Here's what I did all weekend long: I played every bit of "Bruce Dickenson's" dialogue from the cowbell sketch, in between playing actual cowbell and Blue Oyster Cult's (Don't Fear) The Reaper.

It's about time someone put these precious resources up for easy access.

Thanks to Allah.

Posted by: Ace at 07:55 AM | Comments (4)
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Great idea. The Offense Meter rises to Orange as Islamists continue to get the Danes to apologize for not being Muslims.

The only problem is that it actually contains degrees of offense. There really are no distinctions between their perptual feelings of outrage.

A proper Islamist offense meter should include nothing but high offense, like "Ranting," "Frothing," "Crazed," "Murderously Insane," "Just Set Fire To A Goat That Looked Slightly Jewish," etc.

Thanks to JohnS.

Posted by: Ace at 07:52 AM | Comments (7)
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Said on Real Time With Bill Maher, sort of a celebrity Special Olympics of punditry.

Reminiscent of Al Franken on the Late Show last October, on Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, actor Ben Affleck charged that President Bush “probably also leaked” Valerie Plame's name and so “if he did, you can be hung for that! That's treason!” In full rant, an apoplectic Affleck asserted: “You could be killed. That's not a joking around Tom DeLay 'I'll do a year, I bribed the state officials with corporate money.' That's like they shoot you in the battlefield for doing that.”

You know what else you can be hanged for? Gigli.

Video plus more ranting about Tom Delay at the link.

Posted by: Ace at 07:45 AM | Comments (37)
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Pretty surprising. But then, the Washington Post has, even while being a liberal-leaning paper, attempted to be a straight-shooter and not make its double-standards too untenable. Unlike the New York Times, of course.

PRESIDENT BUSH was right to approve the declassification of parts of a National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq three years ago in order to make clear why he had believed that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons. Presidents are authorized to declassify sensitive material, and the public benefits when they do. But the administration handled the release clumsily, exposing Mr. Bush to the hyperbolic charges of misconduct and hypocrisy that Democrats are leveling.

...

...

The affair concerns, once again, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV and his absurdly over-examined visit to the African country of Niger in 2002. Each time the case surfaces, opponents of the war in Iraq use it to raise a different set of charges, so it's worth recalling the previous iterations. Mr. Wilson originally claimed in a 2003 New York Times op-ed and in conversations with numerous reporters that he had debunked a report that Iraq was seeking to purchase uranium from Niger and that Mr. Bush's subsequent inclusion of that allegation in his State of the Union address showed that he had deliberately "twisted" intelligence "to exaggerate the Iraq threat." The material that Mr. Bush ordered declassified established, as have several subsequent investigations, that Mr. Wilson was the one guilty of twisting the truth. In fact, his report supported the conclusion that Iraq had sought uranium.

...

As Mr. Fitzgerald pointed out at the time of Mr. Libby's indictment last fall, none of this is particularly relevant to the question of whether the grounds for war in Iraq were sound or bogus. It's unfortunate that those who seek to prove the latter would now claim that Mr. Bush did something wrong by releasing for public review some of the intelligence he used in making his most momentous decision.

Wow. At least one major media outlet has resisted full-blown Bush Derangement Syndrome.

Thanks to Allah.

Posted by: Ace at 02:02 PM | Comments (65)
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For a couple of years I've been parodizing MSM headlines spinning the economy into something bad.

I guess today's parody becomes tomorrow's headline for the MSM:

If a high-fat cholesterol-laden snack doesn't trigger a heart attack, then a healthy economy just might.

The risk of a fatal heart attack rises when the U.S. economy strengthens and increases further if macroeconomic conditions remain robust over the next several years, according to a study published last month.

The death rate rises in the year the economy expands and grows further if the lower rate of joblessness is maintained, Christopher Ruhm wrote in his study.

A 1 percentage point drop in unemployment is estimated to raise mortality by 1.3 percent or 2,515 additional deaths per year from heart attacks, the study showed. The mortality rate is similar for males and females.

The 20-44 age group is at a relatively higher risk than older persons, especially if the economic upturn is sustained.

Ruhm, an economics professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, used the example of a six-month stint working in another city for what that individual sees as a great opportunity.

"During that period of time chances are you are working so much you are not exercising, haven't had a chance to join a gym, you're eating out a lot, maybe smoking more," Ruhm said by phone from North Carolina.

So, I guess my parody wasn't such a parody at all.

Thanks to James.

Posted by: Ace at 09:17 AM | Comments (44)
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Caveats: 1, it's reported by all-around douchebag Seymour Hersh, and 2, the fact that there's a "plan" to do something doesn't mean there's an intention. We have "plans," somewhere, either already approved and reviewed or being drawn up at any time to deal with any situation, with any sort of weapons. There's a "plan" to invade England somewhere floating around the Pentagon, if they don't stop making Mr. Bean movies.

But I'm glad that someone in the DoD is getting serious:

The Bush administration is planning to use nuclear weapons against Iran, to prevent it acquiring its own atomic warheads, claims an investigative writer with high-level Pentagon and intelligence contacts.

President George W Bush is said to be so alarmed by the threat of Iran's hard-line leader, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, that privately he refers to him as "the new Hitler", says Seymour Hersh, who broke the story of the Abu Ghraib Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal.

