The NRA Supports San Franciscans

The National Rifle Association loves San Franciscans.

That’s why, as soon as Scalia’s poisoned pen dripped the last of its ichor onto his majority decision in the 5-4 “right to bear arms” case that’s overturned Washington D.C.’s 30-year ban on handguns, the NRA filed lawsuits on behalf of poor people in San Francisco and Chicago and their desperate need for more handguns. According to the San Francisco Chronicle:

NRA sues S.F. over guns in public housing
Bob Egelko, Cecilia M. Vega, Chronicle Staff Writers
Saturday, June 28, 2008

(06-27) 18:34 PDT SAN FRANCISCO — A day after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Americans have a constitutional right to possess guns for self-defense, the National Rifle Association sued San Francisco and its Housing Authority for banning firearms in the authority’s public housing.

The NRA filed in federal court Friday on behalf of an unidentified gay man living in Valencia Gardens Housing in the Mission District, who said he keeps a gun in his home for protection against hate crimes even though his Housing Authority lease forbids possession of guns and other weapons…

How Major Robert Saved Widgets

Disclaimer: The following is a completely made up and fictitious story about certain completely fabricated persons who only exist in imagination and could never exist in any sort of complete sense in the Real World. Any similarity to living or dead persons, institutions or aboriginal gaming operations is completely fictional. And made up.

i. in which the plot is introduced, and thickens (which is the narrative, as well)

The Big Wampum Casino, Hotel, Gas Station, Restauraunt, RV park and double-trailer gasoline tanker trucks squats astride Interstate 3.1416 in Oregon like a starfish over a clam. A diamond-vision screen blares out short clips of events, progressive slots, roulette wheels, rock and roll bands and even pancake keno breakfasts 24/7 to passing traffic on Interstate Pi.

A Thought On Our Blighted Age

Who’d have thought that basic decency, horse sense and balls would all be in such short supply …

And all at the SAME TIME?

Zeitgeist? Gesundheit!

Courage.

Tales from the Sufis, or Why I am Lazy

The Sufis predate Islam. Beyond that, you’re left with your own prejudices and ignorances. But hey. You have an internet connection! Educate yourself. Here’s the first story.

I have been a misfit since childhood. I knew that no one understood me, not even my father. He once said, “You are not a madman, fit to be put in a madhouse, nor are you monk to be put in a monastery. I just don’t know what you are!”

Write Right

The best single essay on writing in the English language (or, rather, the American language) is the hilarious Mark Twain essay on the literary “offenses” of James Fenimore Cooper. In an age when everyone fancies themselves an internet writer — a/k/a a “blogger” — it seems fitting to reprint it here. Enjoy.

‘There have been daring people in the world who claimed that Cooper could write English, but they are all dead now- …”

Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses
by Mark Twain

The Pathfinder and The Deerslayer stand at the head of Cooper’s novels as artistic creations. There are others of his works which contain parts as perfect as are to be found in these, and scenes even more thrilling. Not one can be compared with either of them as a finished whole.

The defects in both of these tales are comparatively slight. They were pure works of art.–Prof. Lounsbury.

Mark Twain on Death

Since George Carlin had just won the Mark Twain Prize from the John F. Kennedy Center at the time of his demise, it seems appropriate to serve up a Twain essay on the subject. — HW

The Art of Inhumation
by Mark Twain

About the same time, I encountered a man in the street, whom I had not seen for six or seven years; and something like this talk followed. I said,—

“But you used to look sad and oldish; you don’t now. Where did you got all this youth and bubbling cheerfulness? Give me the address.”

He chuckled blithely, took off his shining tile, pointed to a notched pink circlet of paper pasted into its crown, with something lettered on it, and went on chuckling while I read, “J. B—, UNDERTAKER.” Then he clapped his hat on, gave it an irreverent tilt to leeward, and cried out,—

The Latest KuKluxagram™

I’ll be with our torrid and tempestuous tale of tantalizing and tittilating torpor and taxonomy in a Texas terabyte … or, a terasecond.

but first, just so’s you know, about the FISA bill:

The George Carlin Obituary Obituary

Friends, Romans, Countrymen, I come not to praise George Carlin obituaries, but to bury them.

Take a look at all the words gushing forth, ill-considered, hastily tossed together, desperate to beat deadlines.

Deadlines. There’s a howler for you.

Howler of the Day

Is it my imagination, or does this graphic suggest that the donkey is about to um, er, MOUNT the elephant?

Who’s your daddy!?

This odd illustration cometh from The Telegraph (UK), from which ALSO cometh a howlarious Bush apologia conflating Bush’s unpopularity with Harry S. Truman’s at the end of his term in a classic ‘All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore All men are Socrates‘ festival of speciousness. I trust the reader to note the astonishing rewrite of history involved (‘you got to ACCentuate the positive, EEEEE-liminate the negative‘) But the headline requires comment:

Equal Thyme (and Sage Parsley)

I was going to Scarborough Fair, except it was the Los Angeles Federal Court Building and it wasn’t fair.

click for the larger version (with bonus joke)

A producer I knew from my time as an editor of two Los Angeles Arab-American community newspapers (The News Circle and MidEast Business Exchange) had called to ask if I’d join a protest (this was the early 1980s). Several students were being held incommunicado by the Reagan Justice Department and were going to be deported without benefit of due process of law. (Sound familiar?)

A Mysterious Response

A Belated response to this post was received in the wee hours of the afternoon, Wednesday:

29 July 2007…9:09 am
Wingnut Smear on Columbia Journalism Review