perfidy

In order to cut court costs, Queen Elizabeth I reluctantly expunged four letters from the English alphabet.

Apropos of nothing in particular, I thought I'd let everyone know that there is a turkey hen (or whatever lady turkeys are called) living in my area. She used to have some gal-pals; lately I've only seen a single one. Like yesterday, when she was slowly walking past my truck in the cold morning drizzle, slurping up worms or ticks or CHUDS or whateverfuck bubbles to the surface in heavy rain.

Didn't pay me any mind, which was good, because the only weapon close at hand to defend against a turkoconic onslaught was my bright yellow metal thermos and the hot Earl Grey therein.

Last evening I was inside but saw motion off the back deck, out of the corner of my eye. It was the weird light of slacking rain and dusk; for a second I thought it was the turkey. But nope-it was venison steaks and a buckskin jacket waiting to happen; a young buck in the yard. I had heard from a neighbor that we get them fairly regularly, but I hadn't seen any myself til last night.

Well, in my backyard anyway. I see alot of deer in my travels, and enough turkeys where I'm not surprised if I spy any in the woodline. And of course all the basic town varmints: possums, raccoons. Bats. Which freak out the wife, and my calling them "just flying mice" doesn't help. I hear an owl every so often. Billions and billions of geese.

Oh, and perhaps a chupacabra. Something got into my trash the other night. The can was full, mebbe 50 lbs, and the heavy bag was on the very bottom. Well, something was strong enough, clever enough, or lucky enough to have pulled the can over, popped the locking lid, and had a buffet with a bunch of gross shit I was trying to throw away. And the something had pointy teefers, judging by the torn bags.

My first thought was racoon, but that was a pretty heavy can. Prolly could've gotten the lid off, but pulled it over...? I kinda doubt it; ditto an ambitious stray cat. Then I thought big dog, but we don't have any strays in the area and I was confident the locking lid technology would thwart the cleverest canine (not particularly challenging I know, just saying). Black bear is not entirely implausible, but would be an extreme stretch.

Which pretty much leaves me with chupacabra.

Come to find out that the guy who made this:

Absolutely did not knowingly lend his name to this:

Different cat entirely.

Ministry Crony Rocket Jones, also known as Ted, has a new banner. I dig it. I mean, who doesn't love a Soylent Green reference? And applying it as he has, well, that's just delicious:

However, I must take issue with the other side of this otherwise excellent banner:

Ted says he's thinking outside the box. But that tagline is in the box! How am I to resolve this paradox? Is it sarcasm, ironic distance, or mere inattention?

I find that I am actually upset that I missed a professional basketball game. This is completely unprecedented in my experience, seeing as I am much more inclined to baseball, college football and obscure sports. I have always viewed pro basketball as a beauty show for thugs and retards. Amazingly, I still think that, but...

I watched the Cleveland Cavaliers, team of my hometown, defeat the Washington Wizards, team of my current home. It was fun, because I could go into work and ridicule my colleagues, remind them of the tactically foolish move of trading Hughes to the team that would knock them out of the playoffs. And seeing that Cavs win was just nice. Cleveland teams so rarely do.

But that playoff win threw them up against the juggernaut of the Detroit Pistons. It's hard for me to write a sentence that includes both "Juggernaut" and "Detroit" because (given my prediliction for baseball and football, and the current state of the city) Detroit is a byword for failure, incompetence and pathos. Nevertheless, it seems that Pistons have won every championship since Michael Jordan was abducted by aliens and replaced with a less than perfect clone. And the received wisdom was that the Cavs would be ground to itty-bitty pieces of red gristle.

And, in the first two games that is more or less what happened. So, I wrote off the Cavs and read Vernor Vinge's new book Rainbows End. (Very, very good, btw.)

Now I discover, to my horror, that the Cavs pulled unforseen victory out of their collective asses. They have won the last two games, even without one of their best players - Hughes, whose brother recently passed away. The series now stands at 2-2. And I missed the exciting comeback. I realize that this is mere prelude for eventual disappointment and heartbreak, but I will certainly be watching the rest of the playoffs.

France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country. France has usually been governed by prostitutes.

My dear 'ol mum, not a noted French-hater, sent me an electronic mail over the weekend just chock-full of derisive remarks on the military valor of the French. I have no option but to share:

