What’s liberal about liberal arts? The Graphic Novel.
As she did from time to time, Chanterelle struck a social-realism pose to collect her thoughts.
Man, where do they get these books? (Via CT).
Tag Archives: humor
amusing
Now surround each shot with artistically-arranged panels of sugar, pin a strip of lime-peel to the top of each with a silver cocktail pick (?) or toothpick and draw the peel around the drink, thus holding it together. Serves two. (Hint: to drink, use the sugar panels to scoop up the gelatin.)
The classics make a comeback
Colombian gangsters face sex ban:
Wives and girlfriends of gang members in one of Colombia’s most violent cities have called a sex ban in a bid to get their men to give up the gun.
LYSISTRATA
Now tell me, if I have discovered a means of ending the war, will you all second me?…if we would compel our husbands to make peace, we must refrain… We must refrain from the male altogether…
“The traveller must, of course, always be cautious of the overly broad generalisation”
George Saunders visits the UK.
But I am an American, and a paucity of data does not stop me from making sweeping, vague, conceptual statements and, if necessary, following these statements up with troops.
…
Furthermore, I feel confident that the discovery, by my countrymen, of the unique British delicacy called “fish and chips” would put an end to American obesity for ever.
freedom on the march
According to Fafblog, the justification of our presence in Iraq is a kind of Groundhog Day experience. Here was a laugh-out-loud snippet:
Q. Why are we in Iraq?
A. For freedom! Recent intelligence informs us it is on the march.
Q. Hooray! Where’s it marching to?
A. To set up a government of the people, by the people, for the people, and held in check by strict adherence to the laws of Islam.
Q. Huh! Freedom sounds strangely like theocracy.
A. No it doesn’t! It is representative godocracy, in which laws are written by the legislative branch, enforced by the executive branch, and interpreted by an all-powerful all-knowing deity which manifests its will through a panel of senior clerics.
Q. Whew! Is democracy on the march?
A. Democracy was on the march. Sadly, freedom and democracy were caught in a blizzard and freedom was forced to eat democracy to survive.
Just think about that for a moment — freedom was forced to eat democracy to survive. It’s an elegant and damning metaphor. For all the bluster about the new realpolitik of our post 9-11 world, the neoconservative agenda is fundamentally a pie-in-the-sky approach to foreign policy. As Publius writes while commenting on the NY Times Fukuyama article,
The actual invasion of Iraq (and the greater neocon vision for the Middle East) depends entirely on idealism in that it bets the house on imposing Western ideas top-down rather than helping them develop from the bottom-up… Because liberal democracy “recognizes” the dignity of each individual in a way that no other system does, it represents the final stage of History and has, ideologically speaking, triumphed over competing systems like socialism.
Rather than getting down to brass tacks and figuring out what is actually achievable, we’re fed some heavy-duty koan-like analyses that beggar explanation. And so here is your moment of Zen:
Q. Why are we in Iraq?
A. To prevent the failure of the occupation of Iraq. If we pull out now the occupation will be a failure!
Q. Would it have been easier to have never occupied it in the first place?
A. Ah, but if we never occupied Iraq, then the occupation certainly would have been a failure, now wouldn’t it?
Q. [meditates for many years]
Q. Now I am enlightened.
call numbers
The Library of Congress prefix for the Bible is “BS.” So BS75.xxx is the Bible in Latin, and so on. Although it probably stands for “Biblical Studies” or something, it still made me giggle when I was in the Graduate Theological Union library today.
An Ergodic Walk 