hell’s handmaiden

Are you proud, america?

‘Sometimes they’d turn the heating right up and to get to sleep I’d have to splash myself with the little water they gave me. There were times when they didn’t give me any water or food at all. Then, from the neighbouring cells I could hear the screams of the men who were being tortured, sounds of weeping and screaming that were recorded and played back all night long full-blast, along with other sounds like approaching footsteps on gravel, but the ground there was nothing but sand. There was no way you could sleep. I hated their food. I couldn’t stand things any more. In the end I asked if I could write a note for my children, because I wanted to commit suicide.’

Sometime back I wrote two post about a video game called Left Behind: Eternal Forces. In the first of those posts I wrote that:

It will be the Christians who send this world spiraling into a hell of their own making. Arguably, this won’t be the first time. The religion of love has led to a lot of bloodshed and chaos. This will be the worst time. A destabilized world today is a far more dangerous place than was a destabilized world a thousand years ago. Modern weapons and transportation guarantee that fact. And there are segments of humanity, mostly emanating from within the United States, that are seeking to destabilize the world.

You know you’ve hit bottom when Birthday cards start bashing you.

I had to shop for a Birthday card today. In doing so I stumbled upon some fun. I hadn’t realized that there is a birthday card category entirely devoted to Bashing the president. Here are quick sketches of three I found especially amusing.

• Imagine Bush standing on the White House lawn stammering that “I have it on good authority that today is your Birthday.” Open the card and he continues, “See! Nothing gets by me.” Meanwhile, Osama runs past in the background.

I’m not a big John Edwards fan. In fact, I don’t much like Edwards at all. He’s flat, uninspiring, and, possibly, even undead (though I might have to write that last one up as a point in his favor). Still, posts like one I found at Townhall annoy me.

The post, to start, amounts to not much more than mudslinging, which is irritating coming from any point on the political landscape. But the really annoying things are 1) the way to author includes utter nonsense as ‘points’ and pretends these actually are points, and 2) the way the whole rant seems to based on the myth that Lib’rals think money is bad and evil and wicked and so rich liberals are hypocrits.

Your efforts are wasted.

Unfortunately, your efforts waste my time too. Spam comes through at a rate of hundreds to one over real comments. This is annoying.

I won’t be printing your nonsense strings of words. Nor will I print lists of hyperlinks. I don’t recall ever seeing such things on anyone else’s blog either. I’m sure that other bloggers delete this junk on sight, as do I, if, that is, some software like Askimet doesn’t do the deleting first. I’m left wondering exactly what the point is then? How effective is this obviously automated shotgun approach, if everything gets deleted? Everything? Yes. Everything. Just below I quote a bit of spam I received last night. A quick search for it reveal how many returns? Zero. Remove the name at the end, Mikael, and you get one return… pointing to a mildly snarky post about writing comment spam. In other words, the approach currently being taken by comment spammers is a miserable failure.