perfidy

Christopher Hitchens flays, dices, and juliennes Michael Moore's new propaganda flick. In related news, the New York Times Review of Books crucifies Bill Clinton's tell little memoir.

Nellie McKay, "Get Away From Me" (Columbia)
Katie Melua, "Call Off The Search" (Universal)

I'm a sucker for precocious youngsters. Having passed forever out of precocious youngsterhood a few years ago, I remain deeply impressed by people who can, at an improbably young age, turn out an album of assured, complete, and ambitious songs that deserve a wide audience. However, I'm frequently disappointed with the followup. In 1999, I was very much taken by Ben Kweller's self-released EP, "Freak Out It's Ben Kweller!" His super-ballad "Butterflies" was possibly my favorite song of that year, and his Vanilla Ice redux "BK Baby" was improbably fun. However, his follow-on major label debut, 2002's "Sha Sha" (ATO) lacked the same flair, possibly because recording in an actual studio with Dave Matthews' money made him choke a little when the time came to deliver. Ditto Erin McKeown, a Massachusetts singer whose second album, "Distillation" (Signature Sounds) is still one of my favorites. A pixieish woman who plays hot jazz guitar, McKeown mined Tin Pan Alley and some weird angry side of her subconsious to create a strong and diverse set of songs. "Queen of Quiet," "Blackbirds" and "La Petite Mort" crackled with creativity, brilliance, and masterful performances, and a small bidding war ensued for her among indie labels. Unfortunately her next album, last year's "Grand" (Nettwerk) was notable mainly because McKeown abandoned her strengths to experiment with new genres and forms with the result that for the moment her reach exceeds her grasp.

So now when faced with the prospect of some ambitous new hotness, I tend to hesistate lest I sign on to follow the career of an artist who will within two years disappear into his or her own navel. I am especially hesitant to embrace releases by young female jazz singers these days, since every label in the universe seems determined to build their future on cloning Norah Jones. Nellie McKay and Katie Melua are both nineteen years old, both have preciousness just coming out their ears, both grew up in itinerant circumstances (Melua moving from Moscow to Georgia (the Black Sea Georgia) to Belfast, McKay shuttling between the East and West Coasts in a VW van), and both have chosen to be jazz chanteuses on their debut albums. But for all the similarities, their albums could hardly have turned out any different. Where Nellie McKay kicks against the stereotype, dead set on being different from Norah Jones in every way, Katie Melua seems dead set on jumping Jones's claim.

Nellie McKay has already cut her teeth singing in New York clubs, and her official bio claims that she sometimes writes a song a week (precocious, indeed!). Her album cover tells you almost everything you need to know about what's inside. On it, McKays' apple-cheeked face is ringed with cherubic red-blonde curls as she throws her arms skyward in a Mary Tyler Moore moment. She wears a bright Red Riding Hood coat and is in general completely adorable. Behind her is a grafitti-covered wall and construction scaffolding. Her name and the album title ("Get Away From Me") are in yellow, with her name written in a jaunty serif font that brings to mind swingin' releases from the golden age of crooners on LP. The back cover proudly proclaims McKay to be "A Proud Member of PETA."

The title tells you the rest. Part a response to being lumped in with the fuzzy jazz noodlings the Norah Jones Clone Army (Amazon has bundled "Get Away" with Jones' new album-- get both for $25!), and part a psycho-girlfriend outburst, Nellie McKay's audacious debut album is far more entertaining than all the jokiness and contrivance I've mentioned would initially suggest. Mostly dealing with issues dear to the heart of any 19 year old (boys, hypocrisy, sunshine, death threats, alienation, and issuing death threats to hypocritical boys), McKay and producer Geoff Emerick (of Beatles fame) envelop her self-written cabaret-style songs and droll, dark-toned voice in a shiny mix of piano, strings, and a skintight rhythm combo. But where Norah Jones and fellow travellers like Diana Krall make timid albums that threaten to be little more than pleasant background music, McKay enlivens "Get Away From Me" with adventurous writing, sharp and witty lyrics, and a scary yet bubbly personality. One might be tempted to draw comparisons to Fiona Apple and Tori Amos, but where Apple comes off as a poetry-obsessed neurotic and Tori Amos seems dangerously unhinged, Nellie McKay steps right past them with great talent, a smart sensibility, and-- unlike Fiona and Tori-- a sense of humor. Also, where Fiona and Tori seem always on the brink of carving their initials into their arms with a pencil, I get the feeling Nellie McKay is more likely to carve her initials into yours.

