more cat pictures

LATEST TASTELESS WEAPON IN THE ARSENAL OF THE TERRIBLE-TEMPERED MR. BANG'S INDECISION 2008 CAMPAIGN: A "winning-of-hearts-and-minds" TV advert seeking to compare Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama with the ilk of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, as discussed by The Carpetbagger Report here.

Your Correspondent would like to suggest, in response, an ad in much the same vein as above, only comparing John McCain to those "Four Freaks from Iowa," as The New York Times referred to The Cherry Sisters in a review of their performance @ Hammerstein's Olympia in late 1896--an act of desperation on the part of impresario Oscar Hammerstein, who was facing substantial debts after a string of none-too-successful flops prompted him to take a bet on a rather awful act as was making a name and repute across the floorboards of the Midwest by way of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Which, as it turned out, paid off Hammerstein's outstanding debts after just twelve days in spite of the generally bad reviews received.

And yet none more legendary than that of Billy Hamilton of Iowa's Odebolt Chronicle of February 17, 1898, eventually gaining wide circulation and inspiring the legal case Cherry Sisters v. Des Moines Leader, establishing the legal doctrine that journalists have the right of fair review.

In Billy Hamilton's words, under headline of "The Cherries Were Here:"

When the curtain went up on Wednesday evening of last week the Cherries saw a good-natured audience, large enough to fatten their exchequer to the extent of $35, net.

The audience saw three creatures surpassing the witches in Macbeth in general hideousness.

Effie is an old jade of 50 summers, Jessie a frisky filly of 40, and Addie, the flower of the family, a capering monstrosity of 35. Their long, skinny arms, equipped with talons at the extremities, swung mechanically, and soon were waved frantically at the suffering spectators. The mouths of their rancid features opened like caverns and sounds like the wailings of damned souls issued therefrom. They pranced around the stage with a motion that suggested a cross between the danse du ventre and a fox trot, strange creatures with painted faces and hideous mien. Effie is spavined, Addie is knock-kneed and stringhalt, and Jessie, the only one who showed her stockings, has legs without calves, as classic in their outlines as the curves of a broom handle. The misguided fellows who came to see a leg show got their money's worth, for they never saw such limbs before and never will again--outside of a boneyard.

The first glimpse of the Cherries was worth the price of admission. One shriek of laughter swept over the house. Not even in the woods around Sac City, nor in the wilds of Monona county, could three such raw and rank specimens of womanhood be found. The men howled and the women shook with merriment. There were no vegetables thrown, but there was lots of talk. It would take the sisters six weeks to answer the questions that were fired at them. At intervals Effie and Addie would jaw back and threaten to stop the show, but the boys never let up. When Jessie came out in her bare feet many solicitous inquiries were made about the condition of her corns, and she was freely advised to trim her toenails. And such feet! No instep, flat …….and Z wide. Jessie, however, is not sensitive. She calmly went on with her part, evidently considering her feet her "strong" suit.

Finally the program came to an end and the audience left, well satisfied, as a rule, although some who had never heard of the Cherries before were angry because the noise prevented them from hearing the girls.

The Cherries honestly believe that they are giving an entertainment surpassing anything on the stage, and that their audiences hoot them because they can't appreciate true merit. They have been systematically stuffed by every manager who has engaged them with the notion that they are away up. If they were not stuck on themselves no money could induce them to stand the jeering they get. But having salted down $60,000 in the bank and purchased several large farms with the proceeds of their foolishness they are willing to keep it up as long as they can make it pay. Their personal characters are above reproach; they are virtuous both from necessity and choice, as any one will conclude at sight of them. The most skilful [sic] impersonator would find it impossible to burlesque the Cherry girls. They are nature's own raw material, unique and inimitable.

more cat pictures

AN APOLOGY IS IN ORDER, READERS, FOR THE DELAY IN POSTING MATERIAL FOR THIS BLOG, what with a since-cancelled Severe Thunderstorm Watch for these parts putting the likes of Your Correspondent on edge wondering how intense the storms to the west of us could get once it reached Winona after bringing its share of destruction upon southern Minnesota and much of the Dakotas in the overnight and into this morning.

