You’ve Got to Get Yourself Together
As you know, today was the day that, as predicted by respected Muslim World Experts TM, the apocalyptic regime of Iranian terror masters attacked the West in the name of hastening the coming of the Twelfth Imam. I experienced the carnage first-hand. This morning on the Washington Beltway a guy drove really slow in the left lane – right in front of me. Couldn’t have been going over 50.
I was as resolute in refusing to be cowed by this unprovoked Iranian aggression as I was enraged at the fecklessness of our leaders, who failed to preempt the outrage by launching a major and of course purely defensive war on the Islamic Republic.
But where the craven Bush Administration and its puppeteers on the decadent Left fail America, the blogosphere can fill the void. We are fighting this war too, no less than the meeting planners at the think tanks and the guests on talk shows and the dumpers of fluids into airport bins. So I’m offering this blog item as a sharing – and yes, healing – place. Each of you, please tell us how you coped with the Day of Dodecahedral Doom. Whether acolytes of the Twelfth Imam cut in front of you at Au Bon Pain or put you on hold without asking or failed to note that your blog linked something before any other blogs you happened to notice, no enormity is too, well, enormous, for us to bear, together.
Comment by Jennifer —
August 22, 2006 @ 9:33 pm
I had a wisdom tooth pulled today, so my gums are really really sore. And since I’m not supposed to brush my teeth or chew any gum until tomorrow, the inside of my mouth tastes really really yucky.
It’s horrible. Make it stop.
Comment by Jon Henke —
August 22, 2006 @ 9:47 pm
They turned me into a newt!
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
August 22, 2006 @ 9:52 pm
The 22nd isn’t over yet — there’s still a few more hours of quivering in fear. Hey, until it’s over at the International Date Line (or whatever that’s called), it isn’t over.
But the true right-wing bedwetter doesn’t have to be satisfied with merely a few more hours of self-induced terror. Couldn’t we go back to the debates about year 2000, and whether it was the millenium, and whether the correct day mattered if enough people didn’t believe in it? Those terrorists could think that the important August 22nd was still a few years off.
Comment by Jim Henley —
August 22, 2006 @ 9:53 pm
That kind of thing worked before!
Comment by Leonard —
August 22, 2006 @ 10:06 pm
It’s important to reiterate that, even though the Iranians didn’t actually do anything, our feckless leaders still ought to have responded to their unstoppable aggression. We know exactly what the Iranians are thinking, probably better than they do, and it’s not acceptable. Nor can it be acceptable. All this argument about what Iran might do in the future is specious, just the traitorous fifth-column of the press and the reality-based left trying to buy time for the America haters. Oh, certainly many of these people are not themselves consciously traitors – rather, they are simple dupes of the evil ones. Useful pawns. But it must be reiterated constantly that no excuse that Iran can make, no action they can perform, should deter us from our goals. This war (praise be on it) is no longer about them, because they are evil and they cannot possibly change or accommodate us. No, it’s about us (praise be on it). The question is merely do they kill all of us, literally, to the last man, and rape our women and make our children slaves? Do we embrace our dhimmitude? Or do we strike back, in advance, starting a virtuous defensive preemptive war (praise be on it)?
No, Jim, we should not have responded to the Icosadohedral Day of Dodecahedral Doom with the mere “major … defensive war” that you posit. As we have seen in Iraq, no matter how carefully we choose them, major defensive wars (praise be on them) do not solve all our problems. Why can’t they solve more problems? Clearly we have lacked the will… for what problem can America’s Fighting Men (praise be on them) (and women) not solve? We have not been forceful enough! We must learn from our earlier incomplete successes. We must purge weakness, and cultivate the pure Will necessary for our national greatness to flower. To deal with the Great Danger of Iran, what was called for by this possibility of attack was nothing less than a preemptive defensive nuclear war! (Praise be on it.) It’s time for us in the West to wake up to this threat, that didn’t happen, but might have. Only by eliminating their nuclear capability, and the people necessary to rebuild it, once and for all, can we make sure that we’ll never again be threatened by our imaginary fears on August 22. Only by a complete and total genocide can we truly achieve peace in our time.
