Mission Accomplished

Landrustan smart. Landrustan strong.

Yes, an attack through Canada was expected, although in their last, desperate gasp, the otherwise wily Egoslavs used an attack profile that was surprisingly asymetrical. Nonetheless, we can safely declare victory and pledge foreign aid to the Egoslavs, who have always been our friends. We have never been at war with Egoslavia.

While the Egoslavians maintain that the muddied origins of today's events rooted in a complimentary post about the musical taste of Our Leader, Landrustanians protested in droves, believing that the Knez had ridiculed Our Leader for owning no music recorded after 1982.

All that is irrelevant. The Egoslavs have always been our friends. We have never been at war with Egoslavia.

Join now in the National Anthem of Landrustan:

Landrustan is now looking for other blogocentric national groupings on which to declare meaningless wars in the interest of securing meaningless victories. Successful candidates will share an embarrassing insidery past with Landrustan and possess a detailed knowledge of trivia popular in Landrustan.

Take Cover, There's Gonna Be Collateral Damage

Fools! We have overcome our childhood fear of the Katebush with superior mind control imagery:





Now suffer the wrath of Susanna Hoffs!



Belinda Carlisle is warming up in the bullpen. We have WMDs and we're not afraid to use them.

Surrender Egoslavs

You have the stones to throw down in Minions' comments section? Screw you. You want a war, fight it in your blog like a normal person, damn you!

We will fight you on the beaches!



We will fight you in the cities!



We will enslav you in our fields, where you'll work harder with a gun in your back for a bowl of rice a day!



Of course, we'll not forget to skewer your heads on a stake.

And we'll come for your uncool niece.



And if slavery isn't enough, we'll do experiments on your minds.



No, we really mean it.



We've got a search engine and an indomitable will. On your Knez, Egoslavs.

A Diplomatic Mission to Egoslavia

Dear Knez,



Be careful with that time machine.

Dilemmariffic!

(UPDATED: See below)

With Leather, which I have linked to and, I have decided after much turbulent thought, will continue to link to, is a fun little place. Matthew Ufford, aka Captain Caveman, aka yet another hot young writer in New York waiting for a breakthrough he probably more-or-less deserves, is a funny guy, with a great eye for guy-funny stuff like football and chicks you'd probably like to fuck. He's demonstrated this time and again at KSK (the most important blog in the world) and at Leather, his very own blog, which someone is apparently paying him to write. Great work if you can get it and stand it, and all the love in the world to him. You go, booyee.

Sometimes Ufford and the other guys at KSK skate over collections of points that some people might consider lines (Will Leitch, at Deadspin, doesn't, because he's a paid employee of Gawker and would sure hate to have to go get a job because he stood up and screamed "I Am Spartacus!" and it's hard to hold that against him). I am of the opinion that this shouldn't be a problem. In fact, until today, every time that they've done so, I've laughed my ass off at people in their comments sections who have, in my view, taken things a bit too seriously. And truly? The stuff perceived as over the line has been so ephemeral I don't even remember it, although I think some people got sticks up their butts over a Challenger joke. I mean, I'll punch out any of my friends who makes a Len Bias joke, but coming from strangers? Internet strangers without candy? Meh. Fuck it. I can accept the premise that this might be funny to people in the world at large with senses of humor philosophically similar to mine, who don't happen to carry around giant throbbing boners for the University of Maryland.

One of the reasons the boys at KSK (and Leitch, if he weren't a pussy) get away with this is that they generally don't do politics. I admire their restraint. What I think I actually admire is their focus; I'm incapable of anything but putting everything in a shaker and working it over until memes and jokes and rage just splice and collide and pour out nice and cold into a little glass of sophomoric bile or pee or, maybe sometimes, whoopee cushions, depending on what direction the meds are taking me today. Not so Ufford and the others at KSK. They stay on point. Usually.

I can't imagine that's easy; they're all bright guys and have opinions like everyone else. Ufford, as I understand it, is an ex-Marine, a recent one, who did time in Iraq. That's got to lead to a point of view, especially for someone as articulate as he is. But I've read a lot of words that Matthew Ufford has written, and I haven't a fucking clue what point of view he holds on that issue, which issue I think we can all agree is pretty fucking compelling and tends to lead people to a certain willingness to express themselves. That, friends, is focus. And restraint, a quality sometimes urged upon this blog even by the very closest of its friends (fuck you, Purple).

