PHANTOM ICE!

Something about this felt so…right.

I’m toying around with a new blog, DEEP-FRIED DYSTOPIA.

The general premise can be explained thusly:

“The world is a battleground upon which rational thought and irrational thought gnaw away at each other in a vicious struggle for supremacy. And everywhere you look, you will find despair accompanied by absurdity. Deep-Fried Dystopia strives to capture the humor, the horror, the splendor and the pathos of this day-to-day struggle.

In short, you will find this compendium of lunacy, awfulness, woo and woe to be a handy field guide to existence in the new millenium. (Although, it should be stated that not everything or everyone profiled here are propagators of lunacy, awfulness, woo and woe. Many are just intriguing, so-called “fringe” groups who may or may not bring something unique, fascinating and compelling to the table. You be the judge.)

The line between rational thought and irrational thought may be so damn blurred that it’s hard to tell what’s up, what’s down and what-plus-what equals 4.

Therein lies the intrigue.

Let’s parachute down the rabbit hole, let’s ride the dragon’s wing.

Let’s have some F-U-N.”

So I finally got around to seeing THE DARK KNIGHT last weekend.

It didn’t disappoint; it was quite good.

However, something about Heath Ledger’s voice inflection kept bugging me. He clearly sounded like some other celebrity but I couldn’t determine who.

Then it dawned on me.

Heath Ledger as The Joker basically sounds like moderately funny ”politician” and occasionally amusing liberal comedian Al Franken.

Do the YouTube Comparison:

AL

HEATH

More fun with DVD screenshots, courtesy of my fancy new computer. Guess correctly which movies they come from and win free egg tart.

I went and got myself a new computer tonight, which means there’s plenty of fun to be had given that I’ve upgraded from an old Gateway Precambrian model.

One of the exciting new benefits of this great acquisition is the ability to watch DVDs right here on the machine.

And with that comes the fun of random DVD screenshots.

Ten bucks goes via PayPal to anyone who can identify which films these screen shots came from. (That’s a lie, actually. No money will be forthcoming — but please play along if you will.)

For nobody’s real pleasure: A rambling, random list of people or things I’ve meant to address in this Web site forum lately but ultimately never got around to…

Netherlands’ Olympic athletes look like characters from a
Farrelly Brothers film.

Islamism is murderous and wacko, but it has a cool-looking flag.

A 2004 article on Alex Jones’ INFO WARS Web site alerts us all to the despicable dangers of a Mao Zedong-themed eatery in Colorado.

I’ll have the Benito Mozzalinis and the Idi A-Mini-Corn Dogs, por favor.

Big Jim Tucker claims Henry Kissinger has an American accent.

Hotel de Bilderberg is where I’m staying if I ever make it to Oosterbeek.

Super-funtime quote machine Omar Bakri Muhammad says “Islam prohibits Muslims from allowing themselves to become captives of nonbelievers,” i.e. Islam is fraught with the paranoid belief that it will be contaminated by the runaway thoughts of decadent infidels unless it, y’know, slays everyone in its path.

Meet Emily Rosa — super-cute skeptic prodigy. Therapeutic touch practitioners across the globe hate her guts.

A new favorite word: hoarfrost.

Supper club visionary Lawrence Frank, a Milwaukee native, is a giant, and we are all mere petals on his rose.

Thomas Robb says race-mixing is Satanic. He also eschews use of the “N” word.

Hey: All of your favorites are here — Maumoon Gayoom, Pol Pot, François Duvalier, Fulgencio Batista, Mobutu Sese Seko and more.

You are part of a ZOG world, and you are diluting the blood of the white race, puppet scum.

Max Rebo In Concert

Originally uploaded by Monkey River Town

Seated one day at the organ

I was weary and ill at ease

And my fingers wandered idly

Over the noisy keys

I know not what I was playing

Or what I was dreaming then

But I struck one chord of music

Like the sound of a great Amen

Tron-Taun

Originally uploaded by Monkey River Town

SEE THE CONQUERING HERO COMES!

