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Tuesday, November 8, 2011
posted by fafnir at 11:03 AM
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
"Now is there any new business," says Giblets.
"Well the boat's sinking," says me. "Giblets seems to recall that coming up at the last meeting," says Giblets, "which would make that old business." "Well it's more sinking-er than it was last time," says me. "That's kind of new." "And under Old Business we agreed to form a Boat Sinking Committee to launch an investigation into the possibility of making a preliminary report on the subject of recommending the formal and official declaration of a Boat Sinking Committee," says Giblets. "The Boat Sinking Committee has sunk," says me, "along with their half a the boat." "Well that wraps up the old business!" says Giblets. "Who wants a grilled cheese!" "The boat's also on fire," says me. "Perfect," says Giblets. "The water from the sinking and the fire from the burning will cancel each other out, leaving us standing on dry land." "I feel like there's something wrong with that but I can't put my finger on it," says me. "Because my finger would burn or drown." "Next order of business!" says Giblets. "Should Giblets grill his grilled cheese on rye bread or cheddar cheese loaf?" "See, I almost wonder if this isn't the time for grilled cheese," says me, "what with the burning and the sinking and all the fire coming out of the cheese grill." "Cause cheese loaf is great by itself, but on a grilled cheese it might be overpowering," says Giblets. "But I don't know whether to try to put out the fire or try to bail out the boat or scream and panic and scream," says me. "Come to think of it this is really the kind of discussion that calls for a Boat Burning Committee." "Well it looks like there's no other choice," says Giblets. "The motion is for the rye. All in favor?" "I think the Boat Burning Committee's first course of action should probably be to figure out if we're on fire now," says me. "And if so, do we Stop Drop and Roll, do we See Something Say Something, or do we Click It or Ticket?" "In that an abstention?" says Giblets. "Cause that makes it one in favor and one abstention." "I think we should call for a floor vote," says me. "Any seconds? Anyone?" "Now for the new business," says Giblets. "Why's it so hot in here?" Labels: true adventures
posted by fafnir at 9:09 AM
Monday, September 12, 2011
As it happens, there's another universe in the back of the closet next to the bookshelf in the spare room. It's nearly identical to ours, except that in this universe, 9/11 never happened.* Everything else is the same: George Bush, Barack Obama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Guantanamo, Bagram, the torture networks, the secret prisons, and on and on - but there were no planes crashed into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, no yearly donning of sackcloth and ashes by politicians at ground zero, no annual pageants of official grief.
In describing our own universe to the natives, I attempted to explain the significance of 9/11, how it changed everything forever, but they were frustratingly unable to comprehend. The United States, they said, had spent its time killing and torturing and enslaving the world before 2001, and spent its time killing and torturing and enslaving the world afterward as well; the only difference was the loss of some three thousand souls, an evidently paltry cost given the American government's valuation of human life. I attempted to explain the situation to them again, and felt that I was close to succeeding, but our conversation was cut off by a NATO air strike. *Inhabitants of this universe insist that, in fact, 9/11 did happen, and does happen, once a year, every year, right after 9/10 and right before 9/12. Labels: nineelevenmas, running the world, warnography
posted by the Medium Lobster at 8:06 AM
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Labels: nineelevenmas, warnography
posted by fafnir at 11:26 AM
Monday, May 2, 2011
After years of groaning unemployment and morbid obesity, America has rediscovered its love of life by killing a thing. While the thing had killed other things, it had frequently killed the wrong kinds of things, in the wrong kinds of ways, and it was important, America felt, to kill it, along with several hundred thousand other things, to stress the point. "There is a long and honorable tradition of killing things in America," said the secretary of killing things. "But this thing did not kill things in the way that things are supposed to kill things. And so I am pleased to say that we killed it."
While killing this thing is an important victory in America's global war on things, America's fight to kill things will go on. "The killing of this thing does not mark the end of our effort to kill things," the president of killing things said in a special statement. "Things are still out there. We must - and we will - remain devoted to killing things, at home and abroad." The thing's corpse has been decorated with the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Nobel Peace Prize, and will be married to Kate Middleton and Prince William this afternoon in an emotional public ceremony before being added to America's collection of things America has killed, which is known to include an impressive selection of Afghans, Iraqis, Pakistanis, Yemenis, Palestinians, Latin Americans, Vietnamese, Filipinos, African slaves, Native Americans and children of all ages. Labels: eaters of the dead, everybody loves a winner, warnography
posted by the Medium Lobster at 12:44 PM
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Freedom! If there's one thing America loves, it's... well, war. But if there's two things America loves, it's war and torture. But if there's three things America loves, it's war, torture, and genocide. But if there are several dozen things America loves, they are war, torture, genocide, chattel slavery, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, assassination, poverty, institutionalized bribery, remote-controlled flying death robots and somewhere down the list, between prison labor and lagoons of toxic pig shit, there is almost certainly a special place in our national heart for freedom.