• "The last time the French asked for 'more proof ' it came marching into Paris under a German flag." --David Letterman
• "I would rather have a German division in front of me than a French one behind me." --General George S. Patton
• "War without France would be like ... World War II." --Unknown
• "What do you expect from a culture and a nation that exerted more of its national will fighting against DisneyWorld and Big Macs than the Nazis?" --Dennis Miller
• "It is important to remember that the French have always been there when they needed us." --Alan Kent
• "Do you know it only took Germany three days to conquer France in WWII? And that's because it was raining." --John Xereas, Manager, DC Improv
• "Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." --Norman Schwartzkopf
• "We can stand here like the French, or we can do something about it." --Marge Simpson
• "As far as I'm concerned, war always means failure." --Jacques Chirac, President of France
• "As far as France is concerned, you're right." --Rush Limbaugh
• "The only time France wants us to go to war is when the German Army is sitting in Paris sipping coffee." --Regis Philbin
• "The French are a smallish, monkey-looking bunch and not dressed any better, on average, than the citizens of Baltimore. True, you can sit outside in Paris and drink little cups of coffee, but why this is more stylish than sitting inside and drinking large glasses of whisky I don't know." --P.J. O'Rourke (1989)
• "You know, the French remind me a little bit of an aging actress of the 1940s who was still trying to dine out on her looks but doesn't have the face for it." --John McCain, U.S. Senator from Arizona
• "You know why the French don't want to bomb Saddam Hussein? Because he hates America, he loves mistresses and wears a beret. He is French, people." --Conan O'Brien
• "I don't know why people are surprised that France won't help us get Saddam out of Iraq. After all, France wouldn't help us get Hitler out of France either." --Jay Leno
• "Only thing worse than a Frenchman is a Frenchman who lives in Canada." --Ted Nugent
• "The favorite bumper sticker in Washington D.C. right now is one that says 'First Iraq, then France.'" --Tom Brokaw
• "They've taken their own precautions against al-Qa'ida. To prepare for an attack, each Frenchman is urged to keep duct tape, a white flag, and a three-day supply of mistresses in the house." --Argus Hamilton
• "Somebody was telling me about the French Army rifle that was being advertised on eBay the other day -- the description was, 'Never shot. Dropped once.'" --Rep. Roy Blunt, MO
• "The French will only agree to go to war when we've proven we've found truffles in Iraq." --Dennis Miller
• "Raise your right hand if you like the French, ... raise both hands if you are French." --Unknown
• Q. What did the mayor of Paris say to the German Army as they entered the city in WWII?
  A. Table for 100,000 m'sieur?
• "Do you know how many Frenchmen it takes to defend Paris? It's not known, it's never been tried." --Rep. R. Blount, MO
• The AP and UPI reported that the French Government announced after the London bombings that it has raised its terror alert level from Run to Hide. The only two higher levels in France are Surrender and Collaborate. The rise in the alert level was precipitated by a recent fire which destroyed France's white flag factory, effectively disabling their military.
• French Ban Fireworks at Euro Disney
  (AP), Paris, March 5, 2003
  The French Government announced today that it is imposing a ban on the use of fireworks at Euro Disney. The decision comes the day after a nightly fireworks display at the park, located just 30 miles outside of Paris, caused the soldiers at a nearby French Army garrison to surrender to a group of Czech tourists

For Perfidy readers in Florida, the Ministry recommends retasking your Ministry-approved Zombie Survival Kits (ZSKs) to defense against Alligators. By our calculations, the death rate from alligator attacks has seen an approximately 700 fold jump over the past weekend. A conservative linear extrapolation of this trend would have us losing the the entire population of Florida by sometime next Tuesday. We always thought it would be zombies, or space lizards, or giant fighting robots. But the exact face of our doom is immaterial. What matters is that we go down fighting, with a shotgun in one hand and the bible in the other. Well, maybe a revolver and the Torah. Or a baseball bat and the Bhagavad-Gita. Or a flouncy small sword and a readers digest condensed Shakespeare. Or a metalstorm pistol and a leather bound edition of Dune.

Anyway, armed, and gripping firmly some physical artifact of our our long, glorious and ultimately doomed civilization. Death to the Alligators!

Characteristic of national media (and "local" outlets of national media- Boston Globe, z.b), recent coverage of inclement weather ignores the balance of Massachusetts that lies beyond the Boston suburbs. The AP may be interested to know that in addition to the Hub, it's raining in the 130-odd miles between there and New York state too. Since last Tuesday.

We're ok though- thanks for checking.

[wik]Lest anyone doubt how Beacon Hill views the plebes, proles, and peons who populate the state west of say, Cambridge, consider the recent episode where Ted Kennedy's jet was struck by lightning. He spoke in North Adams, was flying to Cape Cod to spend the night, only to come back out to Springfield to speak the next day. The guy can't even bear to spend a night among his non-monied constituents.

Malthus was terribly, terribly wrong. It seems that while people are screwing around as much as ever, they are not making babies. And as we all know, not making babies leads to a dearth of adults somewhere down the line. While I have been doing my part, having spawned two offspring and planning for another, there is only so much that I can do to make up for the shortcomings of a global population of billions. At a stretch, maybe I can cover Johno's depressingly liberal childlessness, but the rest of you are on your own.

And it turns out that the problems of depopulation may in fact be worse than the problems of overpopulation that gloomy and pessimistic Malthusians have been trumpeting lo these many centuries. If you stumble, you can sometimes run faster to save yourself from a spill. And that is not a bad analogy for the overpopulation and technology. But with depopulation, we may find ourselves with our legs cut out from under us.

Also, there will be a lot more Baptists.