Some dude in Mexico city has been caught with his girlfriend's torso in the closet and her leg in the fridge among other things.

An aspiring horror novelist was arrested after police discovered his girlfriend's torso in his closet, a leg in the refrigerator and bones in a cereal box, the city prosecutor's spokesman said Thursday.

Nearby they found the draft of a novel titled "Cannibalistic Instincts," said the official, who spoke on customary condition of anonymity.

Jose Luis Calva told police he had boiled some of his girlfriend's flesh but that he hadn't eaten it, the spokesman said...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 07:54 PM | Comments (11)
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I'm on the road to NYC to finally find an apartment.

Thanks for the donations so far!

I'll be around this weekend. Bringing my laptop this time, but probably slow blogging most of the time.

Posted by: Ace at 03:05 PM | Comments (23)
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Just another bleg. Thanks to all those who've sent donations so far; I appreciate it, and you'll be getting your thank yous. (In fact, for once, some already have.)

I always note this because it's true: I have a lot of readers. Well, not a huge amount, but a lot. About 5% or 10% seem to donate, and that's pretty sweet. They usually donate between $10 and $100.

But I always pine for the five buck solution: What if large number of readers donated some small amount like five bucks? Or even three? Small donations coming from a huge pile of readers adds up to genuine money pretty quickly.

I realize that a lot of people just don't feel like paying for a blog, or don't like putting their credit cards on line. Fair enough. But for anyone who's thinking "I"d like to donate something, but I don't have much," honestly, were half this site's readers to donate some small amount it would result in a huge pile of cash.

Huge pile of cash = Ace in a good mood = Ace making with teh funny and not whining so much.

I feel like a douche asking twice in one day, but I forgot to say this in the last post, and I think it should be said. If a three, five, or seven buck donation is all you think the site is worth, please don't refrain just because you think it's a small amount and not worth it. It is a relatively small amount, but still appreciated. And if all those who were thinking "Well, the site's okay, but not worth more than three bucks to me, so what's the point?" overcame that and just donated that amount, well, I don't want to say I'd be on easy street, but it would be a great big pile o' cash that I could use to buy Hobo Traps and Hobo Restraints.

Posted by: Ace at 01:31 PM | Comments (56)
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In an earlier post today by DrewM, honoring LT. Michael Murphy USN, who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his selfless and heroic actions to save the lives of the men in his command, reader and commenter Sgt. Seavey mentioned having been a participant in the ceremony of the awarding of this same honor to an Army Captain, CPT. Ben Salomon, USA.

The story of Captain Salomon's heroic actions in defense of his position and the wounded patients in his charge, may be found here, and I am grateful to Sgt. Seavey for pointing me to this amazing story.

Long story short. Captain Salomon and his units, the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 105th Infantry Regiment were targeted for a vicious counter attack by Japanese forces upon their tenuous position on the beaches of Saipan. Captain Salomon defended his position, and those in his care tenaciously, and very likely killed 100 enemy combatants or more who assaulted his position.

In so doing, he suffered seventy-six bullet wounds, of which a doctor who examined him stated that at least twenty four had occurred before he died.

He had dragged a heavy machine-gun several times, while wounded, to defend his men. Before him lay ninety-eight dead Japanese soldiers.

The attack, and the resulting casualties, were so horrific, that for decades, despite the best efforts of good men who only wanted to do the right thing, the honors this valiant man rightly deserved fell by the wayside, into the chasm of war and lost remembrance.

This error was properly righted in May of 2002.

Rest in peace Captain Salomon, USA. Rest in peace LT. Murphy, USN. Your sacrifices are not forgotten.

Posted by: Dave In Texas at 01:30 PM | Comments (5)
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I'd been meaning to note this for a while, but I was prompted by a comment to finally do so.

Patrick H wrote:

If before the war began the Pentagon and the President had known that it would cost less than 4,500 US lives to win the war and secure he peace, I think it's likely they would have still chosen to go to war. It's legitimate to argue that Iraq isn't worth a single US death, but as far as wars go this one has cost very few American lives considering the size of the task.

I don't know if I'd've been so sanguine; my guess was 2500 lives, a number we blew past a long time ago, and based on the assumption that Saddam had WMDs, which he did not. Which I think we have to take as a fact, pretty much, at this point, barring some major revelation that I wouldn't count on. Did he want WMDs? Yes. Did the program continue to exist in the "wills" of his scientists, as they said (i.e., they could reconstitute the program the moment sanctions were off, and intended to do so)? Yes.

