My rant is hereby further postponed in recognition of a great man's passing.

Ave Johannes Paulus Secundus! Ave atque vale!

"Superpope," as I sometimes called him (not from disrespect), is manifestly a tough act to follow.

Before I rant further on the subject of Blood Lake, the New York Times has given me another topic to kick around, though maybe it wasn't that firm's doing; it could have been someone else's link on the page where I was reading one of their annoying columnists, which I don't often do. The guy's tilted take on religion convinced me not to go to the second page, but this looked possibly interesting. Turns out an author's selling a book promoting his own "take on religion." As it happens, I'm not necessarily opposed to what he's preaching, which may derive from Hindu mysticism. But his marketing slants to the left, replete with references to "fundamentalism"--that f-word which nobody, it seems, wants to define. (I'm reminded of Orwell's postwar quip about another f-word, fascism, which people, as he said, didn't bother defining except to agree it was something undesirable.) This guy, a Jew who went to study Eastern spirituality (not the first such case I've known of), gives the impression he believes himself the first and only purveyor of great truth--when even in the West these ideas have been around a while. (See Ralph Waldo Emerson.) Furthermore, he comes across as making the same error he finds elsewhere: Dividing the world into "us" and "them." Possibly he just needs better PR.

I may wind up blogging for a while here on more or less a single subject: the Blood Lake "Massacre," which just occurred on the closed reservation not far to our north--and briefly knocked the USA's #1 melodramatic story out of the spotlight. Wanting to make several points, I'm not sure what to say first. As background, let me note that my family has done business there regularly for decades, though I've hardly ever been there myself.

For a Western Civ guy, I consider myself a little more qualified to opine on the subject--merely due to circumstances--than you'd expect, more qualified in fact than your average pontificating pundit. Even without these "qualifications," though, two assertions already seemed clear enough: Teenagers are stupid; and unarmed guards are easily defeated by those who are armed.

As we all know by now, perhaps the most loathed newsman in America has relinquished his anchor post at the Evil Eye Network after 24 years, leaving it under a cloud--invisible to him, since he doesn't get it. My brother, who's long loved to hate the guy, threw a little party to celebrate his departure. One (questionable) highlight: He'd found a recipe for a drink called the "double standard" and mixed us up some, renamed for the occasion the "dirty Dan".

Yeah, as with Ol' Stubblemug, it's been nice losing him.

I've already noticed so much crap to criticize in those TV shows this year that I'm not even going to start with it. Enough drivel!

My original, unimaginative thoughts on blogging for the new year involved more TV criticism, as usual about the forensic-police shows--in which perhaps the most basic design flaw is that the characters who solve homicides in the lab are often the same who run around after the bad guys. Somehow nobody here considers that realistic.

I'll spare my hypothetical readership further complaints about improbably twisted plot lines and get to what's really riled me up. The New York Times can take credit--and, contrary to reasonable expectations, it's not due to a disgustingly slanted piece of "news" or an absurd editorial. While I never have occasion to mess with the paper's analog version, I currently subscribe to a NYT business-news email service (though one might ask why, since I'm not in business, and currently lack resources to invest). It was a NYT service I signed up with in connection with a Yahoo! account, incidentally giving me limited online access to the Times. Recently the purveyors of "all the news that's printed to fit" sent a message linking to their top ten stories of 2004. One, published a year ago, detailed the sordid organized criminal pursuit known as sex trafficking. This is not mere prostitution; in fact, it gives prostitution a bad name. Hell, it gives sex a bad name! The vile practice might as well be known as--and perhaps is sometimes aptly labeled--sex slavery. I'm tempted to remark that this gives even slavery a bad name, which may be overreaching. Yet what I know about slavery in the United States, as legally carried on before abolition, suggests that these old-American slaves' owners treated their human chattel with greater regard--even if merely because of their value as property--than the bloody perpetrators whose racket is described in this article (referenced here but not directly available for free) evidently can find in their miserable psyches for the people whose lives they deliberately ruin and, often, destroy. These parasites don't care.

A word of caution before I rave on: This information was published in the NYT, which has been known, like some other periodicals, to run stories later exposed as false. Editors' confidence in reporters is an insufficient guarantee of truth. I have to wonder, then, how accurate this lengthy account really is. Frankly, I'd prefer it prove totally false; the less reality in it, the better! Maybe I've gotten riled up over nothing. Wouldn't be the first time.

But get riled up I did; I may not have been so murderously inclined toward an evil organization since some seven years ago, when I imagined what I might do to the Algerian terrorists then in the news. Here's the basic story: children and young women from Latin America and Eastern Europe are acquired/recruited through pretenses/shanghaied and smuggled into the United States, generally via Mexico, and, we're told, typically brought to our big urban centers to serve as sex slaves for the unconcerned enjoyment of paying customers (call them clients of evil) and the profit of a particularly low breed of mafiosi. The parallels with the illegal drug trade are obvious.