Still, though, things could get rather warm into the weekend here in the Minnwissippi region.

*************

AS OF TOMORROW, ZIMBABWE WILL HAVE INSTITUTED A "CURRENCY REFORM" INITIATIVE THEORETICALLY DESIGNED TO CONTROL HYPERFLATION exceeding (as per official estimates) 6,000,000%/annum for the year to date.

Which, for the most part, entails removing ten zeros from the Zimbabwean dollar so that Z$10,000,000,000 (old)=NZM$1 (and note the abbreviate "NZM$" that I use, to avoid confusion with the New Zealand dollar, in referring to the New Zimbabwe Dollar).

But still, there can be no mistaking the fact that the cronyism, corruption and general mismanagement of the Zimbabwean socioeconomic system under Robert Mugabe's de facto one-party rule can be partly to blame for the socioeconomic mess Zimbabwe has been reduced to--and for which the New Zimbabwe Dollar seeks to make up for, inasmuch as calculators and computers in general use lack adequate memory to make up for the ongoing hyperflation.

Still, though, you have to wonder how Zimbabwe's hyperflation would stack up against the notorous German hyperflation following World War I, when the Reichsmark lost value against the dollar over four years by a factor of 762 million before "currency reforms" managed to bring about some relief--never mind that such helped fuel Hitler's appeal among the Weimar Republic's Great Unwashed over time.

=============

MEANWHILE, HERE IN THE SUPPOSEDLY "MORALLY SUPERIOR" UNITED STATES, His Fraudulency's Grand Delusion of socioeconomic recovery aided by ill-advised Economic Stimulus Payments starting @ $300 failed to produce the results as expected, never mind The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang's articles of faith calling for "staying the course" in seeing free-market capitalism with American characteristics as Great White Father @ the expense of further worsening the situation made all the worse by flawed and inept intelligence excusing ur-RAHOWA in Iraq.

For which His Fraudulency is expecting us to rejoice and give thanks to G-d for in his sugar-coated and manufactured stylee in citing a number of supposed "glorious victories" in the Iraqi Theatre of Occupation, not unlike North Korea expecting its peoples to celebrate when it detonated a supposed atomic bomb a couple of years back.

=============

AND SO MUCH FOR NORTH KOREA'S "REJOICING" IN DEVELOPING ATOMIC WEAPONS WHILE STARVING THEIR OWN PEOPLES in the name of "Eternal Leader" Kim Il Sung--it seems that the Japanese may have played an indirect role in North Korea's developing an atomic-weapons programme "on the side" @ their atomic-reactor facility amongst the Azaleas of Yongbyon.

The BBC explaineth:

Police in Japan have raided the premises of a company suspected of illegally exporting machinery that could be used to make nuclear weapons.

Officers targeted the headquarters of Horkos Corp and several related sites in the southern city of Fukuyama.

The company is accused of exporting tools that could be used in enriching uranium without government permission.

Police say the equipment, which was sent to South Korea, could have been sold to North Korea or the Middle East.

The tools are normally used to manufacture automotive components, but they can be modified to produce the centrifuges used to enrich uranium.

Export of these items requires approval from the government, but Horkos is accused of falsely labelling items to avoid the need for permission.

Police suspect a batch of tools sent to South Korea in 2004 could then have been resold to a country for use in nuclear weapons' development, Kyodo news agency said.

Japanese police have carried out similar raids in the past.

Last year four former executives of precision equipment maker Mitutoyo were convicted of illegally exporting devices that could be used in nuclear weapons' production - one of which was reportedly found in Libya.

*************

ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER EHUD OLMERT, HIMSELF FACING CHARGES OF CORRUPTION AND MISUSE OF FUNDS, PROBABLY DID THE RIGHT THING in announcing his resignation with effect from around Rosh Hashanah ... in turn prompting opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu to suggest that Mr. Olmert timely call elections for the Knesset to ensure a seamless and orderly continuity of the Israeli situation.

Never mind Olmert's insisting that he still wants to broker peace settlements with the Palestinian Authority over soverignty of the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza all the sooner.

(Incidentally, did you know that Arabic is an officially recognised language in Israel, alongside Hebrew?)