Some US military chiefs have unsuccessfully urged the White House to drop the nuclear option from its war plans, Hersh writes in The New Yorker magazine. The conviction that Mr Ahmedinejad would attack Israel or US forces in the Middle East, if Iran obtains atomic weapons, is what drives American planning for the destruction of Teheran's nuclear programme.

Hersh claims that one of the plans, presented to the White House by the Pentagon, entails the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites. One alleged target is Iran's main centrifuge plant, at Natanz, 200 miles south of Teheran.

Although Iran claims that its nuclear programme is peaceful, US and European intelligence agencies are certain that Teheran is trying to develop atomic weapons. In contrast to the run-up to the Iraq invasion, there are no disagreements within Western intelligence about Iran's plans.

This newspaper disclosed recently that senior Pentagon strategists are updating plans to strike Iran's nuclear sites with long-distance B2 bombers and submarine-launched missiles. And last week, the Sunday Telegraph reported a secret meeting at the Ministry of Defence where military chiefs and officials from Downing Street and the Foreign Office discussed the consequences of an American-led attack on Iran, and Britain's role in any such action.

The military option is opposed by London and other European capitals. But there are growing fears in No 10 and the Foreign Office that the British-led push for a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear stand-off, will be swept aside by hawks in Washington. Hersh says that within the Bush administration, there are concerns that even a pummelling by conventional strikes, may not sufficiently damage Iran's buried nuclear plants.

When an unthinkable horror threatens, an unthinkable response suddenly becomes a lot more thinkable.

Much Too Late For Goodbyes? Thanks to Allah, via LGF: Soviet/Ukranian nukes may already have been sold to Iran. Up to 250 of them are unaccounted for.

Posted by: Ace at 05:41 PM | Comments (98)
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Since I so heavily praised the movie earlier, I thought I would note a few caveats. more...

Posted by: Ace at 04:14 PM | Comments (18)
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Strategy Page has what they say is a letter from the British Ambassador to Moscow to a Lord Pembroke. It contains a fun but dirty double-entendre.

It's slightly hard to read, but Brett has transcribed it: more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:21 PM | Comments (50)
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The film, for reasons I cannot fathom, was deemed "inappropriate" for a population of caged sodomaniacal felons.

The prison is also investigating the propriety of displaying certain other films, such as Howard Hawks' 1935 classic, How To Make A Shiv And Gut The Guard That Always Hassels You In The Yard, Ron Howard's 1991 box-office bomb Smuggling Cigarettes And Methamphetamines In Your Girlfriend's Ass, and the Drew Barrymore/Adam Sandler romantic comedy Tossed Salads.

They expressed "no problems," however, with the cop-buddy film Rimjob, starring Martin Lawrence and Nick Cage.*

* Blame LauraW for that. She's just filthy.

Posted by: Ace at 01:26 PM | Comments (23)
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And another Call of Cthulhu adventure idea:

A 300-year-old book that appears to be bound in human skin has been found in northern England, police said Saturday.

The macabre discovery was made on a central street in Leeds, and officers said the ledger may have been dumped following a burglary.

Detectives were trying to trace its rightful owner and believe it may have been taken from a dwelling in the area.

Much of the text is in French, and it was not uncommon around the time of the French Revolution for books to be covered in human skin.

The practice, known as anthropodermic bibliopegy, was sometimes used in the 18th and 19th centuries when accounts of murder trials were bound in the killer's skin.

Oh, man. Accounts of murder trials were bound in the killer's skin? That's a horror-story plot just waiting to happen.

Related: Everest expedition discovers new species:

Here's a sampling of the outlandish critters [Gallery]:

-- Giant hornets so deadly locals call them "Yak Killers"
-- Jumping "Yeti" mice
-- A new grasshopper species in which the males hitch piggy-back rides on the females

I like that.

---Baby blue-faced golden monkeys, the region's largest primates
---Hamster-like pikas that eat their own feces

Wowzers. A hamster that eats its own crap.

A couple of new frog species, eight new insect species, and ten new species of ants to add the more than 11,000 already known.

Don't we have enough ants?

This link is to a gallery of pictures and sketches of the new species.

A red panda, which zoologists are having trouble categorizing, as it may be related to raccoons, bears, or even skunks. Or it could be unrelated to any of them, and come from its own isolated branch of the tree of life.

A golden monkey.

A serow, whatever that is, looking all spooky.

The giant "yak killer" hornet, growing up to two inches long. The thing stings with venom that dissolves human flesh -- necrotizing venom, I think it's called -- and is potent enough to kill a yak.

The male grasshopper piggy-backing on a female. Apparently not just because he's lazy, but to keep other males from mating with her. Scientists are torn between naming it the "Stalker Grasshopper" or the "Cockblocking Cricket."

And finally, that "yeti mouse," which isn't really as fearsome as I'd hoped:

I wish it had big fangs that could be used to bite out a human's neck after jumping up, but no, it's just a cute little mouse with a name that greatly overstates its combat abilities.

Ace of Spades HQ -- your source for pulp-adventure plots and incidental elements.

Posted by: Ace at 12:50 PM | Comments (32)
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