Posts by 3410
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Hilary's mother's story reminds me of one from my Grandad (I wish I'd recorded his stories.)
He was an engineer, by trade and inclination, and during the period of petrol rationing had built a contraption onto the back of his vehicle which he called a "gas producer" or some such. In fact it was a small furnace burning coal dust, which somehow fueled the vehicle via a pipe along the side of it, as part of a primitive duel-fuel system, enabling him to drive from Kaikohe to Hamilton on two-and-a-half litres of petrol (or some similarly unlikely combination of distance and volume; I forget.)
It would aparently peter out from time to time, as fires do, obliging him to alight and stoke the coal-dust fire before continuing on his journey.
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An 'I'm-so-above-this-shit' attitude.
More of an 'Are-you-for-real' attitude, I'd say.
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"Yes we can has changeburger?"
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Ok. Embedding disabled, so watch it here
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Fisking? Nerdiness? Wierd Al?
What better time to drop this masterpiece:
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LOL nice one.
Too facetious, to be honest, but I'm doing my best.
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I guess one man's "that's far short of being treated like a human being" is another man's "that's better than being beaten to death."
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You'll excuse me if I consider the real Profiles in Courage in a part of the world where press freedoms are fragile -- when they exist at all -- Muntadar al-Zaidi is well down a tragically long list.
Well, maybe; not that I ever claimed the opposite. Mind you, the guy's got bigger balls than either you or me, I'd say.
BTW, various news outlets are currently reporting Al Zaidi as having a broken hand, broken arm, broken ribs, internal bleeding, an eye injury, and signs of torture on his thighs, so excuse me if I don't feel like ranking the contenders.
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On another note, did anyone ever figure out what "come home to the feeling" actually meant?
If any potential branding slogan actually meant something, it would be immediately rejected. Impossible is nothing, okay?
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And wouldn't it be kind of cool if human rights abuses, persistent allegations of political and police corruption, violations of due process and sectarian violence in Iraq actually got as much attention of someone flinging his brogues?
Amen to that. I still can't help thinking that Al Zaidi has done something important for Iraqi pride. At great risk to himself he has expressed an appropriate level of disgust for the tyrant criminal Bush without shooting him in the face. That in itself is, I submit, quite an achievement.
If I believed in such things, Muntadhar al Zaidi would be, in my books, a strong contender for Man of the Year.
Get back to me when I'm safer being an out gay man in Tehran than in Washington, DC. The United States is far from perfect, but I don't recall any state or federal law where it is legal to torture and murder alleged homosexuals.
Ironically, the US does not consider the murder of alleged homosexuals illegal, if they be Iraqi or Afghani civilians, nor the torture of them if they be "unlawful combatants" (which, need I remind you, can amount to as little as being on the wrong end of a bogus bounty deal.)