So I've never once (seriously) chided anyone from this band of writers for anything they've written, and I have jumped in to chide others for taking them to task for jokes that weren't funny to everybody. And that's why I'm not taking on this one in the comments section of Leather, which today tells me that Amani Toomer's soon-to-be ex-wife is a bad person because Toomer alleges that she's had some number of abortions. I am presuming that Matthew Ufford wrote this, because it's not tagged with anything to indicate that it was penned by his assistant editor, some guy from Chicago whose name escapes me at the moment (and which I cheerfully admit that I'm too lazy to look up).

It's a little difficult to know where to begin, so I guess I'd best fall back on full disclosure: As you know, I fucking hate the New York Giants. As you know, unless you're my friend TJ, Amani Toomer is a fucking douchebag. And as you know, I am a strong supporter of reproductive freedom, and an opponent of the war on fucking.

Here's the factual place we might should start: the source for the story is Page Six. The chance that there is anything factual in this story beyond the correct spelling of Toomer's name, the general location of the story as a product of the New York metropolitan area and, possibly, the name of Toomer's wife, is slim. At best. It is possible that this could act to mitigate my anger at Ufford for running with this item the way he has; he likely knows damn well that the story is likely fairly sloppy, and he may well be poking fun at the story from that perspective--and that I'm not willing to credit that so much because he's cracking wise about this woman who may or may not have had some number of abortions.

The meat of the story seems pretty ritualistic; Toomer, a douchebag, complains that his wife, a blonde, reneged on a pact to bear him many children, and that she carried out that renegation by terminating four pregnancies, and that she wouldn't cook or clean or take his name, and that she wouldn't take meds for her depression, and that she "disrespected [his] integrity and manhood."

The blonde, a chiropractor and law student, contends that Toomer was a douchebag, with various embedded legal contentions, including that he pissed on her clothes and tossed her Blackberry into the Hudson, while stifling her career ambitions and pestering her for sex.

Like I said, pretty ritualistic, yes? Clearly, these kids don't like each other. Standard divorce fare. Toomer's accusations sound moody and testosterone-poisoned; hers sound stereotypically shrill. All of which is undoubtedly skewed by the filters of their lawyers, as further filtered by Page Six.

So why am I pissed? Let's go to the videotape:

"Of course she doesn't cook or clean. She doesn't have the time with all the trips to Planned Parenthood. She's done more abortions than a closet full of wire hangers in the 1950s. Pol Pot killed fewer babies."

Aw, dood. You didn't. No, really, you didn't. After staying clean on politics for so long, you decide to smear Planned Parenthood on a blog read largely by guys? You equate abortion with babykilling? With fucking Pol Pot?

Okay, okay. I've defended your right to edgy humor before, I'll do it again. We're done here, right?

Uhm...no.

"Yeah, Toomer is such a bad guy, says the woman who uses the abortion clinic instead of the Pill. But she's right about one thing -- a BlackBerry is way more important than a fetus. It's true. You ever tried to play Tetris on a baby bulge? Fucking impossible."

Dood. Dood. DOOD. The abortion clinic instead of the pill? For one thing, that's Amani's allegation, run through Page Six. For another, you do understand that the pill has a limited success rate, right? I mean, you don't take it totally for granted; shit happens. For another, you've not only ignored, you have pissed on the equal possibility that Amani Toomer may have actually abused this broad. Equal, I say, because we have roughly equal evidence to the effect that he's a douchebag and she's a golddigger (which is, after all, what this is about)--and all of that evidence came from PAGE FUCKING SIX.

I thought long and hard, and I'm not cutting With Leather from my daily reading, or from the Sausage to your right. I'm not going to take Ufford to task on his home turf, because while some folk over there will get it, a lot won't, and I don't need the aggravation, and I don't want to become PNG in a place where I occasionally find a need to drop a witty comment. I am going to write to him privately and ask that he read this post, and offer him an opportunity to correct any egregious factual wrongs I'm doing him here.

And I'm damn sure not suggesting that you go take this up yourself. I'm really not. What I am doing is this: you're on notice, Mister Ufford. While it is perfectly reasonable that my respect and affection may be trivial to you--and in fact, there's no reason why they should be anything but trivial--you have trifled with them today, Sir. Seriously. Please maintain your laser-like focus on what the fuck it is you're supposed to be doing. Thank you.

