Never Enough Zippy Quotes Department

From this Tuesday's Zippy The Pinhead:

"Stop joking, Zippy.... This is serious... it's not a movie...."

"I hope not. I couldn't bear th' sequels."

Never Enough Wiretaps Department

Great news! The feds will be wiretapping phone lines for only FOUR YEARS! Just what our Executive Branch needs, a good earful of exactly how banal, stupid, vain, and plain pitiful we Americans really can be when not occupied with a Great Purpose.

Just to be safe, from this point onwards, four years straight, I shall begin and end any phone call with a rousing rendition of "Shut Your Fucking Face Uncle Fucker". You can't be too cautious.

Never Enough Time Department

I am supposed to be training a class of support technicians on how to support a popular shopping cart package on my company's UNIX web servers. The techs have yet to show up. Such a sad waste of time, considering I volunteered to stay late to do this.

Why can't I be using all this needlessly wasted time to be with the woman I love?

I can't complain too terribly. While I have been dealing with the Atlanta office of this company, I have had a chance to see Cynthia twice. For two weekends in a row, she has been with me, and I am so much happier for it. Why, just thinking about the times we had--romantic dinners, snuggling, kinky sex (HNEE!) and just looking into each other's eyes--it warms me in ways I haven't felt in ages, it seems.

I've never known anyone who is simply so compatible with me, who can be so wonderfully tender and sensitive and understanding and yet so wicked and fun at the same time. She is the perfect submissive for my dominant tendencies. She is old enough to be mature and responsible where it matters but still very young at heart. She has such potential still, and I will cherish watching her grow over time.

Given all this, a couple of weekends hardly seems to do our situation justice. Eventually, once my job situation has settled, she will come to live with me. And we will never again long for each other the way I long for her, the way she longs for me.

Slave, I await the day you may kneel before me and kiss my feet again. I love you so much.

Never Enough Credit Department

Many of the ideas in the below entry come from the excellent Newsweek cover article from October 15, 2001 called "The Politics Of Rage: Why Do They Hate Us?" by Fareed Zakaria.

Never Enough Saudi Malarkey Department

When the Arabs first attempted reform, it was under the flag of Nasser and his grand ideas of a pan-Arab modernity, strongly independent from West and East alike, strong and self-assured. This vision did not have terrorism in it, not even as they fought off the Israelis. Nasser was the architect for an Arab worldview with all the plusses of modern civilization.

There are many reasons why this gilded vision for all Arabs failed. But I dare posit that the most influential of these reasons, the core of their failure, was an inability on the part of the governments to accept the sacrifices required to become a modern country.

As Gorbachev found out firsthand, the road to reform may lead to a reformer's own removal from the steering wheel, not just the replacement of the maps of policy. Rich, successful, happy countries require openness of its society in order to cultivate the best ideas, internally as well as externally. Such openness requires a press that is capable of expressing disapproval for the regime. It requires an acceptance of protestors, the willingness to allow ideas unpopular with the government. In short, one has to be able to take criticism.

Iran, a society used to freedom of speech and press, became so disgusted at the the hypocrisy of their Shah that they rejected the Western world that accepted the Shah and made his reign possible. The revolution, while having a strong anti-American flavor, was only superficially about the West. More importantly, it was about achieving the common Iranian's dream of having a representative society. The Ayatollahs claimed this could only be achieved through a purity of Islam alien to Sunni or Shi'ite thought, and a flood of young men followed this pure vision until the Ayatollahs could seize control of the country through ownership of the country's resources. Now many of those young men are struggling to undo the effects of their earlier zeal by trying to open the society, an effort fought viciously by the still-powerful Ayatollahs.

