"We Need To Attack Iran" By Henry, A Goldfish

Iran seems to be building some kind of nuclear device, and time is running out to stop them. We have to attack now, before they can complete a weapon. Sure we don't know all the details. But there are too many experts worried about this thing for them to just be flat-out wrong, you know? WHOA! Where the hell did that little plastic diver come from? Was that thing always here? It is awesome! Look, it's even got a little box of treasure sitting next to him. Priceless.

Anyway, our intelligence people pretty much know where the Iranians have their equipment squirreled away. These folks are trained professionals. They have satellite photos, signals intercepts, and human agents crawling all over that country. With their information, we're going to be able to conduct pinpoint strikes and cripple the nuclear program. There won't be blowback on this thing. Really. That's not even an issue. HOLY FUCK, wouldja look at that!? It's like, some kind of man... IN A DIVE SUIT! That is just the most interesting thing I've seen all day. It's great someone snuck in here and put it into my bowl. Really brightens the place up.

There is no way for an attack on Iran to go wrong. The citizens of that country want us to attack, really. They'll probably just topple their leaders and build some kind of democracy. Then, they can help us fight the terrorists in the region. Maybe they'll even let us build a base there and train their new army. That would be perfect. HI THERE, LITTLE DIVER DUDE! When did you get here? Whatcha got there, a pirate treasure? ARRGH, MATEY! Man, that is awesome. Just plopped down when I wasn't looking, didn't you? Where was I? Oh yeah...

Liberators. Mark my words. We'll be greeted as liberators.

(Photo by Luis Miguel Bugallo Sanchez used under Creative Commons license - information here. Goldfish idea inspired by an Ani DiFranco song.)

Dimpled Vengeance

This is my contribution to the meme. For others, go here.

A Message To The Tea Party From King George III

I was right about you lot. You just don't want to pay your bills, do you?

At the time I had doubts, of course. I was pretty cheesed off you weren't willing to pony up the money to help pay all that debt from the French and Indian War. Especially since the whole time we were over there protecting your bony asses. Ha! Sending troops overseas to help a bunch of people who act like they're your enemies. Wonder what that's like, huh?

Anyway I was mad at the time. Still, there was this little voice in the back of my head saying, "Now Georgie, you have to be a bit compassionate. These people don't have any representation. They don't hire the army or control what they do. Of course they don't want to pay for them."

That was complete nonsense. Because now, your country has its own military -- bigger and more invadey than mine ever was, by the way. You elect your own president to send them all over hell and creation, you stick those goofy yellow ribbons on your vehicles to show how much you care about them... and yet you still don't want to pay for them.

They're your redcoats, you know. The whole government's yours. And all you have to do is keep it running. Maybe you want it to be smaller, sure. I understand that. But in the end, you people -- all you people -- have to come together and make the sort of compromises necessary to keep it afloat. Many of you want to keep a massive military, low taxes, and full entitlement benefits. And that means you either discover a kind of math no one's heard of yet, or you run the whole nation into a wall.

When you're young it's cute to be an angry revolutionary who wants to tear the whole state down without a clue what you're going to put into its place. But you're more than 200 now. Act your age. Put on your big boy pants and get this sorted.

Because we are not going to take you back.

The Ayn Rand Investigation Continues...

Below are my notes from the ongoing investigation of Ayn Rand (If you haven't, begin reading the original posts here). I'm sorry I haven't been able to make sense of this. It's... too much. Please just read, and draw your own conclusions. I'll write more when I am stronger. When I've rested. - Paul

Recall of specific plot devices, characters, and scenes within the text are all within 1 to 2% of control texts. However people who identify themselves as “Objectivists” or sympathetic to Objectivism display a markedly higher retention rate of exact quotations of the text which are proverbial in nature. When organized into discussion groups (during Phase 2), subjects repeat quotations, spreading them throughout community, possibly at an exponential rate (Several flaws in methodology prevented a definitive study – we simply hadn’t expected anything like this). New Hypoth.: Books by this author act as delivery vehicles for a kind of rapidly-propagating series of behavioral norms, disconnected from all emotional content in material and all conflicting information from group. Concepts are simple, self-reinforcing, and quickly assimilate and destroy alternate cognitions. Almost virally. (Note: Check with D at Oxf. about this). The spread of the contagion is only limited by the speed of communication itself. Theoretically, if subjects could share ideas over some kind of global, widespread media, it’s possible that a small, determined group could spread concepts indefinitely. One is perhaps thankful this isn’t possible. – Dr. Francis Buer, RESEARCH NOTES for Communication and Context, September-Oct 1975

You don’t know the history of psychiatry. I do. Psychiatry is a pseudoscience, and I know all about it. If I told you what I know you would have about five seconds to realize how totally inadequate your pathetic human brain was, before a massive aneurysm killed you and turned your central nervous system into a thick pulp that smelled almost exactly like lilacs. – Tom Cruise, June 24, 2005 (italics edited out/unaired, because of feedback interference)

You’d hear a sound, like a low wail. And the smell of ozone was everywhere. I saw one of the extras actually piss himself one time, when it happened. There were lights. And, and, a feeling
you got. Like something very wrong had happened. No one ever went into the trailer on Days of Thunder. Not ever. - Anonymous Kraft services worker, quoted in reporter’s notes for an article to be published in Variety in June 1991. Article killed. Name of reporter withheld, at request of the FBI, pending investigation of his disappearance in 2008.

