?We Interrupt this Program,? in which Jack shares he remembrances of November 22, 1963 as a sixth grader... [Jim]
8) thoughts on Charleston... again, this is a theme I love.. taking a place and time, and realizing the importance of it... reminisces... introspection... connecting your Self with your history... [Eric]
7) the Tale of Simone Griffeth... if there is one theme I can sink my teeth into, it is unrequited love... it is truly universal... [Eric]

6) This one at Random Fate struck me last summer because of the depth of his love and respect for someone. [Christina]
5) Eric wrote this post a while ago and it still speaks to me on many levels. [Christina]
4) Straight White Guy - From a Dream: A captivating fictional short story, or as Eric describes it, "....a noir tale of loss.... oh, and sex..." [Sadie]

3) Cake Eater Chronicles - Knickers. Twisted. Kathy discusses the status of Origin Of Species as theory and the resulting manipulation by creationists: "This is their silver bullet that cuts right through the bullshit. And, to my mind, it's a logical fallacy that has no end." [Sadie]
2) 24: Terrorism and Torture - A classic parody for fans of the series 24 at Wuzzadem. [Mark]
1) Your blog and its privacy policy - Hope at Humor Hangout gives sage advice to bloggers. [Mark]

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Posted by witnit at 1:15 PM

April 23, 2005

Stupidest Moment Meme Update

recently posted my Stupidest Moment three days ago, and decided to turn in into a meme. Surprisingly, Stupid Moments are proliferating. I thought I'd try tracking them, since they can be funny. Here's what's out there so far. I still think mine's the stupidest:

Layer One

Ian at Banana Oil!: "Mer and I were considered odd friends. We were quite different people, yet from when we first met we could finish each other’s thoughts. We joked that we each had a half of the same brain."

Phin at Phin's Blog: A Twofer: "I've had problems off and on with my neck and back for the past couple of years, the Chiropractor thinks it was a wreck I was in years ago, the wife thinks it's because I spend to much time in front of the computer, I think I'm just not fishing enough. But anywhoo…." And the second: "It was my freshmen year in high school. The town I grew up in is Greenville, North Carolina, home of East Carolina University and some of the best tailgating in the country. The week prior to a home ECU football game a group of my friends and I decided to tailgate, which would seem harmless enough to most folks."

Christina at Feisty Repartee: Whew! Finally! "When I was in private practice, I usually wore suits with short, pencil skirts when I was to appear in court."

Layer Two

Tom at Undercaffeinated: "When each day adds another moment of idiocy to my huge lifetime inventory of dumbness, how do I go about choosing that one act of supreme stupidity that makes all others pale in comparison?"

William at Pirate's Cove: "So, this was back in the early 90's, and me and a bunch of folks had been out drinking that Thursday night, nothing crazy, just some pitchers at the Substation II. Got to be maybe 12:30, 1am, and we had had enough, was summertime."

Oystersnout: "so, one day, about 15 years ago, when i was still young and reckless, i had a motorcycle. nice bike, a '82 Yamaha Maxim 750, inline 4 with shaft drive, customized before i bought it for a good price."

Marc at Hubs and Spokes: Waiting...

Jay at Accidental Verbosity: Waiting...

Basil's Blog: Waiting...

Layer Three

BillyBudd at American Dinosaur: "Back in the old days when the world was black and white, and I was much more worldy I owned a Cadillac. Before that let me preface the story with this tidbit. The historical precedent starts B.C. (Before Cadillac) when I used to drive an MGB. Yes an MGB that faggy little English car that Harvard professors drove to pick up on young nubile co-eds and prove that they could conquer the nuances of driving an English car."

Alex at B A Start: "Myself and a dozen other Boy Scouts from around the US were backpacking in New Mexico for two weeks. I was the leader, and had the maps."

Mike at Royal Toybox: "Okay, in honor of getting something down on paper, here goes: I, Mike Garvey, was in a vampire movie."

Norman at Expresso Sarcasm: Well, Norman didn't propogate the meme that Tom at Undercaffeinated tagged him with, but he did give us a good petty rant for the day.

Steve at Secure Liberty: Waiting...

Miss Patriot: Waiting...

Layer 4

Jess at Outgrabes: "My freshman year of college I was bullied into going to a Nine Inch Nails concert by some poser goth friends. While this may have demonstrated a shameful lack of backbone on my part, it wasn't in itself stupid."

Emily at Swish: Waiting...

Webshite: Waiting...

*** Democracy: 3 wolves & a sheep voting on what's for lunch.

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Posted by witnit at 7:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

25-Word Challenge and Breakfast

olitickal Animal is the host for this week's 25-Word Challenge. Dead people and hookers...Oh My! Go and help create the story.

And Phin is hosting Breakfast at Basil's Blog.


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April 22, 2005

Basil's Blog for Supper

hanks to Basil's Blog, I think I have finally figured out this Trackback thing by adding Haloscan. One little step for a man, one giant leap for his blog.

So check out Basil's Supper for today. A great idea. Basil is now one of my daily reads, and perhaps should be yours, if you haven't tried him out yet.


*** Every now and then, I do the right thing, just to confuse you. Ashleigh Brilliant

UPDATE: Hey! Did I miss the fine print that said all comments would be lost in the process? BEJEEZUSPHUKENKEERYSTAMUNDO!!!

If you left comments recently, I may not have read them!!

UPDATE: No buyer's remorse here, though. Better I do it now than a year from now...


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South Park Conservatives

rian Anderson, the author of South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias, is offering a free chapter via email. Just type in an email and submit. The PDF for the 26-page chapter "South Park Anti-Liberals" will be emailed to you.


*** I have given up my search for truth and am now looking for a good fantasy. Ashleigh Brilliant


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Posted by witnit at 12:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Crown Me

entistry these days is amazing!

So I have a 2-hour appointment to get a crown (#19, lower left main molar).

She drills it, discovers I need a root canal, does that, computer models the remainder of the tooth, sends the image to that expensive German machine that makes the porcelein crown color matched perfectly, installs the tooth with light-solidified super glue, and I walk out 2 hours later with a completed root canal and crown and...

...no need for followup visits!

And no pain! (Well, the nerve was drilled out, I guess.)

Sure is not like the old days...

*** Refuse Novacaine--Transcend Dental Medication!


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Posted by witnit at 10:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Dax Montana - Western

eed more be said? Get over to read Dax's Chapter One of the blog Western, The Gunslinger.

I, for one, am going to resist saying it. I am...I swear...I'm strong...I will not...I won't...JUST DAMN!

(shit!)

Thanks to Christina for being the blog fiction champion! Sign me up for the humorous fantasy blog novel.

Here's the line up:

Chapter 2 - April 29 - Moogie
Chapter 3 - May 6 - Acidman

Chapter 4 - May 13 - Key
Chapter 5 - May 20 - Eric
Chapter 6 - May 27 - Pammy
Chapter 7 - June 3 - VelociGod

*** Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.


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Posted by witnit at 9:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Shallow End of the Dicepool

ulie with a B is responsible for my taking this test. (What does that B stand for...?)

I am a d4

Take the quiz at dicepool.com

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Posted by witnit at 9:32 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

My Inner European

ammit! I can't believe this!
Your Inner European is French!

Smart and sophisticated.
You have the best of everything - at least, you think so.

Who's Your Inner European?
France--Where men are men, and sheep are nervous. Sheesh! I can thank Ian for this embarrassment. I'd take Russian any day. Tolstoy, Chekov, Pushkin...

UPDATE:

It was a mistake! I went back and retook the test, because I had mistakenly chosen Chicken in White Wine and Cream Sauce instead of Pasta or Rice with lots of Good Bread. There. I feel better now.



Your Inner European is Italian!






Passionate and colorful.

You show the world what culture really is.



Who's Your Inner European?

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April 21, 2005

BabeWits Update

he BabeWits are up to their bloomers in activity this week. Here's an update:



Witty Sex Kitten is a bit testy about, oh, one of those very natural parts of life that make some women actually look favorably upon menopause. (Think Alice Cooper.)



Sadie at Fistful of Fortnights puts on an innocent face and shares a cute little bathroom story that makes only women smile. (Damn you, Cutex!)

Kathy at Cake Eater Chronicles is a wee bit too obsessed with Alias and the fate of Jennifer and Ben. (I love me, I love you not, I love me, I love you not...)

Our Cheesemistress admits to being a murderer! (Is that overstating it?)



Ruth at Freudian Slippers wants bloggers to get over themselves when comparing themselves to the MSM. (You talkin' to me? YOU TALKIN' TO ME?) Mysteriously unavailable...

Christina at Feisty Repartee is not up to the intellectual challenge posed by the Sweet One. (There's a euphamism for you.)

And finally, Silk at Just Breathe likes to fantasize about justifiable slashing while at the dog kennel. (Makes you want to Scream.) And check her out as host for Diva Sez on Friday. Smart answers to dumb men.

And people wonder why I have a special category for these Babes!


*** If I can’t have access to your heart, at least let me have access to your refrigerator. Ashleigh Brilliant


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A History of the World

'm off to the dentist today and I doubt I will have a chance to blog, so I leave you with a classic. If you haven't read this before, you are in for a treat.

The World According to Student Bloopers

Richard Lederer, St. Paul's School

One of the fringe benefits of being an English or History teacher is receiving the occasional jewel of a student blooper in an essay. I have pasted together the following "history" of the world from certifiably genuine student bloopers collected by teachers throughout the United States, from eighth grade through college level. Read carefully, and you will learn a lot.

