Although shade has an interesting idea here, choosing verses from the Quar’an to undermine the basic premise of an Anti-American Jihad would be more difficult to produce than he acknowledges.  For starters, I found an alternate translation of the above-quoted Women that reads “Do not kill each other...” (as in Muslim killing another Muslim; something the warring Sunni and Shi’ites conveniently overlook.)   Not being fluent in Arabic, I am still researching this; Evil Matt is on the job and so far tentatively agrees with you.

Whatever the case, the Quar’an has a number of very infamous passage to the effect of promoting Islamic Holy War against anyone outside their faith, adopted by almost all militant Muslims as justification for their jihad.  One of the most oft quoted:

Buddha is only worth three ponds of flax? Sounds skimpy to me; can you give a cost/comparison of other Deities to put this in perspective? —

shade’s peshar

 

No, huh... 

Die Übermaus

Perhaps as far back as a couple of months ago, I started hearing a very subtle noise late at night in my little room here at the BadAss compound.  Something like a short, soft scuttle or a scrape; came from over in the corner, where I have a spare desk stored atop my dresser.  I looked around repeatedly, but could never find anything, yet I continued to hear these noises (usually when my back was turned.)  

This started to bother me: what the hell was this?  Hidden camera?  Rat?  Something else?

Finally one morning, while catching up on email, I heard it again, and did yet another fruitless search.  I even pulled out a flashlight, and did an extensive search of the shadows.  This time, I happened to catch sight of a tiny head poking out from the bottom of the desk, back where one of the drawers would have pushed in.

It was a mouse.  Grey, full grown (about 2" not counting the tail!) and cute as hell.

So I pulled the drawer out, and sure enough, saw the little guy scampering around.  I got a large box, and tried to shoo him into it with a ruler.  To my surprise, he promptly did this Olympic-quality vault over the box and landed about four feet away in my closet.  Of course, once he hit the nuclear wasteland clutter of that, there was no chance of finding him.

Still, I continued to hear the little guy every now and then, so he obviously had not moved on to happier hunting grounds.  Concerned that he might invite some friends over, and not wanting to start running a rodent bed and breakfast, I vowed to capture him.  After all, he could be a Brain Police agent: anyone who has read my book Blade surely remembers my concept of remote controlled rats used for subtle surveillance on unsuspecting subjects.

FireSkunk and I call him Scabbers, after the pet rat in Harry Potter.

So I went out and bought a humane mouse trap.  I didn’t want to kill him; I’m not that kind of guy.  Best just to capture him, and then FireSkunk and I could have a little Mouse Releasing Ceremony a few miles away from BadAss.  I ended up getting this bizarre little contraption that has a small tunnel for them to scuttle through, in the middle of which is a sensitive pressure plate: touching that pops them into a small holding chamber.  I baited it with part of a cracker and awaited my mouse.

Over the next week, Scabbers managed to pick the bait out (without triggering the trap) three times.  Clearly this is no ordinary mouse!

Then, while recovering from the flu, I was puttering around at about 4 in the morning, semi-starved and wondering what there was to eat.  I didn’t have anything, so I decided to raid Pop & Fresh’s secret stash in the kitchen.  Above the fridge were a couple of cupboards where he usually had some snacks.

Inside, I found Scabbers feasting on the contents of a Rice-A-Roni box.

By the way, this should be further proof of Scabbers’ supernatural powers: there was no direct way up to the cupboard and no mouse-holes inside, so how the hell did he manage to jump up about eight inches and get inside a closed door?!?

Anyway, I put the mouse trap inside, and started watching Duckman on Comedy Central, curious if the varmint would fall for the trap.

This time he did.

So I roused FireSkunk, and we drove to central Phoenix to let the little guy go.  We found a nice park next to the Veterans’ Hospital on Indian School Road, and released him by the fountain.  We have since rechristened the place Scabbers Park. 

Of course, I was still concerned that the little guy might’ve invited some friends over, and rather than have a little rodent rave party in my bedroom, I left the trap out.

Two days later, I caught a little brown one.  FireSkunk dubbed this one Nibblet, deemed it a female (though I am unclear on the gendering; did she check for dangling rodent genitalia?!?) and again we had a little mouse-freeing party.

Alas, that still wasn’t the end of rodent invasion: I continued to leave the trap out, and some mystery varmint picked the bait out of it for a week.  I also found that he had wended his way up onto my desk and nibbled on a cigarette and the end of a q-tip.  Oddly, the q-tip was out because, with some isopropyl alcohol, I was cleaning a peripheral computer part that moves the cursor around.

That’s right: I had been cleaning my mouse ball.

