perfidy

Something's been on my mind lately and, lacking any other material to post, might as well throw it out to both our readers:

What is the most over-used music in film?

I'm thinking specifics here, not the every-time-something-happens-in-Australia-cue-the-didgeridoo type of observation, or the swelling-string-section-in-each-cloying-love-scene type.

For my money, it would have to be everything from The Nutcracker, with second place split between James Brown's Papa's Got a Brand New Bag and I Got You.

The man who they call Deep Throat has reportedly come forward.

W. Mark Felt, 91, who was second-in-command at the FBI in the early 1970s, kept the secret even from his family until 2002, when he confided to a friend that he had been Post reporter Bob Woodward's source, the magazine said.

"I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat," he told lawyer John D. O'Connor, the author of the Vanity Fair article, the magazine said in a news release.

Wow. Even so, I still prefer to think of Deep Throat as two cute blondes with weed cookies.

What a frustrating weekend! I lost [an insignificant but irritating amount of money] to an 11 year old playing Texas Hold 'Em. Really! (Poker discussion to follow... nonfans may skip ahead to the part where I watch Star Wars]. I play a very tight game and seem to have a good head for odds and a good sense for strength at the table. I was able to outlast all the adults in this way, only to come into heads-up mode against the 11 year old son of a friend of mine. Aided by his dad only in that he kept reminding the kid not to show his cards, the kid's strategy amounted to "play every hand, raise every turn." Literally. The kid went in on every hand, no matter how weak, and bet up on every... single... opportunity. This is a terrible strategy to live by because it depends 100% on luck, but it does have the advantage of being potentially disruptive to everyone else's game. The kid's automatic raises amounted to a constant gut-check, driving players either to fold or overbid marginal hands, and his lack of strategy meant that everyone's attempts to control momentum went for naught. And because the kid got lucky on every... single... river card, he just kept on winning. it came down to me and him.

Me: pocket 5s. Him: 2-8 offsuit, the second worst starting hand in the game. I go in small before the flop. The flop gives me another 5 and some garbage; a 3 and a 6. At this point I go all in, knowing that trying to play mindgames against the ATM sitting across from me would be silly. He calls, leaving himself with only 10 chips or so. I win this, I'm thisclose to winning it all. The spawn is trash talking about all the toys he's going to buy. The turn is an 8. I let out a breath. Junk.

And the kid drew a 4 on the river to give him the damn gutshot straight starting from one of the weakest hands in Texas Hold 'Em. I lost to the Dorchester Kid.

Then, on Monday, the power went out four times during Revenge of the Sith. They finally gave me my money back, but I figure they should have kicked in a few extra bucks for skipping over the fight scenes and making sure to restart the show in time to show me all the "I love youuuu!!!!" parts uninterrupted.

So... how's it end?

Mrs. Buckethead and I are leaving for the wilds of central Delaware this weekend. In fact, I'm heading home as soon as I finish this post. The reason? We are going to a mini-burn. You may have heard of the big burn out at Blackrock, NV every August. Well, this is a similar but much smaller twice a year event with a tiny, tiny fraction of the attendees.

About 600 or so people will gather at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Motorcycle Club ranch, and have themselves a very nice time, in beautiful weather, with lots of booze and other intoxicants. Mrs. B and I will be able to partake for the first time in two years, as my mom is on the road from Ohio as we speak. She, my aunt and cousin will be taking care of Sir John-the-not-quite-ready-for-that-sort-of-entertainment for the long weekend.

For the first time since the little nipper was born, the wifey and I will be free to have a good time without worrying about the boy choking, falling, buring or otherwise injuring himself. For the weekend at least, "Free at last, free at last!" Unless you have kids, you have no idea how good it feels to be rid of them, if only for a little while. Much as I love my son, and love spending time with my son; Daddy needs a couple days to go away, be irresponsible, and get well and truly pickled.

I do not plan to be asleep or sober for the next 72 hours.

See you Tuesday.