All Islamic countries would benefit from Iran's example. But especially in Arab countries where Sheikhs and military dictators hold the reigns, it would seem that the powerful fear dissent, perhaps realizing it would mean the end of their power. In the same breath they admit their contempt for the very Westernization they claim they enjoy. There is no half-way point; by closing off their societies they only create a gap between government and people--people such as Osama bin Laden, who, despite his money, was no Shiekh's son and eager to demonstrate it by criticizing the realm. His subsequent exile from Saudia Arabia turned him into a terrorist kingpin.

If Arabs had governments that accepted criticism, this country wouldn't have become a target of repressed frustrations. It's time for the Saudis, and for all other repressive governments in the Middle East, to own up to their failures.

Never Enough Paranoia Debunking Department

Here is a great article on why Anthrax is an extremely lousy biological weapon--and that hysteria is the only thing resulting from the reports of anthrax patients.

Never Enough Imperial Bombast Department

So the new and final Emperor album, Prometheus: The Discipline Of Fire And Demise, has been delayed until the end of the month. I still got a chance to listen to a preview of the album, and I've been meditating on the common criticism by many that this album is more like Peccatum, one of frontman Ishahn's bands, than Emperor.

I think it would be more accurate to say that Prometheus is more like Peccatum fused with Zyklon, the band featuring Emperor members Zammoth (formerly Samoth) and Trym. And I think this statement better underscores the reasons why Emperor is calling it quits: Musically, the team of Ishahn and Zammoth has begun to grow apart from one another. This isn't anyone's fault, but rather stems from the fact that the Ishahn and Zammoth of today are radically different from the two young men who brashly unleashed Wrath Of The Tyrants so long ago. They grew up, refined their musical visions, and found that those visions aren't as compatible as they used to be.

However, that is not to say that Prometheus is a fragmented album. Far from it; my take is that this album does more to re-establish the epic coherence that shone so obviously throughout Anthems To The Welkin At Dusk and which was conspicuously absent from IX Equilibrium. Although there are brief moments in which it seems to wander briefly, it all snaps back with the viciousness of a military grade bungee cord, once holding a tank aloft, suddenly breaking free and slamming into the transport helicopter with several tons of force.

When Prometheus finally makes it out to stores, I will snap up a copy as quickly as I can. You may have hesitations, but hearing what I have heard, I am completely eager to own the final release.

Never Enough Anti-Hysteria Department

A Malaysian reporter weighs in on the ban against black metal currently enforced by the Malay government.

C O L U M N S - Gov't blues, Black Metal and a red herring

I suppose I can take the anti-Black Metal campaign a mite more seriously if the timing hadn't been too convenient for comfort. But at a time when students are being detained under the ISA for daring to express views that differ from those professed at the recent Umno general assembly, and when the government itself is hell-bent on proving its religious credentials against the intransigent orthodoxies of the dominant opposition party, rounding up and detaining scores of kids in shopping malls just because they happen to be wearing black T-shirts with symbols even they probably didn't give any thought to seems too propitious.

Never Enough True Love Department

This has been a while coming, but what the Hel.

I wish to announce to the world my engagement to fellow SubGenius minister Rev. Thea GirlUWant. We are already married in the eyes of the Church but not of the law, but will change that at first opportunity. As I am still (ugh) legally male, we should be able to tie the knot in the law's eyes without problems.

As is, please welcome Sublime Commandrix Rev. Thea GirlUWant von Fraumench to the fold--or folds, as the case may be!

Wedding pics will be archived at http://foolspress.com/lilpics/shordurmar/ for the time being.

Never Enough Patriotism Department

My heart goes pang every time I see the Star Spangled Banner so fetchingly displayed. "Bob" bless the USA.

Never Enough Trannie Goth Department

From the song "Anima I" by Sopor Aeternus

The Woman I am no mirror can see,
My breast are still small and my voice is so deep.
The Woman I am, she cannot feel love,
I wish to cut my genitals and feed them to the dogs.
The woman I am prepared to receive the pain.
The needles shall burn only the ugly remains.
Suppression is impossible, I must live it out,
My true self is female how could I ever doubt...