*************

AND WE CAN ONLY IMAGINE THE POSSIBILITIES OF FORMER SERBIAN MAJORDOMO RADOVAN KARADZIC BEING NO BETTER THAN THE LATE SLOBODVAN MILOSEVIJC @ the International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in Den Haag with all his attempts to question the legality and legitimacy of same as he faces charges of Genocide, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity after being so long in hiding as a medical quack in Sarajevo.

Or, for that matter, Saddam Hussein. 

more cat pictures

To whom it may concern:

I would like to call your timely Notice and Attention to the fact of your books having been found in the premi of a certain Jim Adkission, as in the near-massacree @ a Unitarian Universalist church near Knoxville, Tennessee on Sunday last; the better, he hoped, to "send a message" about "liberals" somehow "threatening" the traditional pride of place you claim "real Americans" (read: conservatives) hold.

And knowing (un)consciously that your respective works may have motivated Mr. Adkisson's acts, deeds and exploits to the extent where two people were killed, as news reports and bloggers have suggested, perhaps it was time to ask you for once:

Have you no shame for what your words have done?

Have you no sense of remorse?

Have you no sense of Decency, Sir, @ long last?

Have you left no sense of Decency?

What exactly precludes your having any feelings of shame, remorse, guilt, responsibility or culpability for the byproducts of your very words in book (and, perhaps, broadcast) form?

(In case you don't know what I'm talking about, please refer to this Open Letter and read through it carefully. Read it through again and again. And keep reading through it until, preferably, such brings you to weeping and wailing and boohoohooing of the highest order, as if seeking remorse and accepting guilt for your indirectly influencing what some on the Pseudoreligious Right are likely to see as a Hero and Role Model before too long to carry out such deeds as he did.

(But don't come crying to me; you only have yourselves to blame, or so you keep blathering on and on whenever you preachify about Personal Responsibility and Self-Reliance.)

more cat pictures

*************

MEMO TO READERS: As I've mentioned before in situations of this sort, your sharing this message along to your friends and your e-mail circle would be greatly appreciated; the better to make sure The Message gets across.

However, I would recommend avoiding "spam" as a means to an end; "spam" can only undermine the potental effectiveness.

21 hours old

Sphere: Related Content • Advertise Here • Seed This • Discuss on Newsvine • Share on Facebook • Stumble It! • Digg This! • outside.in: geotag this story • Technorati Links • Blog This On Yahoo! 360 • Save to del.icio.us • Related Posts from Sphere • Fark It • Bookmark with OnlyWire • Add to Technorati Favorites! • Email this • Subscribe to this feed • Powered By FeedBurner • Bookmark/Share • Add This!

more cat pictures

FOOD FOR THOUGHT, BY WAY OF CONVERSATION THIS MORNING @ THE MOTEL I DO FOR IN WINONA, with a guest out of Austin, TX heading towards Wall Drug and Deadwood:

Having acknowledged where this was his first time in the Midwestern part of the country ever, he took note of where guests @ motels in his part of the country wound up receiving questionable solicitations claiming that they had received "free vacations" to Florida, Chicago or wherever of three days' duration--provided they advanced a "deposit" of some class "to cover administrative and paperwork fees."

Whereupon Your Correspondent promptly pointed out that any "free" offer asking for money in advance was more than likely to be an out-and-out scam, and should therefore be avoided. To which Mein Innkeeper Friend added that the motel didn't sell or share customer names and addresses to anyone, acknowledging that the banks handling credit-card processing for said motels may have so engaged--and to what extent they may have profited from sale of customer lists and databanks.

Not to mention wondering if the practice in question is more likely to involve "cookie-cutter" chain motels more so than smaller, independent "mom-and-pop" such ... and, for that matter, target all the more such holding high-rate and high-fee "sub-prime" VISA and MasterCard accounts.

In any case, the old adage about "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is" should still apply in this case.

=============

METHINKS RECENT DECLINES IN GAS PRICES ACROSS THE COUNTRY (in Winona's case, the prevailing price per "gentleman's agreement" is now $3.599/gallon for regular unleaded, $3.619/gallon for super unleaded and $3.719/gallon for premium unleaded) should also be looked upon as "too good to be true," considering the likely involvement all along of His Fraudulency's Great Within (especially so its "inside of the inside") in the crude oil, natural gas and refined products futures markets all this time, and profiting handsomely in the process.