We didn’t do the things you’re accusing us of. You’ve heard the Americans are a different story, of course, especially with that new one who just joined from ABC. But he brought his unorthodox, sometimes brutal methods with him, and we began to quickly become concerned that, hold on (PAUSE)… I’m sorry. My counsel tells me I shouldn’t answer any further questions unless you can provide comprehensive protection. Put me in prison! Go ahead. You have no idea what these people are capable of. – Rebekah Brooks, excised from transcript of interview with the Metropolitan Police of London, 18 July 2011

I was told to remove the cushions and dispose of them after the show. The shoe prints had scorched or burned the fabric in some way. Just looking at it made me feel queasy, like I had really bad motion sickness… along with this incredible feeling of sadness and despair. I bagged them up and took them out to the dumpster. A man with a thick, curly moustache was there, like he knew I was coming. He took the bag from me and told me not to tell another living soul what happened. When I hesitated to answer, he punched me in the stomach, harder than I’d ever been hit. “The question isn’t who is going to let me,” he whispered, while I lay there gasping. “It’s who is going to stop me.” – Anonymous production assistant quoted in Oprah: the Magic and the Madness, a nonfiction book proposal submitted in 2006 by author George Kornby, whereabouts unknown.

My God! It’s full of Stossels. – Steven Daye, the original Dr. David Bowman, during first script run-through (Sept., 1967) on the set of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Unconfirmed reports say Daye became visibly ill, excused himself and was replaced with Keir Dullea. Daye is now currently serving as a deck officer on the Freewinds IX, somewhere in the Indian Ocean, and declined through a representative to be interviewed further.

In this arid wilderness of steel and stone I raise up my voice that you may hear. To the East and to the West I beckon. To the North and to the South I show a sign proclaiming: Death to the weakling, wealth to the strong! – Unaired 20/20 episode narrated and produced by Anton L. Selstos, whereabouts unknown

Is your local police force really protecting you? Are people who rely on cops instead of private contractors getting their tax dollars worth of safety? Especially if they have an inadequate security system and laughably flimsy window locks? I'm here to find out. It is 9 o’clock at night, and I am standing in the backyard of some blogger is too fucking nosy for his own good. I’m going to throw a rock at his window, and then hide so he looks out, terrified, then tells himself he was only dreaming, before he goes back to sleep a light, nervous sleep that brings no rest. And you’re all dreaming, after all. You know that, right? YOU’RE ALL DREAMING. And you should pray to whatever pitiful god you believe in, that you never, ever wake up. – A note taped to my bedroom window this morning.

A Message From A Compulsive Gambler About Attacking Iran

I don't know, man. It just seems risky. I've been up for 72 hours, and I've got some stuff on my mind about this guy who's kind of holding my kids in a storage unit until... Forget it. Anyway maybe I'm not thinking right. But we could lose really, really big on this one.

Let's break it down: We have this country which is probably building a nuke, that it might give to someone to use against us, so we and the Israelis are thinking about bombing their facilities, because possibly it's the only way to stop them, and we're kinda-sorta-fingers-crossed confident we can actually hit the right targets and maybe not kill too many innocent civilians, and it will, if we're lucky, slow or stop the nuke from being built instead of doing the exact opposite and speeding up the program, and bumping us up on the target list, and we're also guessing we won't accidentally topple the government, which would put us back in the Middle Eastern nation-building business with a country twice the size of Iraq.

Yeah, well... I count seven to ten dice rolls on that thing without even getting into the details. I made a series of bets like that once, and the result is I can't ever go back to the state of Connecticut. Believe me, I know we're running some serious risk if we do nothing. I have a keen understanding about security issues. In my case, it's all about not using my real name or getting a hotel room on a ground floor. But we're worried the Iranians could develop this weapon and attack us with it, so we're about to hit them first, even though no one can guarantee it'll work. That doesn't make sense. Not even to me, and I've had a dozen Jack and Cokes.

Plus, we're using the same intelligence agencies to guide us as we did with that other war over WMDs. Look, when they bring you into the back room and taser your balls until you cough blood, that's one casino you just don't visit again, right? I think America's balls have been tasered enough.

