Happiness is the troof

I'm hooked

Got this song inside my head, for some reason. Share the wealth.

How Things Work

A chicken leg for any who got all mopey about anything I posted about the Mozilla/Eich thing:

https://input.mozilla.org/en-US/?selected=7d&date_start=2014-03-28

Hat tip to AOSHQ over there in Pauli's sidebar --->

Open Whining Thread

It's occurred to me that I don't provide enough opportunity for those who envy the victim status gays, liberals and others of similar moral stature get to claim for themselves on an almost daily basis to have their own voices as the unfair victims of meanies heard. Well, this thread is your chance to whine to your heart's content. I'll even start it off myself with a long-overdue wail about my Existential BooBoo, "Owwwww". Now that's the sound of existential victimhood, people. Repite: "Owwwww".

Extra points will be given if you're well over 30 but can still hit that unmistakeable note of petulant snark only a 13-year-old girl can pull off, and extra extra points if you can keep beating your audience over the head with some sort of utterly banal and pointless slogan like "The Law of Toads: You Don't Think You Have Warts - Until I Do!" to the point that it resembles a ruined mackerel disintegrating over everyone and everything. In fact, if I think I can make any internet cred or cheddar off your meme, I might split it with you.

Okay, whiners, diverticulitis has been done, but everything else is wide open.

Oonnhhhhh.

The Law of Permitted Free Speech

"Somebody's cut the string in two."

Could gay terrorists be suppressing sales of Dreher's Ruthie Leming book?

Are gay terrorists working secretly behind the scenes to suppress sales of Rod Dreher's The Little Way of Ruthie Leming? We know from Rod's own lips that sales have been disappointing, if not disastrous, and his fragmented tour of odd and isolated venues only confirms that. What other explanation could there be?

I saw this hysterical post on Dreher's blog today, and I immediately thought what he was desperately hoping to be was Bluto rallying the troops in Animal House:

Maybe it really is over, ya mo-rons. Maybe this time Wermer really has dropped the big one.

The only problem is that corporations, even liberal outfits like Mozilla, just don't work that way: it simply isn't the case that a few rinky-dink protests pop up on social media, and the board of directors then gather, pull their knives, and put Caesar down to please Pinkus, the one gay Roman who thought he dressed unfashionably.

No, in the real world populated by critically reasoning adults (which may, admittedly, exempt many of the adjunct professors populating Dreher's blog) this sort of action, reaction, and follow through only really happens if things are much more problematic at Mozilla and the gain from pleasing Pinkus is already greater than or at least equal to the loss from sacking Eichus Caesar.

So who wins with Eich stepping down? Everyone, probably Eich most of all.

For this to ever have come close to happening, Eich would have had to have been on thin ice as CEO already, for whatever reason. Corporations just don't change CEOs the way Dreher changes religions; they are actually too valuable to them to add or subtract frivolously. But now Eich can leave as a martyr instead of as a publicly humiliated failed CEO. Mozilla wins by looking even more progressive. And Pinkus wins by walking away with the delusion that his robe stayed on the floor where he dropped it because he commanded it to. Pinkus may come to learn that things don't always work that way.

And how does Dreher win with this post? Obviously it's good red meat, always good for blog hits. But in the time-honored Dreher tradition, it's also something else: the wrapper concealing a different payload.

Despite Dreher claiming "Yeah, it’s personal for me", it's nothing of the sort. He's already retreated back to his boyhood home, a boomerang child with jarringly age-inappropriate thinning hair, where no one can get to him to pull his pants down, and he's already abandoned any real interest in corporate journalism with his confessional wildings on his TAC blog over the past year. But most of all, as we've all pointed out here time and again, Dreher has never gone fully on the record against SSM in any way that could seriously get him in trouble: he already carefully OKCupids himself in advance of every blog post.

If you are already good with first getting the permission of others before speaking freely as the passive-aggressive Dreher does - the assumption underpinning this whole post - you are already their bitch.

Willingly.*

So how does Dreher win? The subliminal, implicit payload inside the wrapper.

This Eich thing is so historically hideous, second only to the fall of Constantinople - no, wait, the fall of France is a much better analogy - that it can logically only be the tip of the iceberg, so there's probably already a vast Pink Illuminati stalking Dreher in order to thwart everything he attempts.

Which is the only way to explain the inexplicable. Given his obvious talent as a writer and the obvious draw of spilling the beans on his dead sister, the poor sales of The Little Way of Ruthie Leming can only be explained by mystical evil forces implicitly, invisibly already at work.

And Eich's resignation is why you should begin to think so. Dreher doesn't need to tell you so outright; you can already figure it out for yourself, ya mo-rons.

Because it's only logical.

*Keith's Law of Permitted Free Speech, minions. Spread it far and wide throughout all lands. I'm a little behind on the internet meme-coining scale, you know.

Good news about our next meetup

Okay, gang - I like to call you gang because it has that fruity-phony sound to it that makes me feel I'm doing a better job of emulating my idol, whom I got it from - some good news about our next View From the Hood of Your Car meetup.

As you'll remember, an unfortunate event precipitated by but not the fault of  Reader M. left the Blue Rhino butane refill stand unusable as a VFTHOYC meetup spot. But Blue Rhino's loss has proved to be our gain.

Our destination this time is a spectacular tropical resort which lies in a lovely South American country abutting Venezuela and Brazil in which - how convenient is this - English is the official language.

Not only will it be a VFTHOYC meetup, but much, much more. There will be seminars and panel discussions covering every aspect of a book I got at a garage sale, including Orv and the Mystery, Biceps Beach, Ann and the possum, the China-Nepal-Bali triangle, and the Fountain man. Not to mention endless opportunities to pre-order my proposed book on certain multi-level marketing opportunities in newly emerging nations. And something new I'd like to explore, which for now I'm calling the Crank Option.

When you order your tickets - they're a flat $100, by the way - be sure to give our operators your full credit card number, expiration date, and that little 3-digit security code on the back.

For the finale Saturday night, we'll be having a special feast featuring several different types of the local seafood carefully prepared in the traditional native manner, all washed down with an absolutely wonderful tropical fruit drink, the specialty of the resort, which I'm told is to die for. Because my doctor has just recently told me to temporarily avoid wonderful tropical fruit drinks I won't be having any myself, but that just means more for everybody else, right?

Our spectacular tropical meetup will be held Friday evening, June 6, 2014 through Sunday morning, June 8, 2014, or maybe earlier, depending.

Again, be sure our operators have your full credit card information on record in advance, number, expiration date, and that little 3-digit security code on the back.

"Free us, O Lord, from all disordered attachments..."

Father Estabrook's homily last Sunday was excellent. Excerpt:

True wealth, one writer put it, is not determined by how much we have, but by how little we need. Christians know that we need so little, we are free to give away even precious gems because we have already received the greatest treasure, the most precious gift.

In talking with the school kids about what they were giving up for Lent, I am always a little saddened when I challenge them to give up video games and television, and they say, “no, I couldn’t live without that.” It’s not like the human race survived and flourished without iphones for thousands of years or anything.

Lent challenges us to examine those things from which we derive inordinate joy and to practice detachment from them.