SOUND THE TRUMPETS, BEAT THE DRUMS!

Some cheery quotes from deceased Muslim party animal Abdullah Yusuf Azzam to brighten your day:

• “History does not write its lines except with blood. Glory does not build its lofty edifice except with skulls. Honor and respect cannot be established except on a foundation of cripples and corpses.”
• “Jihad and rifle alone. No negotiations. No conferences and No Dialogue.”
• “Every Moslem on earth should unsheathe his sword and fight to liberate Palestine. The jihad is not limited to Afghanistan. Jihad means fighting. You must fight in any place you can get. Whenever jihad is mentioned in the Holy Book, it means the obligation to fight.”

Meanwhile, here in the present, America’s chief terrorism apologist, Noam Chomsky, has a few degrading things to say about porn, not realizing, of course, that a little porn viewing by some sexually-repressed jihadists might prevent the occasional suicide bomb or two…

…and speaking of Chomsky, there’s some great criticism of the cunning linguist in Paul Berman’s outstanding book, TERROR AND LIBERALISM.

Dig:

“We are in an absurd situation. Truly, this is a moment Camus would have appreciated. We have reason to be terrified; but it is not a good idea to be terrified. Oh, how I wish that the entire world would turn out to be rationally explicable, after all — that a Chomsky could nail it down for us, and everything could be shown to be the workings of evil oil companies and their media allies, or some other identifiable pestilence. But no single logic rules the world, and no one is going to to intervene on our behalf in order to impose one — not God, nor Hegel, nor FDR. We have to steel ourselves.”

I haven’t seen THE DARK KNIGHT yet, but, dammit…I need to.

THE PORTLAND MERCURY, of all publications, actually has an intriguing review of it .

Writes Erik Henriksen :

" ‘All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy,’ says the Joker in Batman: The Killing Joke . Written by Alan Moore , illustrated by Brian Bolland , and published in 1988, The Killing Joke is a landmark story from Batman ’s 70-year comics history—and the definitive story about the Joker, a sadistic sociopath in clown make-up and Batman’s most infamous and fitting nemesis. ‘That’s how far the world is from where I am,’ the Joker continues, lecturing Batman in a tone somewhere between a confession and a warning. ‘Just one bad day.’ "

What a great line that is, and I like that Henriksen has the smarts to recognize Moore’s connection to the new film.

Granted, I’ve never really read Moore’s stuff — I was a pre-’87 Marvel Comics guy more prone to Frank Miller ’s DAREDEVIL or Chris Claremont ’s UNCANNY X-MEN (or anything drawn by Bill Sienkiewicz ) — but I think I owe it to myself to dive into THE KILLING JOKE at some point soon.

Here’s some more Moore references, courtesy of Henriksen:

" ‘A few panels later into The Killing Joke , the Joker keeps up his contemptuous harangue: ‘You had a bad day once, am I right?’ he asks Batman. ‘You had a bad day and it drove you as crazy as everybody else…only you won’t admit it! You have to keep pretending that life makes sense, that there’s some point to all this struggling.’ There’s a beat, here, and the Joker’s next line gets its own panel: ‘God, you make me want to puke.’ "

That’s heady writing for the so-called funny books.

Anyone care to send this broke curmudgeon a copy of THE KILLING JOKE via his Amazon wish list ?

Finally, a cause worthy of me getting naked and wearing a sandwich board in downtown Portland:

"The eventual goal is to have cetaceans represented as a nation within the framework of the United Nations . This goal will most likely only be fully achieved once consistent communication links with any one of the many species of whales or dolphins has been established."

"We deliver this to you by means of a corps of Human representatives, whom we regard as exceptional, and whose persons are to be regarded as under the protection of the Cetacean Nation. They are to be afforded every diplomatic consideration. Their word of honor is respected by the Cetacean Nation, as Fair Witnesses, and have the right of representation conferred upon them by us ."

And, in Sedona, Arizona:

"But the dolphins gave me the courage to look into my dark corners. They showed me that most of the pain was inflicted by myself. That as long as I stayed in the role of the victim, I should keep feeling the pain and the anger.

