Oftentimes when one is out walking, one will experience a buildup of mucus in the nostrils, due to atmospheric contaminants such as smog, pollen, excessive humidity, or cigarette smoke, just to name a few. Indeed, the human nostrils are quite sensitive to changes in environmental and, indeed, physical equilibrium. It is possible that the nose could become clogged by any number of events, from cold weather to the common cold itself.
During a constitutional, or as the German's call it ein Spaziergang, the problem of nasal mucus assumes serious proportions. The useful tradition of carrying a handkerchief on one's person at all times has in recent years become quite dated and in a crowd of twenty people under age forty, it would be unusual to find even a single man in possession of one. Moreover, when one is out for a walk, it is inconvenient and gauche to carry a box of tissue papers. What then, is the educated and stylish man about town to do about his nasal difficulties?
The solution is elegant in its simplicity. Place the index finger of the right hand against the exterior of the right nare (or nostril), applying pressure so as to seal it against the flow of air. Then, turning the head 45 to 90 degress to the left, expel air from the left nostril. This must be done suddenly and with all due force, similar to that resulting from a cough or sneeze, because only a vigorous expectoration can jar the mucus from the walls of the nostril. The end result of this process should be the emission of a small ball of snot (or "snot-rocket") from the left nostril to the ground, thus clearing the nasal passage. The action can then be repeated for the right nostril, all directions being reversed.
However, prospective snot-rocketeers should be aware that this tactic is often considered very rude and even disgusting in polite society. While walking with a lady of the fairer sex or other companion it would be advisable to distract them by reference to some interesting sight or other diversion before expelling any mucus.
Advanced users of this technique will note its potential as an insulting dominance display. It is vastly more derisive and offensive than merely spitting on another person, although considerably shorter ranged and more difficult to aim. Beginners should avoid starting fights with the snot-rocket, until such a time as they have been able to practice and perfect its application.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
The GOP Field
The New York Times today had a nice long article about how Giuliani was a beastly fascist toad as Mayor of New York, who delighted time and again in deploying the full powers of his station to settle ludicrously petty disputes with people much less powerful than him. At this point his standing at the polls is substantially lower than Ron Paul so we can basically write him off and declare his political career at an end. He will retreat back to the swamps whence he came and probably only venture back out to collect $100,000 per appearance speaking fees or maybe write a bestselling book about what a great leader he is. I'm a little sad to see Rudy fade away, though, because he represented the closest thing to Heinrich Himmler in American politics, i.e. a goofy Nazi thug with bad hair and an oddly shaped skull.
A while ago as well, Huckabee got people good and riled by saying
Of course, Huckabee goes completely the wrong direction with his idea. But this is to be expected from his sort of man. Huck is not a fan of the Enlightenment, if indeed he has any idea what it is. He is not a fan of the Scientific Revolution, either. I think he probably has some respect for the Protestant Reformation being as it is the conceptual basis of his liberation from Papism, but I'm sure he doesn't much hold with anything that's happened since then. I'm not calling him stupid, as stupid people don't become successful ministers and governors of whole states. Ignorant is a better word.
Fred Thompson dropped out of the race recently, so... so what? Who cares? Maybe his wife. I had some things to say about him on this blog way back when, but it doesn't matter now.
Ron Paul I might talk about in a later post, because I'd want to devote an entire post to him, as he's quite a loon. The internet is a great place for terrible ideas like Libertarianism, they can fail in practice and fail in the court of public opinion, but get a second chance in the modern equivalent of 19th Century New York's "burned over district".
John McCain has emerged from the early campaign knife-fights to look like some kind of front runner, though that's probably just the favorable media coverage (the media wuvs McCain) talking and he's neck and neck with Romney, at best. I'd say he's probably the best GOP candidate, because he's got the best to win the general election and he seems less likely that Romney or Huckabee to run the country even further into the ground once in office. However, he's still phony as all get out. It's embarrassing and infuriating that the press continues to pretend he is a maverick. He might have been, in 2000, but he gave all that up after the drubbing he got in that campaign, and has spent the last eight years trying to be a good soldier. He hasn't convinced the media... nor the GOP bosses. The Tom DeLay, Karl Rove, baby-eating troglodytes that run the party from the smoky back-rooms hate his guts, and this will be his greatest weakness.
My money is on Romney. He is made of plastic, has no actual positions or beliefs, and if you squint hard enough in low-light conditions he kind of looks like Ronald Reagan. He also has the support of the party elite, which counts for everything in the GOP, probably to the extent of making his coronation a near inevitability. But maybe this is wishful thinking on my part, because I think Romney is the very worst choice in the entire rogues' gallery. He's a Mormon with extremely weak credentials on abortion, so he'll drive many of the evangelicals away from the polls, and generally speaking he's got no personality or creativity. He'll be beaten savagely, like a cur, in November.
