YOUR CORRESPONDENT WOULD LIKE TO ACKNOWLEDGE A DELAY IN GETTING TODAY'S ITEM POSTED inasmuch as the cable-modem connexion which Your Correspondent useth failed for about an hour's time.

And apologises as well.

Meteorologically, last night's showery and dreary look has since turned to clear skies and generally mild conditions up here in the Minnwissippi as I write you all @ this time. And things should be slightly nicer heading into the weekend, with maxima in the low 70's possible (though rain could be possible again on Sunday).

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WITH COMMENCEMENT SEASON NOW IN FULL-ON MODE, perhaps it was time that Your Correspondent used this occasion to send his best wishes to those who will be graduating as the Class of 2008, never mind their being from high school or university.

And those of you looking for gifts for that special graduate in your heart can look to Amazon.com, Amazon.ca or Amazon.co.uk for what you may need to give. And, in so doing, show your support for The Exaggerator in the process.

Likewise with Mallratz, my new online mall which will serve to compliment this blog--and help support same.

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IT LOOKS AS THOUGH THE SO-CALLED "UNION OF MYANMAR" MAY BE SEEING A DOUBLE WHAMMY as risks not just a major humanitarian crisis on top of that already wrought ... but also pose a threat to the Myanmari military regime.

Especially as new estimates suggest where some 125,000 may have been killed in this past weekend's cyclone and reports from international humanitarian aid organisations about the Myanmari regime taking too much of the relief supplies for themselves, and with reckless and utter disregard for the suffering.

So what rationale does the regime actually have for such behaviour in the face of tragedy?

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YOU MAY HAVE SEEN ADVERTS ONLINE FROM NEWSMAX IN A CONTEXTUAL SENSE over recent weeks asking "Should Hillary Quit? Vote Here Now!"

The which, if we are to believe ConWebBlog, is really nothing less than an "opt-in" survey, which can be notoriously inaccurate and flawed, perhaps fatally, by virtue of the methodology being used. As well as the results therefrom perhaps being deceptive.

In any event, Hillary Rodham-Clinton, notwithstanding her Presidential campaign being in debt to the tune of $20 million after winning West Virginia's Presidential primary yesterday, remains committed to sure victory heading into the Democratic convention in Denver this August ... and one option which has been suggested as a way for her campaign to regain some financial stability (per CNN) would be to have Barack Obama's Presidential campaign fund loan Rodham-Clinton's such the amount of the debt, conditional on her leaving the race.

Nonetheless, the forces of conservative Zealotry and True Belief are getting rather ballisto to the point of paranoid about the prospect of a black Presidential candidate, which they see as being a Clear and Present Danger to the White Male Christian Power Structure regarded as an Antient and Pecuilar with American Soverignty and Soverign Identity.

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AND ANOTHER THING:

Whence comes the argument that only White Male Christians (especially so the Low Church stylee) can be True and Loyal Patriots?

Doesn't this suggest that the Lower Classes can't be trusted when it comes to loyalty and/or patriot love because of their dependency on State welfare @ the expense (or so perceived) of a "healthy respect for industry, self-reliance, personal responsibility, thrift based on cash economy and a Wholesome and Simple Home Life"?

Can the same be said of Jews? Muslims? Homosexuals?

After all, James Boswell reminds us in his Life of Samuel Johnson that "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."

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PLANNED PARENTHOOD DOESN'T FIND FUNNY PRANK PHONE CALLS TO LOCAL CHAPTERS offering donations to provide abortions to those of colour; the better, presumably, to whip up racist feelings in Those Who Should Know Better.

Which have been recorded on YouTube, in two parts:

En laat ons nie vergeet waar apartheid Suid-Afrika was vir ewig roep op "regter-dink" wit families om te Maak Babas vir Botha. . . .

EVERY SO OFTEN, YOU RECEIVE SOMETHING IN YOUR E-MAIL AS CAN'T QUITE BE CONSIDERED SPAM, YET ITS CONTENTS LEAVE YOU WONDERING whether to accept such @ face value--especially if it contains advice to forward it on to others in your e-mail rings.

