Robert Farley: Indeed; to the extent that the United States must devote years, billions upon billions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of troops to "winning" in Iraq, the very purpose of the invasion is undermined. It does no good to "throw some little country against the wall" if in doing so our own capacity to act is severely wounded; other little countries that might have been intimidated take note of the fact that we are incapable of acting. This was, of course, why Don Rumsfeld bitterly resisted proposals to go into Iraq with substantially more troops, why he resisted the idea of increasing troop levels, and why he resisted the shift to counter-insurgency; he understood that such moves undermined the purpose of the invasion in the first place. To the extent that the war has been about the extension of American imperium, it has failed disastrously.
I would just emphasize that bit about Rumsfeld. To the extent that post-2006 tactics have proven relatively successful in stabilizing Iraq, this does not provide a viable tactical implementation of the strategy encapsulated in Bush's preventive war doctrine. That strategy requires that it be possible to subdue medium-sized countries in a sufficiently easy and uncompromising way that we could credibly threaten to do it over and over again.
"Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno."
Classy!
Bacon Wednesday
We can't always have the bacon, even when we want the bacon. Sometimes we want our non-bacony foods to taste more like bacon. Bacon salt may solve both of those problems.
Did you hear the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die? When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, ‘Where is that marvelous ape?’
Har har!
Don't vote for a Democrat
The Republican strategy for Florida is made apparent on this billboard in Orlando.
When I first saw Gomi, I remember thinking that he didn't really look like a fighter. But he's a beast. An excellent wrestler who dishes out KOs with his fists and knees. And now he's fucking twenty-eight and three? Jesus Christ. Against top-notch competition, too.
Above, he wins a close split decision to avenge one of his losses and take the Pride title.
Or maybe I'm being stodgily pre-post-modern, or pre-post-Web-2.0, or something like that. I'm focusing on the cover illustration in isolation, when, in fact, the cartoon plus the artist's explanation of the cartoon plus everyone's reaction to the cartoon, including what I'm typing right now, is the totality of the work, a Cross-Platform Satire-Based Marketing Event, and we're all just shilling for Conde Nast whatever the hell we say about it. The combination of outrageousness and incoherence is what's brilliant about it, because we wouldn't keep talking about it if it actually got its point across. And we are talking about it. We may not like it, but we're soaking in it.
I'm sure I've taken the whole thing too seriously, but our air conditioning is out at work, and I'm sweating like I'm cutting weight. Everyone in the office is ready to fucking kill each other.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Bad Metal Weekend
Hurrah Torpedo is a Norwegian band that play kitchen appliances. Mrs. Boffo and I caught them by accident after a Flaming Lips show a few summers back. Here, they cover "Total Eclipse of the Heart".
JOE BIDEN: Pros: one of the Senate's oldest and most respected experts in the field of Joe Biden; vast bullshit reserve could be tapped for its methane, powering nation for decades; fondness for partition and ethnic cleansing could be a valuable asset during the Second American Civil War of 2013 Cons: as a wholly-owned subsidiary of DuPont, may be ineligible to hold office
JIM WEBB: Pros: tempers Obama's unhinged situational war skepticism with demonstrated love of killing things; broadens party appeal to critical demographic of trigger-happy bug-eyed Reagan officials Cons: vice-presidency would ultimately distract Webb from important work of wiretapping random people while masturbating his guns
Much of the testimony so far has centered on an aspect of the Chelsea "party," as participants have called it, that has turned a run-of-the-mill sex scandal into something altogether more contentious: whether the motif for the event was that of a Nazi concentration camp, as alleged by the tabloid that splashed an account of it across its front page in March, or, as the participants say, an occasion when the use of guttural commands in German, an old Luftwaffe jacket and military-style caps and boots had nothing at all to do with Nazi fantasies.
Bacon Wednesday
Boy with Leukiemia creates Bacon Boy, a crime fighter who slings bacon bits from his wrists. An Oregon glass blower ups the awesome by creating a sculpture for him, and cooks bacon on the glass furnace during the sculpting process.
Worst fight ever. I think that I linked to this in a comment a month or two ago, but it's so entertainingly bad that it deserves to be featured. Also, I have no time to look for anything else.
By contrast, Saturday's UFC was actually quite good. Hopefully, I'll have time to post something about it before the next UFC.
iPhone hunting
Since my beat is "technology, hunting, bacon, and other stuff," I couldn't resist this video of an iPhone shot through the power button with a high power rifle. Very rarely do we see our first amendment and second amendment rights so seamlessly integrated with bad techno music.
Meet my new guitar, Joelle. She's a knock of Tellecaster from the 70's maybe, she has a Fernandez sustainer, killswitch and Marshal Vibratrem pedal built into her.
The internets disappoint me. I had wanted to feature last year's Schambari vs. Clark fight from the WEC, but it's nowhere to be found. I'd post it somewhere myself if I weren't too lazy to do so.
Above is the WEC featherweight championship from June of this year. Faber, the featherweight champ, is undefeated in his last 13 fights. Until this fight, fighting veteran Jens Pulver was undefeated at this weight class. The WEC did a great job of marketing this fight as the greatest fight ever in recorded history, which successfully put asses in seats, so good on 'em. It's a hell of a battle, action-packed and very close, with both fighters getting their bell rung once or twice.
The WEC announcing team of Todd Harris and former UFC heavyweight champion Frank Mir are the best I've heard in quite a while. Mir is extremely knowledgeable and very good at explaining techniques and strategies as they occur. It's this kind of announcing that can educate the fans and really grow the sport.
Pop Quiz
There is no right answer to this pop quiz. I'm merely taking a survey.
You have to live one year in the life of another being. You are guaranteed that you won't die during this experience and that you can travel freely wherever such a creature could travel. Which ONE of the following four do you choose?
A. The opposite sex B. An identical twin C. An underwater creature of your choice D. A flying creature of your choice
Please indicate which one you choose in the comments and then, please comment if there is something else you'd like to be for a year, what is it?