And yet, it was true -- not that we knew this, or could know it -- that Saddam's WMD program was in fact more or less "contained" under the previous sanctions regime.

His support of terrorists...? Not so much, but the connections there are still not entirely proven. Though there is plenty of suggestive information about it.

We have to win now, but I don't know that knowing what i know now I would have supported this. One bad effect, among many others, is our skittishness in dealing with Iran, remember. We'd hoped this would serve notice to Iran; but as th war has worn on, it has been taken as green light by Iran, as we just don't have the manpower to take on another major war at the moment.

This is one of my sources of frustration with the left: They have gotten as much political credit as is necessary over this. I think most Americans would not have supported the war if they knew what they know now, and that helps the liberals.

So even if the US wins the war, the liberals still win, mostly, and the Republicans are still seen as not nearly infallible on these issues. So politically, whatever happens, the left wins, we lose.

But that's enough for them. Even having substantially won this argument in the minds of the public, they demand nothing short of full and complete US defeat and a wildly unstable middle east, just to get their full measure of political vindication.

Seems to be trading an awful lot for a couple extra senate seats, doesn't it?

But it's always about abortion, and abortion is more important than whether the US emerges from this with a much stronger strategic position or a disastrously weaker one. Gotta get those senators, gotta keep abortion, even if the world should burn for that.

The left has won all it can win, through natural effects alone, from the prolonged war in Iraq. But they seem to want more than what natural, inevitable effects would engender; they seem hell-bent on forcing a full defeat, just to boost their foreign-policy ratings by a marginal amount, and subtract from the GOP's foreign-policy ratings by an equally marginal amount.

I have difficulty crediting these bastards as "True Patriots" when they seem determined to lose an extraordinarily important war when it could be won simply so they can say "I told you so."

Posted by: Ace at 01:16 PM | Comments (71)
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A special love-attachment for those hard to reach nooks and crannies, but for the ladies only.

Any guy who's tried this knows it's a one-way ticket to the ER and some very embarrassing insurance paperwork. Blue Cross, for example, doesn't cover sticking your shank into household appliances.

An Ananova article, fairly tame and discreet, but perhaps not entirely safe for work.

Thanks to Del.

Posted by: Ace at 12:46 PM | Comments (39)
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Such enormously optimistic news Allah's not sure if he should believe it or even mention it, because if it's real, he may jinx it.

Long has been the hope that what happened in the Anbar Awakening could also happen among the vengeance-minded Shiites. Even Time magazine is forced to confront the possibility of disaster, aka the possibility of peace and stability in Iraq:

The vaunted U.S. strategy in Anbar province that has put a dent in Al Qaeda in Iraq involved establishing ties with Sunni tribes. But there has always been skepticism whether the same strategy would work in Shi'ite areas of the country. However, that may be changing. In Musayyib, 40 miles south of Baghdad and not far from the holy city of Karbala, American officers are taking advantage of a network of "concerned citizens" in this predominantly Shi'ite area to help quell violence stemming from both Sunni insurgents and erratic elements of powerful Shi'a militias. Just as in Anbar, it was the tribes that asked the Americans for help.

Over the past two months these "concerned citizens" groups have manned checkpoints and established a network of informants that have helped keep out Sunni extremists and finger Shi'ite militants who assassinate rivals and set bombs on roadways to kill American soldiers. While leaders concede that operations in surrounding areas and a growing public antipathy toward the radicals have contributed to diminishing violence, they point to the numbers and say the civilian patrols are having an effect. Soldiers say 57 improvised explosive devises, or IEDs, exploded or were discovered in May. In August, however, only six went off or were found. "It's pretty much shut 'em down," says Maj. Craig Whiteside, the executive officer for the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Batallion.

Seeing a window of opportunity in their own sector, officers quickly mobilized, taking cues from the Anbar program and redesigning it to fit local conditions, enlisting volunteers from the town of Musayyib and surrounding villages to be part of ad-hoc militias supported and paid by the U.S. military. It's still a work in progress and sometimes dangerously clumsy. Members of the American battalion here recently shot and killed three of the new local volunteers at a checkpoint just north of town, saying they mistook them for insurgents planting roadside bombs.

The volunteer militias sprang up here in Babil province over the last two months under local leadership after the tribes saw successes scored by Sunni tribesmen in adjacent Anbar Province. Those homegrown groups in Anbar turned on al-Qaeda and teamed up with American forces to clear their regions of extremists, or at least put them on the run, reaping a windfall of American aid money in the process. What has surprised military officials about the groups around Musayyib, though, is that they are Shi'ite or of mixed sect, containing both Sunnis and Shiite residents who rejected the excesses of the Jaish al Mahdi, the Shi'ite militia nominally loyal to anti-American cleric Moqtada al Sadr. Almost 500 Shi'ites and at least as many Sunnis have already signed on. Shi'ite communities in the capital of Baghdad are also reportedly growing unhappy with al-Sadr's militia.