It has long been an article of faith with me that no matter where you go in the United States, you can find trailer trash there. Before I moved to New England, I perhaps thought that it was a mix of dour upright fishermen who say "ayuh," big time lawyers, and witty, urbane literate types who sit in Edwardian chairs discussing Updike over snifters.

Boy was I wrong. My downstairs neighbors in the first apartment I lived in when I moved to Massachusetts (for the second time) nearly burned the house down the week before we moved in; one of them "fell asleep" on the couch with a lit bowl of reefer. Our next door neighbors never conversed wittily about Updike, or even King. Their nightly 3 AM conversation went something like this:

Him: F*****CK YEEEW!
Her: AAAAH F*CK YISELF!
Him: I HATE YEEEEEEEEEEEW YOU MOTHER****AH!
Her: I'll F*KING KILL YOU YOU **** ******* *** ********* *** ****BAG!!
Spawn: EEEYAAAAAAH! EYYYAAAAH!!!! *STOMP* *STOMP* *STOMP* *STOMP*
Him: F*ck this, I'm leaving.
Spawn: EEEYAAAAAAH! EYYYAAAAH!!!! *STOMP* *STOMP* *STOMP* *STOMP*
Her: Fine! You can't get by without me, you lazy **** ******* *** ********* *** ****STAIN!!!
Him: Oh yeah? F********CK YEEEW!
Her: F********CK Y*******U! I HATE YOU! I F***ING HATE YOU YOU **** ******* *** ********* *** ****!
Spawn: EEEYAAAAAAH! EYYYAAAAH!!!! *STOMP* *STOMP* *STOMP* *STOMP*

The summers were even better, because they'd do this in the parking lot so everyone could hear, and since school was out they had no problem keeping the kid up past her customary 4AM bedtime.

The most dismaying part is that I left Ohio precisely because I wanted to get the hell away from people like this. Still more dismaying is that proof accrues daily that people are the same everywhere. Whether it's small potatoes like kids making lightsabers from flourescent bulbs and burning gasoline or world-historical statements of human fallibility like the various genocides that still continue, there's no getting away from the idiots.

More surprising yet is how people everywhere really are the same deep down. Some might see this as proof that some day all humankind will clasp hands and sing together in perfect harmony in a spirit of love. We at the Ministry tend to see this as proof that we're all screwed. Example: read the following and see if you can tell where the incident described took place. Answer below the fold.

A fatally injured man pulled a crossbow arrow out of his torso and taunted the man who shot him, saying: "Is that all you've f... got?"

Soon afterwards, Anton Nauer collapsed and within hours he was dead from being shot by Dean Pender in a late-night confrontation at Pender's ----------------- home.

Hayden Keith McDougall, 19, unemployed, and Jared James Little, 20, a -------, of ----------, deny the charge.

. . . . . . .

During the previous evening there had been a series of incidents, including a window being smashed at the home of Pender's former girlfriend, leading to the trio allegedly arming themselves with num-chukkas and a knife.

"The allegation is that Nauer proceeded onto the property, bearing a set of num-chukkas, and there was an altercation with Pender, who obtained a crossbow and fired a fatal shot at Nauer," Beaton said.

"Nauer died in hospital some hours later and the allegation is that McDougall and Little went with Nauer and were armed when they went on to the property."

Pender's sister, Sarah Pender, told the court she arrived home shortly before the fatal shot. They were outside moving cars so they could close the gates on the property when "a ------- guy", who she now knows was Nauer, arrived with McDougall and Little.

"They said, `Do you know where Dean Pender is? Get him here'. They said he'd smashed Natasha's window," she said.

"By then (Dean Pender's friend) Shaun Lawrence had come down the driveway and was carrying a pole of some kind. He said, `What's wrong, what have you got against my boys?'

"Shaun's younger brother hopped out of the car and started walking over. The ------- guy said 'Get on your knees or I'll slit your throat.' Shaun started getting angry because of what the guy said to his younger brother.

"The guy pulled out num-chukkas and started swinging them around and started getting really aggressive. By this time Dean was down the driveway and they all saw him and started yelling, 'You're going to f... pay.'

