more cat pictures

AND TALK ABOUT EXPLOSIONS IN THE NEWS THIS MORNING, READERS:

• From Iraq, where it emerged @ the weekend that Our Noble and Glorious Troops are achieving Complete and Final Victory (or are they?!), comes word of explosions in the northern suburbs of Baghdad targeting religious pilgrims in procession to a shrine in the general vicinity and in beautiful downtown Kirquq, with some 50 casualties between them.
• And in Istanbul, Not Constantinople, two pipe bombs within minutes of each other went off in a working-class social housing area, bearing the hallmarks of the Khurdistan People's Party (PKK); although no official claim of responsibility has been made thus far, police believe the same has PKK characteristics, not to mention the notion of same being designed in reprisal for Turkish military excursions into PKK outposts as could be considered "preemptive Holy War" with United States backing in camera.

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TELL ME IF THE FOLLOWING SCENARIO AMOUNTS TO DOUBLETHINK AMONG THOSE PREACHING THE DOCTRINE OF "TRADITIONAL VALUES:"

For starters, the vast majority of the movers and shakers in the so-called "Traditional Values" movement happen to be men of the old school. As in men seeing bonding with other males as one with machismo and friendship.

But then again, I, for one, wonder if such endorsement of machismo is really nothing more than back-door endorsement of male chauvinism as could, in its turn, excuse back-room homosexuality as part of the whole "bonding" thing.

Did you spot the doublethink thus inherent?

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EXCEDRIN HEADACHE #666: Pecuilar to the mostly rank-and-file supporters and sunshine soldiers of Religiopolitical Right groups claiming to serve G-d, Country and Family, the dilemma of having to balance one's mobility needs and True Patriot Love in All Thy Sons Command with unswerving and unyielding obedience to the prevailing boycotts against American automakers for "supporting the homosexual agenda," or so the official line hath it.

Which makes you wonder just how many of the Religiopolitical Right's hard-core support base--mostly working-class white trash with few or no real socioeconomic advancement possibilities beyond Multi-Level Marketing scams, Australian One-Up schemes and "cashflow gifting" packaged as "Christians Helping Christians"--are more than likely to be driving Japanese- or Korean-manufacture automobiles just for the sake of abiding by the boycott while otherwise claiming to be for G-d, Country and Family.

Especially Toyotas, Subarus and Kias.

And also the sort to keep their cars running by way of mail-order house auto parts in a further show of patriotic arrogance.

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SHIA LeBOEUF MEETS SONNY TUFTS? A widely-discredited rumour still told among Old Time Radio fans hath it that the announcer on Lux Radio Theater, in announcing the next week's performance, referred to Hollywood B-movie actor Sonny (Bowen Charlton) Tufts (III) in a somewhat incredulous tone and nuance which the late Kermit "Pardon my Blooper!" Schaefer presented as authentic on one of his collections of broadcast lapses linguæ without checking on its authenticity.

(In contrast, however, there was an episode of the radio potboiler series Suspense in which Sonny Tufts' name was given in a more normal stylee of tone and nuance under much the same circumstances as aforementioned.)

But before too long, Sonny Tufts was quickly to become a Hollywood farce, providing plenty of gossip-column fodder in the wake of numerous displays of drunken and disorderly behaviour as prompted police intervention--and which, by the mid-1950's, would be practically the end of his film career, limited mostly to B-film roles.

I bring this up in the wake of perhaps the second arrest of up-and-coming Hollywood actor Shia LeBoeuf (as in the current Indiana Jones permutation, not to mention supplying Cody Maverick's voice in Surf's Up) in as many years for drunken driving @ the weekend. And you have to wonder how much longer it will be before comparisons are drawn between Sonny Tufts and Shia LeBoeuf vis-a-vis displays of drunkenness and cruelty attracting police notice--not to mention meaning the quick end of what may be a promising Hollywood career by way of the monologues of David Letterman, Jay Leno and Jimmy Kimmel exploiting same.

Let alone fodder for such specimens of "irresponsible journalism" as blogs serving the (howbeit misguided) cause of Die Kultuuroorlog, knowing all along that such is nothing but a fiction of the Dark Satanic Mills of Conservative Propaganda pandering to Die Groot Ongewas and their latent delusions of a nonexistant "people's culture" promoting an idealised, Arcadian ideal of rural and small-town American Values as the Acme and Perfection Therefor. (And as epitomised by the music shows down Branson way--in theory among the Kultuuroorlog element.)

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SOMETHING FOR THE "DIVINE WRATH AND JUDGEMENT" CROWD TO THINK ABOUT when it comes to explaining the current wildfires near Yosemite National Park as a show of Divine Judgement Upon California for Sanctioning That Perversion and Travesty of Nature Otherwise Known as Homosexuality:

How can it be Divine Judgement in principio when police have acknowledged that sparks from overzealous gun target practice @ the weekend set off the fires threatening some 300 homes?

As if that weren't enough, many of the pseudoreligious ilk playing the "Divine Judgement" card to explain all manner of major disasters of late probably have their minds afflicted by the current Extreme Heat Advisories now in force across the extreme eastern parts of Oklahoma and Texas (with Excessive Heat Warnings prevailing along the Cherokee, Creek, Muskogee and Will Rogers Turnpikes in Oklahoma) into southwestern Missouri, western Tennessee and substantial parts of Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisana and western Alabama--where, coincidentally, Fundamentalist/Primitive (pseudo)religious and religiopolitical beliefs hold high carnival among especially "white trash" Who Should Know Better. Ironic, no?