Case in point, as dissected by ConWebBlog:

Remember that April 25 WorldNetDaily article making the misleading claim that "annual U.S. military casualties overall during the first six years of the Bush administration are well below the average for the 26-year period beginning in 1980"? Turns out that story has been hanging around a lot longer than we thought.

According to a March 27 Army Times article:

A spam e-mail making the rounds in the military community serves as a reminder that facts can be flexible when they are launched anonymously into the vast void of cyberspace.

The e-mail, entitled, “Some very interesting statistics: Military losses, 1980 through 2006,” states that more U.S. service members died on active duty during the eight years of the Clinton administration, when there were no major U.S. military conflicts, than in the first six years of the George W. Bush administration, during which the military was fighting two large-scale wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The e-mail offers year-by-year U.S. military death totals from all causes—operations, illness, accidents, suicides, etc.—from 1980 through 2006.

The data supposedly were taken from a periodically updated Congressional Research Service report on the subject, which in turn is based on statistics compiled by the Pentagon’s Defense Manpower and Data Center.

There’s just one problem: The figures listed in the email are wrong. They vary markedly from the figures published in the cited CRS source document.

[...]

But some simple math using the figures listed on page 7 of the CRS report reveals that the figures for several of the years under Clinton are inflated, while figures for some of the years under Bush are downplayed.

Snopes has also debunked the military deaths email as well.

Yes, it appears WND used this false spam email as the basis for its own article, despite touting the work as "a WND investigation."

WND's main contribution appears to be using correct fatality numbers to arrive at its conclusion. But as we detailed, comparing raw fatality numbers, as WND and the spam email did, fails to take in account the total number of military members among which the deaths occured. In fact, the rate of military fatalities was higher in 2005, the latest year for which full fatality statistics were available, than at any other time in the 26-year time frame examined.

Curiously, none of this history is mentioned by WND--perhaps because while WND corrects the email's faulty numbers, it embraces its faulty premise.

This isn't the first time the ConWeb has based articles on spam email. In 2004, Newsmax simply reprinted the contents of a spam--faulty numbers and all--purporting to list the differences between counties that voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and those that went for Al Gore.

In other words, you can't always trust everything you get in your Inbox.

And I'm not just talking about all those "pleas for help" from low-level Nigerian civil servants, "winning notifications" from various offshore lotteries you don't quite recall entering, offers for "Cialis soft tabs" and other "doctor approved and recommended" medications and other obvious specimens of "spam."

"We want to reduce the level of government to the point where we can eventually drown it in the bathtub."

THUS OBSERVED GROVER NORQUIST, ONE OF THE MORE PROMINENT SPECIMENS OF ZEALOTRY AND TRUE BELIEF in the anti-government arena (thanks to his so-called "Americans for Tax Reform," methinks really a front of "the Four Hundred" seeking to reclaim their "antient and pecuilar rights, privileges and powers***entitled them by unwritten tradition"), in encapsulating his articles of faith.

Unaware all along that, in the end, they would have to look for ways to avoid attracting Unwelcome and Unnecessary Attention from Those Meddling Bloggers--as in playing the Andrea Yates card, as it were, blaming Divine Providence for so ordering.

Which begs Your Correspondent asking how these Zealots and True Believers expect to finance government and public projects without recourse to taxation--and yet not wanting to let slip hints that their real agenda is nothing short of a State Corporate and Incorporate, not unlike Fascist Italy.

What have they to fear, "schizophrenic germs"? 

THE OVERT AND OBVIOUS CONTEMPT THE CONSERVATIVE ELEMENT HATH FOR THE POOR, UNDEREDUCATED AND EASILY-INFLUENCED knows no bounds. Especially so when it comes to their weaponry in their phony Kulturkrieg designed to pacify the Lower Classes, and the Culturally-Deprived Environments wherein they reside, long enough for them not to know Certain Inconvenient Truths.