The inhabitants of Egypt were called mummies. they lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert are cultivated by irritation. The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of a huge triangular cube. The Pramids are a range of mountains between France and Spain.

The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinesses, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children, Cain, asked "Am I my brother's son?" God asked Abraham to sacrifice Issac on Mount Montezuma. Jacob, son of Issac, stole his brother's birthmark. jacob was a partiarch who brought up his twelve sone to be partiarchs, but they did not take to it. One of Jacob's sons, Joseph, gave refuse to the Israelites.

Pharaoh forced the Hebrew slaves to make bread without straw. Moses led them to the Red Sea, where they made unleavenbed bread, which is bread made without any ingredients.

Afterwards, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments. David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar. He fought with the Philatelists, a race of people who lived in Biblical times. Solomon, one of David's sons, had 500 wives and 500 porcupines.

Without the Greeks, we wouldn't have history. The Greeks invented three kinds of colums - Corinthian, Doric and Ironic. They also had myths. A myth is a female moth. One myth says that the mother of Achilles dipped him in the River Stynx until he became intolerable. Achilles appears in "The Illiad", by Homer. Homer also wrote the "Oddity", in which Penelope was the last hardship that Ulysses endured on his journey. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name.

Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock.

In the Olympic Games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits, and threw the java. The reward to the victor was a coral wreath. The government of Athens was democratic because the people took the law into their own hands. There were no wars in Greece, as the mountains were so high that they couldn't climb over to see what their neighbors were doing. When they fought the Parisians, the Greeks were outnumbered because the Persians had more men.

Eventually, the Ramons conquered the Geeks. History call people Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long. At Roman banquets, the guests wore garlic in their hair. Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March killed him because they thought he was going to be made king. Nero was a cruel tyrany who would torture his poor subjects by playing the fiddle to them.

Then came the Middle Ages. King Alfred conquered the Dames, King Arthur lived in the Age of Shivery, King Harlod mustarded his troops before the Battle of Hastings, Joan of Arc was cannonized by George Bernard Shaw, and the victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. Finally, the Magna Carta provided that no free man should be hanged twice for the same offense.

In midevil times most of the people were alliterate. The greatest writer of the time was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verse and also wrote literature. Another tale tells of William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son's head.

The Renaissance was an age in which more individuals felt the value of their human being.

Martin Luther was nailed to the church door at Wittenberg for selling papal indulgences. He died a horrible death, being excommunicated by a bull. It was the painter Donatello's interest in the female nude that made him the father of the Renaissance. It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented the Bible. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarette. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper.

The government of England was a limited mockery. Henry VIII found walking difficult because he had an abbess on his knee. Queen Elizabeth exposed herself before her troops, they all shouted "hurrah." Then her navy went out and defeated the Spanish Armadillo.

The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespear. Shakespear never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He lived in Windsor with his merry wives, writing tragedies, comedies and errors. In one of Shakespear's famous plays, Hamlet rations out his situation by relieving himself in a long soliloquy. In another, Lady Macbeth tries to convince Macbeth to kill the King by attacking his manhood. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couplet. Writing at the same time as Shakespear was Miquel Cervantes. He wrote "Donkey Hote". The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote "Paradise Lost." Then his wife dies and he wrote "Paradise Regained."

During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who discovered American while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships were called the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe. Later the Pilgrims crossed the Ocean, and the was called the Pilgrim's Progress. When they landed at Plymouth Rock, they were greeted by Indians, who came down the hill rolling their was hoops before them. The indian squabs carried porposies on their back. Many of the Indian heroes were killed, along with their cabooses, which proved very fatal to them. The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the settlers. many people died and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this.

One of the causes of the Revolutionary Wars was the English put tacks in their tea. Also, the colonists would send their parcels through the post without stamps. During the War, Red Coats and Paul Revere was throwing balls over stone walls. The dogs were barking and the peococks crowing. Finally, the colonists won the War and no longer paid for taxis.

Delegates from the original thirteen states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin had gone to Boston carrying all his clothes in his pocket and a loaf of bread under each arm. he invented electricity by rubbing cats backwards and declared "a horse divided against itself cannot stand." Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.

George Washington married Matha Curtis and in due time became the Father of our Country. Then the Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the Constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms.

Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest Precedent. Lincoln's mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands. When Lincoln was President, he wore only a tall silk hat. He said, "In onion there is strength." Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg address while traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope. He also signed the Emasculation Proclamation, and the Fourteenth Amendment gave the ex-Negroes citizenship. But the Clue Clux Clan would torcher and lynch the ex-Negroes and other innocent victims. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposedly insane actor. This ruined Booth's career.

Meanwhile in Eurpose, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltare invented electricity and also wrote a book called "Candy". Gravity was invented by Issac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the Autumn, when the apples are falling off the trees. Bach was the most famous composer in the world, and so was Handel. Handel was half German, half Italian and half English. He was very large. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took lang walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.

France was in a very serious state. The French Revolution was accomplished before it happened. The Marseillaise was the theme song of the French Revolution, and it catapulted into Napoleon. During the Napoleonic Wars, the crowned heads of Europe were trembling in their shoes. The the Spanish gorrilas came down from the hills and nipped at Napoleon's flanks. Napoleon became ill with bladder problems and was very tense and unrestrainedd. He wanted an heir to inherit his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she couldn't bear him any children.

The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West. Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. he reclining years and finally the end of her life were exemplatory of a great personality. Her death was the final event which ended her reign.

The nineteenth century was a time of many great inventions and thoughts. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick Raper, which did the work of a hundred men. Samuel Morse invented a code for telepathy. Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the "Organ of the Species". Madman Curie discovered Radio. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx Brothers.

The First World War, cause by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by a surf, ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.

*** Without time, everything would happen at once!


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April 20, 2005

Game Warden Humor

illyBudd, the American Dinosaur, tells a Game Warden joke. Reminds me of one:

A game warden on his rounds in a national forest spies a man carrying a bag and a rifle.

"How's it goin'?" asks the game warden.

"Fine," says the man.

"What's in the bag?"

"Nothing much."

"I'm afraid I'm gonna have to insist. Show me what's in the bag."

The man opens the bag and inside there's a dead flamingo. The game warden pulls out his handcuffs. "I'm sorry, but I have to arrest you."

"Why?" cries the man. "I was only shootin' it for food."

"That species of flamingo is an endangered species. I'm taking you in." He handcuffs the man and they walk for a while. Finally, the game warden says, "You know, I've always been curious. What does a flamingo taste like?"

The man thinks for a moment and says, "Oh, somewhere between a condor and a bald eagle."

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Hitchens Gets Off A Good One

n Dennis Miller tonight:

Hitchens (Referring to the recently deceased Pope's inviting Saddam's henchman to the Vatican and protection of Cardinal Law): "This is a pretty grim record."

Miller: "Well, Chris, you better hope so or you're going to Hell if not."

Hitchens: "Well, all the most amusing people seem to be bound the same way."


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"My Stupidest Moment" Meme

figured that since I was going to post this anyway, I should create it as a meme to get a peek into the humiliating private lives of some of my favorite bloggers.

My stupidest moment:

Happiness is a Warm Gun

It was the summer of 1980. Carter was President, the country was suffering the indignity of Iran holding Americans, and our wimp of a President told us how miserable we were while nearly bankrupting us with 20+% interest rates.

OPEC had begun flexing its muscle by reducing supply and forcing gas prices up. For the first time, Americans were pissed about the price of gas at the pumps. And many felt that gas stations were taking advantage of the crisis.

It was a sweltering summer in Sacramento. The rice fields were still routinely burned during summer months, creating a smoggy inversion layer that blanketed the valley and made cranks of us all. Tempers were hot as freshly driven rivets.

I was young, in college fulltime, and working 50 hours a week in a 7-11 convenience store that had three gas pumps. My dream job. No days off and 5 hours a night of sleep. Speed-hyped shoplifters, biker-jacketed beer runners, and the occasional armed robber. Still, it was a nice upper-middle-class neighborhood, so there were more good than bad customers.

My boss Bill was ex-military. Flew Air Force fighters in Vietnam. Good guy. We got on well. Told dirty jokes all the time. He liked to keep a Ruger Police Special revolver that shot .357s and .38s. We used to go up to his Sierra mountain property near Nyack and shoot cans. I'd shot all kinds of guns in my time. Even a custom bear-killer rifle in Alaska that shot hand-made .48s. I was a comfotable amateur shooter. Code for S-T-U-P-I-D.

The revolver stayed in the backroom where he counted the money in the morning. But sometimes when the graveyard shift guy called in sick, Bill would come in to keep the store open and bring the gun up under the register. Just in case.

I'd come in at 6:00 am to take over for Bill. He always left the gun under the register, and I wouldn't notice until he was gone. I'd leave it there fantasizing how I'd stop the robber or blow out the tires of a gas runner.

You see, people were so pissed about gas prices (a dollar a gallon was over the top for most people) that they'd come in, fill up, and drive off without paying. We'd always let people filup first, pay after. Now, for the first time, people would steal gas. You extend a little trust, and they take you down for it. Iran, prices, Carter, misery index, gas ripoff artists--the combined anger was more than any of us realized.