In 18 tracks over two discs (a nice contrivance meant to evoke the lost art of the album side) McKay explores everything from reggae to torchlit balladry, with stops at jump blues, perky rock, and rap. Yes, rap. On "Sari" McKay raps convincingly about every petty thing that irritates her (including herself) in a laconic flow that, though obviously coached, still hits harder than P. Diddy's best attempt at a rhyme. Elsewhere, her more conventional songwriting efforts display similar ambition. The jaunty depression song "Ding Dong" manages to simultaneously evoke Frank Zappa and commercial jingles, "Baby Watch Your Back" detours into canned jazz-funk that works far better than it should, and the album opener "David" is colored heavily by reggae. Her voice and piano playing are up to the genre hopping, and even the songs that don't quite work redeem themselves through sheer bravado and the saving grace of a well-turned lyric. Vocally, she reminds me a little of Anita O'Day and Chicago chanteuse Holly Cole's first albums. Her pitch is good, her voice is strong, and like Cole she tends to over-enunciate her vowels and "r's" in a way that makes her sound positively aggressive.

Her lyrics are Nellie McKays' strong suit, and "Get Away From Me" demonstrates a refreshing talent for acid tirades that would put the great masters of invective to shame. "Clonie" is a narcissistic ode to the "apple of my eye, and "the only person I have ever loved"-- her own clone-- and "Won't you Please Be Nice" warns her man "if we part, I'll eat your heart, so won't you please be nice." "It's A Pose" is a rant against men, men, men! in general, whose thesis is that all men are pigs, so using the filthy swine for pleasure isn't really a problem. The second verse goes:

You’re preenin’ in your armchair
and I’m steamin’ at your knee
go on pontificatin’ like I care
Peter Lorre, then a story about AC/DC
Harvard-educated, frustrated dictator
tyrant with a PhD
. . . . . . . . .
but hey hey hey
that ain’t nothin’ to do with you
you’re a sensitive Joe, I’m forgettin’
but every woman knows
it’s a pose, just a pose, just a pose.

It's hard to say whether Nellie McKay will be able to live up to the promises she has made on "Get Away From Me." For all the accomplishment and bravado, it is still very much the product of someone young. A couple songs, notably "Work Song," which unconvincingly evokes the terror of a dead-end job, and "Inner Peace," in which McKay realizes she's not unique, make it clear that she has room to grow as a writer. As long as she can avoid the usual traps; spiralling off into craziness (like Anita O'Day, Tori Amos or Laura Nyro), drugs, (Anita O'Day again), or her own navel (Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, coffeehouse casualties everywhere), I expect the Nellie McKay of the future to be dangerously happy showstopping boatload of fun who sometimes scares us terribly.

Katie Melua's debut album "Call Off The Search" features a cover shot of her with dark curls and a black leather jacket, holding a nylon-string guitar and sitting on a stool under a single overhead light. The rest of the cover is black-- "none more" black. Just as precocious in her way as Nellie McKay (she already has had a #1 hit in Britain with "Closest Thing to Crazy"), Melua has chosen to explore the quieter side of jazz vocals with a fleet of songs mainly by songwriter Mike Batt, with covers of John Mayall and Randy Newman. Melua's album has already gone platinum in the UK, and it's clear that Universal is hoping to make Melua a crossover success, this year's sonic wallpaper for the Audi set's summer soirees.