And so it is that the United States is fighting to free the Libyan people from the Libyan people by killing the Libyan people. The situation is fairly straightforward, after all - Libya faces a humanitarian crisis, and the only way to address a humanitarian crisis is to bomb it with hundreds of cruise missiles. I'm told that the Red Cross still delivers bottled water and medical supplies by duct-taping them to the nose cone of an outgoing Tomahawk. More importantly, the Libyan people are oppressed by a bloodthirsty dictator - a dictator who kills his own people - and the least we can do is kill those people ourselves. How, I ask, can we stand idly by and allow people to be slaughtered by a ruthless tyrant when we could be slaughtering them instead? You may ask, what makes getting killed by the United States any better than getting killed by Qaddafi? Because we are America, killing for a great American cause, in the name of Americanness, and our murder victims, in their last moments, as their houses are burnt and their schools destroyed and their neighbors incinerated and their families turned into hamburger, will come to know our American values: of freedom, of liberty, of toxic pig shit. Labels: warnography
posted by the Medium Lobster at 11:21 AM
Monday, January 31, 2011
posted by fafnir at 10:38 AM
Thursday, November 18, 2010
 Labels: blog ogg gog
posted by fafnir at 10:42 AM
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Labels: doomed doomed doomed, real america
posted by fafnir at 10:11 AM
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
"If you had to do it all over again what would you do different?" says me.
"Nothing!" says Giblets. "Giblets has no regrets!" "I think I'd travel more or go back to art school or maybe not drive the car off that cliff back when you said 'Hey Fafnir let's drive this car off that cliff'," says me. "Oh, so we're back to this again!" says Giblets. "That was like, eight whole seconds ago. Let it go already! You're livin in the past!" "Or at least maybe I'd pick a smaller cliff," says me."This's been a really long cliff." "Y'know what your problem is?" says Giblets. "You're always looking back. 'Oh boo hoo, remember the Good Ol' Days, back when we lived on the ground and we weren't on fire.' Well Giblets lives for today, and we're air people now! We live in the air! At least for the next several seconds." "Of course when you think about it I guess you can't really blame this on any one decision," says me. "Driving off the cliff, running off the cliff, falling off the cliff - it's a pretty complicated tangle of factors there." "I mean if we made any mistake it was not falling enough," says Giblets. "Because obviously we should've started out falling sideways, where there's just a ton more room. Giblets assumes future generations will develop the relevant technology." "Maybe I just shoulda stayed home today," says me. "Maybe I shoulda stayed in last year. Last year wasn't a bad year, I coulda stayed in last year for a couple more years." "In the meantime Giblets proposes a system whereby we fall out ahead of ourselves, and then dig a hole in the ground ahead of us for us to fall into to maintain our fall," says Giblets. "That way we preserve the fall - not just for us, but for the children." "But I'm not real sure why I moved into last year in the first place," says me. "I mean I was pretty happy in the year before that, and the year before that was even nicer. And now that I think about it I really coulda spent the last twenty years or so living in that day in third grade when I kicked the winning ball in kickball and went on to win the school spelling bee." "Years from now man will have left the earth to assume his rightful place falling repeatedly to the earth," says Giblets, "with great buildings and cities built in the sky itself, to defy the very laws of gravity with humanity's unconquerable zeal for life!" "Really, what I think it is, is I never shoulda grown arms and legs," says me. "I woulda made a great clam." "Countless millions will die," says Giblets. "It's really going to be pretty terrible." "Oh well," says me. "Maybe next time." "This ground's gonna swerve first," says Giblets. "You can see it in its eyes." Labels: true adventures
posted by fafnir at 8:21 AM
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
posted by fafnir at 5:51 PM
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Well now. Israel, the Palestinians, and Gaza. It's a sad story, and we're terribly sorry about it all, of course, feeling pronounced Official Regret in our pronounced Official Regretbones, and we feel compelled at this juncture to demand a request for an investigation into the possibility of an inquiry into the formation of a select bipartisan panel looking into whether or not to request an investigation. Which would be conducted by Israel, of course. No need to get too pushy here.