One such weapon likely to be the deliberate "dumping" of cheap, cheerful--and plotless--curiosa with soundtracks alternating (or so it seems) between "Je t'aime ... moi non plus" by Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin and "Delecato" by Percy Faith and His Orchestra.

And the deliberate location of adult cinemas in "industrial" (lower working-class) neighbourhoods, the whole deliberately looking ratty and decrepit not unlike that described in the following (howbeit incredible) recent "WaiWai" item per the Mainichi Daily News from down Tokyo way:

One of the tackiest and quaintest features to be found in Japanese towns are the small local cinemas, that manage to stay in business by showing re-runs to people too poor to own a VCR. Admission is a fraction of the cost of seeing a first-run film in a big-city theater.

These establishments are too shoddy to warrant the description "retro." They are relics of the 1960s, some so pathetically decrepit as to resemble haunted houses in amusement parks, with pockmarked floors, fraying upholstery and the moldy smell of decay. Most are one-man operations, with tickets sold by vending machine.

Writing in Uramono Japan (May), a 35-year-old company employee in Hamamatsu City, Shizuoka Prefecture, submitted this account of a visit to once such place. So sordid was his tale, he could not bring himself to put his name on the article, so we'll just refer to him as "Mr. A," for "anonymous."

A's article was written in response to an earlier article in the same magazine about an elderly woman who lurked in the sleazy Shinsekai theater in Osaka. For an outlay of ¥500, she would remove her dentures and, during screenings, provide male theater patrons with oral sex.

"Well, I've got something that beats that," writes A. "In my hometown we've got a theater where a woman sneaks in and goes all the way with you for ¥1,000!"

The name of the establishment, he says, is "Cinema House Shinei Gekijo," located close to the Matsuya department store, a 10-minute walk from JR Hamamatsu Station.

Most of the films it shows are B-grade porno flicks, and two current blockbusters were being featured: "The Sexual Desires of a Female Proprietress Who Shamelessly Flashes her Panties" and "The Diary of My Lover--Make Me Come as Many Times as I Can!"

The seedy theater moved to its present location five years ago, but has a long reputation for being a "hattenba"--a place where the horny, either gay or straight, can get together for a quickie. Sometimes these services are performed by men in drag.

"It's one of those guys in drag, right?" Mr. A asks his friend skeptically.

"No, no, it's really a gal," he insists. "She's beautiful too. We call her 'the Goddess.'"

It seems the theater's third floor has "recreation rooms" equipped with reclining seats, where pairs of men could be seen in acts people from the U.S. state of Kansas would probably rather not think about.

Around 10:00 p.m. on a Friday evening, our writer entered and met the gaze of a young woman in the theater's foyer. Her face vaguely resembled that of actress Isako Washio, and the lack of an Adam's apple in her throat strongly suggested she was, in fact, a genuine female.

Is this, Uramono Japan readers must surely be wondering, the alleged "Goddess" that everyone's been talking about?

She exchanged a shy smile with A, who entered the darkened theater and found a vacant seat. Minutes thereafter, a husky but distinctly feminine voice from directly behind him whispers, "Pssst! Hey, give me ¥1,000 and I'll let you have something nice."

It was her! He grunted his consent.

She straddled A's lap and, hands looped behind his neck, gave him a deep kiss. He feels her nipples harden through her blouse. Almost magically she slips down his trousers and her excellent oral skills soon instruct his soldier to stand at attention.

Thus prepared, she slips him inside her and begins grinding her hips, breathing quickly and making little grunts of pleasure until groaning, he spasms.

After it was over, A marvels at his good fortune. Why, he ponders, would such a beauty prowl sleazy theaters seeking sex with strange men?

"Well, I'm really a man," she tells him.

"WHAT!?" A exclaims. "How's that possible? You had one of those ... and it was wet inside!"

"I had a sex change operation, and my penis was inserted inside out in my pelvis to form a hollow tube. When I get sexually excited my Cowper's gland emits excretions."

Oy.