It will be impossible for Melua to dodge comparison with Norah Jones since they are essentially mining adjacent claims. But where Norah has channelled her pop sensibilities toward country and tentative stabs at soul, Melua takes a different tack, pursuing the folkier sounds of Joni Mitchell, Nick Drake, and Van Morrison. And where Nellie McKay spends her time being explicit about everything she says-- to a fault-- Katie Melua is content to suggest, insinuate, and understate. The trouble is, there is a fine line between understatement and snoozing. "Call Off The Search" recalls at times Nick Drake's "Bryter Layter" and Van Morrison's "Veedon Fleece," two other albums which luxuriate in soft textures and barely upbeat tempos. However, "Bryter Layter" was redeemed by Drake's preternatually acute folk sensibility, and "Veedon Fleece" by Morrison's obessive journey to the center of his lyrics. Despite a few highlights-- the title track, the self-penned "Belfast," and "Closest Thing to Crazy," in general "Call off the Search" too often rolls over and goes to sleep.

The overall impression I get from this album is of some very pleasant and indeed beautiful arrangements marred by some fairly bad lyrics and boring writing. For example, "Tiger in the Night" includes the mediocre Blake re-write, "You are the tiger burning bright, deep in the forest of my mind, all my life I never knew, you were the dream I see come true, you are the tiger burning bright," over an arrangement that sounds a great deal like Van Morrison's "Linden Arden Stole the Highlights." "Mockingbird Song" attempts to revive the nursery rhyme with vodka shots that fail to rescue the song from triteness. "My Aphrodisiac Is You" aims to evoke the wonder of being in lust. Unfortunately, a mellow arrangement (especially an ill-considered soprano sax), Melua's languid delivery and an unfocused lyric sap "Aphrodisiac" of the visceral punch it ought to pack, considering the subject.

As mentioned, Melua's first single, "The Closest Thing to Crazy," is already a monster hit in Britain; in fact the Queen is even on record as liking it, and it is here we can see Melua's future if she's lucky. "Crazy" yokes the album's torpid sound to a nice lyric in the style of late period Elvis Costello, and Melua bites off the ends of lines ruefully, like she means it. It's easy to see why the song was a hit with a chorus that goes

This is the closest thing to crazy I have ever been
Feeling twenty-two, acting seventeen,
This is the nearest thing to crazy I have ever known,
I was never crazy on my own...
And now I know that there's a link between the two,
Being close to craziness and being close to you.

However, even here Melua's bravado vocal performance can't break through of the sleepy haze that envelops the arrangement, and the song ends up hamstrung by these limitations.

All this is not to say that Katie Melua isn't talented. Although her voice is not yet up to the heavy lifting that jazz singing requires (she has yet to develop a wide palette of vocal expression, her breath support is sometimes lacking, and her pitch can be hit or miss) if she can harness the earthy smokiness that comes so naturally to her and links it up with a better set of songs and more ambitious arrangements, I'd give her another listen. She is still developing as a songwriter, and unlike McKay, she hasn't yet had a chance to vet her songs in front of paying audiences night after night after night.

If I had to choose one of these two artists and place $500 on whose third album is more likely to be an all-time classic, I have to admit that I'd almost be stumped. On one hand, Nellie McKay has chutzpah and charisma coming out her ears, and those attributes get her through some flat patches of songwriting. But it's hard to tell whether she's emptied her clip on the first try; what comes next is either going to stun or suck. On the other hand, Katie Melua's first album is a workmanlike piece of folky jazz-blues that will go over huge at suburban PTA meetings and will probably be the listen of choice at cocktail parties in Vail, East Hampton, and Provincetown for the rest of the year. That practical assurance of success might get her through the difficult next phase of her development in which she finds her own voice, and if it does she may well end up an affable hybrid of Cassandra Wilson and Carole King. However, it may also be true that Melua is a one hit wonder of the British variety, blessed with one good song and a lifetime of resolute mediocrity.