Something told me that it was a bad idea to keep that gun up front under the register. Something told me that I didn't need it, that my imagination was creating something that had to come out somehow. Something told me...but stupid dumbass kid that I was, I ignored it.

It was a nice, quiet Sunday morning around 10:00 am. Business didn't really pick up until 11:00 am. There was only one customer drifting through the aisles. My boss bill came in to see how things were going. He had pulled an all-nighter two days before and neither of us had bothered to take the gun into the back room.

I asked him to run the counter while I went into the back to catch up on work or go to the bathroom or some such. About 10 minutes later I came out and took over.

I looked outside and saw a long-haired guy in a green Mustang just stop at the Regular pump. I looked at the console. It was clear. I set him up for a fillup. He pumped his gas. And as I stood watching him, the bastard finished and proceeded to get into his car and drive for the exit.


I couldn't believe it! He was pulling out as I watched. Something in me snapped. I grabbed the gun. I raced around the counter. I rushed through the swinging front doors. I hoofed it towards the Mustang.

The guy had stopped, waiting for traffic to clear. He didn't see me coming.

All I thought was, I'm gonna blow out his tires and stop this sonofabitch!

As I got close to the rear passenger side of the Mustang, traffic cleared. The guy started revving his engine. He popping the clutch, and started spinning his tires. I aimed at the right rear tire and fired three shots as he drove away.

Blam! Blam! Blam!

My body turned as I fired each shot at the tire...And I watched as the Mustang screeched out of sight.

Shit! I missed!

Angry and disappointed, I turned toward the store and saw a pair of gawkers, my boss and a customer, looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows, their faces saying What the hell is going on?

I walked back dejected, the gun hanging down, pointing at the asphalt, walked through the glass doors, turned to my boss and said, "Bill, that guy just stole some gas."

And my boss looked at me calmly and said:

"He already paid!"

healreadypaidhealreadypaidhealreadypaidhealreadypaid
healreadypaidhealreadypaidhealreadypaidhealreadypaid
healreadypaidhealreadypaidhealreadypaidhealreadypaid
healreadypaidhealreadypaidhealreadypaidhealreadypaid
healreadypaidhealreadypaidhealreadypaidhealreadypaid
healreadypaidhealreadypaidhealreadypaidhealreadypaid

Whaaa...

My knees went weak and all I could say was, "Oh, don't tell me that!"

While I was in the backroom, the guy had paid for his gas and when he tried to pump it, his intake was too far, so he hung up the nozzle, which reset the console, and i saw him just in time to see him repositioning his car. He only took the gas he had paid for.

My boss and I sat around the rest of the day wondering when the cops would show up. He didn't fire me. I don't know why. He must have liked me for some dumb reason.

Thank God I didn't blow out the guys tires. It turned out that gun had target rounds in it only, so they were less likely to penetrate the rubber.

We speculated on what had happened. I don't recall him ever looking back. Did the screeching tires cover up the sound? Did he think his car was backfiring? Did he see me coming and think, "Christ! You buy some gas and they come out shooting!"


We never heard from him and the cops. And it only took me a year to live it down.

So. Are you up to telling the truth? Your stupidest moment? I'd like to hear from three of you:

1) Feisty Girl: Tell us all about that hidden humilation, Christina.

2) You too Phin: What's the stupid story that you only tell when drunk?

3) And Ian of Banana Oil!: Right back at ya. That one unspeakable night in Shanghai... By the way, be careful if you are at work and you click on any of his Beauties of the Day. I know. I've looked at every one. (Bad, WitNit...bad...bad...)

UPDATE: Seems I should clarify. Although every Stupidest Moment is humiliating, not every humiliating moment is stupid. What was your Stupidest Moment?


*** No wonder I?m so confused! One of my parents was a man, and the other was a woman. Ashleigh Brilliant


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Posted by witnit at 12:00 AM

April 19, 2005

5000

ust hit 5000 on the Sitemeter. [yawn] I'll be impressed when/if it ever hits 100,000.

*** Why am I always so alone in my struggle to have my own way? Ashleigh Brilliant


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Blogroll Me!

ell, I finally figured out this Blogroll Me! thing for those of you waiting for an easy link. Thanks for waiting.

*** When in doubt, vacillate.


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Wave Bye Bye to Air America


commentator in the LA Times predicts the death of Air America, just over one year old and the new rat-infested alley where Al Franken has taken up residence. (Now, now--that's not any worse than so much of what comes out of his mouth...just trying to play in the same sandbox.) Here's Brian C. Anderson's explanation for Why the Liberals Can't Keep Air America From Spiraling In:

Successful talk radio is conservative for three reasons:

• Entertainment value. The top conservative hosts put on snazzy, frequently humorous shows. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication, observes: "The parody, the asides, the self-effacing humor, the bluster are all part of the packaging that makes the political message palatable." Besides, the triumph of political correctness on the left makes it hard for on-air liberals to lighten things up without offending anyone.

• Fragmentation of the potential audience. Political consultant Dick Morris explains: "Large percentages of liberals are black and Hispanic, and they now have their own specialized entertainment radio outlets, which they aren't likely to leave for liberal talk radio." The potential audience for Air America or similar ventures is thus pretty small — white liberals, basically. And they've already got NPR.

• Liberal bias in the old media. That's what birthed talk radio in the first place. People turn to it to help right the imbalance. Political scientist William Mayer, writing in the Public Interest, recently observed that liberals don't need talk radio because they've got the big three networks, most national and local daily newspapers and NPR.

All well and good, but of course he missed the biggest reason of all: Successful talk radio is conservative for the most part because the commentary and analysis contain more wisdom and truth.

Much of what passes for "liberal" these days (Al Franken, Michael Moore, Barbra Streisand) is emotionally based, not intellectually based. It's more about assertion than demonstration.

Radio is a format that requires more extended listening and thinking, when compared to television. It is easier to con people through a visual medium than through an aural one. The visual, especially television, tends toward appearance and superficial meanings. The aural, especially radio, tends toward arguments and extended meanings. (Of course there are exceptions to both, but I'm talking about the bigger picture here.)

Let's face it: Today's far-left liberals are authoritarians (more even than the far right). They want to tell us what to do and think. They want to shout down opposing views. They want to limit the exchange of ideas. They want thought control. They will bypass democracy when it doesn't work for them. They will lie when the truth doesn't help. They see no problem in their own hypocrasies.

They will claim the 2000 election was stolen without caring to investigate the 2004 Washington State governor's election.

They will rail against dependence on foreign oil while opposing new drilling.

They will argue that implementing the death penalty is too expensive given the multiple appeals that they themselves initiate through the legal procedural rules they exploit.

They will talk about democracy while using judges to make laws they cannot get passed through legislatures or through inititiatives.

Air America will die because the left fails to understand why Rush Limbaugh is a success: Assuming that he is merely good at being angry and mean-spirited and propagandizing. They see themselves in a mirror and think they can accomplish they same thing through those tactics.

Air America will die because ultimately today's far-left liberals are hypocrites and liars, and as such, cannot sustain themselves in a radio environment that requires a level playing field in the realm of thoughtfulness.

*** Beware! I can do great harm to myself and blame it on you. Ashleigh Brilliant

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April 18, 2005

Candy Bar Countries

n idle mind can be a terrible, destructive, evil thing. I took off work today to go to the dentist to get a couple of crowns, but the $150,000 machine that makes them in 10 minutes (from 3-D computer modeling of the tooth, saving all that temporary crown/come back in two weeks crap) broke down and I'm rescheduled for Thursday.

So I come home and it's too late to catch a matinee movie (and besides I already saw Sin City, which makes Pulp Fiction look like a Disney film) and I feel a bit draggy and tired and disinclined to do any serious blogging, and nothing in the news is that interesting to me. And I think that I'm draggy and tired because I ate a bunch of chocolate three days ago, and that seems to be the pattern, eat chocolate and three days later feel punk.

So my idle, terrible, destructive, evil mind goes from chocolate to politics to punkness and I begin thinking, How are countries like candy bars?

Where the hell does a thought like that come from? But I pursue it and pretty soon I have a list that's stupid and cynical and U.S.-centric and politiacally discorrect.

Anyway, here's a list of my Candy Bar Countries. Your sugar rush may vary.

*** We've been through so much together, and most of it was your fault. Ashleigh Brilliant

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April 17, 2005

The Pygmalion Effect

ou can jump to Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9



8. How the Mind Works

You probably know the story of Pygmalion. Pygmalion was a gifted sculptor from Cyprus who one day found a large, flawless piece of ivory. He sculpted a beautiful woman and found it so lovely he became obsessed with the statue, thinking it his ideal woman. He went to the temple of Aphrodite to plead for a wife who would be as perfect as his statue. When Aphrodite visited the studio of the sculptor while he was away, she was flattered to find that the image was of herself. Aphrodite brought the statue to life, and when Pygmalion returned to his home, he found his ideal had come alive.

In 1968 a study was done by two researchers, Rosenthal and Jacobson. They told teachers they were testing the intelligence of children aged six to twelve years, all drawn from the same school. They then randomly assigned children to two groups. Their teachers were told that the children in one group were "high achievers" even though they were randomly chosen. At the end of the school year, these children showed significant test gains, despite the random allocation to a group.

In short the researchers discovered that the teachers' expectations manifested in the children. That people pick up unconcious clues from others and respond to them.

The subconscious mind stores our picture of ourselves. When we are young, that picture is influenced and reinforced by how people picture us.