That, and a group of pseudoreligious in St. Louis holding a prayer service the other day @ a Mobil gas station thanking Elohim for recent gas-price reductions through the agency of His Fraudulency and His Divine Intermediary on Earth and in America, which is probably taking things to the extreme deep end of incredulity and fatousity.

In any case, I would still be the one to recommend maintaining current habits of reducing non-essential auto use ... switching over to more fuel-efficent automobiles ... using public transportation where feasable, and suchlike, as a show of arrogance in and of itself towards the Great Within.

=============

WITH IRAQ AWASH IN OIL REVENUES TO THE TUNE OF US$71 BILLION IN THE LAST YEAR ALONE, Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki has gone on record as suggesting that the American Colonial Occupation let Iraqi authorities handle its own monies when it comes to infrastructure reconstruction and development, especially so in light of recent notorious scandals involving American contractors having weird and unwholesome types among their ranks.

No doubt nicely playing into the hands of the Zealots and True Believers in xenophobic isolationist articles of faith all along, holding all this time that America=The World, and vice versa; "that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know," as Keats put it in his "Ode on a Grecian Urn."

And staying with Iraq for the nonce, the International Olympic Committee is finally allowing Iraq to send a team (or reasonable facsimilie thereof--as in two, both competing in athletics events) to the Beijing Olympic Games.

*************

CAN ANY OF YOU SPOT WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE FOLLOWING COMMENTS from self-proclaimed (and hubris-laden) "capitalist pig" Jonathan Hoenig, as overheard recently on Fox Prolefeed (hat tip to NewsHounds for the remarks):

There is a belief now that individuals, especially young people, should essentially ... "devote themselves" to something greater than themselves--sacrifice their own wants, their own interests, to serve the common good, whatever they happen to believe it is at the time. To me, that's very un-American.

Come to think of it, could we have some Scriptural justification for the argument that serving the greater commonweal above selfish interest is incompatible with Christian Values and Teachings?

*************

WITH FRIDAY BEING THE ONE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THE I-35W BRIDGE COLLAPSE IN MINNEAPOLIS, PERHAPS IT MAY BE WORTH NOTING @ THIS TIME that construction of its replacement is progressing @ a faster-than-normal rate, meaning that the contractors involved may be eligible for a special early-completion bonus if same is completed ahead of the November target date.

But then again, Your Correspondent has to wonder if the construction work is being needlessly rushed ahead of schedule for "political reasons" above those of public interest, even to the point where sub-standard construction materials are deliberately being used to expedite completion and, perhaps, influence voters to vote Straight Republican pro Deo, patria et familia come November.

Or, for that matter, whether construction crews are being secretly given some class of drug in the vein of morphine, heroin or D-IX to boost work performance to unusually-Herculean levels so as to expedite the task @ hand (and expected to keep the drug rations hush-hush all the more).

*************

HOW WOULD GLOBAL-WARMING SKEPTICS, ESPECIALLY THOSE IN THE PAY OF OIL AND GAS INTERESTS, REACT TO THIS INTERESTING ITEM: Bhangladeshi researchers have found that any impact global warming supposedly hath on the land mass of Bhangladesh may be underrated--as in the coastal plain of Bhangladesh actually increasing in land mass thanks to sedimentation from the drainage basins of several major rivers producing, on average, 12.5 square miles/year of new land in the Bhangladeshi delta region over the last 32 years.

In its turn, translating into an estimated 620 square miles of new land mass in some 50 years' time.

Which, given the frequency of cyclones and monsoonal storms across Bhangladesh, may result in such new lands being all the more prone to the ensuing flooding unless steps are taken to ensure their stability, let alone become productive.

more cat pictures

MOST CORDIAL HAT TIP TO THEZOO (ULTIMATELY VIA THE CARPETBAGGER REPORT, KNOW) FOR THE FOLLOWING RATHER ILLUMINATING VIDEO, which is presented without any further elaboration:

Need any more be said?