Comment by Bill —
August 22, 2006 @ 10:10 pm
A newt?
Comment by matthew hogan —
August 22, 2006 @ 10:30 pm
” enraged at the fecklessness of our leaders”
Bull. Alot of our leaders seem pretty well fecked.
Comment by ran —
August 22, 2006 @ 11:17 pm
Something, or someone, was sapping my precious bodily fluids when I was out biking in 90 degree heat today.
Must have been those nefarious Persians.
Damn them!
Comment by John Cleese —
August 23, 2006 @ 12:55 am
They turned him into a newt. Then, after a while, he got better. Bill, you should rent Monty Python’s Holy Grail. Be forewarned — it may steer you clear of the reality based community.
Comment by or —
August 23, 2006 @ 3:23 am
I had to work, and I was real bitchy about it, spending the last day of my life at work.
perhaps wolk itself is an evil iranian plot.
Comment by wade —
August 23, 2006 @ 3:46 am
Where i live, theres a family who live behind me. I’m not sure that they are Iranian, but i think they are from Pakistan. I’m sure they are muslim, whatever, they are definitely brown. I went to put my rubbish in the bin, and they had put THEIR WASTE in MY wheelie bin! it had USED NAPPIES in it! and ROTTEN MANGOES!!! this constitutes an attack with CHEMICAL WEAPONS!!!!!! A DIRTY BOMB!!!!!! WHY DID MY GOVERNMENT LET THIS HAPPEN TO ME???!!???
i am not coping very well
Comment by Gene Callahan —
August 23, 2006 @ 5:46 am
I was harrassed by the voices inside my head, all of whom spoke Persian yesterday.
Comment by Greg —
August 23, 2006 @ 6:51 am
I had a headache yesterday afternoon and I couldn’t figure out why. But, in my complacency, I’d forgotten it was August 22nd! Now, it all makes sense. The Iranian mind control weapons were making me forget all about their nefarious plans and the headache was merely a side effect. I have proof, too — now that it’s the 23rd, my headache is gone!
Comment by Stephen —
August 23, 2006 @ 7:03 am
Leonard, you are are a man who sees things as they truly are, and who knows how to respond to threats before they truly materialise, and who knows how to use war (praise be on it) to make true peace. Praise be on you!
(As someone once said, if your God hates the same people you hate, then you’ve probably made him in your own image.)
Comment by Terror-struck —
August 23, 2006 @ 7:17 am
My sons’ swimming instructor failed to show up for their swimming lesson, after I had spent four full minutes driving to the city pool for that purpose. He is, shall we say, rather dark of hue, and has a colleague with a distinctively Islamic name, who was also nowhere to be seen. “Sick day”, I was told. Yeah, sure! Like they could fool an Alert Citizen with that lame excuse! Especially right after we’ve been explicitly warned that the enemy is hiding in our neighborhood! I have seen both of these terrorists drinking Diet Coca Cola, more than once, even though they are already thin and wiry, like most terrorists. All it would take is some Mentos – which our feckless leaders STILL tolerate being sold to anyone who slaps down 75 cents on the counter, without so much as a background check and iris scan! – and we all know the potential carnage at a pool crowded with inner city youngsters on a hot summer day. See http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1450915772177922792&q=mentos+and+coke&hl=en All I can say is “mass murder on an unimaginable scale”. I hightailed it out of there and over to my local DHS branch office, where Our Boys In Mirrored Sunglasses were very helpful, and took prompt action. Now my boys may never learn how to swim, but, by golly, they’re alive, and that’s all that counts. As for me, I’m still shaking, and I need therapy. Can anyone help?