This leads to several interesting considerations:

First, be very careful about the negative thoughts you hold of others, especially what you are sure is true about others. Not only will you create blindspots in yourself that will screen out anything that contradicts your truth, you may actually contribute to that negative image in a way that they will adopt.

Second, be very careful about accepting any negative thoughts from other about you as true. Watch your own thoughts to screen out negative characterizations that may hold you back. Other people's opinions of you do not have to be any of your business.

We often carry multiple pictures of ourselves developed based on our current associations. For example: Do you find that when you visit your parents, you become their child again, feeling how their image of you puts you in a box of behaviors that reinforce their picture of you? Do you find that you are a different person--more confident, more capable, more articulate, more witty--around one group of people, and much less confident and capable and articulate and witty around another?

Do you recall being known as a klutz or awkward in high school, and then after many years being a non-klutz away from those acquaintances, when you go back to them, you are suddenly that klutz again? Do you find that when you return to old friends you haven't seen in years you fall into old picture-patterns that you had forgotten about?

Have you ever been with someone, a spouse perhaps, who seems to undergo a personality change when around his or her parents or old friends?

Have you noticed how you change when you are with your church group, your drinking-poker buddies or shopping gals, your coworkers, your neighbors, your political group, your military pals?

Few of us are able to maintain a single pciture of ourselves as we move from peer group to peer group or person to person.

Restrictive Motivation


Once you understand the picture-power of individuals, you can program that picture to avoid knowledge that you don't want them to have. How? By getting them to emotionally, reactively avoid what you don't want them to know.

Restrictive motivation is simple to illustrate. Suppose as a child you had a father who got violent whenever you were late. You're told to be home by 9:00 pm and you walk in at 9:15 and your father yells at you and breaks things. The next time you are late, he yells and slaps you hard. The next time you are late he slaps you hard and locks you in the closet. The next time you are late, he kicks you in the stomach.

After a while, the idea of being late causes you anxiety. You learn to flinch at the thought of being late. You are motivated to do everything possible to be home on time because you know what will happen when you are late.

Years later when your father is no longer around, you can be on the way to a doctor's appointment and you will race a train to the train crossing and risk it just so you won't be late. Even though the actual punishment is no longer present, your subconscious has taken in the habit, the imprint of associating being late with punishment and pain.

Not only will you suffer this anxiety and flinching when you are later, you will experience it when others are late as well. So you become a kind of controller of others when they are late. In order to relieve your own anxiety, you will go overboard you faulting others for being late. Why? Cause deep down a part of you knows that something bad will happen if anyone is late. You export your anxiety and try to control the world in order to alleviate that anxiety.

If I am an accomplished political operative, I can program restrictive motivation in you. If I know that you avoid thinking deeply about hateful people, all I have to do is make sure that I implant a picture that the people who are against my goals are hateful people.

Restricting Rush Limbaugh

For example, I lived in Sacramento, California, when Rush Limbaugh first came to town and tried out his new 3-hour radio format without guests, just his own power as an entertainer and political commentator. Nobody knew about Rush, so nobody had much of a chance to plant a manufactured picture of him before he went on the air.

A friend and I listened to his moderate conservative voice, irreverent humor, and his intelligent political commentary. He was a hit in Sacramento, and within a few years was marked to go national. We knew he would be big.

We also anticipated how he would be attacked as a far-rightwing extremist, a hate-filled conservative. Nothing could be farther from the truth, but the politics is such that implanting that image before people had a chance to hear him would guarantee that a significant portion of the audience wouldn't hear him. And because of the Reticular Activating System, once people were predisposed to be convinced of the "truth" that Rush Limbaugh was extremist and hate-filled and meanspirited, they would filter their experience of him in light of that "truth."

As a side note, and to dispell the myth of Rush as a rightwing Christian extremist, in the 1980s in Sacramento, during the time when Christian evangelists were finding evil lyrics being recorded in reverse on record albums to program the Devil into the nation's youth, Rush decided to expose how ridiculous that was. (Rush's has a DJ's background, and you will notice that many of the entertainment tactics on his show are DJ-oriented).

On a Monday, he announced that to his listeners that Slim Whitman's "Una Paloma Blanca" contained such reversed lyrics. He did not play an example that day, but he seriously assured listeners that Slim Whitman's albums were a danger to the American Way of Life. Christians called up seriously believing Rush. They did not catch on that he was making fun of them.

On Tuesday, he kept the satire going and people still bought it. By Wednesday he brought in an example, which he played on the air. It was ridiculous, with a devilish voice saying, "Well, you found me, Old Beelzebub...etc" People still thought it was real.

On Thursday, finally, readers were calling up saying they knew it was a satire, astonished that the Sacramento evangelical Christian community did not recognize the satire, and finally Rush admitted that he had manufactured the whole thing to make a satirical point.

Rush was not well-liked by those Christians in Sacramento.

Back to Restrictive Motivation. You can recognize this kind of restrictive moticational programming in you whenever you detect that kind of knee-jerk emotional revulsion being triggered. When your "buttons are being pushed." It's like a kind of reactive seizure that pushes you to avoid whatever is causing the seizure.

More to come in 9. How the Mind Works.


*** Why should we bother to reply to Kautski? He would reply to us, and we would have to reply to his reply. There's no end to that. It will be quite enough for us to announce that Kautski is a traitor to the working class, and everyone will understand everything. Vladimir Lenin


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April 16, 2005

25-Word Challenge is a Cookin'

ver at Lady Mac's. Check it out.

"Angelica took a long drag of her cigarette and surveyed her future prospects from all of the eligible men arriving for her late husband’s wake…"


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The Other Venice

he WifeWit and I are spending the weekend in a friend's apartment a few blocks from Venice Beach, California, the crazy sunny babes-in-see-thru suits, men toasted leathery brown, with hangers-on has-beens, wanna-bes, and who-ares.

Fully wrapped homeless, head-phoned joggers, dog-runners, mama runners pushing dual-baby buggies, Starbucks every two blocks, and Joe's Cafe with real diner quality eggs, bacon, and homefries. Suntans, sunglasses, rollerblades, volleyballs galore, but no Steve Martin except in spirit.

A Jewish friend here told be a joke last night. What is the ultimate Jewish dilemma? "Free Pork!" (FD groans.)

I should have another installment of HTMW today or tomorrow.

*** Nobody has ever really loved me the way I really think everybody should love me. Ashleigh Brilliant

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April 14, 2005

7. How the Mind Works

ou can jump to Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

Of Melancholy and Madness

I've been following the downward trajectory of Acidman lately. I don't know the whole story, but clearly he's had his guts ripped out and shredded, and corrosives poured constantly on his heart. His mind is full of liquid metal fire. King Lear never had it so bad.

Despite the tone I take with these "instructional" posts, I have to admit that I don't have any answers. I don't believe answers come from others. In many ways, we can't teach others. Sometimes others may catch something from us, but in my view they teach themselves.

I post these Mind posts, partially for my own good, and partially in the hopes that maybe one or two people might catch one or two pieces of truth in here that work for them. And that's really the key, isn't it? I know that my wife and others are always suggesting various traditional and non-traditional remedies for what ails me, and I'm sure most of it works some of the time for some people. But it has to be the right remedy at the right time for the right person.

The same with advice. There are no catch-alls, no sugered affirmations, that are guaranteed to work. Nothing I write will ever be of value to more than a couple people here and there at the right time. Mostly, it works for me, and that's all I can know for sure.

Some of the things I know for sure about me:

Sure, this is a simplistic way of saying it, and there are many caveats and exceptions, and it's not as easy as it sounds. But for me at least it's true. And my observations of others seems to support that it is often true for them as well.

You become what you dwell on. You move toward what you picture. Your thoughts are like lines of code in the computer program of your life.

The way to break the cycle is to switch off your mind's auto-pilot. Take hold of your inner dialogue and work hard every day, every hour, every minute, to hold the negative pictures and negative talk at bay.

The mind seems to work by the Law of Reversed Effort. The more you try to resist negative thoughts, the more you give them life.

The trick is not focussing on getting rid of those thoughts and pictures. The trick is replacing them with positive pictures.

Easily said.

This is why some people write positive affirmations every day. But that in itself is not enough to change the mind. What seems to work more often for some people is the Reality Formula:

I x V = Reality

Imagination time Vivideness equals Reality

You mentally say it. You vividly picture it, investing it with as much emotional feeling as possible, and that combination gradually begins to change the pictures in the mind.

Remember, the mind is a creature of habit. Left to itself, it will run negative programming automatically (unless you were raised in a profoundly positive family and with friends who actively reinforced a positive outlook on life). The mind's habits will continue, you will experience those hamster wheels, as long as you don't do something about it.

I think you can see why other people might be interested in making sure you never get clued in to the fact that you can control your own mind, your own imagination, your own reality.

Most of life here tells you that you can't.

Don't buy into that. You can take charge. It's difficult to break mind habits, to break the melancholy and despair, but it can be done.

One way is to moderate your intake of toxic thoughts, toxic environments, toxic people--thoughts, environments, and people that tear you down.

You're better than you think you are, and you can create a better self than you know.

Just my opinion. You do what you want.

More to come in 8. How the Mind Works.