The newly armed and deputized groups have contributed to the biggest dip in violence and the lowest casualty rates since the battalion arrived a year ago. "Fewer of my guys have been killed than at any time before," Lt. Col. Robert Balcavage told TIME. Balcavage, commander of the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 25th Division, said the locally organized Sunni groups have already driven al-Qaeda out of the urban areas and into a rough no-man's land to the north, sandwiching them precariously between his paratroopers and elements of the 10th Mountain Division. In and around Musayyib to the south, the Shi'ite groups have manned checkpoints along roadways that once hid bombs. Since late July, roughly about the time the militias started working, no one has attacked the paratroopers there.

While the real key to stability in the region is training and fielding Iraqi police and army forces loyal to the central government instead of their particular tribe or sect, officers say the concerned citizen militias create a surge effect, picking up some of the slack and creating a pipeline for new and better qualified recruits.

As I've remarked before, the MSM and left have spurned George S. Patton's advice to not imagine the enemy as supermen. Long have they imagined that the US -- and only the US -- could be fatigued and demoralized by a prolonged bloody conflict. It didn't seem to ever register at any moment that the Sunnis and Shiites too might weary of war, tire of endless fighting and bloodshed, and might also concoct their own "exit strategies" from the carnage.

I've forgotten that myself at the bleakest moments of the war.

It's hard to imagine it at this point, after so many deaths, so many flag-draped coffins coming home to the US, but the fact is: This really could work, the war really could end, and on terms favorable to the US -- and to Iraqis and causes of freedom and human dignity as well.

Posted by: Ace at 12:36 PM | Comments (28)
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Max Boot on the "Problem From Hell."

Bryan first opposes the resolution calling the genocide a genocide, finally, and then backtracks a bit.

The problem here is that conservatives are taking a somewhat inconsistent position on "moral clarity." To be honest, I think this is one of those principles it is quite wise to be inconsistent about; moral clarity is important, yes, when it advances your interests and undermines your enemies, but less so when it is contrary to your interests and helps your enemies and strains relations with your semi-allies.

It's a complicated question, but I'm not sure that saying this isn't the right time is the best reason to oppose the resolution -- this has been proposed or considered for at least ten years, probably more, and it's never the right time. It's never a good time to alienate the one quasi-secular Muslim semi-democracy in the world. It may be true that of all the bad times for this this is the very worst of all bad times; that seems to be true. But I don't think it's really a clean call, and stridency on the issue, and imputations of bad faith on the part of the Democrats pushing for this, may for once be somewhat suspect. Perhaps they do have bad faith; perhaps they are proposing this now, again, precisely because it's such a bad time for it, in hopes of further advancing their cause of military defeat in Iraq; perhaps they wish to show that for once they too can demonstrate "moral clarity" in a callous bit of political theater.

Perhaps. But there was a genocide, and it's never been officially recognized as such by the US. I don't suppose a paper resolution helps matters much, and perhaps, yes, this is again the wrong time, the wrongest of times, for it; but it's a dicey call given our general, if nuanced, belief in the power of moral clarity.

I guess some nuance is warranted here. Opposing the resolution seems to me to be a pretty defensible position, given the high stakes in alienating our semi-ally Turkey, but it's hard to be huffy and righteous about doing so.

Posted by: Ace at 12:20 PM | Comments (90)
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Is this a big deal?

61% of 33 name brand lipsticks had detectable lead levels of 0.03 to 0.65 ppm lead levels.

The USFDA recommendation is 0.1 ppm.

hmmm..

Did kissing L'Oreal girls make me dumb?

Somebody did.

Posted by: Dave In Texas at 12:04 PM | Comments (12)
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...even though this was part of his incredibly lenient plea deal. Rep. Rohrbacher is encouraging the Justice Department to demand he fulfill this obligation -- especially if he's going to be a national security adviser to President Hillary! Clinton. Might be good to encourage him in his encouragements.

Good time to re-link this, which I always thought was one of my better pieces, but so few seemed to agree: Mystical Artifacts Removed From Top-Secret Government Warehouse; Sandy Berger Claims "Mishandling" of Ark of the Covenant "Entirely Inadvertent".

Posted by: Ace at 11:51 AM | Comments (8)
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