Comment by Species 8 —
August 23, 2006 @ 7:58 am
I was dining at the local hub of radical islamofascism (as compared to the non radical islamofascism), Bennigans, where I was served a pasta that definitely was not fettuccini in my fettuccini alfredo, w/ chicken.
Bastards.
Comment by Bramblyspam —
August 23, 2006 @ 8:09 am
August 22, 2006 was my 40th birthday!
Does that make me one of us or one of them? I’m confused.
Comment by Phillip J. Birmingham —
August 23, 2006 @ 8:58 am
I’m sneezing a lot today. Do you think maybe it’s anthrax?
Comment by Cryptic Ned —
August 23, 2006 @ 9:27 am
A Chinese woman in my lab kept using both centrifuges at once, preventing me from getting my work done. I don’t remember her ever doing that before. Clearly she is some sort of Shiite Uighur.
Comment by Jim F —
August 23, 2006 @ 10:09 am
I got rained on. I’m worried that Iran may be developing weather control devices.
Perhaps their fiendish plant is to destroy the world by heating it up, thereby triggering more intense hurricanes and storms.
And I wonder, still I wonder, who will stop the rain? Homeland Security? The FBI? Who?
Comment by Marley Greiner —
August 23, 2006 @ 10:15 am
I went to the library and was socked with a fine for late return of DVD’s. It is obvious that the library, a member of the ALA, enemy of the Patriot Act–has now openly aligned itself with terrorists and their Iranian henchmen and is extracting fines from customers to finance the destruction of our way of life. I say shut down all libraries now.
Comment by Charles Johnson —
August 23, 2006 @ 11:10 am
I masturbated while reading the user comments on my blog. In other words, I did nothing new.
Comment by vaskeli —
August 23, 2006 @ 11:15 am
I doubt occupied Romania finds your mockery funny.
Comment by jamie —
August 23, 2006 @ 11:42 am
“Clearly she is some sort of Shiite Uighur.”
…or possibly a Hui infiltrator.
Comment by hass —
August 23, 2006 @ 11:53 am
No no – see, there WAS going to be a terrorist attack on Aug 22 as Bernard Lewis foretold. However, our Secret Police State managed to foil it by listening onto telephone conversations and torturing random “unlawful combatant” goat-herders that we picked up in Afghanistan. I can’t go into details, since its all classified. You’ll have to take our Dear Leader Bush’s word on that.
Anyway, you can’t PROVE that didn’t happen, now can you? Therefore, it must have happened.
Comment by Ugh —
August 23, 2006 @ 11:56 am
I coped by reading the Internal Revenue Code.
Comment by Reinder —
August 23, 2006 @ 12:21 pm
I was feeling a bit sleepy and lethargic all day that day, presumably as a result of mind rays from the Twelfth Imam sapping my mental strength. Also, all the good reading matter in my studio had been mysteriously replaced by Bob & Bobette albums, all of which sucked except a very early one that had… get this… muslims as the supporting characters. If that isn’t a sign of a conspiracy I don’t know what is.
Trackback by Waffle —
August 23, 2006 @ 12:23 pm
Oh yeah, the apocalypse. Totally didn’t happen yesterday, did it?…
It says on the blog’s home page that we’re supposed to write about the impending apocalypse, and I’ll admit it. I’ve been remiss in my duties. This is because I don’t read wingnut blogs, preferring to read material by writers……
Comment by bobbo —
August 23, 2006 @ 12:33 pm
I bit my lip FOUR TIMES. In the SAME PLACE! The Islamofascists clearly have taken control of my body. Then, I was walking the dog, and guys with dark skin were playing CRICKET and speaking in a language I did not understand. We are all doomed. Doomed, I tell you.
Comment by Hogan —
August 23, 2006 @ 12:35 pm
If it’s Tuesday and I’m not getting buzzed on gin and tonics and watching Veronica Mars, then the jihadoids have already won.