*** If at first you don't succeed, quit.

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Marriage Sonnet

hen I married my wife on October 27, 1997, I wrote this poem and handed printed copies on special paper to all the guests as they arrived for the ceremony:

If notes were ever isolate in tone Most wondrous melodies would hold no plea, The tuneless world would merely lie and moan And creatures all would fall from harmony; But notes of love must seek each other out Through all the lonely silences of night, And sound on true through moments posing doubts To find that rhythm formed of play and light. Imagination bridges over time, Our happy hearts aspire to cross the fjords; And thus between, the two approaching find An interplay of heavenly cadenced chords. .....For this I know of autumn-winters long: .....We who sing of love become the song.
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April 13, 2005

GritWits

've added a new Wit category: GritWits. These are the acid-tongued, bloody-knuckled infidels who make me laugh and think.

Let me know if you think of some other GritWits who should be listed here.

*** I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once. Ashleigh Brilliant

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6. How the Mind Works

ou can jump to Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

Lock On / Lock Out

By now you should be getting a fairly clear picture of how the Reticular Activating System (RAS) works. Its job is to:

If you think about it for a minute, you might recognize that people who know that a population has an RAS can take advantage of it. Let's start with a benign example:

You have been given a $1 million marketing budget for a refrigerator store. Your team has two proposals on how to spend the money.

1) One team suggests spending it over a 6-month period keeping a constant supply of mid- to low-priced ads in the newspapers and on television and radio.

2) The other team suggests a million dollar blowout weekend of high exposure that saturates the media market.

You know about the RAS. Which plan do you go for?

(Jeopardy theme)

Okay. Which did you choose? If you went with the first team, you probably did the right thing. Think about it. When was the last time you saw a refrigerator ad in newspaper? You probably don't remember, unless you were in need of one.

And that is the point. No matter how big a media splash you make over one weekend, you will only get through to those who have real need for a refrigerator. If you have a steady stream of ads over six months, you are more likely to attract more customers, because more customers will have refrigerators go bad. And suddenly refrigerator ads become valuable to them.

You are more likely to get through to them with your ads.

Now let's look at a less benign example.

I know that you have an RAS. I know that if I can get you to lock on to a particular "truth," that you will then lock out any evidence or reasonable argument that contradicts that "truth." So all I have to do is to program the truth in you that I want you to retain.

I know that emotional energy is a powerful way to lock in such a truth, so I will make sure I use your emotional buttons to open you to the programming. I also know that for the most part you do not respond to arguments as much as you respond to authorities. And if I can get enough authorities to say the same thing over and over again for a long enough period, your subconscious is likely to take the impression, the thought-form, and store it as the truth.

My political opponent is very effective at what he does. He is sincere and tends to use reasonable arguments to get his way. People listen to him. I arrange to have my supporters and contacts get some dirt on him, no matter if it is minor. We can create the picture that he is a bad man who is not sincere.

We will have our politicians call him "The Prince of Darkness." Our politicians will give press conferences that are loud and angry, emotionally charged, and filled with charged language. We will get our media supporters to slant stories to the negative (never a hard thing to do), and build that authoritative drumbeat of demagoguery in multiple outlets.

And politicians on all sides will call this "politics."

On a personal level, I can control your imagination by helping to shape your self-image in such a way that you will depend on me. I will convince you that you are a victim, whether of birth, race, or something in the past that never had anything to do with you but as long as I can conjure that image into the present, it will have its effect.

So you are a victim and I am on your side. The other guy is not only not on your side, he is the one who is oppressing you. You need me to protect you from him. You need me to make laws that "level the playing field," that take from those who have historically taken from you so that it can be given to you. And of course part of that will go to my team because we are just here to help you.

And how can you doubt my sincerity? I arrange for you to get things that you don't have to work for. Because those things are owed to you.

Victims need people like me.

And you can always recognize me. I speak of inequality and unfairness and the need to help the helpless. I speak of fear and emotion. I don't need logic or critical thinking when fear and emotion are strong.

And as long as there are people like me, I will need people like you. So I will make sure that the definitions of victims multiply. For example, as issues of racism are addressed and the scales balance, I will make sure that more "subtle" forms of racism are defined and discovered.

I will program your image of you and your group and our group. I will lock it in to you emotionally. You will accept that image as "truth." And once it is locked in, it doesn't matter what the other side says logically or presents evidentially.

You will not see it. Your programmed mind will lock it out, like the F's. You will not even realize that something very real contradicted the unreal image I helped plant in your subconscious.

Aren't I a good fellow?

More to come in 7. How the Mind Works.

*** How could there ever be any conflict between my private interests and the public good. Ashleigh Brilliant

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April 12, 2005

Bolton Bewilders Boxer

ashington, D.C. (WitNit Newswire) -- President Bush's nominee to be U.N. ambassador spent much of the day defending his own controversial statements and caustic criticism of the United Nations in a speech a decade ago.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) played a three-minute video clip in which Bolton said that "there's no such thing as the United Nations," and that if 10 floors of the 38-story U.N. headquarters building were eliminated, "it wouldn't make a bit of difference."

Boxer told the committee, "I'm bewildered by this nomination. I am bewildered that a Bush Administration official would actually tell the truth about the United Nations. How can we approve of diplomats telling the truth? Where would the U.N. be today if we actually allowed the truth about it to get out?"

Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) said, "Yes, this is a bewildering nomination. I wouldn't be surprised if the undersecretary of state publicly mentioned how the United Nations allows Saddam'a Iraq and Kaddafi's Libya to chair the U.N. General Assembly's human rights committee. Bolton is a loose cannon. What if he starts actually pointing out that Kofi Annan must have known about the Oil for Food Scandal? This nomination is outrageous."

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) also expressed her bewilderment: "I'm bewildered at the Senators' bewilderment. This Administration is constantly bewildered over how to succeed in Iraq. They failed with the war, they failed with the election, and now they are failing with..." An aide interrupted the Congressperson, who then continued, "And Mr. Bolton clearly is a threat to international security. This nomination is therefore a threat to our national security. Homeland security should be notified."

Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass) added, "Mr. Bolton has proven that he is a weapon of mass destruction! He is a nuclear time bomb! He will destroy all the good work the U.N. has accomplished in the last 60 years."

Asked to give examples of the U.N.'s accomplishments, Sen. Kennedy replied, "That's a right-wing question! It's a conspiracy! Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney have destroyed the peace in this world! I remember when President Carter and Yassar Arrafat won the Nobel Peace Prize for their accomplishments in the Middle East...President Clinton should have won one too! These are the men who are the real peacemakers in the world!"

Senator Boxer told Bolton directly, ""You have nothing but disdain for the U.N. You can dance around it. You can run away from it. You can put perfume on it."

Bolton replied, "Well, actually I did put a little Brut on it. Perhaps next time I will try Hai Karate."

Meanwhile, Bush Administration officials ignored the bewildering array of criticisms and continued methodically doing the daily work of building democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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Poor Nicholas Kristoff

oor Nicholas Kristoff, columnist for The New York Times:

A recent report from the Pew Research Center, "Trends 2005," is painful to read. The report says that 45 percent of Americans believe little or nothing in their daily newspapers, up from 16 percent two decades ago.

In this kind of environment, it's not surprising that journalists are headed for jail. The safety net for American journalism throughout history has been not so much the First Amendment - rather, it's been public approval of the role of the free press. Public approval is our life-support system, and it is now at risk.


Gee, I wonder why? I wonder if Jayson Blair and Howell Raines had anything to do with it? Or last week his own newspaper's decision, according to the Columbia Journalism Review:
...to subvert their own reporting by agreeing to ignore one side of a debate is disturbing, if not wholly insulting, to the paper's readership. And given that in this case, student journalists on a campus newspaper upheld a higher standard of journalistic integrity than the "paper of record," the Times is right to be embarrassed.

And what does Kristoff think is the solution?
More openness, more willingness to run corrections, more ombudsmen, more acknowledgement of our failings - those are the kinds of steps that are already under way and that should be accelerated. It would help if news organizations engaged in more outreach to explain themselves, with anchors or editors walking readers through such minefields as why we choose to call someone a "terrorist," or how we wield terms like "pro-life" or "pro-choice."

Okay, Nicholas. When was the last time you turned your Pharos light of critical swigginess on yourself or your colleagues? When was the last time you wrote a column admitting you were wrong, or that your paper was wrong?

I thought so.

*** It’s not fair the way you keep retaliating against my unprovoked attacks. Ashleigh Brilliant


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April 11, 2005

Suicide Countries

o I was reading a story on a Japanese news website about Japan's suicide rate, where they claimed that the WHO website (World Health Organization) now ranked Japan as having the 10th highest by country in the world.

Knowing how statistics lie, I went to the WHO website and came upon this chart of suicide rates per 100,000 by country and sex.
Just one little problem. None of the following countries are listed:

But the following are listed. Here are the male/famale rates per 100,000 with the last year information was collected. (Japan is listed as 35.2/13.4 2000):

Hmmm...Why do I think there's something funny in these numbers? And the idea that Japan ranks number 10 in the world?


*** I have questions for all your answers.


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Ayn Rand and Me

'm not an Objectivist. Ayn Rand would likely despise me for one of those second-hander nitwits who acknowledge the existence of Soul and God, though not the Christian version of these. (Never mind that I could make a "reasonable" case for the micro-scientific method of proof.)

Ayn Rand is probably the most fervant rationalist skeptic I've read. I've taken them to task in The God Game, Part 2.

Still, every 5 to 10 years I pull out The Fountainhead and give it a good read. How can you not read a book that starts like this?

Howard Roark laughed.

