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November 2004

Ephemeral Isle

 

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Monday

1 November 2004

The Winners!

We have the winners of our 1st Tales of Future Past Short Story Contest!

Check back on the 15th of this month to read their exciting entries!

Osama Bin Laden: Tool of Karl Rove?

When I first heard this particular gem I dismissed it as the fodder of pure nut-jobs, but when Walter Cronkite starts spouting it… 

Okay, maybe I just have to expand my nut-job list.

The End of Civilisation

The BBC reports that the Times is going from broadsheet to tabloid format.  That’s it.  Stock up on tinned food and get out the anti-mutant submachine guns; it’s Omega Man time.

John Kerry and the New Boyfriend Syndrome

Mark Steyn claims that the endorsements for John Kerry sound a lot like a woman talking about her new boy friend by harping for an hour on her old one.  Maybe, or perhaps the Democrats are still pining for Howard Dean.

The End of Civilisation II

In a classic example of cutting off your nose to spite your face, British actors are letting their prejudice against Received Pronunciation kill their chances of getting work.  Because it’s fashionable to hold on to one’s native accent (or better yet, feign a Mockney one), many actors are refusing to learn how to talk proper and are relegating themselves to a future of playing costermongers, maids, and a vast wasteland of kitchen sink dramas. 

Well, better that than audiences being forced to sit through this:

Ter be, or not ter be--that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the Chinese Blind ter suffer

The slings and arrows ov outrageous fortune

Or ter take arms against a Housemaid's Knee ov troubles

And by opposin' end them. ter die, ter sleep--

No more--and by a Bo Peep ter say we end

The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation

Devoutly ter be wished. ter die, ter sleep--

To sleep--perchance ter dream: ay, there's the rub,

For in that Bo Peep ov death what dreams may come

When we 'ave shuffled Frank Bough dis mortal coil,

Must give us pause. There's the respect

That makes calamity ov so long life.

For who would bear the whips and scorns ov time,

Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely

The pangs ov despised love, the law's delay,

The insolence ov office, and the spurns

That patient merit ov th' unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread ov somethin' after death,

The undiscovered country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than Joe Blake and Kidney Isle of Skye ter others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards ov us all,

And thus the native hue ov resolution

Is sicklied o'er wiv the pale cast ov thought,

And enterprise ov great Hedge and Ditch and moment

With dis regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name ov action. -- Soft yew now,

The fair Ophelia! -- Nymph, in thy orisons

Be all ma sins remembered.

Translation courtesy of Cockeyizer.com.

Tuesday

2 November 2004

US Election Day

It’s the US elections today and if you’re an American citizen you should be on your way to the polls.  I’m not going to make any endorsements, because the Time Lords forbade me from interfering in local politics, but I will indulge in a couple of reminders.

Remember the above photograph when you go cast your vote.  This wasn’t a figment of the imagination.  It really happened and the bastards who did it were only disappointed that they didn’t kill more people.

Remember Bali, Jakarta, Madrid, Tunis, Istanbul, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Riyadh, Casablanca, Moscow, and, most of all Beslan.  9/11 wasn’t a one-off.

Remember Paris, Rome, London, Amman and all the other places that we stopped them from killing again and where we hope we can keep doing it.

Remember Kim Jong-Il’s brace of fission bombs, the Mullahs of Iran’s “peaceful” reactor, Dr. Khan’s charming little nuclear black market, Saddam & Qaddafi’s now defunct bomb programmes, and how none of this rogues gallery would shed a tear if London or New York vanished under a mushroom cloud.

Remember the kidnappings and beheadings.  Those weren’t special effects on the screen.

Remember that there are very evil men in the world who want to kill as many of us as they can, enslave the rest, and will literally kill themselves trying.

Remember that Bin Laden is on the run, most of his lieutenants are dead or in gaol, Qadaffi has thrown in the towel, and Saddam is sitting in a cell waiting to answer for the hundreds of thousands he tortured and murdered.  The killers can be beaten and they know it.

