Just Say the Word..

Ok. This one really pisses me off.

You can fire missiles into the Sea of Japan for a while before I really get pissed, though I certainly don't like it as is. But why the fuck is anybody still tolerating this?

Firing a missile on path for Hawai'i on July 4th? Fuck you very much. Why hasn't someone put that Munchkin understudy in his place?

Post-Easter Post

So lots of cool things have happened over the last couple of days, the most important of which is clearly the home run Matt Stairs hit to bring the Phillies to .500. It was majestic. But on to the other things.

The biggest story, in my eyes, at least, really just makes you think “America, fuck yeah!” When the Somali pirates captured an American ship, and took the captain hostage, you kinda figured they were getting in over their heads. I mean, it’s one thing to fuck with Danish or Panamanian ships; honestly, you can probably get away with that. But the US has a pretty badass navy, and a President who has to make known that he won’t put up with shit from anyone. So we sent in the Seals, and they kicked all sorts of ass. They rescued the captain, who’s pretty much fine, killed three of the pirates, and now we even have one under arrest who can stand trial. Additionally, it must be noted that the French also tried to rescue some hostages from pirates, but didn’t do nearly as well.

The pirates, understandably, aren’t taking this so well, and have issued some threats to both the French and Americans. This really isn’t the best course of action for them. If they were smart they would just take the beating they got and go back to preying on ships for Comoros or some other country that won’t fight back. The US and France will seriously fuck them up if they get too uppity. If they actually start killing Americans, they’re gonna have to deal with the wrath of the US navy, and their AK 47s really aren’t going to be able to compete with Tomahawk cruise missiles.

Speaking of the French, it’s important to note that they’re assholes. This has manifested itself most recently, and really fairly consistently over the last like twelve years, in their treatment of Lance Armstrong. They’ve dicked him around with bullshit allegations incessantly, and they’ve never been right; he has passed every drug test he’s taken. But now it’s possible that he won’t be able to compete in the Tour de France this summer, even though he’s racing to raise global awareness about cancer. Two things have been made clear by the actions these French assholes are taking. First, the French love cancer, probably as much as they love not showering. Also, they’re afraid of Armstrong. They know he won’t lose, and they don’t want to be one-upped by an American anymore. Let’s be honest, America has been doing things better than France since America first existed. We had a Revolution for democracy, and things went pretty well; the French tried to follow in our footsteps, and mostly just a lot of heads got lopped off, and the only decent French military mind since William the Conqueror ended up exiled in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Oh, and they went back to a monarchy. Later, America decided it wanted to fuck with Mexico, and we got a ton of land out of it. When the French tried to do the same, they actually lost, getting their asses handed to them at the Battle of Puebla. In the twentieth century, France is best known for getting steamrolled by Germany, twice (seriously, the Maginot line? Great plan, dickheads; Vauban would be terribly disappointed in all of you). America bailed them out each time. Now, America is a world power, and France is mostly just fading into irrelevancy; they’ve been passed as a power by a bunch of other European and Asian countries, their soccer team isn’t that good anymore, and the Eifel Tower isn’t really anything special. Pretty much all they have left is this bike race, and they’ve been trying to take it back after Lance Armstrong had made it his bitch for seven years; clearly they’re screwing around with Lance because their national pride is dependent on it. Well, fuck them, I hope he gets to race, cause you know if they let him in there’s no way he won’t win number eight.

So since the economy is shit, local governments are doing all sorts of crazy things to raise money. And it’s bullshit. Seriously, a streetlight user fee? That’s asinine. Streetlights are there to make streets safer. The purpose of a government is to protect its people. Really, the responsibility for this falls on the government. Stop sucking.

The Pope said Mass in the Coliseum on Good Friday, and spewed some nonsense about the world being a desert of godlessness. I ignored most of that. But this part was interesting. He said that there are “many societies in the world where women fail to receive a fair deal.” Um, would one of these societies maybe be the Church? You know, the one that won’t let women be priests. Maybe the Church should work on its own discrimination before criticizing anyone else. Benedict has been pretty clear in stating that he won’t permit women to be priests. It’s pretty much bullshit that there’s a sacrament that only men can receive (nuns don’t receive Holy Orders). How is that a fair deal? Maybe it’s not as overt as marrying your eight year old daughter off to some guy in his forties to settle some debts, but it isn’t not discrimination.

Finally, Woody Harrelson is the coolest.

Dickhead

Wow. It's a good thing you teach chemistry and not math, Mr. Gerber. And anyway, I actually had no idea how many posts we've had. But since we are getting close to 100, and it seems like something you want, I'm not going to let you have it. This post, and the one that comes right after it, will have much less content than your attempt at 100. Fucker.

Manny

The Yankees need to sign Manny Ramirez. Up until this weekend, this wasn’t a necessity. It would have been cool had it happened, but the Yankees and baseball fans in general didn’t need it. They do now.

From a purely baseball perspective, it would make the Yankees terrifying. The heart of their order would be some awe-inspiring combination of Mark Teixeira, Alex Rodriguez, and Manny Ramirez. Yankee fans would fawn over this, and it would really be a focus of animosity from other fans. But just as a baseball fan, it would be really fun to watch a lineup like that.

I would also like to see the Yankees do it as a way to taunt people clamoring for a salary cap. There is absolutely no reason for a salary cap in baseball; there is the same competitive balance across the league as there is in football. Seriously, the Lions went 0-16 this year, the salary cap sure didn’t make them competitive. And football, despite its salary cap, has had more repeat champions in recent years than baseball has; since 2000 only the Red Sox have won multiple titles, compared to the NFL, where in that same time period the Patriots have won three Super Bowls, and the Steelers two. So hopefully people will just back off this salary cap nonsense, and even though this signing wouldn’t cause people to calm down, the righteous indignation and fury that it would stir up would at least be entertaining.

