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The Public Blogging of Pomosexuality, Homotextuality, Homophobiaphilia, and Drear Theory (aka Career Theory) [aka Gay4Pay]. We also read the Corner and OpJournal so the right buttock will be punished as well.
All comments subject to publication. Or dismissal. Or Both.
Deus Irae, I do love Philip Dick. Just thinking, since I mentioned him below, how much he means to me. I have the picture of PKD you'll see at the top of this Italian fan's page , framed on my bedroom wall. OK, so its one of dozens of pictures I have on my bedroom wall, but it probably is my favorite.
I like the fact that so many of Gamblin' Bill Bennett's books contain the word BOOK in their titles. A word that has great resonance to chance addicts. As in bookie, or I owe the book, or what's the book on... Too bad Bill's subconscious didn't command him to make a small prepositional change in the titles too. It would have worked on so many levels and still allowed Bill's, uh, hobby to hide in plain sight.
The Book on Virtues
The Book on Virtues for Young People
The Children's Book on Heroes
The Children's Book on Faith
The Children's Book on America
The Children's Book on Home and Family
The last batch is best. Brings to mind a race of kiddie brainiacs living off the colossal vig of a casino as big as the world, forever calculating the push, win or lose permutations of every human social interaction. The childish touts gaming religion, history, America, home, family---everyfrigginthing. Why didn't Bill B write that book. I mean, why didn't he have his people write it. I would have read that one.
Christ, how did I get here. I just wanted to have some fun on Bill Bennett's chit and I end up having to declare Philip K Dick the Agendabender dude of the year for 2203. The year that the events in the Solar Lottery transpire.
And Bill Bennett is the Agendabender keeper, calibrator, protector and polisher of the moral compass for all years ending in an irrational number.
PS:Happy Birthday Cait and Olga! Here's your Birthday Pi.
(Casino Bill's exploits via Eschaton, your over/under source for all the breaking Bill Bennett ridicule.)
3:30 PM
WASHINGTON, May 1 — Four parents of gay children had a fiery private exchange tonight with Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. The meeting did not go well, and Mr. Santorum, who has infuriated gays by likening homosexuality to incest and bigamy, left in a hurry, tripping over a chair, the parents said. 1:24 PM
Nothing to Chuckle at Here, Move Along
Blogdex pointed me to a way too long Washington Post story about the highly evolved system of ambulance chasing in the District. You'll know all you need to know by reading the first third. A Pulitzer-worthy detail that makes me glad I read it is near the beginning, too. Though probably the writer should lose the Pulitzer for not putting it at the very end. There is, I hasten to add, nothing in the least bit amusing about what I quote below. Nothing at all:
After 13 years as a "personal injury specialist," Johnson, 46, is one of the old-timers. He remembers when there were just a handful of people doing what he does, instead of 20 or 30. He calls himself the Chuck Brown of the industry, after the go-go music pioneer. He's seen some senior people throw in the towel; the guy who trained him is now installing satellite dishes, he says. The lawyer who introduced him to the business was killed by a car while standing on an exit ramp, apparently talking with accident victims, Johnson says.
This post represents a Borgesian breakthrough in blogging. The towering Jorge Luis B. told of maps that mapped countries on a one to one scale, maps that were as big as the area being mapped. And of books that were exact transcriptions of other books, but that were nevertheless completely different books because the consciousness of the copier made them so.
I'm going to copy below the same three paragraphs from a London Times story that Instapundit posted on April (the month made sacred to Aphrodite) 15th (the day made sacred to Moloch). But while Mr. Reynolds was making a point about Euro perfidy, rampant continental old garconism, and franco stanko banco bunco (ho hum), these three paragraphs illustrate something other and greater here. Namely, a fairy tale romanticism the likes of which I've never before encountered in the business section:
THE former chairman of Elf-Aquitaine, the French oil group, apologised in court yesterday for “delegating” his divorce settlement to subordinates, who gave his ex-wife almost £2 million from a company slush fund.
Loik Le Floch-Prigent is on trial in Paris, along with 36 other defendants, on corruption charges relating to his period as chairman between 1989 and 1993. He is accused of using the firm’s money to appease his wife, Fatima Belaid, as they went through a divorce in 1991. . . .