Yet the greater depravity, when compared with drug trafficking, is also obvious. Rather than dwell on the differences, I'll offer my reaction--which is what journalists really want, isn't it? Four words: Not in MY country! So say I, Derrick Edgar Ronald Hohenburger of Lacus Transversus. It's one thing for the godfathers of whoremongery to lord it over towns they corruptly control in the middle of Mexico, and another to push their foul tentacles into the US and its cities--as if there weren't enough criminals here already!

Just as well (for the bad guys) that I'm on the other side of the country without my own wheels. Should I hit it big, I might look into buying cheap border property in Arizona, where I already have some tenuous connections, just so I could make an impact. A less ambitious option would be to join these guys (more power to them & others who've undertaken similar operations).

Should I ever run across any of these white slavers (to use an old term), if I felt as I did when reading the Times article, I'd be inclined to shoot all the slave-driving bastards on the spot. That wouldn't be enough for their victims, though, who need--to appropriate an expression--kinder, gentler treatment. Sounds like a cause for church/charity--too big a project, admittedly, for a would-be lone ranger.

There, I said it. Don't we feel better now?

A little more about Salami--since this quote from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (http://www.defenddemocracy.org/) came to my attention.

Referring to Bin Slobberin's latest recorded refuse, this article notes:

[T]he tape asserts that anyone who participates in the upcoming Iraqi or Palestinian elections is an "infidel," in effect demanding that Iraqis accept bin Laden as the supreme Islamic religious authority.

My reaction is, as we say in my country, "Who died and made you God?" IIRC, this gobbler never even studied theology. He thinks he can buy the caliphate with his family fortune--that, and his long beard, plus a turban. Aside from deluded disciples, that's all he's got. Whether he even believes his own rantings is questionable. Maybe he's just in it for the power trip. Personally I don't care.

It's like this bit I thought up in perhaps a different context: sort of Thomas Jefferson meets (the old Johnny Carson character) Art Fern: "Want to preach no god? We don't care! Want to preach 20 gods? We don't care! Want to sacrifice poultry and goats? We don't care! Want to kill people? That's when we care!"

Seems every time I start an entry, I feel like apologizing. Well--yes, I've ignored this blog for more than a month now. Tonight I'm ready for something different. For better or worse, I'm joining an organized blogospheric movement:

www.blogsagainsthillary.com/

There it is, folks, a current Noble Cause. It may not come as much of a surprise to Hohenblogger's readers--if it has any yet! By way of confession, I'm a member of the Republican National Committee, though I also have ties to the Libertarian Party. At any rate partisan activity is probably less fundamental to me than to a major portion of the politically active.

As for the Clintons--well, I'm not so violently opposed to them that I wouldn't associate with them myself if I thought it might advance my career! Not that I'd be up to misrepresenting myself, but if (in my estimation) it did no harm, I'd be ready to exploit their standing. More of this later, maybe. I'd prefer, of course, that the reviled Rodwoman not become President.

At any rate I'm aware that we have more dangerous enemies. Like many of you all, I'd be happy to personally put Salami been Slobberin and his Islamofascist pals, as well as their current Saddamite allies of convenience, out of our misery. Lacking the means, we mere Netizens can at least attack electronically, if only to mock these deluded dorks.

Almost seems I need to begin with an apology again. It's been over a month once more since I started my last entry--and some month it's been, eh?

Before going further, since I started this post on 20 Nov, I'd like to salute the Archduke formerly known as (Crown) Prince: Dr. Otto von Habsburg, grand old man of Europe, who now turns 92. I'm slowly catching up with him; about two years ago I reached half his age!

Meanwhile, so long to Ol' Stubblemug, grand old Moloch of the Middle East, at 75--it's been nice losin' ya! One hopes the practice of child sacrifice will now wane, though such optimism has yet to be justified.

I apologize for devoting so much of this log to criticism of dopey media output, but the subject matter's all too easy to come by--and unfortunately it doesn't have a lot of competition. Anyhow, I regettably mentioned this forensics-spinoff show, which nowadays boasts other siblings as well. This time my mistakenly paying attention to the living-room tube revealed a fine target for conservative types to blast away at: This stupid-sode's villain turns out to be a chaplain who's obsessed with the 1950s. There were formulaic details I also found offensive (maybe there always are), but this implied anti-moral--the '50s were evil, & religion is bad--is about as subtle as one of that era's monster films, and about as realistic.

Flash: CBS News stands by its error.