"They started running towards Dean and the guy was swinging the num-chukkas. I got pushed to the ground by the ------- guy with (McDougall) right behind me.

"They were yelling 'You're going to f... pay, Pender. We're going to get you.' (Nauer) said `We're going to f... kill you.' McDougall had a knife in his hand. It was like a hunting knife.

"I was freaking out. It all happened so fast – they were running towards Dean and I got pushed to the ground. I was getting off the ground when it happened. Dean said 'Get back or I'll f... shoot. Get back. Get back.' That's the only time I heard him yelling.

"Then the ------- guy was pulling out the crossbow (arrow from his torso). As he was pulling it out, he said 'Is that all you've f... got?' He handed it to Shaun then he and the two [other] guys (McDougall and Little) started taking off up the driveway."

Crossbows? Frigging numchucks? Public knife fights at a girlfriend's house? Where, indeed?

Florida? Nope.
New Jersey? Nope.
Detroit? Gettin' colder.

The incident in question happened in the nicest country on earth, New Zealand.

Tom Wolfe once said that Fascism is forever descending on the United States, but that somehow it always lands on Europe. It seems that President Chirac will proceed with Euro-integration and the EU constitution regardless of how the French people vote. The EU Constitution looks like a very bad thing to me, and it seems that a majority of voters in France and the Netherlands will be agreeing with me. Since the rejection of the constitution by any of the member states will sink it, this is bad news for the Brusselcrats. However, they are urging the administrations in France and the Netherlands to run the referendums again and again until the masses get the right answer. Too bad they don't have the option of recalling the people and electing a new people.

Perhaps the Euro project is heading for the ash heap of history. But if the Euro constitution is put in place over the will of the actual people of Europe, the end result will not be good for them, or for us.

Via Kausfiles, we find this really, really interesting bit of political analysis that I don't have time to discuss right now.

The report of the civil engineers examining the World Trade Center attack came to the conclusion that thousands of lives were spared that might have been lost because people ignored the recommendations of emergency services and fled the building in a self-organizing and effective non-panic..

We know that US borders are porous, that major targets are largely undefended, and that the multicolor threat alert scheme known affectionately as "the rainbow of doom" is a national joke. Anybody who has been paying attention probably suspects that if we rely on orders from above to protect us, we'll be in terrible shape. But in a networked era, we have increasing opportunities to help ourselves. This is the real source of homeland security: not authoritarian schemes of surveillance and punishment, but multichannel networks of advice, information, and mutual aid.

This gets into what I (and of course many others) have been saying for some time - that an informed public (and an armed public, but that's not the point here) is the first and best line of defense against terrorist attacks. Note well that every major success in the WoT on our soil was won by ordinary citizens, not government agencies or law enforcement. (The shoe bomber, the wackjob at LAX, flight 93, the DC snipers.) In the case of the DC snipers, those assholes were nabbed despite the best efforts of Sheriff Moosehead and his assholes to conceal the very information that, once leaked, led to their arrest within hours.

An interesting exercise in simultaneous fiction and public health awareness.

British doctors writing in the British Medical Journal are calling for a complete ban on all long kitchen knives, saying that half of all stab wounds are caused by those deadly kitchen implements.

They consulted 10 top chefs from around the UK, and found such knives have little practical value in the kitchen.

Good to know that they got everyone involved in the process.

They argued many assaults are committed impulsively, prompted by alcohol and drugs, and a kitchen knife often makes an all too available weapon.

And if there aren't any knives handy, they'll grab something else.

The study found links between easy access to domestic knives and violent assault are long established.

What? There's a link between the existence of swimming pools and drowning deaths. Violent assaults usually happen at home.

The researchers say legislation to ban the sale of long pointed knives would be a key step in the fight against violent crime. "The Home Office is looking for ways to reduce knife crime. We suggest that banning the sale of long pointed knives is a sensible and practical measure that would have this effect."

Practical? Are they going to register the hundreds of millions of already extant knives?

Nutjobs. First they came for the guns...