Finally, here's what we know about attacking Iran: innocent Iranians will get killed. Long before we find out whether it worked we will be certain we're the bunch of bastards who ruined the lives of people who didn't deserve it. I've done some stupid things before. But you have to draw a line somewhere.

I'm The Kind Of Twisted Deviant Who Really Supports Family Values

Hello. I could be your next state senator or U.S. representative, or even a powerful and famous preacher on TV. I'm going to promise you that I support traditional marriage and pro-life policies, and that I am a strong believer in Biblical morality. You're going to help my career because you think I'm exactly the guy we need in the Capitol or the state house or the public square. You'll see pictures of my pretty, perfectly made-up wife and frighteningly cute kids. You'll be convinced I'm one of you. Just slightly better, maybe. The kind of person you want to be. That's really why I have your support. Then you'll learn about my secret.

I'm not gay or anything. Two committed gay people sharing their lives are pretty vanilla compared to what I have become. Actually, it's hard to describe the stuff I'm into, but trust me, it's not going to be pretty when it comes out. Let me put it this way: If you put a photo of me in action up on 4chan, they would take it down immediately and everyone who saw it would give up internet-fueled masturbation forever.

I'm going to win an election or a position at a megachurch, and two months later, you'll hear all about my thing. A massive fireball will torch the petting zoo where they find me unconscious and naked, covered in two different kinds of salad oil. Cops and EMTs will discover huge bags of crystal meth and crushed Pez all over the place, along with plastic tubing, WWII gas masks, full-body furry costumes, several handguns, and a set of Facts of Life-themed anal beads (Most people pass out before they get to Natalie. But not me.) They will be trying to identify at least a dozen dead hookers dressed like members of the Continental Congress and corral more than a hundred shaved, emotionally-shattered alpaca roaming the place. Plus, they'll find what the New York Times describes as "an electric prosthesis of some sort, with several, brightly-lit rotating nozzles."

Later I'm going to stand next to my lifeless, mortified wife, and I'm going to give a speech about how sorry I am, but you're not going to believe me at all. Because everything I say will sound eloquent and well-rehearsed and utterly insincere. And for the first time, you'll notice that I've been speaking that way about your beliefs and your values all along. I will make you, all of you, everyone who ever supported me, look like an idiot. I will do to you and your worldview the kind of thing I did to a person dressed as Captain Kangaroo at a coke party once. No, not fuck them. I did so much more than that.

Why? Why do people like me always end up in airport restrooms and police stings, and why does it usually involve some kind of terrible depravity?

One reason is you just can't trust politicians and celebrity preachers. The kind of person who wants to tell thousands, sometimes millions of people what to do is by definition a perverted, raging narcissist. Conservatives always say they distrust folks like me, but then they put us in charge of policing people's bedrooms. Which is just silly.

Also, anyone obsessed with the sexual chastity of others is probably into some pretty sick crap himself. You know the whole explanation if you've ever taken a Psych 101 class.

But I think the real reason I'm going to be embarrassing you social conservatives and breaking your hearts is that you ridiculous people have it coming. You deserve guys like me, and you're going to keep getting us until you learn. One right after the other. You're asking for it, and we're going to give it to you, long and hard and...

Sorry. Got a little worked up there. Excuse me, I need to go get some more tubing.

Well then. See you in the news!

Sam Harris Confronts Little Bunny Foo Foo

Yes, it's all an illusion, this idea that you can choose to pick up those field mice or not. You, the hapless rodents, and the good fairy are locked in a web of causality that stretches beyond your control or understanding. Your conscious mind is a tiny ship on a massive and treacherous neuronal sea, the impulses to inflict violence emerging from mysterious depths you can not imagine with a force beyond denying, even though on some level you know it will bring your doom...

But choice still matters. Your actions free or constrain the lives of countless creatures in the field in ways we can't even realize. Just as my words to you, the warnings you've already received... these bits of stimuli are right now affecting what you will do next. And strangely, they become part of what you are. As you alter your own life and the relationships you have with small, terrified fleeing mammals, or an angry and disappointed supernatural creature who for some baffling reason is enforcing a bizarre moral code here in the wilderness, you are discovering yourself through time. Who is Little Bunny Foo Foo? Whoever he is, he has two more chances.

It's false comfort to think that you decide what your circumstances and the dark parts of your own brain are telling you. You're no more than a puppet deciding that he wants to move with his strings. But your mind, your actions, and finally your fate are you nonetheless, and no one else.

You are a goon, Little Bunny. Live like one.


(Photo of Sam Harris under Creative Commons license. Source: http://www.fritankesmedja.se/sam_harris_bara_vetenskap. Information here.)