Tuesday Worldfarts

A quick roundup of my mini-blogosphere:

The Maximum Leader invites you into his time machine.

Another interesting series of photos accompanies this post over at Higo Blog. Unfortunately, the final pic looks to be of Hagrid with a boner. Gee... thanks, Adam.

A moderate liberal take on the Clarke flap at Peking Duck.

Lots of good material at Winds of Change. First: where to assign blame for 9/11? Next: a fascinating (for religion students) article by Robin Burk re: Lord Carey, the ex-Archbishop of Canterbury, who made some rather critical remarks about Islam. I might want to deal with this issue more in my Friday post.

Guest blogger CVE of Anticipatory Retaliation has comments about the Condi Rice flap. His verdict: the coverup is always worse than the scandal. I'd have to agree. Didn't anyone learn from Arnold's grope-pology? Arnold got out there fast when he learned that some women were accusing him. He issued a public, generic, largely content-free apology that left key issues unresolved but performed the strategic work of getting him in office. The more this administration hems and haws over whether Rice should testify, the worse things look. Ditto for over-defensive reactions to perceived threats (I'll let liberals jump all over that statement). Whether we're talking about domestic PR or diplomatic capital on the international scene, these are the kinds of impressions that count. "Style over substance," you say? Of course-- and I agree with you. But that's part of what politics is all about. As the old wisdom goes: Washington is Hollywood for ugly people.

Very interesting Tacitus post on Christian self-perceptions in Jordan and Israel.

Annika has me rolling with this lovely Photoshopping of the new, thickening Britney Spears.

KBJ on reasonable thinking about the Iraq war and just-war theory.

John Moore offers a decidedly different take on the Condi Rice/Clarke issue.

Instapundit sees it differently from Moore.

And now: your Hominid update.

My senses of taste and smell haven't returned yet, but I'm no longer afflicted with chills, fever, nastily sore throat, and slight nausea. I no longer cough up huge, dark blobs of congealed mucus, nor do I find it hard to swallow. Was well enough to teach on Monday, even though I looked and sounded shittier than usual. Today was an improvement over yesterday, but my nose is still stuffed and my voice still sounds much deeper (and therefore sexier!) than normal. Unfortunately, most of the SWU campus seems to have caught my illness, so runny noses, fevers, and coughs are everywhere. I guess this is a good time for... phlegmatic endurance.

Haw haw.

Ah, your silence, your eye-rolling-- they reveal much. Yes, I see I've gotten you so thoroughly conditioned to intense scatological imagery that a simple Disneyfied pun is as ineffective as giving coffee to a crackhead.

So let me tell you about my extremely productive anus, which has been especially entertaining over the past few days.

Although today's glorious jet of diarrhea smacked the toilet water hard enough to produce a sound akin to a moist thud, first prize has to be awarded to yesterday evening's diarrhea, the horrifying results of which I had the good fortune to see-- and therefore to relate to you.

Diarrhea is nature's way of reminding us that, sometimes, There Are Unscheduled Launches. Luckily, I was master of my internals for most of the day, and didn't feel any particular urge to evacuate the plumbing even while at Min-sung's place. But once I got home, the situation changed dramatically, and one of my very first acts upon entering the domicile was to lumber/waddle to the bathroom, settle myself magisterially upon my Throne of Power, and let fly a ghastly torrent of Sauron-scale filth that would have produced a thousand Uruk-hai in the breeding dens of Saruman.

You'd think a man would outgrow the urge to stand up, turn around, and look at his ass's latest attempt at a Jackson Pollock repro. What I saw yesterday was truly amazing: the shotgun splatter pattern-- more violent than usual-- was a full, deep charcoal everywhere above the level of the toilet water, and the toilet water itself was obsidian-black. Even Yoda popped his head into the bathroom and declared, "This place is strong with the dark side of the Force. A domain of evil it is."

The blackness of the toilet water wasn't what struck me: the fact that the splatter pattern above the waterline was so dark-- that's what had me worshipping myself. Normally, the splatter pattern is too diluted to be more than chocolate-brown. The fact that utter blackness speckled and splotched the inside of my toilet bowl was a testament to the absolute purity of my asshole's evil.

Shitting is one of those skills for which the compliment "I knew you had it in you" was developed. It's a skill that, like the game Othello, is "a minute to learn, a lifetime to master." At this point, NO ONE IS RATED HIGH ENOUGH TO JUDGE THE LEVEL I'VE ATTAINED.

FUCK YOU ALL!

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