Remember, whether you vote for Bush, Kerry, Nader, or a write-in for Commander John Crichton, to make sure that your choice is one that will make the murderers and tyrants lose as much sleep as possible.

Wednesday

3 November 2004

United States Election Results

President George Bush has been re-elected.  Evidently my last-minute write in campaign for Farscape's Cmdr John Crichton has not borne fruit.  You would have thought that the slogan Vote Crichton, he can make wormholes! would have resonated with the electorate.

Final results of the electoral college votes:

George Bush:  286

John Kerry:  252

Ralph Nader:  0

Cmdr John Crichton:  0

Thursday

4 November 2004

President George W. Bush: Returned by the Voters

Many people I know are literally in tears after George W. Bush’s victory, but I am most definitely not joining them.  In fact, when I got word this morning of Kerry’s throwing in the towel all I could feel was a wave of relief.  Not victory, mind, or satisfaction, or whatever; relief.

If you’ve been following Ephemeral Isle, you know that I don’t care that much for politics and that I have one over-riding concern: the war.  I am firmly convinced that the American elections were a turning point in our battle against the Islamofascists.  Either we were going to take them seriously, hunt them down, and kill them; or we were going to hide our collective heads in the sand, pretend that it was still 10 September 2001, and learn the hard lessons all over again when a North Korean nuke goes off in Trafalgar Square or Boston Harbour.  I’m not kidding when I say that if Kerry had won I was going to be spending the day buying gas masks, pistols, and a second-hand Geiger counter.  Instead, I sat down to write this confident for the first time in months that the next four years would bring us closer to victory rather than more likely to see our cities in ashes.  The tyrants are on notice.

That being said, the 2004 American elections have had some interesting repercussions.

First, it is apparent that the Democrats are in real danger of falling apart as a serious political party.  They have not only embraced the loony left fringe to the point of allowing Michael Moore to sit at the top table at their convention, but they have waged an incredibly dirty campaign that’s sole focus was the Democrat’s irrational hatred of the president.  In fact, it’s the only election that I can think of where the opposition candidate didn’t matter.  John Kerry in defeat isn’t worth considering.  Even his own party thought he was irrelevant to the election.  Never mind his utter lack of charisma, his sense of entitlement, and inability to speak a sentence without contradicting himself; what Kerry said or did was never important.  The Democrats could have fielded a tin of condemned veal for all they cared.  This was never more obvious than during the last week of the campaign when Kerry spent four days hammering away at a bogus story about missing explosives and nobody in his own party gave a toss that he was making himself look ridiculous.  Why?  Because he was nothing but a placeholder for a campaign whose goal was never to get him in, but Bush out.

Not that that didn’t keep the Main Stream Media, Hollywood, MoveOn.org, and the whole “angry crowd” from pulling out all the stops to help him.  It was an impressive feat and shouldn’t be underestimated.  They almost managed to drag a corpse into the White House.  Impressive, but suicidal.  Even if they’d succeeded, they destroyed their own credibility in the process.

Still, there’s a bright side.  Rents will be much more reasonable in Bel Aire and Manhattan once the upper-class Kerry supporters make good on their promise to leave the country.  Of course, that assumes that self-denial gives way as reality seeps in.  Today I overheard some chaps in an office talking about the election.  While Kerry was giving his concession speech, this lot were talking about lawyers and recounts with the sort of cheery confidence that one associates with the day after Culloden and Leftist analysis on the Internet talks about how Kerry would have “won handily” if he’d handled other issues as well as he handled the war— the very thing that nearly killed his candidacy at birth.  The BBC Have Your Say pages were particularly good; comment after comment about the need for superior intelligence in a president and the idiocy of American voters—all written with questionable spelling and grammar.  Then there is the fascinating way that the media seems to be struggling with its instinct to spin the news of Bush’s victory, only to come up with the nagging problem that there is no one and nothing to spin for at the moment.