As far as I'm concerned, the deck is stacked against artists who don't take chances. At nineteen you should be either too drunk or too stupid to know there are things you aren't allowed to do. A listen to some artists' early albums-- "Never Mind the Bollocks," the Clash, the Ramones, Elvis' first Sun sessions, even the Flaming Lips' long out of print first EP-- burn with a thrilling audaciousness born of wild ignorance. The artists I mentioned at the opening of this piece-- Ben Kweller and Erin McKeown-- first caught my ears because they were doing something it seemed they shouldn't be doing. The danger as I see it is that, for a young singer or songwriter, it's much easier to teach someone restraint than it is to teach them originality. Nellie McKay passes that test with flying colors, and although her next album could be a disaster, I am much less confident that Katie Melua's next album is going to even take that chance.

(also posted to blogcritics)

Ross emails from the great white north:

Weird little DNS errors prevent me from entering this, so I'm just forwarding it to you...

I am currently engaged in some serious R+R on the west coast, up in that Canada place. My gracious hosts have provided me with living quarters that are possibly larger than my house...I've been out on the water, over to the mountains; I've sat on docks watching birds, listened to locals asking for a birthday joint, seen the place where a local grower tragically crashed his harley two nights ago and killed his wife...been on a sailboat at 10:30pm, still in the light, trolling over a reef, catching nothing...i marvel at what my cousin and husband have been able to do out here...it occurs to me that we are all total pussies compared to him ;) i mean, i am typing this in the house he built by hand, a 3000 sqare foot house with beautiful hardwood floors on five acres with its own orchard and swimming hole and five hundred fee of split rail fence, two workshops, a sawmill (that made the lumber for the house)...and i have trouble just organizing my mail. ouch!

people out here just DO things. they do things a lot of people have forgotten how to do. there's ocean and water, children with bikes instead of video games, and everything has to come here on the ferry.

i'll be coming back in two days...

The AFI has released their list of the 100 top songs from movies of all time.

They did remember some of my favorites: "Puttin' on the Ritz" from Young Frankenstein, "Lose Yourself" from 8 Mile, "Springtime for Hitler" from The Producers, and the theme from "Goldfinger" all figure, as does "Rainbow Connection" and the theme from "Shaft." Nice work there.

However, I am hard to please, and I'm flabbergasted that some very worthy selections were passed over in favor of songs from "When Harry Met Sally...", "Beaches," and "Moulin Rouge". Beaches? Did you ever know that you're my hero? Bite my implants, Bette.

Among the reasons for my irritation (not that it takes much to irritate me these days) is that not making the cut is the single greatest film theme song of all time, no discussion allowed:

• Across 110th Street, Bobby Womack (Across 110th Street)

And let's not even mention these worthy candidates:

• Can You Picture That, Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem (The Muppet Movie)
• Stuck in the Middle With You, Stealers Wheel (Reservoir Dogs)
• Shout!, "Otis Day and the Knights" (Animal House)
• My Way, Sid Vicious (Sid & Nancy)
• Rock and Roll High School, The Ramones (Rock and Roll High School)
• Purple Rain, Prince (Purple Rain)

"Afghans Behead Taliban in Revenge for Beheadings".

This is not the way. Not at all.

It has been a busy few weeks for the Buckethead family. When I was laid off almost a month ago I dreamed that I would have a period of rest; a time to gather my scattered mental faculties into a pile, give them a light dusting and polishing, and sort them into neat ordered rows. I would do the job search, obtain remunerative and rewarding employment, and rejoin the working week. But as my personal savior John Belushi said, "But nooooo!"

Once I no longer had the excuse of going to work, I was expected to increase my participation in the management of the household. I was able to get several days' respite by "reorganizing the garage," but my wife soon saw through my cunning ruse. But even Mrs. Buckethead had to defer to my new master, the townhouse.

Long time readers will be aware that the townhouse has been something of an albatross for me. While it held out the hope of gleeful capitalist windfalls, it mostly was a black hole of time, effort and money. (Well, let's be fair - it was only a neutron star.) We had finally reached the point where we could rent the damn thing, when the dark clouds started gathering at the workplace. So, we did what any sensible people do when faced with uncertainty - grab for the cash.