A while ago as well, Huckabee got people good and riled by saying
"What we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards, rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family."which honestly shouldn't have surprised anybody. I actually admire him just a little bit for his daring, because here in America we like to pretend that the Founding Fathers were just splendid and the Constitution is perfect. People ought to spend less time polishing George Washington's shoes and more time thinking about what the Constitution and the laws of the land can really do for us today. I mean, we're talking about people who drank gin for breakfast, had sex with their slaves, and bathed twice a year. The best of them, Benjamin Franklin, electrocuted turkeys for fun. How much do they really have to tell us about how we should lead our lives, apart from Enlightenment principles which they stole from the French anyway? The Constitution is a fine basis to work from, and it has worked reasonably well in the past 140 years (I refuse to regard the history of the Constitution prior to Amendment XIII with anything but friendly contempt), but let's not pretend it was handed down by God or anything.
Of course, Huckabee goes completely the wrong direction with his idea. But this is to be expected from his sort of man. Huck is not a fan of the Enlightenment, if indeed he has any idea what it is. He is not a fan of the Scientific Revolution, either. I think he probably has some respect for the Protestant Reformation being as it is the conceptual basis of his liberation from Papism, but I'm sure he doesn't much hold with anything that's happened since then. I'm not calling him stupid, as stupid people don't become successful ministers and governors of whole states. Ignorant is a better word.
Fred Thompson dropped out of the race recently, so... so what? Who cares? Maybe his wife. I had some things to say about him on this blog way back when, but it doesn't matter now.
Ron Paul I might talk about in a later post, because I'd want to devote an entire post to him, as he's quite a loon. The internet is a great place for terrible ideas like Libertarianism, they can fail in practice and fail in the court of public opinion, but get a second chance in the modern equivalent of 19th Century New York's "burned over district".
John McCain has emerged from the early campaign knife-fights to look like some kind of front runner, though that's probably just the favorable media coverage (the media wuvs McCain) talking and he's neck and neck with Romney, at best. I'd say he's probably the best GOP candidate, because he's got the best to win the general election and he seems less likely that Romney or Huckabee to run the country even further into the ground once in office. However, he's still phony as all get out. It's embarrassing and infuriating that the press continues to pretend he is a maverick. He might have been, in 2000, but he gave all that up after the drubbing he got in that campaign, and has spent the last eight years trying to be a good soldier. He hasn't convinced the media... nor the GOP bosses. The Tom DeLay, Karl Rove, baby-eating troglodytes that run the party from the smoky back-rooms hate his guts, and this will be his greatest weakness.
My money is on Romney. He is made of plastic, has no actual positions or beliefs, and if you squint hard enough in low-light conditions he kind of looks like Ronald Reagan. He also has the support of the party elite, which counts for everything in the GOP, probably to the extent of making his coronation a near inevitability. But maybe this is wishful thinking on my part, because I think Romney is the very worst choice in the entire rogues' gallery. He's a Mormon with extremely weak credentials on abortion, so he'll drive many of the evangelicals away from the polls, and generally speaking he's got no personality or creativity. He'll be beaten savagely, like a cur, in November.
Monday, January 21, 2008
I read a book a couple days ago, golly
I read a book recently. Surprised?
What book, you ask. It was Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 by one Hunter S. Thompson. The next question you ask is, "What in God's name are you doing reading topical new-journalistic work from 1972 in this day and age? Why, goddammit, in 1972 people thought we would have space-planes and robots and a telescreen in every living room. What can they have to tell us?"
This is a good question, but watch your language. I don't even know who reads this blog. There could be children involved.
I read the book because it interested me on several levels.
ONE-
Hunter S. Thompson at least invented--accidentally perhaps, but then again penicillin was an accident--something which was new and fresh and stunning, and '72 was perhaps the one time he made a concerted effort of applying his hand-crafted Gonzo New-Journalism monstrosity to the national stage. These days all you have to do is crack a Rolling Stone to read prose lifted right out of Thompson's brain and then run through a tenderizer nine or twenty times so it can meet standards. Paragraph after paragraph of neo-Gonzo pablum flung out in an article about goddamn Nickelback or whatever they want to pretend matters. Sometimes meta-Journalism, Gonzo, the act of the journalist turning away from objectivity and facing him/herself is the only sane response. I once read an article a nice young lady wrote about her attempted and aborted coverage of the Godless beast that produces the "Girls Gone Wild" tapes; the entire affair was such a damn travesty that it could only be understood as Gonzo.
But more and more published and televised journalism disgusts me. They've only got two flavors--the one that pretends to be objective but isn't, and the one that doesn't pretend but bores me anyway. Who neutered these people? I think they were fooling us when they did Watergate and the Pentagon papers. It was a trick. They wanted us to think we could trust them, just so they would have time to shiv Walter Cronkite in a back alley and then run credulous garbage about Iraqi WMDs.
At least when Hunter lied it was hilarious.