UPDATE: Matt Ufford updated the post in question, to note that he does not, in fact, take seriously anything he reads on Page Six. He reminds that "nothing -- nothing -- on this site is serious unless I make it an explicit point to 'take off my With Leather hat.' You fucking nancies."

I'll take his point and be done with this. My sacred cow ain't your sacred cow.

Notes From An Abyss

Yes, I went quiet for a bit. Remember, it's easiest for me to post when I'm bored at work, and should be doing something else. The two things I should be doing right now are work (things are busy) and my taxes (things are ugly).

So let's chat, shall we?

The weather in My Local Locality since we last visited has been nothing short of The Day After Tomorrow. Five inches of sleet, capped by a half-inch of ice, was nature's Valentine's Day present to the DC area. This had consequences, the most heinous of which was being shut in the house for two and a half consecutive days with my loving family. By Friday, though, I had to venture to work, because if I stayed home, someone was going to die (and I was a leading candidate).

Five inches of sleet may not sound like much to you. But I can assure you that clearing enough of my driveway to allow an escape (even by my tree-hating, self-indulgent SUV) took Ilse and I, working together in near-harmony, four hours of work that approached digging one's own grave in granite in terms of difficulty and soulsuck.

A week of relatively balmy temperatures, and a pair of decently non-freezing rainstorms, dented but did not completely disperse the icepack. Which is where we found ourselves this morning, when My Local Weather Dweebs forecast a couple of hours of light freezing rain changing over to plain old rain.

Nuh-uh. We got another five inches of snow. Way to go, Science. We await word on whether tomorrow will involve yet more family entertainment. I'm guessing that My Local County is making a huge effort to open the schools; we live a few hundred yards from a public high school, which is at this moment lit up like Christmas and overrun by snarling, beeping vehicles desperately trying to clear sidewalks and parking lots so that the little darlings can go to school tomorrow without cracking their keisters. We'll see.

On politics, we have much that is lovely, and I'm going to ignore every damn bit of it. Any hoopla surrounding any presidential candidate of any stripe is, at this juncture, undisguised and gleeful masturbation. Don't get me wrong; I've nothing against masturbation. But it's a personal pleasure, and my personal masturbatory pleasure does not give a flying fuck whether Mitt Romney (who is a horrible person in his own right) is descended from guys lucky enough to have multiple wives, or whether Senator Obama has given the Vice President the same level of respect that the Vice President gives everyone else. I'm hard-pressed to argue that there is a level of respect in anything the Vice President does, so I'll have to admit a certain bias there; the point, though, is that I don't fucking care, 12 months before the first presidential primaries and 21 (!) months before the general election.

There are certain truths about the upcoming presidential election that I hold to be self-evident; one is that anyone who's a presidential candidate (again, of either party) is an asshole. Another is that I will support whichever asshole wins the Democratic nomination. Another is that whichever asshole I support to win the Democratic nomination is unlikely to win it. Mind, I'll be happy to hear the news of the elimination of certain candidates from the electoral scene; Joe Biden and John Edwards turn my stomach. Hillary is not the candidate who will make me happiest. Tom Villsack self-detonated before I could even figure out whether I liked him. But in general, I take it for granted that I will be unhappy with the outcome of the candidate selection process, and that the difference between the chosen candidate and the Republican candidate will be sufficiently stark that I will not have to trouble myself with delusions that I need to consider the man and not the party.

Finally: I have opined, wrongly, on the condition this season of the mens' basketball team fielded by My Local State Land Grant University. I told you on January 11, six short weeks ago, that you would have to drop your male trousers to still undercount the number of moons that would pass before the Maryland Terrapins again graced the NCAA tournament. I told you in October (and again in January) that I was having grave difficulty loving my basketball team, a horrible state of affairs for any psychotic fan.

Things have changed, and I was as wrong about this team as I was about the football team, which managed a respectable record and a bowl victory. After victories over Dook and the University of the Color of the Sky, I have come to love this team. Mind you, they still have the stench of the Gilchrist about them, and I would be remiss if I did not admit that there is much I would have them change. But coaching excellence and the dedication of a few guys who suddenly realized that their entire college careers reflected nothing short of a waste of...well, everything, has led to some spectacular play of late. Even if the Terps lost their last two games and bombed in the ACC tournament without a win, they would deserve a berth in the Big Dance (and regardless of the way their games at Dook and against NC State, and the tournament, play out, I will be extremely startled if they win more than one game in the NCAA tourney).

