Conservatism ...

Comforting the comfortable, afflicting the afflicted, and speaking power to truth.

You Know Your Campaign Is In Trouble ...

... When you lose a battle of wits to Paris Hilton:

Video from Funny or Die

See you at the debates, bitches!

— Paris Hilton

Page 3

Quote of the day:

"When the Journal gets its Page 3 girls, we'll make sure they have M.B.A.s."

— Rupert Murdoch, on his attempt to purchase the Wall Street Journal

Household Explosives, Redux

It's always fun to check out the Site Meter stats (icon at the bottom of the page). Since I've been inactive for the last couple of years, most of the visits I've had are people looking for something else. I wrote about this in Referral, where somebody was looking for "pocket sized witch detectors". I still have no idea what they were after.

Far and away the most common search that's finding me is for "household explosives". The searches find "What's Your Household Like?", which is almost certainly not what they're looking for.

I suspect that the folks doing the searches are looking to make explosives out of stuff they already have lying around. The one comment on the post suggests this. Folks, if you're thinking of trying this. one word of advice. Don't

The World's Dirtiest Joke

A new act comes in to a vaudeville booker. It's a man, a woman, a little girl, and a little dog. They're all well dressed and clean-cut and wholesome looking.

"So what's your act?" the agent asks.

"It's kind of hard to describe", the man replies. "We'll show you."

So they start into a sweet little song-and-dance number. However, it starts to change. Soon is is the most ghastly, obscene routine imaginable. It's the kind of act that would be banned in Thailand.

(This is what makes this the World's Dirtiest Joke — it's all in your head. I'm sure you can think of things that would gross you out totally that I might consider a mildly boring kink, and vice versa. Just imagine the grossest thing you possibly can.)

As the act comes to a close, it changes back to a sweet little song-and-dance. They've worked cleaning themselves up and rearranging clothing into the act, so that when they finish, they're all clean-cut and wholesome looking again.

The agent is aghast. "Well, what do you think of it?" the man asks.

The agent is speechless. He tries to think of something to say, but all that comes out is "What do you call your act"?

"The Aristocrats"

The metaphor is obvious.

Woof!

The latest Bush ad shows a bunch of wolves being spooky. Sheesh! What are these guys thinking? Wolves are not a scary image to Americans. There is no record (including Native American legends) of a North American wolf ever attacking a human. Nature programs have rammed the picture of warm fuzzy lovable wolves down our throats for years. It's only been in the last couple of years that you'd know that wolves are carnivores. Before then, you'd think they ate nothing but Alpo.

Hypothesis: the Republicans are outsourcing their ads to Russia.

North American wolves are harmless.

Unless you're a sheep.

LATER — Now, of course, we have Wolfpacks for Truth:

They told us we were shooting a Greenpeace commercial!

As We Dodge Another Bullet ...

Cards top Astros, to face BoSox in World Series

If the Astros had won, the national media would probably have collapsed with a case of terminal Metaphor Overload. I don't think they could stand having both the Presidency and the World Series be Massachusetts vs. Texas.

Quote of the Day

From the Head Girly Man:

I don't know why I watched the presidential debates. If I want to watch a smart liberal Democrat and a Republican leader argue, all we have to do is go out to dinner. They were lucky. They only had to do it three times.

— Arnold Schwarzenegger

Seems Ahnold got to sleep on the sofa for a couple of weeks after his RNC speech ...

Omens

So NYC's ex- mayor and demigod Rudy Giuliani says, on Monday

The only two things I'm thinking of in the future right now are the Yankees getting themselves into the World Series and President Bush being re-elected.

Tempting the gods is a bad idea. Poking them with a sharp stick is an even worse idea.

Would these guys recognize an omen if it bit them on the arse?

"Girly Men"

California's honorable governor's favorite phrase for people he doesn't like is "girly men". Odd phrase. Austrian? Nope. Bodybuilder. Check out the side effects for massive steriod use.

Now, who do we know who has used massive doses of steriods? Who's the real "girly man" here?

Keep the Republicans Out of the Tunnels!

Security is tight at Madison Square Garden. (At least, for anybody important) Access to the train stations under the Garden (both subway and Amtrak) is quite limited.

How carefully are they checking the tunnels around the Garden? After all, isn't the whole point of having the convention in NYC to let the Republicans lay their eggs under the Garden?

This is especially worrisome in that Al Qaeda has expressed interest in the same scenario ...

Lock Up the Silverware!

When I lived in Arizona, both parties had a "stable" of big donors who would run in any race that was a sure loss. It was considered a perk -- run around the state, make speeches, get on TV, and so forth. Worked fine until one of the won.

Well, Illinois has that problem now. Barack Obama looks like a shoo- in for Senator, and the Republicans can't find anybody to run against him. Jack Ryan (the primary winner) is Out because of sex-club allegations and Peter Fitzgerald (the incumbent) and Mike Ditka aren't running because they aren't idiots. Best Line award to Fitzgerald: "I need that like I need a cancer transplant".

So it looks like they're turning to Maryland's own perennial Senate candidate and all- round fruitbat Alan Keyes. A bit of friendly advice for the Illinois Republicans -- lock up the silverware.

In 1992, when Keyes ran against pitbull Barbara Mikulski, the national party wouldn't give his campaign any money. No need to throw money at a sure loser. His campaign was seriously strapped for cash; they needed every nickel to just get out posters and flyers. So what did Keyes do? He paid himself $90,000 for "salary" from campaign funds.