Well, folks, I'd hoped to be writing up an account of a trip to New York City and the Republican National Convention. Author and readership (if any!) can relax; no such piece will appear, because I wasn't invited and ultimately couldn't afford it anyway. (I was invited to serve as an alternate four years ago but passed on that opportunity.) Then, as if to rub it in, came this mailing, of which my journal reads:

A GOP outfit invited me to a private St. Paul reception & dinner with the First Lady. Dinner alone costs $10K. Wish I had that kind of money.

My financial picture has turned rather bleak of late--ironic, considering how my family has long known me as a frugal spender. Unfortunately I've never been so great on the earning side and am still working on Plan B. (Plan A is the common standby involving a lottery win! :-))

Here's a curiosity, to put it mildly.

A roundabout investigation of a newly-discovered and interesting website led me to the pages of an individual with much to say. (Sorry, folks, I'm posting no links and don't feel like including too many specifics.) What particularly got my attention was a reference to a certain unpopular church I regarded highly in my youth. One residual opinion of mine: Maybe these people were wrong for the right reasons--though I've naturally wondered how that might compare with being right for the wrong reasons! Anyhow, this other blogger described in some detail her experience with an outfit ("cult," to use her fashionable pejorative) she described as an offshoot of this church after its partial breakup in recent decades. In retrospect, she didn't have much positive to say about the guys running it, which is not entirely surprising.

What did surprise was the religious system of her own she apparently assembled to replace her earlier faith. I found it off-putting enough without the inclusion of what she presumably considered her inspired prophecies--and then there was her recognition of her own virgin birth. Folks, I think we can agree that this is kinda weird--over the top, in fact. No thanks.

Here's something I almost included in the previous post before running out of time. Just as well--it's not fit to be mentioned in the same space as Apollo 11 material.

I'd considered noting that the "cyberjerk" seemed to have vanished from the science newsgroup where he'd long annoyed readers, though I've seen indications elsewhere that he's still around. Unfortunately I found someone worse on an unrelated group, motivating me to set down a few relevant remarks here. It started when someone unknown (to me, anyway) presented a request for certain info. I wouldn't have responded, even though the item referred to a popular conspiracy theory, except that the author--who claimed to be a US resident--larded it with uncalled-for anti-US sentiment and cheap-left slander against our leadership and the UK's (plus a few mundane goofs). So I replied with relatively mild ridicule/contempt for the passages in question and left it at that. A French guy responded, and we discussed a germane subject over the next few days.

It may have been a week after the initial incident that the original clown popped up again, mad as hell; perhaps it took this person that long to write the overly-long rant. The fool more or less began by accusing us (?) of racism--as if anybody could tell anybody else by race in this context! The topic had never even come up. Well, maybe this demonstrates a truism about the Left: contradict these people, and, rather than argue, they prefer to call you names--"racist" being Name No. 1. Ironically this character came across as a racist him/herself, of the non-white variety. These views apparently extended to religion, which the offender evidently maintained a warped version of; threatening us supposed enemies with damnation was only the most twisted aspect. This party also promoted a website whose mere title hinted at a laughable exclusivism: This oracle alone had a monopoly on truth!

I felt like dissecting and refuting the lengthy rant point by point--but, maybe because it was so blasted long, my newsreader kept blowing up! Well, I checked out the site and found a message announcing it had been taken down due to offensive content. (Now that's convincing.) Finally I contented myself with adding "Forget it" to the thread title, noting "Serious crank..." and posting the web message. I never even read most of the creep's article--and don't regret it. This lesson reinforces a stereotype of the Net crank, which I see may be widespread: the hostile, paranoid, obsessed individual who believes he alone is right. Our distinguished cyberjerk shared these traits, but he was more refined.

At least they're not all lefties.

I guess it behooves me to comment on Apollo 11's 35th anniversary. I've noted people's sharing memories online, of course, so here's mine: Outlasting Walter Cronkite while viewing coverage of the landing and, later, first moonwalk on a black-&-white set in the same corner of the same house where I now live, and where a TV still resides--only now it's high-definition with surround-sound--and it belongs to someone else. That was before CBS became the Evil Eye Network and W.C. revealed himself as a superfluous lefty. (Maybe I watched too long, since I recall getting a headache.)

I was twelve, and naturally much enthused about space exploration. Within two months I would be trying to cope with the scary environment of junior high school. FWIW, this year most of the building making up the scene of that crime was reduced to rubble; aside from the P-E facilities no one wanted it. My brother the TV master says that place looks better every time he sees the remains.

In retrospect one of the most amazing facts about Apollo 11 is its position on the historical timeline. Only 30 years separate Hitler's storming into Poland from Armstrong's boot on the Sea of Tranquillity--less time than has passed since the last men left the Moon. Yikes.

I don't even want to start on the subject of what we haven't accomplished in space since then.

Well, Blogger betrayed me last night.