He stood naked at the edge of a cliff. The lake lay far below him. A frozen explosion of granite burst in flight to the sky over motionless water. The water seemed immovable, the stone flowing. The stone had the stillness of one brief moment in battle when thrust meets thrust and the currents are held in a pause more dynamic than motion. The stone glowed, wet with sunrays.

(I remember once holding the book somewhere in public, and an old lady saw it, pointed at it and told me, "Young man, that book is pure evil!" I smiled and left her to her "wisdom." I had already read it three times by that point and understood that the book itself explained her reaction.)

After that I take out Atlas Shrugged and give it a good read, even the 60-page polemic at the end, and like The Fountainhead find myself profoundly stimulated and profoundly moved, especially during passages where her major characters take principled stands despite the consequences.

Anyone who has not read Ayn Rand owes it to themselves to at least read The Fountainhead. I once had a friend who was a struggling architect who did not know what to do with his life. I gave him this book, and it provided him all the energy and vision he needed to turn his life around.

I know people who swear that reading Atlas Shrugged saved their lives, because they had reached a point of wondering if the political and social forces in this world were worth standing against.

I've known many young people who have discovered the value of individualism and striving for success without regard to the opinions of others.

I read Ayn Rand's Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, which finally gave me a clear understanding of what real capitalism was all about, and every other fiction and non-fiction book she published. Not because I always agreed with her (I often smiled at the disagreements) but because of the clarity and power of her prose, the sincerity of her conviction, the Aristotelian structure of her arguments.

I always thought it ironic that she came out of Communist Russia as such a major voice against Collectivism, and yet granted one of its fundamental precepts--that there was nothing beyond material existence.

I also thought it ironic that for all her life-affirming philosophy, I found it near impossible to imagine her major heroic characters--Howard Roark, John Galt, Hank Reardon--as having either parents or children.

Yet I've cycled around again to giving her books a good rereading, for the pleasure of it. And I recommend everyone who looks at themselves as a passionate thinker to do the same.


*** A government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims. Ayn Rand


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April 10, 2005

The Two Monks

wo monks, a young one and an old one, left their monastery one morning for a long trip to the village. Theirs was a strict order, and one restriction required that they have no association whatsoever with females.

After buying some goods in the village, they were returning in the afternoon and came upon a woman standing beside a muddy creek. She was dressed in beautiful silk clothing and appeared concerned that she would ruin her clothes with the mud.

The younger monk started to move on but the older monk went up to her, startling the younger monk who looked on. The older monk asked if she were in some difficulty. She replied that she feared crossing due to the mud. So the older monk offered to carry her across. She accepted his kind offer. He lifted her up gently and carried her across.

The two monks resumed their journey in silence. As they approached their monastery that evening the younger monk could no longer contain himself.

"You know," he told the older monk, "we are not allowed to have anything to do with women. Why did you carry that woman across?"

The older monk looked at him with piercing eyes and replied, "I left her there back by the muddy creek. Why are you still carrying her?"

*** Please don't squeeze the Shaman.


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All Bow to the Cheesemistress

've begun partaking of The Cheesemistress. I may gain weight but the cheese is good. She has a good sniffer for unusual lists and sites and things.

*** How can you be expected to govern a country that has 246 kinds of cheese? Charles de Gaulle

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April 9, 2005

Babylon 5 Quotes


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Evil Dictionaries and Money, Part 4

ou can go back and read Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

The story so far: How words are defined has consequences. Con artists of all stripes us language and changing definitions to take advantage of you. The definitions of money are such that most people don't realize that they have been conned into thinking what's in their wallets and purses is real money. It's not.

Mind Games

If you have read up to this point, you might be thinking that I am one of those "Don't file your tax returns" individuals. Not true. I do not see any benefit for anyone to "buck" the system, confront the IRS, and fail to pay income taxes. It would take a fairly significant minority to even consider such an action, but the risks are too great for individuals. Too meaning well-meaning government people simply have no idea what they are participating in. Or of the consequences of changing meanings.

Let me give you an example: The 16th Amendment to the Constitution has very little text. It states quite simply:

"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."
Pretty plain meaning, right? Well, not exactly. If you do a Google search on the income tax amendment, you will find a wealth of controversy, but I am going to focus on one small aspect--the definition of the word income.

Originally, income was understood to mean indirect income (such as capital profits and other profits that did not involve labor), not direct wages (such as the money you get for going to work).

In other words, there was a difference between income and wages.

But over time, as such things naturally evolve with government, bureaucracy, and the abuse of power, the definition of income has continually changed and expanded to encompass much more than was originally intended.

But here is the crux of the matter: What exactly does it mean to amend the Constitution?

Where does the Law reside? This is an important question, because it goes to the heart of what distinguishes the U.S. Constitution and the United States from all previous forms of government. Historically, law has resided in men: in princes, kings, monarchs, emperors, bandits, gangsters, and so on.

The right to make law, execute law, and judge law resided in people. And if a king or a thug decided to change the law from day to day, to punish you but not his buddy for the same crime--to be absolutely arbitrary in the definition and application of what was law, crime, and punishment--the king or thug could do precisely that.

Our Founding Fathers changed all that. And the value of The Rule of Law vs. The Rule of Men cannot be overstated, for it is what has sustained the greatest amount of liberty for the greatest amount of people in the history of our world.

The founders separate the making of law (legislative), execution of law (executive), and judging of law (judicial) to dilute the power of men to take the law into themselves in an absolute way. The whole point of the U.S. Constitution is to embody law externally, outside of people. To concretize meanings externally so that people could see and agree on the meanings, and only to change those meanings in a difficult process in order to protect liberty from the Rule of Men.

This is so important that it needs to be emphasized and repeated. The arbitrary rule of men, embodying meanings inside people, so that individuals can decide what the fundamental laws mean on a day-to-day basis is the path to tyrants and thugs and well-meaning despots. It is the death of liberty.

The amendment process to the U.S. Constitution exists for a very obvious reason: To allow an orderly, conservative, difficult-to-implement process for changing the meanings of the Constitution in such a way that it cannot be done by the whim of individual people.

But there are many people who look at others, especially productive people who work hard and make a lot of money, who do not want to go through the difficult process of being explicit about the meanings of their words, and changing those meanings. Instead, they will bait us with one kind of meaning, and then through the interpretations of judges, or the interpretations of bureaucrats writing regulations, change the meaning of the words in the law, without consulting the people.

Words have meanings. Clear definitions have real, practical importance in protecting the Rule of Law. Think about it. The Rule of Law is the primary indicator of whether or not an economic system is viable for investment.

If you have money to invest, are you going to feel more secure investing in a country that has consistent Rules of Laws that are explicit and that you can count on from day to day? Or more secure investing in a country whose leader or leaders can arbitrarily change the law from day to day without notice?

The extent to which a government is governed by a Rule of Law vs. Rule of Men is the extent to which it can have a viable investment-oriented economy.

Now you may be more appreciative of people who argue original intent or original meanings when talking about the Constitution. The extent to which we get away from holding ourselves to the legislated meanings of laws and allowing people to change those meanings outside of an amendment process is the extent to which we return to the rule of kings and monarchs and emperors and despots and tyrants and gangsters and thugs and con artists of all stripes.

How do con artists line their pockets at your expense? By using language to distract you with one meaning in your mind, while they have a different meaning in theirs, and while you are distracted with a fantasy, pick your pocket, or your goodwill, or your virginity.

Words have meanings. How those meanings change is crucial to liberty. Pay attention to meanings. It's important.

If you haven't already started the series How the Mind Works, start it now. That series of posts is heading into some interesting related areas.


*** The purpose of our organization is to perpetuate our organization. Ashleigh Brilliant


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25-Word Challenge Is On

hin's Blog is hosting this week's 25-Word Challenge. Oh, and don't touch the fish!
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April 8, 2005

Good Hitchens

hristopher Hitchens has written the kind of essay in The Atlantic Monthly that keeps me coming back to him. "On Becoming American" is an instant classic. If you are a subscriber, you can read the whole thing. Otherwise, sign up for a trial issue and gain access. Here's a snippet:


I had just completed work on a short biography of another president, Thomas Jefferson, and had found myself referring in the closing passages to "our" republic and "our" Constitution. I didn't even notice that I had done this until I came to review the pages in final proof. What does it take for an immigrant to shift from "you" to "we"?

No loyalty oath, no coerced allegiance, was involved. In the course of writing thousands of columns and making hundreds of media and podium appearances, many of them highly critical of the government of the day, I had almost never been asked by what right I did so. My offspring were Americans just by virtue of being born here (no other country in the world is or has ever been this generous). As soon as I got my green card, immigration officers started saying "welcome home" when I passed through. Moreover, as one who is incompetent to do anything save writing and speaking, I stood under the great roof of the First Amendment and did not have to think (as I once had to think) of the libel laws and the other grand and petty restraints that oppress my craft in the country of my birth.

But this wasn't my thinking. . . For me, September 11, 2001, really did "change everything." In exploring the non-clichéd but most literal forms of that observation, and its ramifications, I began to read the press—the American press—as if it were held up to some kind of mirror. Each time I was instructed that such-and-such a fatuity was the view of "the Europeans," I decided not that my Anglo-Celtic-Polish-German-Jewish heritage was being parodied (though it was) but that someone whose claim to be "European" was at least as good as M. Chirac's should assure his American friends that they need not feel unsophisticated or embarrassed. Au contraire …


Of course, let's not forget there's the Bad Hitchens.