They have Redeemed, brothers and sisters. Redeemed, I tell you. Fear Again the Turtle.

Okay, really, I'm going to do some work now.

Self-Delusion

Most people either got my last post, or didn't care. Either is fine with me. For those of you who sensed any grain of seriousness--whether or not there are any of you beyond Purple--allow me to clarify.

I don't want to be a famous blogger. I don't give a fuck if people listen to me. I don't give a fuck if I persuade anybody of anything. I don't want to have to care about the effect my words have on others (beyond the realm of the personal, of course).

Would it be really, really cool to get paid for spewing this tripe? Duh. Of course it would. Do I want the responsibility that goes with it (i.e., posting daily and putting up more posts not fairly taggable with "self-indulgence" than otherwise)? Fuck no.

Does that make my blogging wanking? I don't give a fuck. As I think I've said, I blog for me, and to maintain a communication channel with friends in a world where more conventional channels aren't always possible. If that means I'm spraying you indiscriminately like Sexy Rexy, so be it.

Dashing All Hope

Fuck you, TBogg, you cruel, insensitive bastard. All I've ever lived for is to sit on the set of some television wankfest, looking Ann Coulter right in the Adam's Apple, screaming that anyone who doesn't agree with me is a fucking moron with a dubious right to reproduce, or suggesting that maybe a trial period for mandatory abortions would be a good thing, or asking Michelle Malkin if she'd like to join me for some hot anchor-baby tapioca action.

But you, Mister Bogg, you with your highfalutin' blog that gets more than six hits a day, and your radiant family and your high-profile outing and your being noticed by people who don't know you personally, you? Have to step in and kick us poor little bitches with nothing but moxie and a dream, right in the fucking teeth? Your sadism knows no bounds. I do have moxie, I do! And no mean old celebrity blogger can tell me otherwise. Someday my ship will come in and I'll get paid for sitting here in my jockstrap and ballgag writing about myself, with an occasional interruption to imprecate Republicans, watch football, or spank the monkey. I mean the children. Spank the children. See? You have flustered me beyond repair.

You, Sir, are one coldhearted and vicious motherfucker. Consider my affections withdrawn.

Except, y'know, feel free to come read Minions and link to it and say bad stuff about me specifically, by name. With links. Heck, I'll even provide photos. Please. Pretty please?

Ketchup

Busy week.

These not-bunnies are sleeping after eating Landru's blogging time this week.

But the world refuses to sit still as I don't blog it, so I'll catch up a bit here.

John Edwards (the Presidential candidate, not the other douche): What a spineless fucking piece of shit. Granted, he eventually expressed something vaguely resembling support for Amanda Marcotte and ShakesSis, who he had hired to reach out to the netroots. But he waited 36-48 hours after the faux explosion around them (caused entirely by noisemaking right-wing fucktards), before acting. Sasha points out (privately) that Edwards is either a complete pussy, or merely an ineffectual one. To the extent that it was possible that I'd support Edwards in the primary any more, it ain't now. That a so-called progressive candidate could find himself at odds with the "sentiment" of various posts by unshakeable feminists is not exactly what anyone would call progressive. And the outrage over girls saying "fuck" is sheer hypocrisy. I'm not a big fan of either blog (ShakesSis is linked here, because I occasionally mosey over and get a dose of whatever they're peddling), but this shit is way over the top.

Anna Anna Anna Anna Anna Nicole: I don't want to laugh at this tawdry tart's misfortune. It's hard for me to sit here and write that she was dumb, or something; she parlayed those tits and that ass into megawealth. On the other hand, I just heard the first "choked on her own vomit" story of the ensuing media frenzy. While Anna Nicole Smith was and is pretty much irrelevant to me, I must simply remind you that you can't dust for vomit.

Looney Astronaut: Sasha and I were discussing how this week's news alone should be outstanding fodder for TreyStoneParkerMatt, but sadly, they're not producing new episodes of South Park at the moment. Hopefully a wacky astronaut chick driving hundreds of miles in diapers to fuck up a workplace rival (and remember, Wacky Astronaut Chick says she wasn't involved with Studly Astronaut Boy) will remain topical until they start cranking some new stuff. And if there was no fucking involved, Victim Chick must leave quite a mess in the ladies' or around the coffee machine, to be provoking that much hatin'. This story is, by the way, the funniest. Thing. EVAR.

