Pass the Catch-Up

Still trying to get caught up in the world these days, and sometimes there's no better way to do that than to swing on over to the palace of the King of Zembla for a good read or six. For instance, having not had time to get through my daily newspaper yesterday, I missed this Don Asmussen Bad Reporter strip -- reprinted on the King's site -- that had me rolling with laughter at the the unlikely combination of an order of Wendy's chili con dedo, as the King put it, and a certain court case cum Congressional circus over a Florida woman whose name you might recognize. As I wrote in the comments there, it almost had me shooting milk out of my nose, and I wasn't even drinking milk at the time.

Satire is so very hard to do properly these days, as those of you who read this blog regularly know very well. (Meaning, of course, that my attempts at it are not always successful.) Here's an example, though, of a satirical piece done right. It has all the earmarks of truth, and in today's climate is easily as believable as -- if not more believable than -- just about any routine news story regarding schools and the mandates coming down on them by the holders of the federal purse strings. Abstinence education is just the beginning...

On a far more serious note, there is a long excerpt from and link to this very disturbing story of oil-diver turned documentary filmmaker Mark Manning's journey to Fallujah to capture the words and images of the people who live there and their reaction to the mess we've made of the occupation of Iraq. This is haunting, chilling stuff. Thanks to the greed- and power-driven schemes of a gang of incompetent, bloodthirsty ideologues who now occupy the halls of power in this country, we have poisoned our world and our reputation in it for generations to come.

Many thanks to His Zemblan Majesty for all of those links, and if you rush right over to his site now, you can still catch not one but two Joe Bageant essays. Meanwhile, I've got some more catching up to do, not to mention my taxes...