The one thing the Democrats are not doing is taking a good, hard look in the mirror and trying to figure out where they went wrong.  I have read a number of left-wing commentators who have gone on about how they have to be more aggressive, they have to speak in simpler language, they have to get beyond the war and talk about social programmes, etc.  etc. etc.  It never occurs to them that trying to run a stealth campaign where you say one thing to get elected and do exactly the opposite in office might have something to do with it; that maybe they do this because if they ran honestly no one would ever put their lot into office.  They remind me of a theatre company that can’t understand why the seats are empty night after night.  They blame the location, the publicity department, the newspaper coverage, and the churlish tastes of the public.  The one thing they can’t bring themselves to ask is whether or not the plays they put on stink.

By contrast, the pro-Bush blogs are strangely sedate; not much today beyond quiet satisfaction and telling Kerry supporters that the world has not ended.  Mind you John Derbyshire allows himself a tiny bit of a gloat.

Still, I must admit that I will miss John Kerry, Okay, I confess that I took a lot of shots at him, but that’s only because he’s such a gloriously pompous windbag.  It’s going to be very hard to let such an easy target go.

Friday

5 November 2004

Guy Fawkes Day

Happy Guy Fawkes Day from Ephemeral Isle!

May the sparks of your bon fires fly ever heavenward. 

Monday

8 November 2004

Fishy Heaven

We had one of those cliché childhood traumas last week.  We bought Emma her first goldfish last Sunday and since I’ve had more experience with dead fish than Brighton Beach I insisted that we get a pair.  Sure enough, the next day one of the two was hail and hearty and the second was hovering near the surface as if gauging the appropriate moment to give up the ghost.  It hung on until Wednesday when it finally did the piscine backstroke and Daddy tried to do the good and proper thing and remove the remains before Emma noticed what had happened.  I made sure that she was engrossed with her toy box before I opened the lid of the aquarium, scooped out the minute corpse, and palmed it as I casually strolled to the bathroom for the traditional loo-side service.

What I hadn’t counted on was that two-year olds have the power of instant teleportation and just as my hand was pressing down on the lever a very distraught Emma appeared in the room and saw her fish go swirling through the waters of Time into the u-bend of Eternity.  There followed a good twenty minutes of her crying and alternating between demanding her fish back and waving a sad bye-bye to it while Daddy tried to explain that her fish had to go to heaven and it was okay.

Eventually, I thought we’d settled things until my wife got home and went for a pee.  Emma saw this (having a toddler means that you have no privacy) and began to wail as hard as ever at the thought of further indignities being heaped on her pet. 

Anyway, fifty percent success; I got my daughter to accept that her goldfish has gone to a better place, but now she thinks that Heaven is somewhere under the toilet.  

Let’s just hope that nobody close to us dies in the near future or Emma is going to be lumbered with some psychological baggage that no amount of therapy could expect to shift.

Not that this is the first fish-related crisis that I’ve had in my life—and I’m not referring to the special at the Café Martin.  A few years ago I was dating a girl to whom I gave a pair of goldfish with the highly original names of Peter and Wendy.   Unfortunately, Peter and Wendy had the life expectancy of an Italian parliament and died the next morning.  Naturally, I did what any brave, upstanding male of the species would do and ran out and bought two more fish that resembled the missing pair.  They fared no better than the first and the cycle repeated itself a dozen times over the next few weeks until one evening I was in the pet shop buying the fifteenth pair and chatting with the assistant, whom I’d never seen before, who told about this pathetic loser whose fish kept dying on him, but who didn’t have the bottle to tell his girlfriend.  I laughed.  It was forced, but I laughed.

Since then, I have learned a lesson that I would have applied with Emma, but she doesn’t know how to read yet.  Instead of taking the coward’s way and secretly replacing fish or stealthily flushing them, I now lay the late piscatorial inmate out on the counter next to the tank and place a cunningly forged suicide note next to him. 

I find that it makes things simpler all around.