The last straw came when I came home and caught the guy red-pawed, brazenly sitting on my desk and eating a pistachio nut.  So I changed the bait on the trap to a pistachio, and the next day added Marvin the Mouse to the growing population of Scabbers Park.

FireSkunk suggested I get one of those sonic mouse repellants to drive him (and any drinking buddies) away.  Of course, I pointed out that if we’re going to use sound to de-mouse the compound, I should just put on some Ramones: anyone who's seen Rock ’n’ Roll High School knows the explosive effect I’m suggesting.  But since that film also shows that mice have mastered earplugs, that may not work after all.

Anyway, I took FireSkunk’s advice and got a sonic buzzer, which seems to have worked.  So the BadAss Compound is now ostensibly mouse-free, though we strongly suspect that Scabbers Park will shortly be overrun by super-smart, pistachio-loving rodents, slowly culling an army to conquer Phoenix...

The Rand Rant

Many of you may have noticed a recurring theme during the Branch Floridian ministry-in-print: a profound dislike of author/philosopher Ayn Rand.  

In the past, I’ve been content to let well enough alone and just hope that everyone was on the same page as I was on this: unwritten acknowledgement that Ayn Rand sucks like a starving tick on a skinny puppy.  

However, recent events (a lengthy digression I’ll spare y’all) made me rethink this.  Not in the fact that she sucks—face it, folks: a Hoover vacuum can’t compete here—but more along the lines that everyone knew where I was coming from, and why.

So allow me to elucidate.

Ayn Rand is the Ranch Dressing of modern philosophy.

An oft-quoted comment of mine on the subject is “I would rather stab myself in the testicles with a shrimp fork than read any more of her books, because it would be less painful and damaging in the long run.”

 My hatred of Rand is two-fold: I absolutely oppose her philosophy, and simply can’t stand the awkward, immature prose she uses to communicate it.  

Let’s dissect each in turn.

Rand’s philosophy is known as “objectivism.”  It is a rigid, intransient mentality that sees things in fixed, flat black and white, with no gray or excluded middle allowable.  Things are set in absolute values, hence “objective” truths, with a specific rejection of subjective interpretation.  

This is, of course, diametrically at odds with the Fourth Rule of Branch Floridianism: “All things are subjective.”  

With an emphasis on objective “reality,” the individual interpretation of the human experience is effectively nullified.  This is hypocritically ironic, as she is a big believer in individualism: each and every person is a power unto his or her self.  Still, she sees things as only having an absolute, inflexible value/meaning/truth, so if someone happens to have an alternative perspective on something contrary to its accepted value, that person is, by (her) definition, wrong.

The problem with that logic should be obvious, but if not, check out my previous defense of subjectivity.

At a book-signing conference for her alleged “masterpiece” Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand was challenged to present the core of her philosophy while standing on one foot.  She did so, thus:

     1. Metaphysics: Objective Reality
     2. Epistemology: Reason
     3. Ethics: Self-interest
     4. Politics: Capitalism

She subsequently elaborated on this (with my commentary provided in purple after each):

Bullshit.  All “facts” are subject to subjective interpretation.  If you don’t believe me, check out any Rush Limbaugh diatribe and his use of “documented facts” to prove his point.  I myself have seen historians site “facts” about Napoleon, “proving” he was an enlightened dictator with progressive reforms and France’s best interests at heart.  Likewise, I have also seen historians site these very same “facts” as “proof” that Napoleon was a tyrannical despot whose self-serving interests set France back several hundred years.  Who’s right?  I’d say that “it depends on your point of view” but of course Rand’s rigid interpretation does not allow for that, so ultimately the only way to be “right” is to agree with her.  Undoubtedly she would be horrified by quantum physics, which pretty much proves my point that something can be more than one state at the same time.  Reality is NOT an absolute.  Historically, reality is what the majority of people agree it is.  Of course, Branch Floridians know better: to quote Robert Anton Wilson, “Reality is what you can get away with.”

Our only means of survival?!?  I guess she’s never heard of instinct.  By her logic, only entities which can reason can survive.  I personally doubt slugs or plants can reason, at least in the sense Rand suggests, so I guess they are not surviving.

What a selfish, self-serving world-view!  With her mentality on this, it should come as no surprise that she was an atheist, because she could not possibly tolerate the idea that there might be Something superior to herself (or to any other person, but let’s face it: mostly herself.)