Comment by Jackmormon —
August 23, 2006 @ 1:01 pm
A nice lady in India walked me through a tricky fix on my operating system that finally restored my internet access! I found a reasonably priced apartment in New York City! The local thrift store had a beautiful dress in just my size! The Yemenese kid in the minimart was sad to hear I was moving and urged me to come back and visit!
I could use more Days of Dodecahedral Doom, frankly.
Comment by Jim Henley —
August 23, 2006 @ 1:02 pm
Ladies and gentlemen, I think we’ve found one of those fifth columnists from the coastal enclaves!
Comment by Monte Davis —
August 23, 2006 @ 1:20 pm
Silk Road? Fall of the Roman Empire? Duhh… if you can’t connect the dots, Laurie Mylroie can.
Comment by markg —
August 23, 2006 @ 2:46 pm
I sneaked out of work early yesterday to spend my last afternoon on earth by the pool at my complex. The water was a chilly 83 degrees, down 2 from normal. I just know Iranians sabotaged the heating system,
Comment by K. Ron Silkwood —
August 23, 2006 @ 3:47 pm
My mail was late. And none of it was interesting.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
August 23, 2006 @ 4:39 pm
“Day of Dodecahedral Doom”
I still can’t talk about yesterday. It’s too hard.
I’m still struggling to figure out how twelve-sided polyhedrons fit it. I just can’t make it work!
*runs off, weeping*
Comment by Crusader AXE O'Lost Causes —
August 23, 2006 @ 4:46 pm
I finished Guests of the Ayatollah and decided that it was probably almost as boring to read as it was to be a hostage. I then took an attractive blonde from corporate to work and talked about old Europe. Later, I will feed the terrorists, Scaredy Cat and Tux, that I live with. Then I will read Fiasco, and see what comes next…
Comment by Hesiod —
August 23, 2006 @ 7:28 pm
Just a question. Why would the Iranians actually attack us when they already pulled off the intelligence operation of the past 100 years and goaded us into taking out their arch enemy (Saddam) AND bogging us down in a sectarian civil war?
On top of that, they even got their client militia in Lebanon to goad the Israelis into a humiliating military stalemate.
All this without firing a single shot in anger. At us anyway. They ARE shelling PKK strongholds in Iraqi Kurdistan as part of a joint operation with their new best buddies Turkey.
So….haven’t they, like, already won?
Comment by thoreau —
August 23, 2006 @ 9:15 pm
I spent the day trying to get a calculation to work. Amazingly enough, my boss, who was born in Iran, didn’t come into my office. So that was a blessing. If he had come in, I probably would have freaked out. “OMG!!! They’re coming to kill me!!!!”
Comment by Jon H —
August 23, 2006 @ 9:37 pm
“So….haven’t they, like, already won?”
Just goes to show, those grand vizier types are bad, dangerous, sneaky dudes, and not to be taken lightly.
Comment by Jon H —
August 23, 2006 @ 9:39 pm
I have it on good authority that Iran has thousands of people feverishly working on solving a huge tower of hanoi puzzle. Upon completion, they say, the world will end.
The fiends!
I demand to know why the President hasn’t acted against these Weapons of Puzzle Destruction.
Comment by pbg —
August 24, 2006 @ 1:56 am
Well, you see the world really did end on Aug. 22. However, due to the heroic efforts of the Super Ultra Grand Mystic Drumming Circle, it was put back together.
It’s really too bad one of the circle was busy with her bodywork–otherwise we wouldn’t have such unaccountable blips as Arnold Schwarzenegger being Governor of California, Michael Jackson being white, Guam being thousands of miles to the east of the Philippines, and a guy named Adam Sandler suddenly being a popular movie star.
Well, at least Battlefield Earth is now a box office disaster and nobody’s heard of Lee Grobin.
Comment by Johnathan Pearce —
August 24, 2006 @ 6:27 am
I notice that as yet, the hurricane season has yet to kick in. All the doomsayers will be out of a job soon.
Even so, making light of Iran’s nuclear ambitions is a bit silly, Jim. The Iranian regime are mad as hatters.
