Lileks needs help, send money guns and lawyers

Or just Money. James Lileks who is one of my favorite columnists
is running a pledge drive. If we don't send enough money he'll
give The Bleat the ax.

So send money to keep high quality bleatage going like this:

As I tweeted: Target was doing their photo-booth hiring from the Li’l Witch Employment Agency this year, it seemed. I asked her if she had a thumb drive I could use, and she said – literally – “Nah.”

Nice to hear that someone still says “Nah,” because I tend to use it in a novel from time to time.

I sent 30 simoleans, which I found out today are a chain of mountains in northern italy.

Great Lileks - bleat - July 9th

And so it came to pass on a weekend night that the entire crew was assembled upstairs at the Valli at 1:30 AM, waiting for pancakes. In my mind everyone’s there: Dime-A-Time, the goat-aroma math professor who always sat in B-8 and never tipped more than ten cents; the perpetually grinning and grizzly-faced bobble-headed idiot savant who would sit for hours during peak time working problems on napkins and graph paper; the couples in the private booths of A section, the regulars in B, where you could see everyone come in the door. The loft is open and full. The kitchen’s sizzling - orders shouted, dishes crashing, Springsteen coming from the cook’s radio. Sam’s on the grill; maybe it’s Mickey. (He was the local revolutionary; I saw him the other night on an old 90s episode of COPS. He was leading a protest downtown. There was a scene in which he exchanged words with an officer, but it was with the bounds of civilized discourse. At the end of the segment the policeman said the event went pretty well, but they’d had to arrest some people, and Mickey had bit a cop.) I’m with the Giant Swede and the Crazy Uke in B-5, probably. Probably Jack as well, working through his third pack of Marlboros. In A-4: Mike, and probably his girlfriend, and a couple others. Mike looks dark and drowsy.

the link of horror

Lileks has a pretty good bleat today, reminiscing about 80's music videos like
"Take me on" and "money for nothing". It hit a nerve because I'm of the age
that I remember the show "nightflight", where they played an entire hour of
videos - straight! Then a year or so later Mtv started when I was a freshman
in high school, and I would go into zombie attention fixed mode whenever I got
to see it because we didn't have cable at home those years. So someone starts
talking about early videos and my ears perk up like a dog when someone mentions
cheese.

Unfortunately, Lileks also describes a nightmare he had, and he wrote down a scary
phrase from the dream, then used his mac to speech synthesize the ghostly voice.
(another 80's trick, 'yeah, someday the computers will talk..."shall we play a game?".)
Unfortunately, the apartment we're in is the attic of a 600 year old house, and the
boooo factor is already off the charts, so I really can't click that link and listen to a
scary voice. It's pitch black in here, if the voice is really scary I'll have to face the
embarrassment of carrying my laptop around like a flashlight so that I don't have to
walk in the dark to a light switch.

Better screwed than rude

Mark Steyn has a great essay today, here's the denoument:

Our heroes pursue phantoms as the world transforms. Is sharia, polygamy, routine first-cousin marriage in the interests of Canada or Britain or Europe? Oh, dear, even to raise the subject is to tiptoe into all kinds of uncomfortable terrain for the multicultural mindset. It's easier just to look the other way, or go Nazi-hunting in the men's room. Nobody wants to be unpleasant, or judgmental, do they? What was it they said in the Cold War? Better dead than red. We're not like that anymore. Better screwed than rude.

Go read the whole thing...

Lileks was on fire this morning too, fisking some comments called into a radio show saying
why they supported obama:

The replies were rather indistinct. He would end the division and bring us together by encouraging us all to talk about common problems, after which we would compromise. He will give us hope by giving us hope: for many, the appeal has the magical perfect logic of a tautology.
...
But compromise is impossible when you have a fundamental differences about the proper way to solve a problem. I believe we can achieve a fair society by taking away your house and giving it to someone else. I disagree. It is my house....

...If he wins, I do look forward to dissenting; since it’s been established as the highest form of patriotism, I expect my arguments will be met with grave respect. Shhhh! He’s dissenting.

To me, Obama sounds like the "migger" character of Chris Rock's old hbo show. Chris did a spoof of "The legend of bagger vance" where he'd walk through a neighborhood, wave his hand and magically fix all the problems.