CALLING CAPTAIN EURO

Matt O'Blackfive has some fisk-a-liscious commentary on a Chicago Trib article examining Euroweenie attitudes towards the US. What really caught my attention, though, was this part:

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71% of Europeans surveyed said they now would like to see Europe emerge as a superpower.

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Let's see:

Super - Of great value or excellence; extraordinary

Power - The ability or capacity to perform or act effectively

European - Arousing contemptuous pity, as through ineptitude or inadequacy

Nope. I just don't see it happening. Although if they're serious about wanting to hit superpower status, I think I've got a copy of "Kicking International Ass For Dummies" around here somewhere.

GONE DRINKIN'

I stopped at Madfish Willie's for my usual couple of post-work tension-relievers, and discovered three things. First, the waitresses are getting ready to kick the crap out of him in the parking lot after work because he can't keep his hands out of the tip jar (he's always countin' & fondlin' the contents). Second, he's right - Bill from Bloviating Inanities IS a freak. Third, Fritz really knows how to deliver when it comes to bitch-slapping Michael Moore.

I kinda don't remember anything after that third discovery, but if the fog lifts, I'll let you know.

IT'S A VISUAL

For those of you who wonder what a ClueBat actually looks like, Misha's got a link to a pic of one of the old classic models.

BARKEEP SEE, BARKEEP DO

The Bartender is such an annoying little copycat. I got a blog, so he got a blog. I got blogrolled by the Emperor, so he got blogrolled by the Emperor. I had sex with my wife, so he had BETTER STAY THE HELL OUT OF WISCONSIN OR I'LL STRANGLE HIM DEAD!

Congratulations, Mike. I'm buying this round.

SPY-CAM!

Apparently Vanderleun from American Digest was in my neighborhood last night doing some spying. He's got a photo of me standing next to my stash of Graffiti Currency.

I'm the one that's NOT shaped like a car.

PRETTY, FUNNY

America's #1 pin-up girl will now tickle your funny-bone (no, that did NOT sound dirty) with her list of the Top 10 Toys That Will Be A Huge Hit This Year. My personal favorite:

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2. Politically-Correct Crayons - New set of crayons assures that your child will never offend a classmate with their drawings. Crayola has removed any color that, when used to draw a bodily feature, might cause emotional hurt or discomfort to minorities. Out are brown (Latinos), black (African-Americans), red (native Americans), yellow (Asians), orange (Middle Easterners), gray (the elderly), green (Martians), blue (Smurfs), and purple (one-eyed, one-horned, flying people eaters). The boxes of white crayons will sell for the same price as the regular, racist crayons.

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Now I know what to get for the nieces & nephews.

Go read the other nine. Drink Alert in effect.

Heh. "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Cokehead".

LATE, BUT WITH FEELING

While surfing at Rajan's place yesterday, I was reminded that October 12 was the one year Anniversary of the Bali attack.

A moment of silence

...

TIME TO GET ON THE SHORT BUS

So I was over at Angelweave Sunday, and I noticed a post that said her 6 month blogoversary was October 12. For some reason I thought that Oct. 12 was way in the middle of next week, so I thought I should wait until the actual day to post on it.

DUH!

To make up for it, I'm going to be way ahead of the curve when I say:

HAPPY 5 YEAR BLOGIVERSARY, HEATHER!

Ha! First!

By the way, to give her due credit, her first blog post was funnier than Frank's.

BEST. FILTHY. LIE. EVER.

Looks like J's gonna end up on my ever-growing list of "bloggers I'll never be funnier than". Here he comes with Evil Glenn's trip to the afterlife:

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"Mr. Reynolds? Mr. Reynolds?"

His eyes fluttered. His fingers twitched, stabbing at a non-existent keyboard. He sat up suddenly, a tiny trickle of saliva starting at the corner of his mouth. Eyes wide, he snapped his head back and forth, shock and fear on his face. He was in a clean hospital room, on a bed with blinding white sheets.

"Where's the flames?" he asked, eyes darting back and forth.

"Flames?" the old man in the white lab coat asked, "What flames?"

"I was expecting flames. They all said I was going to hell, so I was expecting flames," Glenn Reynolds said. He quickly looked himself over. He seemed to be okay, other than the hospital gown gapping at the back.

“Well, Mr. Reynolds. I certainly hope we exceed your expectations.” The old man smiled. Glenn felt the radiant and galactic warmth in that smile and was heartened. Perhaps all those late night rituals hadn’t been damning.

“There are a few things we need to discuss before we proceed, Mr. Reynolds.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. There are a number of missing puppies that we believe you were responsible for.”

The trickle of saliva increased into a stream. Glenn’s tongue touched his lips as he reveled in a momentary orgy of sensual memory. “Heh,” was all he managed to say.

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Plenty more. Go check it out. Drink Alert in effect.

ALLIANCE ASSIGNMENT - PRECISION GUIDED HUMOR

This week's question:

What would you say if you had the floor at a Jacques Chirac press conference?

As a concerned world citizen who realizes that America shouldn't try to go it alone, I want to discover the root causes of France's reluctance to get involved in the Iraqi quagmire. What does America have to do to get France's help?