Comment by Jim Henley —
August 24, 2006 @ 7:47 am
Jonathan, can you really not see that “making light of Iran’s nuclear ambitions is a bit silly” in no way whatsoever speaks to the topic of this post? I’m “making light” of the self-reinforcing propaganda of a particular Western nomenklatura.
Your second statement seems, btw, utterly and obviously false. Just because the same circle jerk who stampeded us into the last war keep claiming it doesn’t make it true. You ought, finally, to stop taking those people so seriously. From what I can tell the Iranian regime is one of the most carefully calculating ones, in terms of calibrating means and ends and calculating the balance of forces, on the planet. This is not the same thing as saying they are cuddly or warm or, like President Bush is claimed to be, great to have a beer with. But they’re not reckless or insane, unless you’re using “insane” in the same sense Soviet psychiatry used to use the term.
Comment by Monte Davis —
August 24, 2006 @ 8:30 am
Cf. also the well-documented use of “let them wonder how crazy we are” tactics by Nixon and Kissinger, and the oh-so-rational RANDian calculus of nuclear brinksmanship before that.
Comment by kiche —
August 24, 2006 @ 8:44 am
There was more neocon/bushworshipping/religious right blather than usual on the 22nd, just take a look at this article.
I blame Iran. We must attack now before we suffer another unprovoked assault like this.
Comment by Species 8 —
August 24, 2006 @ 10:41 am
I wrote this comment about how my dinner was ruined by those people the other day. Unless of course, they, removed the comment.
Anyway, I was dining at the local hub of radical Islamofascism (as compared to the non-radical Islamofascism), Bennigans. Where they served a pasta that definitely was not fettuccini, in my ordered fettuccini al-Fredo, w/ chicken.
Watch your pasta. Therein lies the truth.
Comment by W. Kiernan —
August 24, 2006 @ 10:49 am
Early yesterday I saw some guys with medium brown skin milling around on the sidewalk doing Heaven-knows-what. Then after work I went to the booze shop to buy a 24-oz. Icehouse and a quarter pint of Beam in which to submerge my various sorrows, and what did I see but they were flat out of Icehouse! Thery didn’t even have any back in the walk-in cooler. Don’t try to tell me that’s a coincidence. Damn you, Ayatollah Khomeini!!!1!
Comment by Brian C.B. —
August 24, 2006 @ 2:15 pm
Someone tried to teach me algebra today. I resisted, manfully, as I am sure our leader did in his youth. But, I noticed that a kebab place just opened in town, and Giant Foods now stocks a whole refrigerator shelf full of different kinds of hummus. So, I think my fight is becoming a lonely one.
Comment by thoreau —
August 24, 2006 @ 9:48 pm
The Iranian regime are mad as hatters.
Keep in mind that the real power in Iran is not in the hands of the crazy Ahmadinejad, nor was it in the hands of the reformist Khatami. The real power is held by senior clergy, and for 27 years those guys have managed to keep power, keep a lid on domestic dissent, keep oil pumping, keep Saddam Hussein from conquring them (despite the fact that he had the backing of a certain superpower), and keep us busy in Iraq lately. (Their hireling Ahmed Chalabi played a part in that.)
They are eminently rational. Not in the sense of reasonable or fair-minded, but in the sense of knowing their material interests and knowing how to pursue those interests.
In some ways, this rationality makes them even more dangerous. In other ways, it makes them reassuringly unlikely to do something really, really insane.
Be afraid. Be very afraid. Just be sure that you’re afraid of the real dangers. The real danger is that these guys know how to keep us busy, they know how to keep their neighbors busy, and they know how to manage the sorts of instabilities that tack a huge risk premium onto oil prices. They may manage to out-maneuver us for regional dominance, keep us bogged down in a bloody mess in Iraq, and laugh all the way to the bank with their oil money.