Tuesday

9 November 2004

Emigration Alternative

To Our American Readers:

Liberal?  Upset by the Republican victories across the board?  Frightened of Ashcroft's Dark Legions about to be unleashed?  Wish you could make good your threat to move somewhere more European if Bush won?  Dismayed by the fact that emigrating isn't as easy as you thought?  Don't give up hope, because there is an alternative to living with a load of stupid, bigoted, racist, homophobic, gun-toting, bible-thumping, red-state sub-humans who don't appreciate your open-mindedness and obvious moral and intellectual superiority.   For you, the discerning Democrat, we at Ephemeral Isle offer you our latest product: The Lefty-Shelter™. 

Yes, with Lefty-Shelter™ you  and your family, partner, alternative family, group spouses, emotional collective, or significant otherness set can wait out  Republican rule in your own self-contained, climate controlled underground bunker.  Made entirely of compressed issues of Mother Jones, The New York Times, Socialist Worker, and The Guardian by happy Cuban collective farm workers, Lefty-Shelter™ is stocked with enough granola and lentils to out last one, two, or even three consecutive conservative administrations.   This premium installation comes with  an MP3 stereo with all your favourite Joan Baez hits, plasma television with patented Fox News Censor™, and the complete DVD collection of every season of Mash, Queer as Folks, The West Wing, and 60 Minutes so that you can be kept entertained with politically correct security.  An environmentally friendly wind solar panel system delivers a whopping five watts to power it all-- at least, during the daytime.  In addition, Lefty-Shelter™ comes with your choice of one of our complete pre-selected libraries with reading matter to suit your place on the political spectrum: 

  • Moderate
  • Claret Socialist
  • Raving Left-Wing Nut Job
  •  "That Maureen Dowd is So Insightful" Basket Case

Order Now and we will include absolutely free our Ideology Shielding to block those nagging Right-Wing telepathic messages without that itchy tinfoil hat.

On a budget?  Then consider our Econo-Lib™ shelter.  All the protection against having your preconceptions shattered for a fraction of the cost.  Comes with a free DVD of Fahrenheit 9/11 and an autographed photo of Noam Chomsky.

Wednesday

10 November 2004

Emigration Alternative Part Two

Coastopia! 

Ladies and gentlemen, you needn't fret anymore. We have decided that we can't live in the United States anymore, because so many of you in the "heartland" are so full of ****. We were all going to move to various other countries, but then we thought - why should WE move?

We are tired of rednecks in Oklahoma picking the leader who will determine if it is safe for us to cross the Brooklyn Bridge. We are sick of homophobic knuckle-draggers in Wyoming contributing to the national debate on our gay marriages. So we have done the only thing we could.

We seceded.

Uh, huh.  Right.

Some disappointed Kerry supporters have come up with an alternative to admitting defeat: secede and declare their own country of Coastopia.  Yes, that worked so well in 1860 and that time the Confederacy had the advantage of having an army while this lot are counting on hazelnut lattes and wishful thinking to do the job.

Mind you, they may want to do a bit of homework first.  The would-be Costopians imagine that if the enough disgruntled granola munchers opt out of the Union they'd end up with a nice chunk of real estate as above, but if they looked at the Democrat counties for the states they want, they'd find themselves rivalling Serbia for Most Pathetic Rump State. 

Um, Coastopia?

Thursday

11 November 2004

Remembrance Day/Veteran's Day

What we owe and what the to tell the Islamists: Two sides of the Atlantic

and two senses of the word "never" that are perfectly apt for this war.

With Americans and Iraqis fighting to drive the terrorists from Fallujah, and the Black Watch in the thick of things in the Sunni Triangle, this Remembrance Day is one where we especially owe the men and women of the Coalition forces our deepest prayers and thanks.