Do we need to provide France with tanks that have three gears in reverse?

Do we need to spray all the local goats with skunk juice so that French soldiers won't miss the smell of French whores while they're overseas?

Do we need to provide French soldiers with rifles to drop when they're surrendering to small Iraqi children?

Do we need to staff the interim government with badly-moustached sadists so that the French will be more comfortable working with them?

Or do we just need to keep reminding you cowardly, annoying bastards to shut the f*** up because we couldn't care less about what you think?

Oh, and by the way, in the spirit of international cooperation, I feel compelled to add that your mother is a fat, filthy slut who blows dead rats.

If you could give me a hard copy of your answers so I can wad it into a ball and shove it up your ass, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Thank you for your time, Mr. Chirac.

SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS!

TODAY'S LOVE NOTE

(Introduction)

Since you are my sunshine and I am your raindrop, together we can create an everlasting rainbow of love.

TODAY’S GRAFFITI CURRENCY

 

I have to agree with what Linda told me:

"How f'ing stupid can they be? I mean, come on! Two people, one dollar? And these cheap bastards STILL can't figure out why they're on my shit list!"

DON'T GIVE DON ANY LOVIN'

Poor Don. He just can't get any action. Maybe it's his approach as he relates here:

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Me: Hey, I’m Don. How are you?

Her: [smiling] Cindy…I’m fine.

Me: Isn’t Kant fucking evil?

Her: Um, okay. So what do you do?

Me: I’m a writer. Can I ask you a question?

Her: Sure.

Me: Finish this sentence. “A is…”

Her: …for apple?

Me: Slut.

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Geez, Don. Even if they've read Atlas Shrugged, they're not gonna get that whole "Kant is evil" thing. You're gonna have to start toting around copies of the Ayn Rand Lexicon.

Oh well, as long he's not scoring, he's channelling his frustrations into being funny on his blog, so it's better for the rest of us if he remains socially inept.

Ok, Don, enough poking fun at your love life. I was intrigued by your statement that you're an optimist. Not usually a word that gets associated with Objectivism. So here's a site you might enjoy: The Objective American.

The author, sadly, passed away a few months ago, but the archives are still up, and there's a LOT of good stuff in there. For example:

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I'm impressed by TOA Daily's focus on optimism. I've been a long-time advocate of a greater emphasis on reason in everything from politics to economics to personal living. To that end, I've admired much of the work of the free-market writers, especially that of Ayn Rand and her Objectivism crowd. But the thing that's all too frequently missing from these writers is positive thinking. They spend incredible amounts of time focusing on what's wrong, and very little on what's right—or on what could go right. For instance, I find that your site keeps me on an even keel. You provide a counterweight to all the negativity that one finds among the other so-called libertarians and conservatives. Keep up the good work. With optimism in the mix, I'm much more enthusiastic about picking up my long-dropped sword of political activism. Thank you. Yours is the first Internet site I read in the morning.
—Rejuvenated in Redmond

I'm pleased that TOA Daily is having this effect for you—as it is on others. One of the reasons I started this service was precisely because, like you, I was disgusted with the excessive focus on gloom and doom—not just among libertarians, but also among neo-conservatives, liberals, and moderates. What perplexed me was that these people had in common a stated desire for a better world, yet they spent precious little energy or time painting a positive picture of how things could or should be. They spent even less time analyzing the wonderful progress going on around them. I watched pundits from across the spectrum slamming America as though it was no better than some grubby little Third World banana republic on steroids. This angered me. If America was as awful as they claimed, then how come people were literally dying to get in here? It made no sense.

So I did what good reporters do: I started digging. I started a policy of actively searching for stories of the positive—of success, of progress, of innovation. I was impressed by how much there was. I was even more impressed by how regularly the "reason" crowd ignored it, especially the media and think tanks among them. There were exceptions, but by and large, when I read the liberty-oriented magazines and listened to the pundits of the reason-objectivity axis, they tended to emphasize tales of horror and decay, not of hope and accomplishment. And now we're seeing it all over again with Operation Enduring Freedom. I'm repelled by how grumpy and cynical the putative freedom-oriented press is about the chances of the US succeeding at defending the very liberty that these people say they value so highly.

Way too many tracts among freedom lovers are thinly veiled litanies of wrongs, missed opportunities, and failures, rather than analyses of success. (E.g., "What about Vietnam?" not "What about our winning World War II?" Or: "What about the Great Depression or the recent NASDAQ crash?" not "What about the fact that in the last twenty years the US has experienced one of the best growth-to-decline ratios in history?") Worse, they often carry a psychologically deadly subtext: an emotional implication that things cannot get better, that we are somehow doomed to collapse back into a new Dark Ages. This negative worldview is corrupt. It's not what's happening. If any of my readers have fallen for this death-oriented determinism—which is exactly what it is—shake it off, because it's bad for your mental, physical, and economic health. (Nor is it any good for the morale of your nation—something that is important to maintain during a worldwide war.)

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 For what it's worth.