But the process of selling our spare house, begun just before I was pink slipped, has proved to be just as much a burden as trying to rent it ever was. Fascist homeowner's associations, recalcitrant plumbing and the prejudices of others have kept me working until my fingers are nubs. One particularly egregious example: just yesterday Mrs. Buckethead and I disassembled our fence, and then immediately reassembled it six inches lower to satisfy an obscure codicil of the association covenant. All the while, my son sat in purgatory, or what toy sellers like to call the Megasaucer. A thousand minor details must all be attended to, so that weeks later, you (cross your fingers) get the cash. I'll need to get laid off from being laid off, just to recover from this harrowing experience.

Then there was the trip to Vegas. Naturally, the first thing one thinks of when one is unemployed is, "Hey, I need to go to Vegas!" What better use for now scarce funds than to buy an airline ticket a week in advance and fly to an entire city scientifically and methodically designed to devour every cent you have, or can easily borrow or steal? Normally, my common sense and prudence (also known as my wife) would preclude such a journey. Thank god for extenuating circumstances! My dear friend Jeff (an actual rocket scientist) had decided after seven years of dithering that the right time to get married was right after I became a government jobless statistic. I met Jeff in 1972. I was born in 1969. I have quite literally known him as long as I can remember. And he asked me to be in the wedding party. I had little choice but to take the hit. I had to go to Vegas.

I got up at 5:30 on Thursday to get to the airport. Arrived at 10:30 Vegas time. Goofed off, found the bachelor. Went to the bachelor party at eight in the evening. Met some fascinating women with wonderful personalities and lucrative careers in the arts. Got back to my hotel at 4:30am, twenty six hours after waking the previous day. Got exactly three hours of sleep before waking to a phone call from Mrs. Buckethead, who apparently didn't think too much about time zones.

Then we gambled. And drank. And drank and gambled. We saw the fountains at the Bellagio, the miniature Statue of Liberty, the smoked glass pyramid, the lions at the MGM, and the Venetian, which would have embarrassed even a Sforza. Outside, it was Times Square - old and new together - on crack. Hispanic street buskers handing out hooker's business cards. Silicone. Elvis. Inside, all the wonderful and clever cheese that is a thin disguise over some rather merciless interior design. Every path leads to gambling. It's uncanny. Free drinks as long as you're playing. Silicone, Elvis.

Then there was the wedding. I could tell you that it had a Brazilian carnivale theme. I could tell you that the minister was a transvestite Carmen Miranda and a Cuban accent. But you wouldn't get it. This picture will give you some idea of what was going on - this is the happy couple perhaps ten minutes into the holy and sacred institution of marriage:

The reception lasted until the wee hours of the morning. I had so much to drink, I even danced. I apologize to all those who had the misfortune to witness that. No one was permanently injured though, which makes it one of my more successful forays into interpretive dance. (By this series of movements, the white male shows his alienation both from soceity and himself. He demonstrates that even his body cannot be a comfortable home for his soul. Here, this movement satirizes the conventional notions of grace, aesthetics, and athleticism.)

In my spare time, I have read exactly one and a half books. All on the plane to and from Vegas. I have pursued the job search thingy - In fact I have a lead on what would be a stupendously fantastic job; failing that, there are still several other attractive options before me. All I have to do is survive until next Monday (when the deed is recorded and I get my cash) on $6.00 and the change under my couch cushions. Then, big money. And I apologize to all four of my loyal readers, who may have noticed my absence and suffered for the lack of a useful reason to say, "Jeebus, what a deranged mongoloid fuckwit!"

So that's what I've been doing on my summer vacation.

Scenes from the New York Times Magazine interview:

Q: We can't kill everyone who hates America!

A: We can kill a lot of them, particularly when they try to kill us.

Q: You recently created a stir when you defended the interrogation techniques at Abu Ghraib.

A: Most of the people in Mississippi came up to me and said: ''Thank Goodness. America comes first.'' Interrogation is not a Sunday-school class. You don't get information that will save American lives by withholding pancakes.

Q: But unleashing killer dogs on naked Iraqis is not the same as withholding pancakes.

A: I was amazed that people reacted like that. Did the dogs bite them? Did the dogs assault them? How are you going to get people to give information that will lead to the saving of lives?

Q: How do you feel about gay men adopting and raising children?