"So, step by step, I am cleaning up the broken pieces of my mirror image. I look at them, feel them, thank them for their lessons and let them go."

AND…

"HOW DO I KNOW IF A DOLPHIN WANTS TO HAVE SEX?"

"If you are in the water, they may press their genitals up against yours, nibble your fingers, nuzzle your crotch, or do pelvic thrusts against you."

THANKS!

That zestful sound you hear is me squealing with delight, because I have found yet another Portland-bashing gem from conservative writer Takuan Seiyo, whom I canonized in my last post.

This time, Seiyo takes aim at Rev. Bob Pamplin’s spite-inspired plaything, The Portland Tribune.

Dig, if you will, Seiyo’s “Brain Functioning Skewed by Race” blog post, in which Tribune scribe Nick Budnick feels the wrath of The Tak.

“‘Year after year, studies in Portland and elsewhere have shown African-Americans more likely to find themselves in handcuffs,’ froths a Nick Brudnick [sic] (rhymes with nudnick). Not only that; to Brudnick’s [sic] and his editors’ horror, ‘in Portland, minorities and especially blacks are stopped and arrested far more frequently than their white counterparts.’ To top off the poisoned chalice of the bien-pensant, a new sheriff’s study has found that ‘once defendants are in the jails, the lopsidedness of minority representation keeps growing — especially for black inmates.’ “

I won’t quote Seiyo ad nauseam as in the previous post; because by now you should get the point. Our eloquent visitor has sampled the insipid tripe we call local news and is stunned by — not only its astonishing lack of relevance and significance — but also by the inevitable harm its biased and flimsily researched horseshit propagates.

He ends with a fitting “I am just a sojourner here. In a few days I will up and leave this patch of white invertebrae holoplankton.”

But because his formidable conscience will not let him go quietly, Seiyo states: “…I am co-citizen of these nauseating nudnicks. So I sit down and compose a Letter to the Editor, with a Brudnick [sic] cc.”

And the letter — beautifully composed and filled with relevant data — likely only drew giggles and condescending snickering from The Tribune’s prestigious think tank.

A shame.

It’s also a shame that Seiyo left town before The Tribune treated its readership to this darling puff piece on psychic healer Sonja Grace, whose magical mind powers can be commissioned for a reasonable sum of $105 per 45-minute phone conversation.

According to dogged and hard-hitting Tribune writer Randall Barton, Grace’s bonus gift is the ability to telepathically determine when a cat’s esophagus is in pain.

For that I say…THANKS, Sonja. (And thanks to you too, Randall.)

Oh joy-joy, jolly-joy fun.

I’ve found a new favorite writer, Takuan Seiyo — a conservative — who, writing in the BRUSSELS JOURNAL , makes one of the most devastatingly accurate, funny and spot-on descriptions ever of the dystopian shitscape we call Portland. (OK, maybe dystopian shitscape is a tad harsh — I do, after all, have a love-hate relationship with our fair city. Perhaps a better term for it would be dysfunctional-albeit-occasionally-fun-and-scenic hellpit).

Seiyo, visiting town briefly, describes an encounter on the MAX train wherein he spots a rotund gal beaming with pride over her new acquisition, a garden gnome bearing an etched inscription of "Howard Zinn ."

Thus Seiyo dubs our politically righteous burg (along with its neighbor to the north, Seattle) "Zinnlandia."

Read his encounter with a prototypical, faux-altruistic Portlander:

"A Zinnlandian I met on this trip, a WASP physician endowed with the best education much money can buy, told me that he does not celebrate July 4th because the Declaration of Independence had been written by a slave owner and signed by other slave owners. He was just as hotly critical of the ‘racism’ of Americans in dealing with the growing Muslim immigrant minority. The conversation unfolded over a bottle of Oregon Vino Pinko, with the likeness of a notorious Cuban mass murderer on the label."

Seiyo goes on to take aim at the puzzling proliferation of Birkenstocks on his particular MAX train, which, incidentally, is en route to the airport.