The Super Bowl: I think I done said all I'm gonna, in the game-night posts. The Cum Cannon just couldn't sling enough spooge to get the job done, and that's sad. From a high comedy perspective, the game rated about an A minus; the rain was a hoot, bashing the Cumslinger is a hoot, and it just doesn't get any better than 5-6 turnovers before halftime in the Super Bowl. The commercials this year neither heightened nor diminished the thing's comedy potential, although it was a pretty lackluster set of commercials. And Prince with a shadow demon penis? Priceless.

Futbol: Of course, blackDogred has addressed this thoroughly and essentially without fault. The U.S. mens' national team played a friendly against Mexico the other night, and it was massively entertaining. Unfortunately, I've gotten to the same point with USMNT that I've gotten to with the Terps; I dislike almost as many of the USMNT players as I do Maryland basktballers. While this is sad, it doesn't keep me from spewing bile when our boys play the Mexicans, who are aging, melancholy, unsportsmanlike pussies. The good news is that I can forget about this a few weeks into DCU's upcoming season and focus on hating Bruce Arena (who was in the booth with Eric Wynalda for the Mexico game, and THAT, friends, was pure comedy gold).

And in closing:

Greg says, "Fuck you, Michelle, Gun Counter Gomer, and Dan Riehl!"

On The Other Hand

I gotta give the guy TAFKAP props for hanging in and doing an electric show during a monsoon.

But then again, that whole demonic shadow penis thing gets us right back to planet-scouring.

Can I have my football comedy gold back, please?

Dear Aliens Watching The Super Bowl Halftime Show

Yes. He's an embarrassment. I cannot fault you for scouring us from the face of this otherwise perfectly good planet.

Pregame Show

I have previously opined muchly about football. It is time to come to a conclusion.

While Rex Grossman is a testosterone-drenched cum cannon dressed in a Bears uniform, spraying footballs all over the Orange Bowl (or wherever they're playing this game) to sublimate his need to inseminate everything in America, and the Bears are despicable sons of bitches, their defense led by a steroid-crazed bag of herpes who actually stuck his dick in Paris Hilton, the Colts are far worse. Peyton Manning is a closeted homosexual Republican party supporter, and Tony Dungy hates fags. There is no doubt about the outcome of righteousness here; God wants the Bears to win.

But God doesn't have time to influence the outcome of the Super Bowl (beyond maybe dumping a few gallons of rain on South Florida, demonstrating that, like many bettors, God took the points). God is, like the rest of us, busy eating greasy appetizers and cursing CBS' coverage of the game.

The simple fact is that the Bears still haven't played anybody. When they've played teams that approach being somebody, they've squeaked by. Victories over Seattle and the Aints to get to this here game are simply not all that compelling. The Colts, on the other hand, have managed victories over the best teams in the league during their march to the big day. While the game should, by rights, be close and low-scoring, even my stark disgust with Manning would not prevent me from picking him over the Cumblaster in a close game for all the marbles.

Of course, I'm rooting for the Bears; we've covered that. And the only game outcome that would surprise me would be the Bears blowing out the Colts. But I think it most likely that the Colts are going to win tonight.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go eat some deep-fried cheese sticks.

Fini

The things I do for you people. The tagging project is completed. Most of the tags are pretty close to self-explanatory, but a few need a word of exposition:

Self-Indulgence: Yeah, it's all pretty self-indulgent. I tried to highlight here the ones that were really just self-pitying crap. If there's anything else of value in these, they're also so tagged.

Motherfucking Snakes: Anything about television, movies, radio, or culture, generally.

Your Personal Nametag: If I could find more than one instance where you, a minion, were called out by name, I tagged you. If you don't want to be tagged, say so. If you do want to be tagged and weren't, get over it.

If you see something that's really badly tagged, please let me know, bearing in mind that I've cranked about eight hours on this tagging project and I'm really kind of sick of it and I don't even know if it's of any particular utility.

But enjoy it, for what it's worth.

It Is

A neverending source of amazement, the things that draw minions out of the woodwork.