A: It's so important that children have parents or family that love them. There are a lot of adopted children who have loving parents, and it comes in different ways with different people in different states.

And there you have it. Kill the bad guys, gay marriage ok!, and it's not torture as long as the dogs didn't bite.

[wik] n.b. I originally included a darkly sarcastic analogy in the above to make it clear that I think Trent Lott is out of his damn tree if he's gotten around to splitting hairs on the torture issue by arguing that a) we don't know that the dogs ever attacked anyone, b) ergo, no torture, and c) they deserved whatever they got anyway, and who knows where those bite marks are from. However, the analogy was too unsavory and made me rather uncomfortable. Consequently, I just have to say it. Trent Lott is out of his damn tree if he thinks that using dogs-- the bitey kind or otherwise-- to threaten unconvicted, possibly average-Joe prisoners in the hopes of gaining (*stentorian Prussian voice*) in-formation is the right idea. At least two of my bloggin' buddies disagree with me on this point, but in 100% of cases I've heard of to date, I'm agin' it, and it makes me see red.

[alsø wik] Trent Lott thinks gay marriage is okay by him. Whoosh. I need a minute to process.

The uninspiringly-named "SpaceShipOne" has completed its maiden voyage at America's first licensed inland spaceport, ushering in the age of private space flight. All that remains now is for Bert Rutan's team repeat the feat twice in two weeks, each time carrying three people, and the X-Prize will be theirs. (Let's bask in this a bit... I'm sure we have about twelve hours of glory before al Jazeera, Reuters and the Berkeley Barb find some inane way to blame this success on 'the Jews'.)

Interestingly, SpaceShipOne is being financed the same way all the great voyages in the last few centuries have been: by immense reserves of private capital held by men (not so much women, yet) entranced in equal measure by the potential for profit and the fascination of discovery. In this case, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is the lucky man, to the tune of $20 millon so far. Who knows? Maybe Microsoft will go down as the Medici family of its time in this regard.

As Minister Buckethead has noted extensively on this weblog and in hours of beery pontification, the future of space flight lies in the private sector, where ambition, genius, and market forces can strip away the unnecessary crapola governments bring to the project. SpaceShipOne has taken the all-important first step. Congratulations to Scaled Composites, Bert Rutan, and to test pilot Mike Melvill.

Far be it for me to get all high and mighty about religious people, being a-religious myself, but the ongoing Catholic priest child-abuse scandal is just too much to take.

The Dallas Morning News is working on an investigation that has found that orders of priests (e.g. Franciscans) sometimes shipped known abusers overseas without notifying the receiving diocese of the priest's background, even though internal diocese records reflected known instances of child abuse. Not only has the Catholic' preisthoods' tradition of keeping its own house in order privately become a contempt for the well being of their flock, but it now turns out they can't be trusted to be straight with each other. A more pious man than I might draw from this lessons about the fallibility of humans and the imperfections inherent in human ethical and moral codes, but I just see a bunch of people letting terrible things go unpunished and then foisting the problem off on someone else.

It's big, it's ugly, and it needs to stop. NPR (yes, yes. Shut up.) coverage here.

Mr. EGERTON: One of the examples we'll be looking at in the first day of our coverage involves a priest named Frank Klep(ph), who had a long career working with the Salesians in youth institutions in Melbourne, Australia, and was repeatedly accused of sexual abuse. In the 1980s, the order moved him to Rome for a bit, a little cooling-off period, and then on to New York, and they wanted Frank Klep removed from duty with children, and in one sense he was. And he went back to Australia and he went right back to working, as the Salesians do, with poor and needy children. People began to go to the police at that point. Frank Klep was criminally convicted, got some community service time, went back to work again.

INSKEEP: As a priest?

Mr. EGERTON: As a priest all along. He is still a priest and he has admitted to us and to one of his victims that he did these things. Finally a new criminal i! nvestigation began later on in the 1990s, and his order moved him to Samoa and told his accusers that he was no longer in ministry, that he was in a very remote area, that he had no contact with children. And so we set out to simply test that claim. And we went to Samoa and the first day that we were there, my colleague went to church and saw children running up to Frank Klep after Mass, calling him by his first name. And he was pulling candy out of his pockets and handing it out to all the little kids. We later found that he was in very active ministry and sometimes tutors children alone in his bedroom.