"Such flimsy footwear on people who will soon be shuffling in long security lines and dragging heavy suitcases through crowded airports bespeaks of thoughtless insouciance. These people cannot imagine a hard heel stepping on their exposed toes, let alone a soft ‘diversity,’ voluntarily imported, rising to stomp on their faces, one day."

And Seiyo is at his absolute best when slamming our local print media kingpins. In particular, he ridicules The Oregonian for using overly-sensitive verbiage to describe a MAX encounter wherein several black teens assaulted a lone, white female rider. (A tagged-on, "oh-by-the-way" sentence sheepishly buried behind the story’s lede states "The woman, who is white, had just had a conversation with the teens, who are African American and were harassing another woman .")

"It’s uncharacteristic for the progressive press of this progressive town — just what are they progressing toward? — to disclose the racial identity of violent perps, since this could dent the very foundation on which Zinnlandia and all postmodern Western civilization are built on: that all people, and all racial, ethnic, gender and national groups of people, are equal in their proclivities, abilities and merits, and are equally deserving of uncritical acceptance. They just have different ‘narratives,’ you see. But it’s interesting how gingerly the racial identity is mentioned, when it is, with what curious, for a newspaper, waste of words. The story could have opened, after all, "An assault by five black teenagers on a North Portland MAX train this week…etc.’ "

Seiyo continues his (necessary and appreciated) assault on The O…

"It seems endless. ‘Sixteen-year-old Joe Crane is afraid to ride Portland’s MAX light-rail. Four years ago he was attacked on a MAX platform near the Lloyd Center. And recently, he was jumped at night by three men, who pulled him off the MAX, kicked him in the head and stole his wallet, cash and cell phone.’ At the end of the story, there is reference to surveillance camera footage as ‘pictured above.’ What’s ‘pictured above’ are three young black men pouncing on Joe Crane like beasts of prey on a cornered doe."

"The article goes on to blame the transit police for its insufficient presence. Such arguments are now ubiquitous in the Portland media’s editorials, demanding more funding, more TV cameras, better lighting, better inter-agency cooperation. Everything is discussed, everything is noted — except for the 10-ton rhinoceros wearing a tutu and, balanced on his horn, spinning pirouettes right in the middle of the room. For what is required is a better populace, not better lighting. And to have a better populace, its rotten part must be clearly identified, watched and punished for every crime committed, to the full extent of the law. Punished and cordoned off from society, rather than left to the ‘compassionate’ ministrations of the social saboteurs proliferating among the ruling, clueless and cowardly Western elites."

He softens his blow just a bit toward the end of the piece, stating "I should not like to single out Portland, Oregon, for scorn or ridicule. This type of paralyzing cowardice or suicidal stupidity exists in every American, Western European, Canadian and Australian city I have visited over the past thirty years."

True, good sir, but our city has the market cornered on a uniquely sinister brand of white guilt and condescending, all-encompassing groupthink. Don’t doubt that for an instant.

Seiyo wraps things up concisely with more venom directed at The Oregonian.

"For now we can rest easy knowing that virtue is winning. ‘Welcoming people of color makes a city,’ coos The Oregonian in a Nov. 17, 2007, sidebar. Particularly if they are 19, at a tribal stage of arrested development, and handy with sharp implements."

Touche, homeslice.

I effing love this guy.

OK — inspired by a Top 10 list from Letterman in the ’80s ("Amish pick-up lines") — I offer my own brand of religious pick-up lines, plus a few atheist ones thrown in for good measure.

RELIGIOUS

"Are thee at book burnings often?"
"I’d like to shroud your Turin…"
"Hey baby: let’s get some wafers and wine and transubstantiate…"
"Can I show you my incorruptible bodies?"
"You make me want to be a better martyr…"

and…

ATHEIST/SKEPTIC

"Why don’t you and I get together and slide down Occam’s Razor?"
"Can I interest you in a clean, close shave with Occam’s Razor?"
"Why don’t we get together and infinitely regress…"
"Mind if I shoehorn your strawman?"