Finally, it would get people talking instantly. Nobody would benefit from talking about Manny more than Alex Rodriguez. If not completely, it would shift the majority of the spotlight from A-Rod’s steroids disclosure onto Manny, the enormous amount of money that the Yankees paid, Manny v.s. the Red Sox, and all sorts of other storylines. Derek Jeter didn’t come through and stick up for his teammate (really people, he’s a terrible captain. Can’t field his position either), at least he could gush about Manny as a hitter. I’m sure Skip Bayless would love to yell about Manny on First and Ten. ESPN has an article up now about how Bud Selig is considering punishment for A-Rod. I don’t even want to get into how reprehensible it would be to punish him, so I’ll just say that it can’t help him for this conversation to be floating around. Manny would steal that conversation, and he’s such a weird guy that it wouldn’t even matter.

We're gonna have to work on our communication

The RAF just locked up the 2009 award for ballsiest decision ever, and it’s only January. But seriously, what could possibly beat this? For the link-opposed, the story says that dating back to the 1980s RAF pilots have on several occasions have been given orders to shoot down UFOs. While you pick your jaw up, I’ll repeat that. RAF pilots have tried to shoot down UFOs.

So far, the RAF has been unsuccessful in its attempts. However, recent weapons developments have given some guy named Mr. Pope, who spent 21 years in the Ministry of Defense, hope that eventually humans will be able to blow those aliens sons of bitches out of the sky.

While the public stance of the MoD is that UFOs don’t pose any danger to the public, that’s obviously garbage. They’re aliens! They’re probably trying to kill us and steal our planet. Plus, if we shoot one down we can probably steal all the alien technology. I would go to outerspace in a rebuilt UFO, doesn’t matter to me. Anyway, in closing, I support the RAF’s efforts to shoot down UFOs; we should show them that we won’t go down easily before we fall into a situation like this:

Apocalypse when?

I just finished reading Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel The Road, and it was one of the best books I’ve ever read, probably on a level with Confederacy of Dunces, even though those books couldn’t be more dissimilar. Anyway, allusions are made to the event that devastated the world, and the whole plot flows from it, but McCarthy never says exactly what happened. So for the past couple days this has gotten me to think about the apocalypse, probably more than I should, and I’ve put together a list of the top five cataclysms that, if they ended the world, probably wouldn’t upset me too much.

5. Yellowstone Volcano
Yeah, so evidently there’s a huge volcano sitting underneath Yellowstone National Park. Who knew? It doesn’t look like a typical volcano, like Vesuvius or anything, but apparently it’s really powerful. Recent earthquakes have started to make scientists a little nervous that it might be getting ready to erupt. You wouldn’t think that a single volcano could end all life on earth, but since some scientists believe that volcanic eruptions killed off the dinosaurs, I wouldn’t call it impossible. I don’t know why, but this just seems cool to me. I’m weird.

4. Rapture/Tribulation
I’m ok with this happening because I won’t be around to have to deal with it; God is going to bring me up to Heaven with Him, and all you suckers are going to be left behind. Then, as if that’s not bad enough, you’ll have to deal with the tribulation: seven years during which the Anti-Christ rules on earth. So I’ll be learning how to play the harp while you suckers are dealing with the combined wrath of God and the Anti-Christ. So there’s that.

3. Ice Age
Climatically, we’re apparently in an interglacial period, ten or twelve thousand years that sort of serve as a respite from the unrelenting cold of an ice age. Worst of all, we’re towards the end of that period. So pretty much at any time, we really have no way of pinpointing when, it’s going to get really cold. As temperatures plummet, crops will die, and animals too. Glaciers will come south as mountains of snow accumulate; it may get so bad that life could only exist in the oceans. That would suck, but the global warming irony might make it worthwhile.

2. Mayans
So the Mayans think the world is going to end on December 21, 2012, or something like that. I actually changed my mind about this, it’s about as dumb as Nostradamus. The Mayans are all dead now, so they clearly weren’t that smart.

1. Zombies
This is clearly the most likely manner by which humanity will cease to exist on Earth. For years the government has been covering up zombie uprisings, and so far they have done a good job. This can’t go on forever though; eventually an outbreak is going to happen too fast, and become too widespread too quickly, that the government will be powerless. Things will spiral out of control, as the number of zombies increases exponentially, and humans decrease in turn. It’s going to get ugly, but at least I’ll be ready. I really want to kill zombies. And if I have to die, I want to be killed by a zombie. Just remember, when this happens, destroy the brain, it’s the only way to kill a zombie.

Ninja dispatched to Somalia

It’s finally happening! The US Navy is going after the Somali pirates. I’ve been waiting months for this decision, and it seems like the naval brass has finally caved in to inevitability. I suppose this is as good a time as any, considering the pirates have just ransomed an oil tanker, and are probably gearing up to strike again.

Unfortunately, they seem to be taking a pretty half-ass approach to the situation. The multinational force, with more than twenty nations represented, isn’t going to really be attacking targets on land.

I don’t see how they can effectively destroy the pirates if they’re not going on the offensive; this approach seems like they’re going to be forced to be purely reactionary, attacking the pirates only when someone reports seeing a ship. If they could just launch a bunch of cruise missiles at docked pirate ships, I think they could end this threat pretty quickly.

Anyway, since this pirate situation is a little bit similar to the Barbary pirate situation from the beginning of the nineteenth century, here’s a great book to read: Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy. As the title suggests, it’s about the creation of the US Navy through the construction of its first six frigates, among them the USS Constellation and the USS Constitution, partly for protection of US shipping against the pirates. It’s a really good book.