A shoe bomber has killed 11 people and wounded 20 others in a mosque in Iraq, and this is where most news agencies are inserting the phrase "despite last week's killing of Zarqawi (sung to rhyme with Volare)" or "despite ongoing coalition security operations in Iraq." So I guess they thought last week's highly questionable bombing followed by the mob movie style "17 raids we've been waiting to hit people with until after we got this one guy like it's Donnie Brasco or something" was going to be a silver bullet, thus ending a war. And it might've been, if it were part of a plan, but it's not. And we're having the devil of a time with that back at home, as Dems struggle to re-structure the argument from "stay the course vs. pull out entirely" into something workable like "put in enough support and cash to repair the hideous mess since to pull out now would likely kill thousands and destabilize a region, but staying the course simply isn't an option when there is no course vs. back out now because we've realized that the President is a monomaniac and a fool who never planned anything, and there will certainly be more deaths as a result." Guys - good luck with that, okay?
I think the guy did it just to bring street cred back to the profession of shoe bomber. I mean, Richard "I appear homeless and confused" Reid did for shoe bombers what Rodney King did for motorists, so I'm thinking this guy just wanted shoe bombers to be taken seriously again. Worked, didn't it?
Over on Warren Ellis' blog, I saw this story about a man who killed a woman with a sausage. No, this was not some kind of sex thing, this was some kind of enormous German sausage thing. A Bockwurst, as it turns out. The article manages to dissuade me from my original interpretation of events, which was that he beat her to death with a sausage, (a la the Joker from Mask of the Phantasm) explaining instead that she choked on the item in question, which is far more normal, but does kind of go back to the sex thing. The article also makes the creepiest use of the word "administered" that I have ever seen, as in "the man acknowledged that he may have administered the Bockwurst to the woman." Whoa. I don't think this goes far enough, however. I think this calls for a whole new verb. If you kill someone with a Bockwurst, then it is my considered opinion that you can be said to have 'Bockwursted' that individual. Disagree? Then you may be first in line for a good Bockwursting.
I can finally say something positive about Monkeyface. Yesterday, he declared something like 140,000 square miles of space around Hawaii a national monument. This means that a lot of shallow water reef systems are now protected, and even fishing will be phased out over the course of the next few years. Apparently, a lot of the credit for this belongs to Monkeyface getting a good lecturing (stopping short of an actual Bockwursting) from Cousteau Junior and "famous to those of us who read National Geographic" marine biologist Sylvia Earle. I, of course, think he did it so I would have to say something nice about him, so he could take a little break from the stream of invective and vitriol that issues from the Squidbag on a nigh-regular basis. And also to distract from the arguing going on about his fucking debacle in Iraq. His "FucRaqle." Yeah, I'm sure that was a factor, too. So yes - Thank you, President Monkeyface for killing thousands and squandering billions of dollars so that you would need the press hit of protecting some coral reefs and endangered species.
Democratic Representative William Jefferson from the great state of Louisiana has declared that the entire House has risen up against him in a racist ploy to have him removed from the uber-powerful House Ways and Means committee before he is even accused of anything by anybody. That's right, Billy. It's because you're black, and has nothing to do with the 90 grand they found in your fridge during the possibly illegal search. (It is hard to keep up with what is illegal and what is not with the current Supreme Court roster, I find.) The fact that Rep. Jefferson is even willing to play this ugly-ass, overused race card is indicative of the state of politics in Louisiana.
Finally, I hate our pediatrician, I think. Not my pediatrician, surely. Dr. Thomas J. F******** was a kind and decent man who was patient with me and eventually taught me how to re-set certain bones and do my own sutures. No, I mean this other person I have to deal with now. I'm not even entirely convinced she exists, for one - but my wife claims to have seen her. She never says anything good about her, though. I went for the first couple of visits - 'cause I wasn't back at work yet - and I never saw her, only a phalanx of Nurse Practitioners. And her scales don't match. I'm warming up to hating her, is actually what's happening. I'll let you know how that's coming.
At least it's fucking Friday.