Keyes' motto is "I'm smarter than you are". Expect to be presented with the bill for all sorts of "necessities", like a new house. (Illinois law says a candidate has to live in the state on Election Day.) And he will be very persuasive. Once you've locked in on him, you'll do things his way or else -- and that means taking a really big turn to the Right. I've seen his TV show -- think of Rush Limbaugh without the charm.

Amusingly enough, Keyes went after Hillary Clinton as a "carpetbagger" for her run for the Senate from New York in 2000:

I deeply resent the destruction of federalism represented by Hillary Clinton’s willingness go into a state she doesn't even live in and pretend to represent people there, so I certainly wouldn't imitate it.

— Alan Keyes, 2000 (via Archpundit)

Don't you Republicans in Illinois have a nice Republican used- car dealer who'd like to travel around the state and make speeches?

Later

Keyes gets his first real endorsement:

"I spent five weeks trying to find good people," said Mr. Hastert, who said he approached state legislators and the former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka and Gary Fencik, an Ivy Leaguer who was a hard-hitting safety.

"I got down into last week interviewing a 70-year-old guy who was a great farm broadcaster in Illinois," Mr. Hastert said. "He decided because of his health problems he couldn't do it. You know, we were down — we needed to find somebody to run, somebody who wanted to run. And, you know, Alan Keyes wants to run, and I hope he's a good candidate."

...

"I tell you what," Mr. Hastert. "I was out of town when it happened."

Some really wild enthusiasm there. (Via twistedchick)

"We have turned a corner, and we are not turning back!"

Georgie's new slogan. Sounds like a music cue to me:

Prosperity is Just Around Which Corner?

from 1932

[This song involves two people, the first is a loud-mouthed politician, the the other is supposed to be a man on the street.]

Everywhere you go, everyone you meet, All they talk about is this depression. They blame it on the war, they blame it on Wall Street, On politics and this administration. For two years now we've been assured good times are on the way, I wonder how much longer we must hear them talk this way?

Prosperity is just around the corner! What we'd like to know is which corner? We've turned so many corners now we're dizzy. But still I'm positive we'll soon be busy!

Why I read in Monday's paper that 10,000 men were hired! Yes, but Tuesday they forgot to say 12,000 more were fired. Well, I insist that this land of ours is stable! Stable? sounds like horses to me!

Prosperity is just around the corner! Did you say corner or coroner? Our credit is still strong, no one can doubt it! I guess my landlord don't know about it.

I see the market is going up, now you can't call that a joke! I recollect one time before it went clear up in smoke. This slump is just mostly imagination! Yeah, well you just try to pay your grocery bill with that!

Now everyone is sure that they could find the cure, If they could be the one to run this nation. They'd put a bill right through, and show us what to do, To get the money back in circulation. They say if we would spend our dough bad business soon will end But they forgot to tell us where to get the dough to spend.

Propserity is just around the corner. Around the same corner with prohibition, I reckon. Why, can't you understand why I'm so cheery? Yes, just like I understand the Einstein theory. But look at all the bumper crops the farmers have to sell, And every time they get a crop the price goes plumb to ****. [They couldn't record "hell" in 1932 for morality reasons] Well, every cloud still has a silver lining. But that don't line the pockets of your pants.

Still, prosperity is just around the corner. And we still would like to know which corner. Our nation will go down in history's pages. We're going down all right, especially wages. Why our banks are full of money, now you have to say I'm right. Then we can get all we want if we just use dynamite. You should fill your mind with optimism.

(Original here. I copied it because this link doesn't seem to be working.)

Referral

One of the joys of SiteMeter (the little icon at the bottom of the page) is that it lists "referrers" -- the page that a reader was on when he or she (or it; there are robots out there, too, you know) was on before coming here. In particular, if somebody comes to this site from a search engine, the referrer will contain the search terms that were used to find the page.

Some of them can get pretty bizarre. The Preacher, as usual, has the champion

I just got a contender. "pocket sized witch detectors", from MSN. The hit was on this page. I have a strong feeling that this was not what the person putting in the query was looking for. But what were they looking for? Hint -- learn to use quote marks in your queries. Otherwise, you won't get phrases. Blogs can be especially nasty, as pages tend to cover many posts with widely different subjects.

Nostalgia! My first blog posts!

Some others:

• oops flashes
• lightningbug movie
• small flashes (in Finnish??)
• funny flashes
• very scary flashes
• hesoid blog

No end of fun. I had to extract these by hand; supposedly, the pay version of Site Meter extracts them for you. Almost worth it.

What's Your Household Like?

I like to visit News of the Weird occasionally to remind myself that sometimes weird is merely weird. However, this item (which I'd seen before) caught my eye (so to speak):

A 17-year-old boy lost sight in both eyes in a "potato gun" accident in Denton, Texas, in April. The "gun" (a length of pipe in which a household explosive is ignited, propelling a potato out the other end, although in this case, it was not a potato but a frog) was being experimented with by several teenagers but failed to fire, and the victim, who had been a mere bystander, stepped up to have a look down the pipe to see what might have gone wrong, just as the gun finally fired.

(emphasis added)

Household explosive? I know I don't keep with all the latest trends, but I don't remember seeing any "household explosives" mentioned in the "Home & Garden" section of the local fishwrap. Is this something new for getting rid of stubborn stains? Mice? Opening jars? Clearing drains?

Nobody tells me anything.