Comment by Johnathan Pearce —
August 25, 2006 @ 7:41 am
Jim, cool it. If Iran is carefully as calculating as you say – debateable point, by the way – then how come it is led by a man who has made the sort of comments he has?
I honestly hope you are correct and that Iran is about as menacing as say, Iceland. I am not going to bet the farm on that, however.
Comment by wade —
August 25, 2006 @ 9:00 am
Iceland??!? ICELAND!!!??!
HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN THE COD WAR???!!
Comment by Bartholomew Rend —
August 25, 2006 @ 7:35 pm
Actually, by the way – your point, as you say, is about the sort of comments that he made, wouldn’t you say?
I sincerely suppose you are accurate and that Iceland is about as menacing as, hmmm, Tactical Nuclear Deterrents. I won’t wager the family Monet on that, whatsoever you might say, by the way.
Vote Tory.
Comment by Georgia Rend —
August 25, 2006 @ 7:39 pm
You should listen to my husband. He knows when to speak up, and when to pipe down. And we all should have something serious to fear, very soon, and enough with all this shambasting and sherbert tomfoolery. It’s positively apoco-lipstick.
I too vote Tory. Long live the Party.
Comment by Young Master Rend —
August 25, 2006 @ 7:53 pm
I believe the Iranians are pretty shirty, what you might call sad nutters, at a Liberal disco without hos (i mean the plural of your great American Ho, well famed on our shores).
Here’s what i believe: that we must all strive to keep the whirling wind of fear centralised, with its eye around the good, and its ventile netherborders vacant for the lightweight dregs of ”tolerant” ”compromisers”’, who will fly away, as though by science .
But this can only happen if we do it together, praying silently in our family houses for the strength to concur our inner liberal tendencies. Let us strive in atomised together-ish-ness likewise unto the skies in surprise, for peace on earth and no cease in worth of holy geese and mirth.
P.S….”Even us youngsters vote Tory once every 4 years!”
Comment by O my God! —
August 25, 2006 @ 7:58 pm
You have no idea of the horror i went through before i realized you were all a joke, and your family is only jagged slicing broken dreams, smashed by cynical satanic rubbish.
You Rends will never learn this is not your place.
God i’m so mad i could shoot something RIGHT NOW.
But i won’t, no way, because of the gun laws.
O my God. But it’s like, no way, it’s just a joke.
Comment by Listen to our President —
August 25, 2006 @ 8:06 pm
I saw a weasel getting chased by (approx.) 19 magpies today.
And the other day my cat ripped out a stoat’s throat.
Is this a portending sign of Islamofascistic and Muslimosadistic and Non-Christianistic smut in our air?
Who o who can tell me o? Is it safe to listen to the Sham Box set? Is it (sum-of-all-fears) Liberalism yet?
Please please me do, or else make like a Red, and turn!
Comment by Bartholomew Rend —
August 25, 2006 @ 8:11 pm
I wish my earlier points-in-comment to be in no way mistaken for a rancid diatribe against Semites.
Or my belligerence to be berated as a fatwah to fight my lawyer’s leftist issues (idiocies).
A law in the paw is worth not-a-thing in the jaw, but to whom? to whom? to whom?
and for what ends?
Comment by O my God —
August 25, 2006 @ 8:14 pm
I wish to strike against this facile neo-pagan, who thinks politics can be linked to ANIMALS PLAYING CHASE!!!?!
O MY GOD, have you no idea in one bit whatever??
And what is a “Sham Box Set”? And what is your problem?
Can’t you see we’re trying to FIX THINGS HERE?
Comment by Appreciation —
August 25, 2006 @ 8:18 pm
Appreciation is what i pay my workers with.
You’re all great-looking people. Trust in Dr. Atkins.
Can you tell a terrorist at 50 paces yet? Learn how with ACCU-VU lenses.
Feel better. Inform in a (possibly-neutral/certainly-acceptable) fashion TODAY – don’t be late, when you’re on a date to stop HATE! Vote FBI.