INSKEEP: You found him there and talked to him, and he confessed to what he had done?

Mr. EGERTON: In one case he did. He denied all the others. He said that he didn't feel he was a threat to children any longer, that he had overcome whatever problems he had had in the past and didn't see that it was really a problem to be working with children.

! INSKEEP: Is Frank Klep the only Salesian priest you found with a rec ord like this?

Mr. EGERTON: No, no, not at all. Other cases that we'll discuss include a guy who started in Peru and has worked in at least six countries in the Western Hemisphere. He was sent to the archdiocese of Chicago with a specific letter of reference. We have the document saying that he has never showed any behavior that would give rise to concern about children's safety, and yet we have other documents from the Salesians showing that their own priests in a church disciplinary panel specifically said that he should never be allowed to work around children.

INSKEEP: Were there American priests who were shipped overseas?

Mr. EGERTON: Absolutely. Frequently, what we've seen are priests who worked for a long time in America but remained citizens of another country. They came here and, when trouble arose, there was an easy escape hatch, and that was to go back to their native lands.

INSKEEP: You've already told us of one case where someone outside the United States got in trouble and was shipped to the United States for a while.

Mr. EGERTON: That's right. It...

INSKEEP: Did that happen more than once?

Mr. EGE! RTON: Oh, yes, absolutely. Yeah, we found some folks who are still here, still here.

OMG! LOL! ROTFLMAO! YGBK! And other acronyms to express disbelief and hilarity!

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) -- Syria is preparing a law that would prohibit trade dealings with the United States in response to U.S. sanctions imposed on the Arab country last month, Syrian legislators said Saturday.

More than 130 members of the 250-seat legislature have prepared a draft of the "America Accountability Act" that would impose "strict sanctions" on American interests in Syria.

So... what? They're going to stop exporting terrorists?

Turns out, no.

Muhammad Habash, a lawmaker with moderate Islamic affiliations who is one of the campaigners for the draft law, said the law was meant to maintain the dignity of Syrians.

"We are not simple-minded to the degree that we imagine we can affect the great American economy," he said. "But we are able to maintain our dignity and slap the Americans so they know that if they continue with their arrogant policies, people everywhere around the globe will spit at them."

Good luck with that, folks. Hope it works out for you. (Thanks to blogmother Kathy Kinsley for the pointer.)

[wik] In yet another example of the uncanny interconnectedness of the world, Syria's decision will actually affect me directly. I bought a pair of discount slacks last week at Marshalls' that according to the tag were made in Syria. They're comfy and have enough room in the butt, so I won't be taking them back even though the little spangled Patriotism fairy on my shoulder tells me I should do so instead of supporting state-sponsored terrorism with my pants dollar. Under sanctions, this debate would be moot because there would be no more Terror Pants for me to buy. So, Syria. Nice job. Pretty soon everyone in the US will be walking around without any Terror Pants. Is that what you wanted?

[alsø wik] Goodwyfe Two-Cents was wondering whether the pants were just manufactured in Syria, or whether the wool and fabric were also domestically produced. It occured to me; maybe my pants were once just fibers, wrapped around a case of Sarin or a disassembled Scud bound from Tikrit. It'd be perfect! "No, no sir, just some wool for the Syrian trouser trade. Nothing to see here."

Just a crazy idea, I know. I'm full of 'em. Maybe I should go work for the State Department as Special Minister of Crazy Ideas that Just Might Be True.

[alsø alsø wik] One might ask: Are these sanctions a legitimate state action taken by the Syrian government in protest of US policy? Or is this whole thing just an orchestrated performance by the parliamentary puppets of the Syrian trouser concern to game the world market in single-pleated brown three-season wool slacks? Inquiring minds want to know!

[wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?] Then again, maybe State has enough of its own crazy ideas to deal with right now. I'd better steer clear.