More New and Improved

Okay, I lied. I had to reconfigure the Blogger template and stuff, so a couple of links got dropped. If yours was one of them, I had given you up for dead, so welcome back.

The labels list is now intact. Thanks to Sasha for the idiot-proofing. I'm still working through the archive, coding older posts with labels.

New and Improved

I have crashed through the dimwittedness of Google's McUpdate software and moved to The New Blogger. You will notice only one change as a result, that being that I am tagging posts now. I'm working on tagging the archives, and when I've done that, I'll include tagging links in the sidebar, if I can figure out how to do that get Sasha to walk me patiently through it step by step in an idiot-proof sorta way. So far, the tagging process is proving interesting, and I'll probably do some self-indulgent commentary about that at some point. In the meantime? Vroom! Vroom!

Tipping Update

It occurred to me that I might need to do a little preemptive splaining after this morning's post about the governing apparati of the city of Boston becoming totally unhinged by a bunch of Lite-Brites.

Knocking out the most simplistic stuff first: no, moron, I'm not in favor of terrorism, I didn't say I was, and I didn't advocate being in favor of it. I'm not advocating rolling over for it. I'm not advocating being a dumbass when you see a brown paper package wrapped in twine ticking away in the airport lounge. I'm not advocating cutting funding to local and federal law enforcement. Or not increasing it.

I'm advocating having a fucking brain in your head. The only reason the war in Iraq is about terrorism is because having a large, but too-small body of troops in a country undergoing a civil war (one we precipitated--not that I advocate having left Sadaam Hussein in power, since we went all that way to kick his ass and stuff) is, in fact, an invitation to terrorism. The original reasons for invading had nothing to do with terrorism, and leaving Iraq now would neither alter that country's strife-ridden path to a government that may or may not like us nor bring more terrorists to our shores.

It's like leaving your laptop on a park bench and boggling when someone steals it. It's like putting wooden barrels of gasoline in an old, dried-out barn filled with straw, and leaving matches strewn about, and expecting no one to burn it down.

I'm also not disrespecting the 3,000 or so mostly Americans who died on 9/11. Your view may be that the math disrespects them--they were, after all, only 3,000 of the 150,000 or so people who died of unnecessarily violent causes in 2001. But that would not be a real objective view, and it would be pretty disrespectful to the other 147,000 or so victims of violence.

And I am most assuredly not suggesting that terrorism deaths are unpreventable. I'm just suggesting that they should be viewed in the appropriate risk context. The rationale for preventing terrorism is the rationale for preventing any unnecessary deaths. AIDS kills far fewer people than cancer. Compare the amount spent on research into each. It's exactly the same thing. Exactly the same.

I saw the video of the two accused, wherein they would only entertain questions about 70s hairstyles. I think they've got it just about exactly right. They are effectively charged with giving the city of Boston an opportunity to look really, really stupid. Their attitude is what it should be.

The howls from the right are not as loud as I might have thought, although they're just as mean. And the howls that try to sound like sensible howling are real knee-slappers. I heard a Fox correspondent guest-bloviating on my local pound-news-up-your-ass radio station today; her take was that the Feds believe Boston did the right thing. When asked how that reflected on the other nine cities that managed not to panic over Lite-Brites, she took a trip to the Waffle House, but tried to edge in an assertion that the Feds thought Boston was right and nine other cities were head-up-ass.

Uhm...wrong.

The Tipping Point

We all experience the accumulation of idiocy in various forms, affecting various aspects of our lives, many of them trivial, some of them less so. I decided a while back that the genus of idiocy relating to politics and worldviews was one I no longer wanted to significantly engage in this blog. The thoroughgoing blindness and pervasive dishonesty of the other side just saps my soul. Should somebody engage them? Sure, somebody should, but I'm mostly not going to, and in so deciding, I forgo the right to an opinion on who should.

Yesterday's little dustup in Boston, though, is not possible for me to ignore; it is the tipping point of my rage on this issue. The "war" on terrorism is unadulterated bullshit. If you are not a law enforcement or intelligence official and you go around worrying about terrorism, you are either a complete fucking idiot, you are seeking an excuse to impose your brand of fascism on our country, or you are psychologically disturbed and should seek some help. Multiple choice is plausible.