Friday

12 November 2004

This Just In:

Arafat: Still Dead

Yasser Arafat (1929-2004... give or take a week)

Yasser Arafat was declared officially "dead" yesterday after being kept "sort of dead" for a week while his PLO cronies fought over who would be Capo de Capo and "talked" to  Arafat's Kurdish accountant to find out what happened to the billions of dollars that the late "president" trousered. 

Just as well, since Plan B involved ideas gleaned from Weekend at Bernie's.

Yes, another murderous despot has died in bed with a fat Swiss bank account rather than on the gallows as he deserved.  This man, who invented modern terrorism and has the blood of who knows how many innocent men, women, and children on his hands, who addressed the UN while wearing a pistol by a UN that let him, and turned the Nobel Peace Prize into a sick joke, has finally gone to meet his maker, and let us hope that it is a very awkward meeting.

Predictably, the Western press has gushed over his week-old corpse with the BBC skirting lightly over that awkward matter of his ordering the murder of athletes, schoolchildren, and tourists in wheel chairs; the suicidal "war" that he declared against Israel; and his nasty little pacts with Iran, Syria, the Saudis, and Saddam; but the Arab press were, oddly enough, happy to show the contempt in which they've held him for years.

To his credit goes his remarkable legacy:  He found the Palestinians a dislocated people who were despised by their fellow Arabs and living in refugee camps and he left them a dislocated people who are despised by their fellow Arabs; living in refugee camps; robbed blind by their "leaders", tortured and murdered for speaking a word against the PLO (excuse me, the PA); and spoon-fed insane, racist propaganda until they're willing to strap on a bomb belt and take out a bus full of children.

Speaking of children, in May 1974, one of Arafat's early operations involved taking a school full of kids for ransom.  When Israeli troops tried to rescue them, the brave PLO terrorists let off hand grenades and started shooting the hostages.  Twenty one of the dead were children.  Their names were:  Ilana Turgeman. Rachel Aputa. Yocheved Mazoz. Sarah Ben-Shim'on. Yona Sabag. Yafa Cohen. Shoshana Cohen. Michal Sitrok. Malka Amrosy. Aviva Saada. Yocheved Diyi. Yaakov Levi. Yaakov Kabla. Rina Cohen. Ilana Ne'eman. Sarah Madar. Tamar Dahan. Sarah Soper. Lili Morad. David Madar. Yehudit Madar.

Sleep well, you monster.

Monday

15 November 2004

Best Cell Phone Prediction Ever

As we can see here, the disadvantage of early cell phones was that they were large, clumsy affairs.  On the plus side...

Tuesday

16 November 2004

Consumer Affairs Department

Airline Food Tip No. 42:  NEVER order the fish.

Wednesday

17 November 2004

Theatre Department

The critics gave mixed reviews to Howard's performance as Thimble in Neville Lillbut's new play, "Waiting for Talcum Powder."

Thursday

18 November 2004

Three Days Late Department

Once again circumstances conspire against me.  Emma's learning curve exhibits that unnerving steepness that only a two year old can reach.  One day her speech is nothing but a string of babble with occasional words and phrases to break the gibberish up and the next she is making intelligent sentences and is answering questions.  A couple of nights ago it was getting late, so I informed our offspring that it was getting late and that it was time for her to go "night-night."  I expected some token resistance, but what I did not expect was for her to not only say "No," but to follow it up with "Not sleepy."

Great suddenly she's not only defying me, but she's giving me arguments.  That means that Daddy has to switch to Firm mode and it also means that if she can consciously say "No," then she can understand the concept of bedtime.  So, for the past three nights we've been trying to enforce a proper bedtime ritual with quiet time, bath, jammies, bedtime stories, and tuckings in with Bunny followed by Emma sweetly drifting off into the arms of Morpheus.  Or rather, Emma putting up a screaming blue fit as she refuses against all odds to go to sleep until she's damn well ready.  That sort of rebellion just isn't on.  Wouldn't take it from crazed Afghan tribesmen who wouldn't go to bed and I won't take it from my daughter, so her howls and tantrums were met with firm resolve, switching out all the lights in the place, everyone else going to bed at 9 PM, and, finally, a long car ride around town.