Excuse me while I get a bucket to yerf into.  Granted, I like capitalism, as it encourages progress: find a way to do something better than your competitors.  That is good, as I think you all will agree.  However, here she expresses a naiveté here that is bordering on the absurd.  "The government acts only as a policeman that protects man’s rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use...."  Oh, puh-leeeze: that is more bullshit that McVeigh used to blow up the Murrah Building.  Governments use force to protect their own interests, not those of the populace they allegedly represent.  Anybody who thinks otherwise should leave this website immediately: it’s probably past your bedtime, anyway.  Considering she grew up in Stalinist Russia, I am stunned that she would even think this.  Admittedly she’s discussing an ideal, but Moore’s Utopia has a better chance of materializing than this bilge.  But back to the point, the last line of that drivel above is especially telling: the separation of state from economics under the Reagan administration was what allowed Enron and WorldCom to do what they did. 

Rand’s fascination with economics is a sub-theme in much of her writings, and it should come as no surprise that she was good friends with Alan Greenspan.

Anyway, having deconstructed her ideology for the toxic vomit that it is, let’s turn our attention to the primary means she uses to convey it: fiction.

Granted, Ayn Rand did write a number of “non-fiction” books, but most of her exposure to the masses comes from a couple of novels she shat out that actually have have characters and plots, all as vehicles to drive her philosophy over the poor, suffering roadkill that are the readers.

Her two most famous books are The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.  Admittedly, I have not read Atlas Shrugged, but did suffer through The Fountainhead, as well as what is essentially a short story of hers called Anthem. 

The Fountainhead is a meandering piece of manure that rambles on for almost 700 pages.  Although it is largely about the conflicts of the individual versus the demands of society, an underlying motif is a championing of ‘art for art’s sake.’  The book has five main characters, each of which is a specific archetype of the human experience.  The protagonist, Howard Roark, is presented as the ‘ideal’ person for all to emulate, which is surprising, as he struck me as an otherwise soulless, emotionless golem who grunts through dialogue and is completely ill-equipped to interface with people and society at large.  The closest he comes to having emotion is in his work: architecture.  It is unclear, and at best debatable, if Roark is a good architect.  He is certainly different, but if he is actually “good” is something that Rand’s rejection of subjectivism disqualifies as a possibility.  

But if there were ever a reason to hate her prose, it is the wretchedly written Anthem.  This was my first exposure to Rand, back in 1989 at the recommendation of my bass-playing roommate, who told me the band Rush had based their rock opera 2112 on it.  The book is sort of Brave New World meets Fahrenheit 451.  In it, society is essentially a big collective commune where individuality is effectively non-existent.  However, the protagonist (Equality 7-2521) escapes and finds some old books.  In them he keeps seeing a word he does not understand, and a climax of sort comes when he finally deciphers it: “I”.  This epiphany causes much crying and wailing as he rediscovers his lost individuality.  Blah blah blah.  Although sappy enough as it is, the book is written (until the discovery at the end) in a variant of first person where Equality refers to himself as “we”.  This literary device gets old real fast, and by the second paragraph of the first chapter you’re sick of it.  By the third, you’re ready to kill someone, probably the author.

Anyway, see my point?  Both books abound with in-your-face symbolism that anyone beyond kindergarten can grasp.  Rand’s wretched, pretentious prose makes an already intolerable (and intolerant) philosophy unpalatable to anyone with an IQ over 50 that has had exposure to good literature.  My experience is that Rand’s core audience are high school and college undergrads who have just enough brain cells to erroneously think they’re smarter than everyone else.  Rand is what you read when you want to seem intellectual, but aren’t brainy enough to handle something really challenging.  Such as two excellent deconstructions that effectively refute (or at least offer valid counter-arguments to) her objective mentality; both written a hundred years before she wrote: Stendahl’s Red and Black, and Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground.  These are challenging examples.  Stendahl’s concept, called ‘beyalism’, advocates a hypocritical conformity because he views that society demands conformity and crushes individuality.  That idea horrifies me, but I see his point.  On the other hand, Dostoevsky’s unnamed narrator from Underground posits that in life you can either be free or happy: one but not the other.  He presents a worst case scenario of this: someone who is completely free but miserable (both in person and as a subject to read about.)

Both these ideas are slaps in the face of conventional wisdom, which is why they are so challenging.  

Much more so than any wretched Rand concept.

THIS JUST IN: check out the update on the Cult of Ayn Rand.

Lost in the Pine Gap

Although it’s taken for granted that the CIA has expanded its charter from mere intelligence gathering to actively tinkering with regimes deemed “unfriendly,” what is less known is that the Agency occasionally turns its hostile purview towards “friendly” nations as well.  

The textbook example is the U.S.-sponsored overthrow of the Chilean government and the assassination of its democratically-elected leader back in 1973.  Even though Chile had a good rapport with the United States, Nixon decided President Salvador Allende was soft on Marxism and a more hard-line (and malleable) tyrant was needed in the area.