It seems the stratagem of the "Goddess" is to ask for ¥1,000 because men tend to be suspicious if a woman offers to do them for free.

Yet when viewed under the lights, our correspondent writes, this depraved deity is even more desirable than a real woman. At a sleazy cinema in Hamamatsu, he continues his quirky quest for theatrical romance. 

IN CASE YOU REGULARS PROBABLY DIDN'T QUITE NOTICE, BLOGDRIVE HAD SOME TECHNICAL ISSUES OVER THE LAST TWO DAYS precluding the immediate posting (as opposed to postdated such) of blog material.

The reasons for which were never disclosed up front, leaving Your Correspondent, no doubt, quite frustrated psychologically trying to find answers or explanations therefor.

In any case, the afflicted postings are now up, and your patience and understanding are greatly appreciated. Not to mention your support, especially so in form of online shopping--be it off to the side of the page or through my new cybermall.

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IN THE WEATHER DEPARTMENT, ESPECIALLY SO HERE IN THE LIKES OF MINNESOTA, which takes great pride in having such diversities of climatic extremes for the latitudes so situate, you learn rather quickly that appearences can be deceiving vis-a-vis how the weather will turn out as the day wears on.

From a sunny (if breezy) afterlunch yesterday, Your Correspondent can discern a change from hazy sunshine this morning to what could be a showery afterlunch into evening. Forecasts call for the showers to transit these parts around midnight, with a return to nicer weather likely tomorrow.

As for the Syttende Mai weekend (Syttende Mai being the Norwegian national day, celebrated with festivals in communities with substantial Norwegian populations like Spring Grove and Westby in these parts), it should be partly cloudy Friday and Saturday, with showers likely on the Sunday.

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FOR THOSE NEEDING ANOTHER REASON WHY THE OXYCONTIN SOW CAN'T BE TRUSTED (yet still is, particularly so among Those Who Should Know Better), Brave New Films' Fox Attacks unit calls your timely attention to the following video, as speaks for itself:

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AND IS IT JUST ME, OR IS MISSOURI SEEING SOME MAJOR BIG DIVINE JUDGEMENT IN TORNADIC FORM thanks to a possible Constitutional Amendment in the Show-Me State as would require "proof of valid citizenship" as a formality to exercise electoral franchise, never mind the price of electoral disenfranchisement ensuing among the Lower Classes @ the expense of an "elect***entitled as of right" which the Zealots and True Believers of hyperconservatism see themselves as exclusively entitled?

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AUSTRALIANS, AS MUCH AS GERMANS, CZECHS AND BRITS--OR PERHAPS MAYBE A LITTLE MORE SO--HAVE WHAT COULD BEST BE CALLED A QUASI-RELIGION OF BEER (or, as the Aussies oft call it, "the amber nectar") which can get out of hand @ times.

As witness the use of "name-and-shame" campaigns listing such as have been arrested for DUI in local gazettas for the sake of warning.

And the likes of the following, duly noted by the BBC:

A car driver in Australia has been fined for strapping down his beer rather than his young child.

Police said they were "shocked and appalled" when they pulled over the car south of Alice Springs in Australia's Northern Territory.

They said the 30-can pack of beer was strapped down between two adults in the back, with the five-year-old child unrestrained on the floor.

The driver was handed a fine of A$750 (US$709; C$706; £362; €455; Rs.29,753; ¥73,734).

The fine was for failing to ensure a child was wearing a seatbelt as well as driving an unregistered and uninsured vehicle.

'Blank' look

The car was pulled over on the Ross Highway last Friday.

Constable Wayne Burnett said: "I haven't ever seen something like this before.

"This is the first time that the beer has taken priority over a child... The child was sitting in the lump in the centre, unrestrained."

When Constable Burnett handed over the fine he said the driver "just looked at me blankly".

"He didn't get it," Constable Burnett said.

"I asked him about the fact the child was unrestrained and the beer was, and he said he didn't know anything about it."

Superintendent Sean Parnell of Alice Springs police said the incident was a "timely reminder" to ensure "all passengers are secured".