*** I need to learn patience: Where can I take a crash course? Ashleigh Brilliant


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More Richard Mitchell Stuff

nthony Fassano has been kind enough to supply more Mitchell articles from the NYT and a brief review of The Gift of Fire. Download the Zip file here.

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Test for Dementia

friend from Australia forwarded this to me. You've probably seen it before, but maybe not. (BTW, there is a correct answer to the second question):

Below are four (4) questions and a bonus question. You have to answer them instantly. You can't take your time, answer all of them immediately. OK?

Let's find out just how clever you really are. Ready? GO!!!


First Question: You are in a race. You overtake the second person. What position are you in?

Answer: If you answered that you are first, then you are absolutely wrong! If you overtake the second person and you take his place, you are second! Try not to screw up in the next question.

To answer the second question, don't take as much time as you took for the first question.


Second Question: If you overtake the last person, then you are...?


Answer: If you answered that you are second to last, then you are wrong again. Tell me, how can you overtake the LAST Person?

You're not very good at this! Are you?


Third Question: Very tricky math! Note: This must be done in your head only. Do NOT use paper and pencil or a calculator. Try it.

Take 1000 and add 40 to it. Now add another 1000. Now add 30. Add another 1000. Now add 20. Now add another 1000 Now add 10. What is the total?

Answer: Did you get 5000?

The correct answer is actually 4100. Don't believe it? Check with your calculator! Today is definitely not your day. Maybe you will get the last question right?


Fourth Question: Mary's father has five daughters: 1. Nana, 2. Nene, 3. Nini, 4. Nono. What is the name of the fifth daughter?


Answer: Nunu?

NO! Of course not. Her name is Mary. Read the question again.

Okay, now the bonus round: There is a mute person who wants to buy a toothbrush. By imitating the action of brushing one's teeth he successfully expresses himself to the shopkeeper and the purchase is done. Now if there is a blind man who wishes to buy a pair of sunglasses, how should he express himself?


He just has to open his mouth and ask, so simple.


KEEP THIS GOING TO FRUSTRATE THE SMART PEOPLE IN YOUR LIFE!

UPDATE: Flaming Duck has posted a demented response:


UPDATE: Flaming Duck continues attempting to hit bottom. But he cannot succeed. Here's about as stupid a joke as you can get:

UPDATE: Flaming Duck seems to have surrendered with his latest attempt. His is not a stupid joke but an actual Classic. (Clearly, F. dUCK is not classically trained...oops, darn sticky CAPS Lock.) Here's the coup de grace:

UPDATE: Flaming Duck has the nerve to claim my lightbulb joke is NOT FUNNY. Well, DUH! That was the PUNCHLINE! How about these:

UPDATE: Flaming Duck continues to pummel WitNit with lowbrow humor. What hope is there? WitNit takes a final shot:

*** You reached me just in time; I was beginning to feel confident again. Ashleigh Brilliant

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April 7, 2005

An Experiment in Great Art

'd like you to help me with an experiment. It will take about 20 minutes of your time, but read on and I think you will be intrigued enough to give it a try.

I've done workshops in the past trying to convey why Mozart and Shakespeare and other *great* artists are so great. What is it that the knowledgeable musician or reader experiences in these superior works?

Well, I think I have a kind of analogy that could help almost anyone get a sense of it.

Try this. Please follow instructions exactly and Comment on whether it works for you or not.

Step 1: Download this music file: a.mp3

Listen to this music file one time. It's about 3 1/2 minutes long.

Step 2: Download this music file: b.mp3

Listen to this music file three times. It's also about 3 1/2 minutes long.

Step 3: Listen to the first music file again (a.mp3).

The first time you listen to the a.mp3 file, you are like the novice listener to Mozart or novice reader of Shakespeare. You only get the obvious, literal experience.

But after you listen to the b.mp3 file three times, when you go back to the a.mp3 file, you will experience something quite different, and I think quite profound: You will hear something that is not in the actual music. A kind of musical subtext that you will supply in your own mind.

The richness of this new hearing of the first music file will give you a clue as to how trained listeners and readers and viewers experience great art. For this reason, I think, it is worthwhile for anyone interested in experiencing Mozart or Shakespeare or Monet to do the study, find the great teacher, spend the time to learn the musical, poetical, or dramatic subtext.

The music is very inspiring, so I'm sure you'll enjoy listening to it. By the way, don't worry that you don't understand the words in the b.mp3 music.

Let me know how it goes in the Comments.

*** Music cannot be expressed in words, not because it is vague but because it is more precise than words. Felix Mendelssohn


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April 6, 2005

Another Book Meme

an Hamet of Banana Oil! (he's in Shanghai and has a compulsively readable and viewable blog) passed a meme to me publicly several days ago. I've been traveling so I am just now getting up to speed with it.


You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

The last book you bought is:

I bought three:

The last book you read:

What are you currently reading?

In the order that I will probably finish them:

and

Five books you would take to a deserted island:

Assuming that I am literally limited to single works:

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons)? And Why?

1) Gil at A Reasonable Man, to see if he exposes his low-brow side.

2) Hope at Humor Hangout, because she's a librarian who I picture with glasses and a tight bun. What happens when she lets her literary hair down? (This violates one of her blog rules about content, but maybe we can persuade her to modify.)

3) Sadie at A Fistful of Fortnights, because her blog appears to beg for it.

*** English majors are novel lovers.


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Random Morsels

his week's Penguin Dope Slap goes to Paul Krugman of the New York Times. Take that, Krugman:

In his column An Academic Question, Krugman posits that the reason liberal professors dominate in universities is because conservatives don't respect science and are anti-scholarship, and therefore self-select themselves out of academe (offered without further comment):


Think of the message this sends: today's Republican Party - increasingly dominated by people who believe truth should be determined by revelation, not research - doesn't respect science, or scholarship in general. It shouldn't be surprising that scholars have returned the favor by losing respect for the Republican Party.

Conservatives should be worried by the alienation of the universities; they should at least wonder if some of the fault lies not in the professors, but in themselves. Instead, they're seeking a Lysenkoist solution that would have politics determine courses' content.

And it wouldn't just be a matter of demanding that historians play down the role of slavery in early America, or that economists give the macroeconomic theories of Friedrich Hayek as much respect as those of John Maynard Keynes. Soon, biology professors who don't give creationism equal time with evolution and geology professors who dismiss the view that the Earth is only 6,000 years old might face lawsuits.

UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg answers Krugman:

His argument is that American universities are dominated by non-registered Republicans on their faculties for good reason and that complaints that this reflects a "liberal bias" in hiring are off-base.

Well, first of all, it's not just liberal bias, it's left-wing bias. Self-described liberals are often perceived as right-wing in much of the academy. A self-identified pro-McCain Democrat might as well show up to a job interview wearing bear skins and carrying a flint axe. In some corners of academia a Frantz Fanon-quoting English professor is considered “mainstream.”

Read the whole thing.

In other news:

*** Nobody has ever really loved me the way I really think everybody should love me. Ashleigh Brilliant

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Help with Richard Mitchell Research

nthony Fassano is doing a seminar paper on Mitchell's work, and is asking for help on where to find more writings both by and about Mitchell. He'd greatly appreciate any information.

You can contact him here.


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April 5, 2005

The Pope and Iraq: Huh?

letter to the editor in the New York Times states: "Those on the left will admire his opposition to the death penalty and the war in Iraq as well as his strong commitment to interfaith dialogue."

Richard Cohen in his column in The Washington Post writes: "On the war in Iraq, he was indistinguishable from many liberals here. He simply opposed it."

An Opinion piece in The San Francisco Chronicle by the president of San Francisco University states: "He spoke with equal vigor in condemning abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment and both Iraq wars."

I have just one little question: Where are the quotes that prove the Pope opposed or condemned the war in Iraq?

I can't find them. Yes, he warned of the necessity of diplomacy and war being a last option. But I can't find a single statement of opposition.

Are we seeing yet another rewrite of history?


Update: Apparently not. In the comments section, Gil, that eminently Reasonable Man, shows where I am wrong here and here.

*** One good reason for trusting me is that many foolish people already trust me. Ashleigh Brilliant


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For Serious Mitchell Fans

or those of you who have an archival interest in Richard Mitchell, you can download a PDF here of his 1963 scholarly article "An Age of Issues and a Literature of Troubles" in Western Humanities Review.


*** Hofstadter's Law: It will always take longer than you think it will take, even if you take into account Hofstadter's Law.


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April 4, 2005

Uncomfortable Truths

eave it to Christopher Hitchens, the scab-ripping writer who trashed Mother Theresa, to remind us of an uncomfortable truth about the Pope:

A few years ago, it seemed quite probable that Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston would have to face trial for his appalling collusion in the child-rape racket that his diocese had been running. The man had knowingly reassigned dangerous and sadistic criminals to positions where they would be able to exploit the defenseless. He had withheld evidence and made himself an accomplice, before and after the fact, in the one offense that people of all faiths and of none have most united in condemning. (Since I have more than once criticized Maureen Dowd in this space, I should say now that I think she put it best of all. A church that has allowed no latitude in its teachings on masturbation, premarital sex, birth control, and divorce suddenly asks for understanding and "wiggle room" for the most revolting crime on the books.)