TWO-
Hillary Clinton is the new Hubert Humphrey. I mean, Jesus, let's qualify my statement a bit, Hell. What do I know about Hubert Humphrey? What I've read, what I've read. But all that indicates that he was some foul barbarous creature who represented the worst of Democratic machine politics and had no real positions apart from wanting to be president. Does this sound like anyone we know?
I watch the bloody primary season and marvel at the determination of some people to nominate the very worst candidate in the entire lot. She's the most conservative, most easily bought, most owned by special interests already, least responsive to the will of the people, indeed least respectful of the people, and she's carrying eight years of Bill Clinton-brand baggage that will hurt her numbers even if we completely discount her general weaknesses, which are manifold.
The only thing redeeming that sad mess is the fact that the GOP field is a bunch of feckless neutered liars who couldn't convince a man dying of thirst to buy a glass of water from them. Even a foundering vessel like Hillary Clinton can overtake a pack of rudderless and mastless cripples like the Republican candidates. I'm looking forward to November to an extent that would almost make a Hillary Clinton nomination worth it. What could be more poetic than watching Mitt Romney or whatever other shambling corpse they stuff into the Candidate Suit get the unholy tar beaten out of him by Bill Clinton's wife? Would they ever recover? I hope not.
Plus Barack Obama is still only 46. Even if Hillary becomes the first lady prez, if he kept his nose clean in the interim and led the liberal wing of the party (if could unseat Harry Reid, that noxious cretin, it would be beautiful), he could turn up as the heir apparent in 2016 and still be younger than Hillary is now. 16 years of Democratic leadership, God Willing.
THREE-
God, I've only come up with two levels. I'm in trouble now.
What book, you ask. It was Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 by one Hunter S. Thompson. The next question you ask is, "What in God's name are you doing reading topical new-journalistic work from 1972 in this day and age? Why, goddammit, in 1972 people thought we would have space-planes and robots and a telescreen in every living room. What can they have to tell us?"
This is a good question, but watch your language. I don't even know who reads this blog. There could be children involved.
I read the book because it interested me on several levels.
ONE-
Hunter S. Thompson at least invented--accidentally perhaps, but then again penicillin was an accident--something which was new and fresh and stunning, and '72 was perhaps the one time he made a concerted effort of applying his hand-crafted Gonzo New-Journalism monstrosity to the national stage. These days all you have to do is crack a Rolling Stone to read prose lifted right out of Thompson's brain and then run through a tenderizer nine or twenty times so it can meet standards. Paragraph after paragraph of neo-Gonzo pablum flung out in an article about goddamn Nickelback or whatever they want to pretend matters. Sometimes meta-Journalism, Gonzo, the act of the journalist turning away from objectivity and facing him/herself is the only sane response. I once read an article a nice young lady wrote about her attempted and aborted coverage of the Godless beast that produces the "Girls Gone Wild" tapes; the entire affair was such a damn travesty that it could only be understood as Gonzo.
But more and more published and televised journalism disgusts me. They've only got two flavors--the one that pretends to be objective but isn't, and the one that doesn't pretend but bores me anyway. Who neutered these people? I think they were fooling us when they did Watergate and the Pentagon papers. It was a trick. They wanted us to think we could trust them, just so they would have time to shiv Walter Cronkite in a back alley and then run credulous garbage about Iraqi WMDs.
At least when Hunter lied it was hilarious.
TWO-
Hillary Clinton is the new Hubert Humphrey. I mean, Jesus, let's qualify my statement a bit, Hell. What do I know about Hubert Humphrey? What I've read, what I've read. But all that indicates that he was some foul barbarous creature who represented the worst of Democratic machine politics and had no real positions apart from wanting to be president. Does this sound like anyone we know?
I watch the bloody primary season and marvel at the determination of some people to nominate the very worst candidate in the entire lot. She's the most conservative, most easily bought, most owned by special interests already, least responsive to the will of the people, indeed least respectful of the people, and she's carrying eight years of Bill Clinton-brand baggage that will hurt her numbers even if we completely discount her general weaknesses, which are manifold.
The only thing redeeming that sad mess is the fact that the GOP field is a bunch of feckless neutered liars who couldn't convince a man dying of thirst to buy a glass of water from them. Even a foundering vessel like Hillary Clinton can overtake a pack of rudderless and mastless cripples like the Republican candidates. I'm looking forward to November to an extent that would almost make a Hillary Clinton nomination worth it. What could be more poetic than watching Mitt Romney or whatever other shambling corpse they stuff into the Candidate Suit get the unholy tar beaten out of him by Bill Clinton's wife? Would they ever recover? I hope not.
Plus Barack Obama is still only 46. Even if Hillary becomes the first lady prez, if he kept his nose clean in the interim and led the liberal wing of the party (if could unseat Harry Reid, that noxious cretin, it would be beautiful), he could turn up as the heir apparent in 2016 and still be younger than Hillary is now. 16 years of Democratic leadership, God Willing.
THREE-
God, I've only come up with two levels. I'm in trouble now.
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