Not much time to write today (or for the next few days, most likely).

In the meantime, you might have a look at my the latest revision of my WWII parody poster

Zonitics blogs that it's apparently against French law to insult their president, and that a U.K. paper is facing a 30,000 pound fine for calling Chirac a "worm".

I'd like the set the record straight here. Blacques Jacques Chiracques is not a common worm. Worms, although slimy and practically brainless, provide a valuable service to humanity (and to the environment in general).

Blacques Jacques is more like a lamprey, or perhaps a tapeworm, of the sort you might find wriggling in a pile of steaming feces.

Tapeworm! Tapeworm! Tapeworm! Tapeworm!

Guess I'd better hold off on taking that vacation in France, huh?

(via InstaPundit)

Current reading: More Darwin APIs (I think I've found a way around my earlier problem... at least it seems to be working)

Current listening: AC/DC: Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

Well, I'm glad to see that all the danger from terrorists has passed, and that the Justice Department has nothing better to do than bust people for selling bongs.

Wonder if Ashcroft is going to start arresting purveyors of toilet paper rolls, aluminum foil, apples, and beer cans?

Free clue, John: not being able to buy a bong never stopped anyone from smoking dope. This makes about as much sense as fighting alcoholism by outlawing shot glasses.

I love this quote from acting DEA chief John Brown: "They are as much a part of drug trafficking as silencers are a part of criminal homicide".

He might have a point if more than a miniscule fraction of homicides actually, you know, involved the use of a silencer. But why should we expect a professional law enforcement type to know that?

Yet another update: email from Max, stating that he hasn't banned my IP after all.

Perhaps he hasn't. All I know was that I kept getting "connection refused" messages.

Another update: Max has apparently banned my IP. I'm simply crushed.

I don't recall that I'd ever read Max before this "Ablogalypse" contretemps; not reading him in the future isn't going to put much of a crimp in my day.

Update: Sawicky seems to think that Vietnam was "Nixon's war", and (indirectly) that I'm some kind of Nixon supporter.

I suppose that's why the U.S. troop level went from a peak of 540,000 in the last year of Johnson to 0 in the first year of Nixon's second term, right?

As for me being pro-Nixon, well... let's just say that's somewhat at variance with reality.

Does Spock have a beard in Sawicky's universe? Or (more likely) is Sawicky suffering from adolescent bimodal judgment, best exemplified by the late 20th century pragmatist philosophers Beavis and Butthead, whose weltanschauung is based on the summum bonum, "cool", and the summum malum, "sucks"? It seems clear from Sawicky's history that he views his opponents as a monolithic bloc, viz his absurd claim that warbloggers worship Oliver North.

Yay! Blogger is back up on (one hopes) more reliable/higher horsepower servers. I wasn't able to post last night due to the server move. This morning the banner ad at the top of the screen is being served by Google.

Looks like I spoke too soon about the sanity of the LA city council. They did, in fact, vote to oppose the war. Now, that's the California I know and, er, know.

While not crying into his beer because his Marxist utopia seems to have died on the vine, Max Sawicky has been busy making a public fool of himself. Of course you've seen how people have taken his bletcherous "Four Horsemen of the Ablogalypse" crapola and run with it (if you haven't, check Instapundit, LGF, Sullivan, or Den Beste). Plenty of others have given him a well-deserved verbal beat-down over that issue. See, for example, this post by Andrea Harris or this lovely Photoshop job by Mean Mr. Mustard.

While reading his "blog", though, I ran across this little gem, in reference to the Campus Crusade for Stalin marches as organized by the ANSWER thugs:

"At the same time, as Julia Child once said, to make an omelette you have to break some eggs".

Unfortunately for Herr Doktor Professor Sawicky, it wasn't Julia Child at all, but Robespierre at the outset of the Reign of Terror.

Very appropriate quote, don't you think?

Current reading: The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis

Current listening: Come Away With Me, Norah Jones