Anyway, Cardinal Law isn't going to face a court, now. He has fled the jurisdiction and lives in Rome, where a sinecure at the Vatican has been found for him. (Actually not that much of a sinecure: As archpriest of the Rome Basilica of St. Mary Major, he also sits on two boards supervising priestly discipline—yes!—and the appointment of diocesan bishops.) Even before this, he visited Rome on at least one occasion to discuss whether or not the church should obey American law. And it has been conclusively established that the Vatican itself—including his holiness—was a part of the coverup and obstruction of justice that allowed the child-rape scandal to continue for so long.

Sigh. Read the whole thing if you can stomach it.

*** I hate judgmental people.

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April 3, 2005

5. How the Mind Works

ou can jump to Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

The story so far: You have a mind. Your mind functions as is complex filter. It stores pictures of yourself and the world. The pictures may not match reality, they may even be outright lies, but they are regarded by the mind as "true."

The mind has a mechanism, the Reticular Activating System (RAS), that creates blindspots to anything that does not match its stored pictures. The good news is the RAS helps you focus. The bad news is the RAS blinds you to anything contradicting your stored pictures, of yourself and of reality. Why? Because its job is to maintain your sanity, meaning your stored pictures.


You don't get what you want in life; you get what you picture.

When you learn to ride a bicycle as a child you learn a simple fact very quickly. If there is a rock in the road, you don't focus on it. If you do, you end of hitting it. It doesn't matter that you want to avoid the rock. The harder you try to avoid the rock, the more you are drawn to it. To avoid the rock, rather than focusing on the rock you focus on the path around the rock.

When you drive a car, you also notice this phenomenon. When you think about changing lanes and check the rearview mirror, you begin to drift into that lane.

I remember watching America's Funniest Home Videos. A buddy was videotaping his friend skiing down the slope. The skier was so focused on his friend holding the video camera that he ended up skiing right into him, even though he obviously was trying to avoid him.

You don't get what you want in life; you get what you picture.

The mind naturally moves toward the picture it holds. This is another aspect of the RAS.

This is why in disaster training, airplane pilots do not practice crashes, they practice recoveries.

This is why fatalistic people who are convinced nothing will go right in their life find that nothing does.

This is why no matter what kind of person you want to be, if you are convinced you are fated to be a particular kind of person, that is who you become.

You don't get what you want in life; you get what you picture. If you are not happy with what you are getting in life, change your picture.

This may not always be easy, but it can be done. Of course, if you don't believe the picture can be changed, you will continue with your current picture. In fact, there are many people out there who want you to believe that your life is fated to be something outside your control. That you must follow the picture they give to you of yourself. And it's no surprise that the picture is often at your expense and their benefit.

Self-Image and Self-Talk

The subconscious mind functions somewhat like a computer. It accepts programming, lines of code, in the form of Self-Talk, what we say to ourselves about ourselves in our own mind. And how much feeling is behind it.

Self-Talk also includes the statements we accept from others and adopt as our own in our own thoughts.

You've probably noticed how much your mind chatters about yourself and the world. For most of us, the mind is talking non-stop. The talk is not just what people say about themselves. It also includes talk from parents and teachers and colleagues and political pundits and advertising and... everyone who we have consciously or unconsciously accepted as authorities.

If you were to monitor your Self-Talk for a day, you would notice that it is mostly negative--angry, sarcastic, self-belittling, limiting, can't-do, and down on yourself.

Your Self-Talk creates your Self-Image, the deep picture that is stored in your subconscious and filters your reality about yourself. Therefore, your Self-Image strongly influences How You Act in the World. And How You Act in the World reinforces your Self-Talk.

This is the Reality Cycle that strongly drives your sense of self and reality.

This Reality Cycle operates mostly without people being aware of it. But when you are able to acquire enough detachment and begin observing the Reality Cycle within yourself, especially your automatic Self-Talk, you can begin breaking the Reality Cycle and being the driver of it, rather than it driving you.

But this can happen only if you recognize several important things:

  1. You are not a victim of anyone or anything.
  2. You can begin recreating yourself and your reality.
  3. You can continually enlarge your perception of Truth by overcoming your externally implanted and self-created blindspots.
  4. There are plenty of people and institutions around you that do not want you to recognize any of this.

In a very real way, we are talking about your Imagination, your primary creative picture-making faculty, your ability to create a Vision about you and the world.

Look at your life and relationships. Who and what is it around you that wants you to believe you are a victim? That you should feel guilt or fear? That you cannot help who or what you are? That making your own way in the world is useless and pointless? That you are helpless?

Who and what is it around you wants you to believe that you were born with a negative stamp on you? Whether it is religious guilt, racial deprivation or some other thing that means you started out with a deficit that you cannot help, that you cannot overcome?

Who wants you to believe that you are a victim?

Who is using words and images to program your mind against you believing that you can better yourself despite the way the world is? Who is using guilt and fear and strong emotional energy to "lock-in" negative imagery about you and the world to drive your behavior into thinking and actions that usurp your creative energy for an external cause?

Who wants you to believe that you can't change yourself or the world or what is "true" just by thinking differently about yourself?

By the way, if you have read this far and are actually interested in reading more, please let me know in the Comments.

More to come in 6. How the Mind Works.

*** Well, if you don't like my opinion of you, you can always improve. Ashleigh Brilliant

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April 2, 2005

25-Word Challenge is Happening

ver at Moogie's World. In all "Modesty" it's a hummer. Join in now!
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Berger Admits Documents Came Alive

ashington, D.C. (WitNit Newswire) -- Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, a former White House national security adviser, plans to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, and will acknowledge intentionally allowing copies of a classified document about the Clinton administration's record on terrorism to come alive and destroy themselves.

Berger's plea agreement brings to an end media willingness to look any deeper into the remarkable, accidental series of miraculous events that transpired between Berger and self-animated documents in the National Archives.

He described the episode last summer as "an honest mistake." Yesterday, a Berger associate who declined to be identified by name but was speaking with Berger's permission said: "He really doesn't understand how it happened. Those documents came alive all by themselves and shoved themselves into his pants and socks. We believe government black ops experiments are behind this event."

Under terms negotiated by Berger's attorneys and the Justice Department, he has agreed to pay a $10,000 fine and accept a three-year suspension of his national security clearance. Berger's associates said yesterday he believes that closure is near on what has been an embarrassing episode during which he repeatedly misled people about what happened during two visits to the National Archives in September and October 2003.

Lanny Breuer, Berger's attorney, said in a statement: "Mr. Berger has cooperated fully with the Department of Justice in trying to determine why these documents had a mind of their own, and regrets the mistakes he made in allowing these documents at the National Archives to take advantage of his sincere efforts to be transparant with the American people."

The terms of Berger's agreement required him to acknowledge to the Justice Department the circumstances of the episode. Rather than misplacing or unintentionally throwing away three of the five copies he took from the archives, as the former national security adviser earlier maintained, he now acknowledges that copies of the document intentionally committed suicide while in his possession.

The document, written by former National Security Council terrorism expert Richard A. Clarke, was an "after-action review" prepared in early 2000 detailing the administration's actions to thwart terrorist attacks during the millennium celebration. "Obviously, the document had mental problems," said another anonymous Berger associate. "But that's what happens when you hang around trailer-park trash like FBI surveillance documents and CIA spy documents. These innocent documents didn't stand a chance."

Archives officials have said previously that Berger had copies only, and that no original documents were lost. It remains unclear whether Berger knew that, or why he destroyed three versions of a document but left two other versions intact. But since Berger has shown such a willingness to admit wrongdoing and accept virtually no significant punishment, the government and the media are willing to forget the incident ever happened.

Berger friends regarded the agreement as fair, given the circumstances, and they praised the "professionalism" of the lawyers he worked with at the Justice Department. "We really can't thank our friends enough for keeping the full story from coming to light."


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April 1, 2005

Unbelievable!


o I am finally sound asleep in my Singapore hotel room, finally clicking in to the 8-hour time difference, and I'm startled awake by loud crashings and bangings and laughter in the hallway, and so I get up and put on my pants and yesterday's shirt, a little smelly, and in the near dark (I have the chiffon curtains drawn rather than the total eclipse curtains so that the lit up building across the street provides a night light) and stumble to my hotel room door and open it, and see about 5 feet away four bodies, two shorter than me (6'1") middle eastern men in their 20s laughing and holding up a wad of Singaporean dollars (about a 1:1.6 exchange rate) and two Caucasian females, twin sisters it looks like, each weighing about 300 lbs each, and one is removing her clothes, I am guessing on a bet, and she's down to her underwear (and the largest slinky black Frederick's of Hollywood or Victoria's Secret bra and panties I have ever seen), and her sister is wearing identical clothing, some kind of tan and orange oversize pantsuit uniform, maybe fast food clothes because I notice a name sewn into her top, April, and just as the woman is starting to remove her bra, one of the guys grabs her pile of clothes and both guys take off running down the hall to the stairwell door, bursting in laughter all the way, and both sisters take off running after them, yelling and screaming and flopping, and they disappear through the stairwell door, which closes and cuts off all the sound, and the door across from me opens, and an old Chinese lady looks out at me and I at her, and we both stare open-mouthed like fools down the empty hallway, as more doors open and more people of all complexions look out, and I decide to call it a night and go to bed, with uncomfortable visions in my head, and dreams of creatures of the night.

*** Make one or two ridiculous assumptions and everything I do or say makes total sense. Ashleigh Brilliant


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