I worked a good while on what was to be my next post. Then, somewhere along the line, I lost cursor function--and it got worse after that. The text execrably disappeared. I'd thought our newer, more improved Blogger was better than that! Rather than attempt to recreate my lost text, I'll try summarizing it before completing this entry.

I'd recently run across some online info about Mr. Sureman's book, The Science of Good and Evil. My suspicions about it were correct, and in order to recognize his apparent eagerness to subsume ethics under the philosophy of materialism, I decided to rename him Cocksure.

Mr. Cocksure's major points reportedly are that morality can be seen as derived from evolutionary biology, that it doesn't require religion, and that we can subscribe to a jury-rigged system of ethics such as he supplies. I haven't seen it and so won't evaluate his code, but I still don't view science as a source of moral authority. This isn't to deny that the discipline maintains its own ethics: Basically, good science requires honesty. The amoral universe the scientific establishment describes, however, cannot replace the Transcendent, however we may conceive of the idea.

It's like this: Years ago I came up with this--satirical--commandment:

Thou shalt not believe in any purpose, for purpose is an abomination unto EVOLUTION thy God. Thou shalt acknowledge chance, and chance alone.

If this "principle" applies to one's outlook on the world, then I'm not interested in the "morals" that might result.

Here's a sort of counterexample I'd originally intended to give. An old acquaintance, professor emeritus of biology here, has on occasion publicly defended evolutionary biology itself--but he's also gone on record proclaiming his belief that his studies have given him insight into the mind of God.

As a postscript, this subject matter tends to provoke the question: What kind of person might I be if I shared the materialist view? On the other hand, it may be too difficult to separate me from my tenets.

I've heard that this month marks the hundredth anniversary of Times Square. In local history, the Lake Traverse Travesty (no, there's no Travesty Plaza here) reminds us that the 20th was the centennial of our town's first leading citizen's passing. The man's name was Shaynowishkung, meaning "he jingles/rattles." On being widowed, evidently around the time of the Civil War, he left his then-home and moved to this river-lake junction in the wilderness. In 1888 he was here to welcome the first European types to settle. (A British trading post allegedly stood across the lake a century or more earlier, but there's no obvious trace of it.) People dubbed him "Chief" out of respect, adding the lake's Ojibwe name signifying waters lying crosswise. The French called it Lac Traverse.

Since then, of course, hordes of Big Knives have done quite a number on the region's resources. Once the good timber was cut, farming proved marginal, so our land never became quite civilized. Still, I wouldn't blame any residents who might long for the great hunting/fishing/gathering of Shaynowishkung's day.

One further historical perspective: The day the "Chief" died, a certain Austrian kid named Adolf, son of a Schicklgruber who'd taken the surname Hiedler, turned 15.

I can now report having accomplished an online exchange with none other than the "cyberjerk" I've complained of before. Another of his harangues penetrated my filters. This time he made some valid points, plus a few errors I thought deserved pointing out. Didn't expect him to respond. Followed up with a perhaps charitable reply and am left to wonder whether he regarded this as satisfactory (not that that's important). He still has an attitude problem.

Having noted my obscure appearance on the local paper's front page, I've neglected to mention that I've cropped up visually on the Web too. In this case the photo's poor quality hides my ID, as does the rudimentary caption. Hey, I'm not complaining.

Then there's the latest available baloney from the Evil Eye network. I'd like to comment on A. Looney, the clown who pops up toward the end of the Giant Stopwatch (as in Stop Watching?) show. He used to be funny, at least sometimes, though he could also be annoying. (Beavis and Butthead took him on once: "Why do they call it taking a dump? I mean, you're not taking anything...") Now he's blown it with his wanton hostility toward some peoples' faith--because of a contoversial film he hasn't even seen. Well, I'd say it's time to put him out to pasture; he's become a liability to his employer. I haven't seen the film either and don't intend to evaluate it. But I've seen enough of the insulting Mr. Looney to decide he's not worth viewing. (Update: For a nice response to the guy, go to dumbcelebs.com and scroll about halfway down the page. [OK, to the 2/23/04 entry.])

The P-Cock network, on its often-good SNL, similarly insulted the unfashionably-conservative cinematographer and his take on Christianity with a cartoon crudely mocking both and essentially depicting him as a Jew-baiter. (Real animosity directed against Jews tends to flourish on the Left, where the mainstream media won't cover it.)

Back to See BS: The other day its prime propaganda program found fault with the US President for making fun of himself, displaying photos of himself in the Oval Office, apparently searching, while voicing lines about seeking the notorious missing WMD. The Evil Eye agitprop chief pompously questioned the President's taste in jokes, ostensibly because of the danger our military faces--then produced someone from a military family who, predictably, objected to W's eforts at humor. Bad taste?! Look to your own glass house, you moral morons! And don't tell us your coverage isn't biased.