M Le Floch-Prigent has said that he asked his colleagues to handle the divorce settlement when his “passionate love affair” with Mme Belaid turned into a “nightmare”. He said that she subjected him to “psychological harassment that was incompatible with the role of company chairman”.
The corporate beauty and mystery of the words Elf Aquitaine have long enchanted me, as has (though to a lesser extent) the name of its para-entity (and elvish childe)--TotalFinaElf. But who could have predicted that the company officers would have names and lives still more magical, even more redolent of otherworldly perfumes.
Loik Le Floch-Prigent--his dream of love turned boardroom nightmare.
Fatima Belaid--the paramour into wife into scourge changeling.
Their writhing lust into choking dust stratagems now subject to the judgment of Paris.
Loik Le Floch-Pringet and Fatima Belaid are the Agendabender fairyland couple of the year. For 1313. Or 3131, alternately.
Circumcision Does Not Dull Sensitivity: Study
Tue Apr 29,12:47 PM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Circumcised men appear to have the same degree of penis sensitivity as men who are uncircumcised, a new study suggests -- in a finding that will probably just add fuel to the fire of a controversial subject debated for years.
The findings are to be presented Tuesday by Dr. Arnold Melman at a meeting of the American Urological Society in Chicago.
...Around three-quarters of American-born men in the U.S. are circumcised, although that number appears to be declining rapidly in some regions of the country.
Male circumcision is common in North America and elsewhere for religious and cultural reasons and is known to help prevent urinary tract infections, sexually transmitted diseases and penile cancer, a rare condition. In the minor [speak for yourself] surgical operation, the foreskin is removed, which can help prevent bacteria from growing under the fold of skin.
On the other hand [smirk] , many parents feel it inflicts unnecessary pain, and in many countries circumcision is rarely performed.
...In the current investigation, Melman's team* evaluated the penile sensitivity among 43 uncircumcised men and 36 circumcised men through a variety of methods, including vibration, pressure, spatial perception and warm and cold thermal thresholds. Both groups contained men with and without erectile dysfunction.
In uncircumcised men, the foreskin was pulled back during the sensitivity testing procedures. [nice detail]
The investigators found no statistically significant differences in sensitivity between the two groups of men, regardless of whether they had erectile dysfunction.
In other findings, the researchers found that white men were 25 times as likely and African-American men were eight times as likely as Hispanics to be circumcised.
Why did everybody link the jokefree Onion piece about Christopher Hitchen's messy subterranean life with its drunken fights and serial arrests at his common law wife's trailer home? Did the subliminal trailer Hitch joke suck everyone in? The premise was ok, but the execution was miserable, uninformed. If you're going to do phony stories about real people get the facts and nuances about the real person right first. I don't need The Onion for that anyway--it's their real stories about phony people that make The Onion invaluable. The Onion was working from a crib sheet on Hitchens dated 1991.
I've mentioned before that I love Wired, though I know the smart take on Wired since forever is to say it was cool for three months (or maybe three hours), but it's been so over ever since. I finally subscribed a couple months ago after reading a good half of extant issues picked up from friends or at work or at thrift stores ( I scored a dozen old issues apiece at two different T. stores over the years). My niece was helping her school to raise money to buy chlorine for the pool by selling magazine subscriptions, so I gave in. And just in time for Wired to take a terrible fall in cover graphic quality. The March and May covers are just unarresting, sort of like Premiere magazine would look like if it went tech. The April issue, Wired's 10th anniversary edition, is a disaster--daisies growing out of the nozzle of a gas pump to illustrate a hydrogen power story, on a yellow background with a circular cutout that highlights an old Wired cover that is part of the poster of 10 years of Wired covers that is helpfully pasted inside. Thus making the archaeology of the decline of Wired's recent graphical design easy enough even for me.
Reason mags much hyped re-design has been a bust too. I don't think there's been a good cover since they went to the single image on a burst of color gimmick. Several of them have been bizarrely banal. The minuteman statue cover might be the least visually appealing magazine cover image I've ever seen. I know how the covers would look good and it's the one way Reason's readers are never likely to see them--next to each other in a mosaic on a wall. Reason's art director is probably building exactly that mosaic, and that's the source of the design mistake here. Magazines have to be appealing as singular artifacts not as patches in an art director's quilt. Strangely for them, Reason has chosen the collective over the individual.
