Parrot Cage

That Trembling British Mouth

If you thought Christopher Hitchens' musings on American foreign policy were creepy, try stomaching his ode to blowjobs.  Hitchens reveals his primary fondness for America, which may explain everything:

...when any sweet American girl smiled at me, I was at once bewitched and slain by the warm, moist cave of her mouth, lined with faultless white teeth and immaculate pink gums and organized around a tenderly coiled yet innocent tongue.

Much like his vision of Iraq, ew!  What's the use of stereotyping Brits as sexually repressed when they can't seem to hold it in?

One chubbie hubbie to the next

The first sign that gay marriage imperils the nation. Good heaveans! They're saving each other's lives!  At this rate they'll stop dying off in their 40's and remain a possible political threat to Republican interests.  Unless of course they're gay Republicans, in which case they'll empower the very people who want them exterminated.  Sorry Log Cabin losers: Tax cuts can't buy civil rights.

Veteran's Day

For a functionally moral human being, the desire to serve and protect one's countrymen must be balanced by the knowledge that one could become a tool for immoral politicians. 

Soldiers may disobey orders, but they do so at risk of discipline ranging from reprimand to firing squad. The organizational structure of the military, any military, crushes the individual into the will of the governing body.

It's amazing that anyone could emerge from such an authoritarian structure with their identity and moral compass intact.  And it is even more amazing that anyone could emerge from the horrors of war unmoved by its consequences and dubious of its glory.

In no particular order, and with varying levels of love and respect, here are our very favorite Veterans who didn't let the abomination of war or the regimen of subjugation diminish their humanity or lessen their contribution to our troubled species.

Pat Tilman    Paul Riekhoff    John Kerry, circa 1971 

Jimmy Carter, post 1980     Howard Zinn

Max Cleland    Kurt Vonnegut

    Ron Kovic      Norman Mailer

    Smedley Butler    Wesley Clark      Edward D. Wood Jr.

John McCain    Elvis Presley    Jackie Robinson

    John F. Kennedy    Dr. Mary Walker

Jim Whitaker (1923-1989)

The Christian War on Halloween

Convinced that evil secularists were determined to take away their Winter pagan holiday, Christians have now retaliated by trying to take away a pagan holiday that is... well, too pagan.

With visions of demons, witches, and devils (mythical creatures which are foreign to Abrahamic cultures but predominant in those formerly pagan), these anti-Halloween hysterics usually manifest in one of the following ways:

1. Assimilate safely.  Rename Halloween parties "Harvest Festivals" while continuing the same costume-wearing candy-gorging rituals.  Avoid the horror: eschew ghosts, goblins, and other bedeviling simulations in favor of innocuous role-playing.
2. Assimilate dangerously.  Instead of haunted houses, create Hell Houses: they're still haunted, just haunted by the wages of sin.  Call them Judgment Houses, and simulate the ghastly horrors of god's merciful punishment. Why not promote your god as an eternal torturer?  As Mel Gibson's bloodfeast Passion of the Christ proved, torment and suffering are the cornerstones of evangelical faith.  Oddly, the gospels lack any remote detail regarding the horrors of a punitive afterlife.  Hell, with the creativity of Dante and other Catholic artists, is the domain of pagan myth.  Logically, the celebration of Hell, and the fanciful speculation on its workings, would seem an ironic obsession for American protestants, but logic is not the realm of the religious.
3. Ban Halloween.  Fresh from Harry Potter bonfires, parents are bearing down on schools to remove any recognition of the holiday.  And they're getting more successful.
4. Total denial.  Lock the doors, dim the lights, hide the kids, and snuggle away the night in the warmth of your own righteousness.

So, come Christmas, when Fox and friends try to stir up another "war on Christmas" chorus, remember where they were when the better pagan holiday was burned at the stake.

CSI: Toronto

Another victim to experts.  An Ontario man was convicted of raping and then strangling his 4 year old niece, without physical evidence or anything except the testimony of an "expert" pathologist.  After twelve years in prison he was released when it was decided that the young girl actually wasn't raped and probably died of natural causes.

Had this occured in Texas, the man would already be dead.  But then again, states with assembly-line executions tend not to have much interest in investigating themselves, let alone admit mistakes.

Inmates Soon to be Enjoying Their Daily Koz

White-collar crime poster boy, former Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski, will soon be showering in Attica.  Him and buddy CFO Mark Swartz were finally sentenced and hauled off to Rikers Island for their plundering of company resources to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

There is pleasure to be taken from Republicans behind bars, and that should commence soon after lockdown.

Will the threat of perpetual impolite sodomy strike fear into the hearts of corporate raiders and start a wave of white-collar virtue?  The impact of the Kozlowski cautionary tale lies in the fact that he and Swartz will be doing hard time in Attica rather than in a country club minimum security facility. 

Of course, there are those who feel the 8 to 25 years sentence does not match the crime, if only because they are first time offenders: first time offenders who plundered tens to hundreds of millions of dollars.  Who amongst us wouldn't be willing to serve 1 to 5 years if we had a $30 million stash waiting for us?  Done right, who would even need to steal a second time? 

The most bizarre unintended consequence scenario that we've seen over this incident is the suggestion that this sentence will deter businessmen from taking risks.  Is that the kind of business environment we live in, where risk-taking is borderline criminal?  Or is it that the head office shenanigans are attracting borderline criminals?

Also off to the pokie is entertainer Lil' Kim.

We'd call her a rapper, but our favorite Lil' Kim moment wasn't in a rap or a song: it came in the movie You Got Served.  Lil' Kim's character (also named "Lil' Kim") stews, with much consternation, over how to properly adjudicate an especially heated dance competition.  With some helpful suggestions from the butchish hip-hop dancers, she comes to the conclusion that a straight-up dance-off might be just the ticket: "like we do it on the street, y'all."

Now, we don't know where this magical street is or in which ghetto this manifestly heterosexual competitive-dance fever reigns supreme, but we suspect its gang problems are perpetrated by ancillary Jets and Sharks.

Lil' Kim may have deserved more of the Martha Stewart treatment, but she will be missed (everyone loves a blue-eyed sista, even in cheap lenses).  Her gun-toting entourage will not be missed.

From first-hand experience we know that entourages, a posse if you will--and notwithstanding Mark(y Mark) Wahlberg's light-hearted HBO series--are comprised of the the worst parasitic bottom-feeders in the worst parasitic bottom-feeding industry.  Rap posses are the worst of the worst.  Whatever happened to a ready supply of free-love groupies to round out a musician's social needs?  Kids today....