We Are Doomed

See, kids? This is what happens when you mess with a well-established balance of power.

Russia Developing New, More Dangerous Nuclear Weapons

• New York Times (registration required)
• CNN
• CBC

I ran into this article on fascism while zooming through zompist.com, which is normally a site that I visit when I want comedy. It deals with the definition of fascism, and the growing perception that there would appear to at least be a growing fascist minority in the political Right in the USA. Some disturbing things in the article, and a few things that at least put some of my fears on a lower priority level, if not completely to rest.

Once you’re done with the first article, click the link to David Neiwert’s article on proto-fascism in America. Now this is the article that gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies when I look at the current extremist political right and what they stand for. Understand that while my political standpoint is pretty far to the left, I’m not an extremist in the least and don’t believe in outlawing conservative viewpoints–I just have a healthy amount of concern for some of the viewpoints I’m seeing coming from a lot of the neo-conservative policy wonks these days.

Next week, Mindful Rage is sent to the Wolfowitz Memorial Re-Education Camp. Guest stars Merilu Henner and Alf.

Declare by Tim Powers is probably one of those books that everyone should read and take to heart. And then start reading other things. We’ll take it step by step.

Declare is a story of high espionage and the occult loosely based around famous double agent Kim Philby and his life. Powers takes an already amazing true story and adds an overtone of an occult conflict to it, creating an overarching story that just floors you.

This is the kind of well-executed and intriguing stuff that reminds you of John LeCarre on a bad acid trip, or maybe Dan Brown if he actually knew what he was doing with The DaVinci Code.

This is in fact the best kind of book, the one that makes you want to read more. From here, I would recommend getting deeper into Powers, with books like Last Call and Earthquake Weather. You can then branch into John LeCarre, who wrote amazingly good Cold War books like The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.

Keep reading, people. Eventually you’ll make it back to Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, and I’ll be proud of you.

…and it is written in blood with the scrawl of a dying madman on pages of dried flesh. Let me make this clear, this shit is WRONG, right? Introducing the latest squamous treat for your lunchtime horror: the OctoDog.

Because, you know, we NEEDED a way to make hot dogs more horrifying than merely just contemplating the processed awfulness that they contain.

Ea! Ea! Cthulhu fhtagn TASTY!

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. As a species…. we are fucking DOOMED.

DOOMED.

Guh.

And tomorrow is my lovely girlfriend’s birthday. Which means I need to go out and buy some flowers and some balloons so she has something nice to wake up to. She’s a little demanding, but she’s also been the most wonderful, supportive person that I’ve ever known, for all her faults.

Which are lots.

But I love her anyway.

I must be insane.

So we’ve got cows in Canada with Mad Cow Disease.  It’s so much more fun to say “Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy”.  Of course, the culprit behind this and other types of spongiform encephalopathy is the prion, which is a particularly tightly-spooled kind of protein.  It will kill you, you pets, your neighbors, devalue your homes, rape your daughters, make your sons gay and your wife unfaithful, and it will use mentalic powers to format your hard drive and then stuff it with kiddie porn.

It’s just that fearsome.

Well, no.  Seriously, it’s a nasty little organic structure.  They’ve found that it is not killed by damn near anything - from microwaves to gamma radiation to fire to poison to pure chlorine to being fired out of a cannon.

It now seems clear to me… they’re nearly impossible to destroy.  They’re more survivable than the near-almighty cockroach.

Remember kids, when your far-future descendants are put to the whip by foaming, twitching, giant filthy insects whose brains look like the center of a loaf of Amish bread, you heard it here first.