Let me be abundantly clear about this: if you see a small electronic sign, one with blinking lights in a pattern that appears to be flipping you off, and your first thought is that you are looking at an explosive device? You need competent medical help. Seriously. It is not possible for a sane and rational person to look at this:

and think, "I am looking at a terrorist bomb." It's just not possible.

It would be easy to write this off to the stick up Boston's ass. We are talking about the descendants of the folks who brought you the Salem Witch Trials. Today's news bears this out; the two poor bastards hired by Turner Broadcasting to carry out its nefarious plot of using art installations as advertising are facing arraignment in Boston-area courts this morning, and city officials are acting like the company--and its temporary starving-artist hires--are actual agents of Al Qaida.

Let's set the terrorism thing straight: you, personally, are not going to die of terrorism. It ain't gonna happen. Let's take a look at the things that will kill you.

The World Health Organization estimates (and by the way, I worked on the book pictured on the linked page, there) that, in 2002 (the most recent year for which WHO has published data), there were about 291 million people in the United States (please forgive my national chauvinism if you're one of Minions' 0.135 non-U.S. readers). A little over 24 million of them died. That's about .08 percent of Americans. Eight tenths of one percent, eight out of every one thousand Americans, died that year (the actual figure is 831.7 deaths per hundred thousand population--I'm even willing to put the worst possible face on it and call it a whole nine out of a thousand).

That's a slim chance of dying to begin with, on the low side of the middle of the spectrum, around 80th in the world (191 countries are listed), a death rate most similar to that of, oddly enough, France. Our national death rate in 2002 was not very far from the global death rate of 918.5 deaths per hundred thousand population.

Various countries in Africa approach or exceed a death rate that triples ours. Stop. Think. Triples. Around 2.7 percent of the denizens of Sierra Leone (not a particularly safe country for humans, I grant) died in 2002.

So, when it comes to dying (at all--we haven't even gotten to terrorism yet), you have a middling advantage in that you are an American. You would do a bit better in any of a number of countries--including, interestingly enough, Israel and Syria--and significantly better in a handful of countries, all of them (with the exception of Brunei) oil-rich countries that border Saudi Arabia.

Why did people die in 2002? WHO classifies deaths by cause. Globally, about 26 percent of deaths in 2002 owed to infectious diseases of various sorts, 12 percent to cancers, a whopping 29 percent to cardiovascular diseases, and smatterings of 4 and 5 percent attributable to various other causes; 58 percent of deaths owed to causes classified as noncommunicable diseases, which subsumes everything not infectious or injurious.

Only 9 percent of deaths in 2002 owed to injuries, and of those, two-thirds were accidental in nature--traffic accidents, falls, drownings, and the like. Another 17 percent of injury-caused deaths were from self-inflicted injuries, meaning suicide. Only 1 percent of deaths (and it's almost exactly 1 percent) resulted from violence or war.

As a citizen of the world, you had less than a 1-percent chance of dying in 2002. If you died, there was only a 1-percent chance that you died from any violent cause--including terrorism.

As an American, your advantage here really kicks in, unless you're me. 87.5 percent of U.S. deaths in 2002 were caused by noncommunicable diseases--23 percent by cancers, 38 percent by cardiovascular diseases, with smatterings attributable to other disease-based causes. In the U.S., only 6.3 percent of deaths were attributable to injury, and of those, around 70 percent were accidental.

Roughly 157,000 Americans died of violence-related causes in 2002, less than six-tenths of one percent of all deaths. In 2002, you were seven times more likely to die from an accidental cause--itself not all that likely--than from any violent cause, including terrorism. Even if we take a liberty with the numbers and add in 5,000 terrorism-related deaths from 2001 into the totals, the incidences don't change significantly.

Now let's talk about preventable deaths. Well over half of cancer and cardiovascular deaths can be prevented. Compare the amount spent on preventing deaths from noncommunicable diseases to the amount spent on the so-called war on terror. No rational person can look at these proportions and think them appropriate.

Like I said, if you're scared of terrorism, you're either stupid, lying, or deeply troubled. If you're deeply troubled, I truly hope you can get some help for that--it's not surprising that, given the government's propaganda campaign of the last five years, people's heads are twisted by this issue. But if you're stupid or lying--and if you have a fear of terrorism for any reason other than some psychological disorder, you're one or both--just shut the fucking fuck up and consider a fact or two.