Heading southeast for about a week.  Not sure what the online access will be like.

If you still see this message after, say, Friday, there isn’t much, or I’m too busy running around to post.  Either way, hoping to have a couple of cool pics and a good story or two shortly.

Stay tuned.

Oh, and please don’t anybody bomb Iran while I’m gone.  Thanks.

UPDATE: I’m here, it’s fascinating, and yep, online access is limited.

But cool pics a-plenty and a good story or two around the end of the week.

But my goodness, judging from the TV ads, India looks like a fabulously itchy place.

I’m keeping myself company while working late (again) with the second cricket test between Oz and Bangladesh, this one from Chittagong.  It seems to be the live Indian feed again, complete with commercials.

It seems like half the ads are for creams and powders to keep your body from spontaneously swelling, turning red, and driving you slowly insane with pain.  This must happen a lot, apparently.  Not being able to understand Hindi makes the whole thing a notch more delirious.  Neat!

Now that I finally have that dang Dermi-Cool jingle out of my head (see earlier post, below, and praise Shiva for the relief), I’m giggling at a competing ad, depicting, in sequence: a fashionable young man in considerable discomfort, a cartoon of a bright red swollen crotch of ambiguous gender, and then the same guy dancing with a cute babe in a disco.

Oddly, a Hindi slogan begins the ad with a little arrow pointing at the guy’s lower torso, but later, the words reappear with the arrow pointing at the cute girl’s lower torso.  I’m guessing that a phrase like “hot body” in Hindu is being remapped to refer to both a man’s itchy groin and a woman’s fantastic butt.  Thus the humor.

Either that, or it just says “abnormally red and swollen genitals.”  Also funny.

(Rainy day?  Make up your own!)

And now as I write this, the damn Dermi-Cool ad is back on!  Crap!  Thande Dermi-Cool ka!  It’s back in my head!  Aaaaahhhhhrrrgggg!

Itchy itchy itchy, this India.  At least judging from the cricket ads, which of course is no way to judge.

I must go there and see someday.

The new Chomsky just came.  I didn’t exactly run around the house like Steve Martin in The Jerk getting the first new phone book with his name in it, but if, like me, you enjoy the characteristic Chomsky-exposure mixture of (a) appreciating the work of a guy who tries to refuse moral relativism in all its forms, while (b) becoming incredibly depressed, it’s a hell of a good read.

I’d recommend alternating with John Hodgman’s The Areas of My Expertise, a surrealist almanac more accurate than most of the evening news.  The authoritative list of eight U.S. presidents who had hooks for hands, for example, is a perfect reset-button after reading Chomsky’s assessment of the U.S. electoral process.

… is that you don’t have to do death every damn year.

I return now, after spending most of the last few days enduring the government’s annual attempt to dazzle me with the four basic mathematical operators before taking large chunks of my money, partly to finance pointless killing in my name.

Without getting into boring detail, my tax situation is a little complex.  Thing is, if you read too closely, the IRS doesn’t exactly help.  Over the weekend, I was instructed in writing to both (a) submit and (b) not submit a particular schedule, and to send the kaboodle to two alternative, mutually exclusive locations.

Yes, I read very carefully, double- and triple-checking.  Eventually, I chose to follow the instructions that looked like they would be seen by more people, choosing safety in numbers.

This way, at least I will have company in jail.

Is Iran getting anywhere near the nuclear-bomb capacity Chimpus Maximus et al are claiming?  No, not according to the U.S. intelligence community.

There are serious technical obstacles presented by the Iranium uranium itself.  (Not least of which: “Iranian uranium” is too much fun to say out loud.)

This also leaves aside the Rube Goldberg status of their centrifuge capacity.

So, um, except for the uranium and the centrifuges, I guess, well, Iran is practically ready to go…

Treating
this as an imminent threat would get Bush laughed out of the White
House if we had a functional media and a system of checks and balances
that actually worked anymore.

Instead, if Bush isn’t stopped, the pointless disaster could be Iraq x 10.  At least.

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, using nuclear warheads to attack bunkers, as is reportedly under discussion, would kill innocent people — possibly millions — and yet not actually accomplish anything. 

Want to see why?  Click the link.  They made a cartoon, so even CNN and Fox News can understand.

(Shlit.  I cannot believe we are trying to stop more pointless megadeath with frickin’ cartoons on the Internet.  I mean, fluuuuuck.  But that’s where we are…)

In any case: Possibly millions of innocent people killed.  Let’s get this clear.

And
according to counterintelligence czar Richard Clarke, who is privy to
most of the wargaming the U.S. has done on the subject in the last
decade, the aftermath has no victory scenario — none
— and would likely (a) drive the Iranian people deeper into the arms of
their own lunatic leaders, (b) destabilize Iraq even further, and (c) result in
massively increased terror attacks on the U.S. all over the world —
including here.

So, let’s see: no upside, unimaginable horrible downside for all concerned.  Genius. 

And
for what?  FOR WHAT?  Chimpus Maximus’s ego?  So the 30% of America
who are too goddamned misinformed and proud to realize they’ve been royally had can spend another year or two not admitting their mistakes?