Result:  she goes to sleep as late as ever, but parental authority is intact.  More or less.

Can speak for parental nerves, however.

Anyway, one side effect of all this is that it has eaten into my time and energy like pouring petrol into a Styrofoam cup and therefore I must apologise for this year's Tales of Future Past Short Story Contest winners being posted three days late.  I feel like ten times a fool and would like to say sorry to all the winners and those who have been popping in the read their stories. 

Anyway, enjoy while I go duct tape my daughter to her mattress.

Friday

19 November 2004

Earlobe Men!

Earlobemen!  They came from beyond to awe us with their superior aural appendages.  It doesn't get them very far, I'll grant you, but you've got to go with what you have.

Monday

22 November 2004

Important Announcement!

Okay, we've been getting a lot of controversy about this, so let's set this straight once and for all.

Here are the lyrics to Megas XLR:

Living here in Jersey,

Fighting villains from afar,

You've got to find first gear,

In your giant robot car.

You dig giant robots!

I dig giant robots!

We dig giant robots!

Chicks dig giant robots!

Nice!

Get it right, people!

Tuesday

23 November 2004

A Public Service Announcement

Here is a reminder about eating more fish:

Eat More Fish!

Wednesday

24 November 2004

Happy Thanksgiving!

It's the American holiday of Thanksgiving here, so I'm off for a few days of family time and dyspepsia from gross overindulgence. 

Monday

29 November 2004

Oh, the Fun That We Had!

"Okay, Mother, it was very funny, but for the last time, where is the Superglue solvent?!"

Tuesday

30 November 2004

UN Reform

I see from the news that the United Nations is talking about reforming itself.

<longpause></longpause>

Sorry, I had to go away until I could stop laughing.  The idea of reforming the UN is like someone who bought a prefab home made out of untreated chip board sitting on stilts stuck straight into the ground on a steep hill composed of silt honeycombed with sink holes in a region of heavy rainfall, earthquakes, forest fires, and high winds asking whether or not it would be a good idea to replace the paint that hasn't been renewed for fifty years with vinyl siding.

Reform the UN?  What in the name of sanity is there to reform?  The UN record is dismal beyond belief.  I won't even bother about the old stuff, meaning last year's,  look at just the current crop of UN scandals

And now the UN has given Iran exactly the same toothless inspection deal that Korea got when it "promised" to suspend its nuclear weapons... sorry, power programme.

This lot makes Major Bloodnok look like a solid citizen

Now, this isn't to say that UN reform couldn't be fun.   Hauling Kofi off for six of the best, forcing the entire UN staff to live off a typical Sudanese diet of warmed over nothing for a week, making Chirac explain in person why he blocked the liberation of Iraq to a group of knuckle-duster toting mothers of former inmates of Saddam's children's prisons, shifting the General Assembly to South Georgia Island; these all have a poetic justice to them, but I'll settle for Bush sending Condi Rice to discuss nuclear proliferation with the Security Council... three days after he takes Tehran and Pyong Yang. 

Iran Invasion is On!

I predict that the Coalition is going to be invading Iran soon and the Mullahs are going over like a house of cards.  How do I know this?  Because the first swallow of war has taken wing as Andrew Gilligan declares in the Spectator that Iran is not a threat to anyone, yet is impossible to defeat. 

Let's see... Afghanistan and the Brutal Afghan Winter...  Iraq and the Brutal Iraqi Summer.... Yup, we're right on cue.   

Szondy's Law:  When a pundit declares that a nasty little third world dictatorship is harmless and invulnerable he is certainly wrong on both counts. 

Iran Update: Neville Chamberlain Award

Oh, well done, UN!  You really put the Islamofascists on notice!

The Mullahs are already swaggering about saying that they'll be back in the uranium enrichment business within months and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

You would have thought they'd at least have waited for the ink to dry before trying it on!


Ephemeral Isle

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