I hear and obey, Dear Leader

North Korea has (it is claimed -- remember the "Uncle-fed-to-dogs" rumor of a while back) mandated that all males must have the Kim Jong Un hair cut. 

Far be it from me to fight city hall.

DuChamp Rides Again

Sunday morning, sun shining, still and cold; a toilet seat abandoned at a BP station.  Political comment or simple incompetence: you decide.




By early afternoon, it was gone.  McConnell says he's going to work it into his next book, somehow. I know we'll all be looking forward to that.

Blatant International Aggression

Bad timing in the world of international thought experiments.  If I were going to advocate for a large, well-armed, well-funded company country taking over a smaller, more primitive, and less-prepared neighbor, I wouldn't have done it right this month.  Nevertheless, author Diane Francis is apparently unapologetic for the opinions expressed in her book, Merger of the Century. She proposes nothing less than a US takeover of Canada.

Okay, she calls it a "merger", but we all know how that works out. Just ask the Philippines. Or Panama.  If we don't get enough respect from the Russian Federation over the Crimea thing, it's not hard to imagine Washington cooking up a distraction. We start by painting Rob Ford in darker and darker tones, internationally. Then we claim that "extremists" in Prince Edward Island are threatening our vital sources of shellfish.  There are some Iroquois First Nations people blockading roads right now (really), and we can say they're being brutally oppressed by a ruthless majority (they are, more or less, but that's beside the point).  We cozy up to the Quebec separatists, and then publish a CIA report that says this winter's weather was really manufactured in Ottawa.  We seize one of their warships and tow it to Pearl Harbor.  The forts at Michilimackinac, Mackinac Island, and Detroit are re-militarized. Littoral Combat Ships appear on the St. Lawrence. Armored vehicles are re-equipped to be poutine-resistant. Oh, it'll be just awful.

Anyway, it probably won't happen.  Probably.  But if I were Stephen Harper, I'd be looking for support from ... hmmm. Somebody. England, maybe?  Nah, they're too busy trying to scare the Scots into voting against devolution. Oh, I know: France! Canada can buy the two Mistral-class ships the French won't be selling to Russia. That'll scare us off.

Let's go McConnelling

If you don't know about McConnelling, just Google it.  I haven't got the energy to explain.

Hot Career Advice

A survey of hiring managers appears to indicate which words you should leave out of your resume.  Their list, while predictable, is nevertheless mildly amusing:

• best of breed
• go-getter
• think outside the box
• synergy
• go-to person
• thought leadership
• value add

The study didn't appear to stratify results by the domain of employers or the job types in question; I imagine that jobs that require an ability to babble mindlessly and spew buzz phrases -- areas such as marketing and sales --  and companies that exploit serve Government markets would, in fact, relish this sort of vocabulary.

The things the managers liked to hear were, again unsurprisingly, verbs. Words like "achieved" and  "created" were more attractive. However, in keeping with our relentless focus on the negative things in life, we were more interested in expanding on their list of naughty words. Here are some resume terms that would be unlikely to get you an interview with Wood-Charles.

• nolo contendere
• Sears
• monkey
• Ted Nugent
• DSM V
• Mayor of Toronto
• Spetsnaz
• dancing with the stars
• sexting
• high school yearbook
• Detroit

Same-gender marriage undecided still

2014 04 11: Update
Michigan was told that their pathetic attempt to demonstrate anything at all bad about gay parenting was ludicrous and "clearly unconstitutional". Now Utah is coming up on a court date, using the same unqualified hoonyack that Michigan tried to use.  It's a great chance to see whose Judges are smarter, at least.

---

After the close of testimony, the defense was optimistic in a lawsuit brought against the state of MI, seeking to have the ban on same-gender marriages declared unconstitutional. The judge had disallowed testimony from their star expert witness on the basis of his less-than-impressive credentials, forcing them to scramble for a more-respected authority.  They settled on a ten-year-old boy, Travis Bungle, whose work in social science is widely recognized throughout the Grand Rapids suburbs. His four-page, handwritten paper, Why I Hade Phagids, won the Agema Prize and the unanimous support of the Westboro Baptist Church. Its key assertion is that a disproportionate number of the children in same-gender households have cooties.

The judge, after having regained his composure, agreed to allow the youth's testimony on the grounds that "we could all use a laugh".

Getting out ahead of things

Boeing says there's more trouble with the 787. Hairline cracks in the wings. But the good news is, they're showing up in production. That is, the aircraft are suffering potentially critical defects before they're finished.  Nice.

Update: the world edition of COPS.

Putin says he was invited to invade the Crimea, and those aren't Russian troops, anyway. And he was only trying to distract the world's attention from all the sev 1 incidents the Indian Navy keeps opening on the floating (sometimes) rubbish they bought from him.

I swear to God, officer, some guy just ran up to my armored personnel carrier and threw all those soldiers in here! Those aren't MY mechanized infantry!

It's not too early

To start mocking the GOP candidates for 2016.  Right at the moment, it looks as though the people who might go up against Hilary Clinton whoever wins the Democratic nomination include:

• Rick Perry, Lunatic Governor of Texas
• Ted Cruz, Canadian Texas Senator
• Rand Paul, Son of a ... Son of Ron Paul  Kentucky Senator
• Ted Nugent, Lobotomy patient  aging musician
• Viktor Yanukovych, (apparently) ex-head of the Ukraine
• Rob Ford, Mayor of Toronto
• A pack of feral Chihuahuas from Phoenix

Michigan's own little bad boy, Dave Agema, has refused to say whether he'll run, since an obscure note in the Constitution forbids candidates to stand for election while being pelted with dung by members of their own party.

The old ways are the best ways

So let's say you're a dim-witted, authoritarian leader of a former world power. You want to show the world that your country is making a come back. Do you:

a) Liberalize your laws and move toward a pluralistic social structure?
b) Try to draw a veil over your country's despicable past?
c) Hire mercenary savages from the same ethnic group that previous tyrants employed, and dress them in their traditional costumes, complete with whips?

If you chose c), congratulations, you're qualified to run the Russian Federation.