The aardvark, the wombat, and Dick Cheney.

The aardvark, the wombat, and Dick Cheney.

All proof positive that the Creator finished inventing Cannabis before he got to vertebrates.

JJ from 'ell

J.J. Bittermuch, the world’s angriest man, writes me from the fifth circle (the Wraithful) of Hell:

“The smug woman says, ‘The more I see men, the more I love my dog.’

“I reply, ‘And I thank your poodle for removing you from the gene pool.’”

Definition

Abstraction — definition: a moral absolute like “Virtue,” “Greatness,” “National Security”, “Race,” and so on, which allows us to kill and maim without feeling a twinge of guilt.

See Abscess.

E. Coli

So, people are dropping dead from E. Coli contaminated spinach. Thousands of acres of the crop are being plowed under in a desperate attempt to stop the spread of the disease.

Of course, if we’d adopted a program of sanitizing food by means of low level irradiation, the way we wanted to you a few years back, all of this could have avoided.

But, you see, radiation is “bad.” And Those Who Knew Best protested and jumped up and down and said “Three Mile Island” and claimed that we were all gonna turn into mutant freaks with two eyes and three heads. So, we didn’t do it.

Now, we’ve got dead people and a ruined industry.

Don’t you just love People Who Know Best? Who are On The Side of the Angels? And who will Save Us From Ourselves?

Say, I got an idea. Most of ‘em are Vegetarians. Many of ‘em are Vegans. So, they wouldn’t object to eating nothing but spinach for a few decades.

It would save the spinach industry. Take care of all these rotting vegetables. And best of all, provide nice snug homes for all those poor, dispossessed E. Coli.

How could anyone in league with Angels possibly object?

Pre-Texting

So, as I read in the papers, it seems that HP has been accused of “pre-texting” – i.e., gathering private information on its critics and the press.

Gosh.

So let me get this straight. We have an enormous, multinational corporation in a Bushite-Reaganoid age when “share holder value” is a religious mantra while “regulation” is a swear word, and its crewed by MBAs who’ve been trained from birth to win at ANY cost, and who believe as God is their witness that “business ethics” means disembowel the other guy before he can get you first . . .

And then it spies on its enemies . . .

And we’re gonna pretend that we’re surprised?

ABD?

By the way, since I’ve passed my oral exam, I’m now known as “All But Dissertation.”

That’s ABD for short.

Hmmm.

Sounds a bit like a personality disorder, doesn’t it?

foul mouthed

Hard to discuss my education in polite conversation. How do you say “I’ve passed my orals” without sounding like out of a South Park episode?

I passed.

Well, you ask yourself, where the ‘ell is ole Michael Jay?

Answer: I’ve been getting ready for my Ph.D. oral exam. You see, after about 20 years in the trade press, I woke up and realized that if I wrote one more article about disk drives, I was gonna kill somebody. So, I went back to school to get a degree or two in history.

The oral exam was in some ways the capstone of the whole effort. The dissertation is still out there to be written, of course, but, still, the exam was the real biggie. It was the thing which could have reduced all my efforts to naught in an afternoon.

The exam was last week.

To my surprise, I passed. The committee even said my answers almost made sense. Tragic, really. Clearly, the whole bunch must have been drinking heavily since breakfast. Remind me to send them those flyers from AA, won’t you?