Category Archives: Almost Seven Wonders

The Almost Seven Wonders files

Welcome, millionth visitor

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Site Meter says this will be accurate sometime in the next day or so, anyway.

Colin, who knows such things, says we went past that long ago, but that Site Meter and similar counters miss a lot of visits on everybody’s sites for technical reasons involving a lot of words that make my ears go all blurry.

Either way, hi, welcome, hurray, and please do not shoot me in the face, neck, and torso.

A few things we all learned today

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Just to review, in the wake of Tricky Dick’s 18-Hour Gap:

  • It is perfectly sporting not to shoot at quail in the air, but near the ground — at roughly eye level, in fact.
  • It is also responsible to fire at eye level when you do not know where a member of your party is.
  • There is no reason a hunter should be expected to know what he is shooting.
  • If you are shot by the vice president, it is your own fault for not first shouting, "Mister vice president, sir! Please do not shoot me in the face, neck, and torso!"
  • Being wounded in the face, neck, and torso by a shotgun is something that happens to hunters all the time.
  • Shotgun wounds are inherently minor.
  • People also go into intensive care with minor wounds all the time.
  • There is no reason to worry about a 78-year old man who has been
    shot in the face, neck, and torso and has been in intensive care for
    days.
  • A 78-year-old man who has been shot in the face, neck, and torso is
    obviously healthy if his eyes are open and he is able to speak.
  • It is perfectly respectable to kill animals not because you need
    to put food on the table, but for fun.  It is good that our leaders
    take pleasure in killing.
  • Shootings by vice presidents are always reported by local newspapers, who learn a few carefully-chosen details from a friend of the vice president, after she has spoken with Karl Rove.
  • When the vice president of the United States shoots a man, there
    is no reason the president of the United States should immediately learn exactly what happened.
  • When the vice president of the United States shoots a man, there
    is no reason the public should find out about it until the next day.
  • When the vice president of the United States shoots a man, there
    is no reason he should be interviewed by local law enforcement until
    enough time has passed for his body to metabolize any alcohol in his
    bloodstream.
  • When the vice president of the United States shoots a man, he is not subject to any of the relevant state or local statutes.
  • When the vice president of the United States shoots a man, he does not even need to face the press or public in person.
  • When the vice president of the United States shoots a 78-year-old
    friend in the face, neck, and torso, putting him in intensive care for
    days, after negligently firing a weapon for the sheer pleasure of killing, he can insist that he has done nothing wrong and go to bed
    with a clear conscience.

Well, glad we got that all cleared up.

Hooray for the Purdue Pudus!

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Thanks to reader Jeremy, a visionary beyond his years, who recently proposed in a Purdue student newspaper that the school’s unofficial* mascot should be changed from Pete the Macronogginous Large-Hammered Tiny-Hatted Slightly-Psychotic-Looking Boilermaker to, well, a pudu.

I think it’s about damn time.

As a matter of fact, if you listen closely, many pudus speak English
with a slight accent, often making their own name sound a bit more like
"Purdue."

And frankly, since pudus believe the university was named after these timid animalitos in the first place (contrary to this official creation story the college seems intent on sticking to), it only seems fair.

As Jeremy himself has put it so brilliantly:

[H]ow does Pete relate to chemical,
nuclear, biomedical and biological engineering?  He announces to the
world that we are on the cutting edge of the Industrial Revolution…

Further, the pudu would be a unique mascot. Too many college mascots
are disfigured men. But how many are pudus?  I challenge the reader to
present even one! 

If you think it’s time for Purdue to adopt the pudu
as a mascot, there’s even an online petition, open to students,
faculty, and concerned pudus (acting as friends of the university):

Click here to view the petition.

As one student put it, "I believe one should be able to explain to others what your school mascot is."

There’s also a Facebook group, "Purdue People for the Purdue Pudu."  I
do hope the effort succeeds.  Especially if they decide to use the
genus and species name, which would lead to the Purdue Pudu Pudus.  (I
assume this will only be used as a formal greeting, as on black-tie
invitations sent to the mascot.)

So far, it’s still just a very small movement.  But then, pudus are very small.  This is as it should be.

There is power in numbers, however.  (In the case of pudus, very large numbers.)  All hail the Purdue Pudus!

*The "official" mascot, incidentally, seems to be a railway locomotive. 
This is bulky to transport to the sidelines of Big Ten football games. 
Thus the need for the large disturbing-looking man with a hammer, or a small endangered deer to take his place.

Fox: America’s Soviet-style news agency

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Wow.

Just stumbled across the 6 pm EST top of the hour news break on Fox News.  Amazing.  Bizarro world stuff.

Not a single word about the Scooter Libby fingering "his superiors" [Cheney]. 

Not a single word about Brownie making clear that the White House lied their asses off. 

Not a single word about the CIA’s head Middle East guy saying Bush cherry-picked intel to start a war.

These are all top stories on any legit news site you want to look at.  Period.  Not arguable.

In other news, not a single word about Abramoff meeting Bush a dozen times, or the trade deficit hitting an all-time high, or that the world is the warmest it has been in 1200 years.

Nope.  Not one word.  Instead:

Lead story: Jill Carroll.  Message: The world is dangerous.  You are powerless and blameless.

Second lead: Bird Flu.  Message: The world is dangerous.  You are powerless and blameless.

Third story: Big car crash on Mexican border.  (Wow.  Pretty
desperate.)  Message: The world is dangerous.  And you are powerless and blameless.

And… that was it.  The biggest news on this day, according to Fox.

It’s hardly, um, news, that Fox is awful and biased and bad for your brain.  But this was amazing, even to me.

PS: Actually, there was a crawl along the bottom throughout, which included three other stories:

1) Bush job approval low, despite increased consumer confidence.  Message: Bush deserves more credit.

2) Big fires in Orange County.  Message: The world is dangerous.  You are powerless and blameless.

3) World record pumpkin pie.  Message: Mmm.  Pie.

D’oh!