Now, you might say this week's events represent an atrocity, a massacre, a savage and criminal slaughter of humanitarian aid workers by a paranoid, murder-happy police state to further prolong the suffering of a million and a half refugees penned up in an open-air concentration camp. And you'd be right. But what you'd be overlooking is the fact that Israel has a right to defend itself. In particular, Israel has the right to defend itself from the millions of non-Israelis stubbornly living on land seized from them by Israel. Indeed, every day the Middle East's Only Democracy finds itself surrounded by a deadly horde of beggars, children and amputees who would stop at nothing to live next to it, with nothing to defend itself but two hundred nuclear warheads and one of the best-financed militaries in the world. Who in that position wouldn't attack a flotilla of aid ships attempting to smuggle contraband food and terrorist medicine to the stockpile of potentially rogue humans in Palestine? Indeed, it's only at times like this that we can fully appreciate the Special Relationship between Israel and the United States. For is there any other country in the world that can so fully appreciate Israel's dilemma? To be hobbled by money, power, and privilege, menaced on all sides in a world in which there are too many Palestinians in Palestine, an overflow of Afghans in Afghanistan, a dangerous surplus of Iranians in Iran, a grave and growing stockpile of Pakistanis in Pakistan, and only we - we! - have to courage and conviction to do something about it. Labels: never say never again, rhymes with shmisrael, running the world, warnography
posted by the Medium Lobster at 12:57 PM
Friday, April 30, 2010
 Labels: blog ogg gog
posted by fafnir at 10:01 AM
Friday, April 9, 2010
"If you could wish for one wish from all the wishes you could wish, what would you wish?" says Giblets.
"Well yknow I always thought the world'd be a better place if people could communicate better," says me, "which is why I developed Fafsperanto, the universal language made from English and Spanish and Urdu and Mandarin and rhythmic elephant trumpeting." "Shut up Giblets doesn't care!" says Giblets. "Giblets would wish for a singing tap-dancing joke-telling bagel named Starchy O'Shaughnessy and put it in a sold-out Broadway musical revue as the Eighth Wonder of the World!" "It was actually goin pretty good for a while," says me, "with the classes on tape and the courses online and a lotta elephants were pretty interested in the semester abroad program." "People would come from miles and miles to marvel and wonder at the amazing miraculous feats and powers of Giblets's magical tap-dancing bagel until Giblets got bored and ate it," says Giblets. "But it all kinda fell apart after the bursar tried to shoot one a the TAs to harvest his tusks and a visiting lecturer trampled the provost in the faculty lounge," says me. "Then Giblets would wake up so full of guilt and grief and rage and remorse for eating his innocent bagel friend that he would use his second wish to destroy the earth," says Giblets. "Now I think maybe everybody should come with their own personal language as well as a book of handy phrases like 'I would like to purchase the balloon' and 'which way to the zoo'," says me. "And after destroying the earth Giblets would feel so full of guilt and grief and so on that he would use his third and final wish to wish that none of his other wishes were ever wished and for all we know this has already happened," says Giblets. "La playa," says me readin out loud. "Donde está la playa." "Giblets's second choice would be a llama that plays the saxophone," says Giblets. Labels: true adventures
posted by fafnir at 9:04 AM
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Literally tens of Americans were shocked this week to discover that the United States military likes to kill people. Unsettling news, yes, particularly for those of us who had assumed in good faith that one million Iraqis had accidentally slipped on a banana peel one morning and fallen into a pile of mislaid cruise missiles, but before we leap to all sorts of unsightly conclusions, calling Our Boys "mass-murderers" just because they happen to enjoy the occasional mass-murder, let's remember that in the fog of war with the eggs and the omelettes and the War Is Hell, who can say what's right and wrong, what's good and evil, who's an unarmed pregnant woman and who's a ticking time bomb threatening to produce future foreigners? Our troops have a job to do, after all - defending our country from those countries who would defend their country from our country - and if we hounded and nit-picked them after every little massacre, gang rape or atrocity, they'd hardly get any killing done at all. Now, is this video disturbing? Of course. Were atrocities committed, innocents slaughtered, corpses desecrated and children maimed? Absolutely. But was it all done according to proper procedure? Ah, now, that's the question. We should all certainly be willing to support a full and complete investigation into the possibility of an official recommendation for preliminary motions toward an investigation, looking into the matter of whether or not the people here were properly murdered in triplicate, signed twice on the goldenrod form, in accordance with the Code of Canon Law. And we shouldn't rest until any guilty parties have been found, and strongly-worded disciplinary Post-Its firmly applied to their personnel files. Apart from that, I don't think we have to spend much time thinking about this sort of thing - this is an isolated incident, just like this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this - and one has to accept a certain amount of rape, torture and murder with one's military. After all, if the military wasn't free to rape and torture people, then it certainly wouldn't be free to murder them; and if the military wasn't free to murder people, then it wouldn't be free to slaughter them en masse; and if the military wasn't free to slaughter people en masse, then what would we even have a military for? Labels: everybody loves a winner, warnography
posted by the Medium Lobster at 10:04 AM
Monday, April 5, 2010
We are at war with Pakistan, bombing and killing thousands of people who might otherwise object to our war with Pakistan, which is urgent and vital and necessary to secure the success of our war with Afghanistan, in which we are bombing and killing thousands of people who might otherwise object to our war with Afghanistan, which is urgent and vital and necessary to secure the success of our war with Pakistan, which together with our war with Afghanistan is urgent and vital and necessary to our national interest, which is defined as that collection of things which our nation happens to find interesting. You may say that all this is arbitrary and inhuman and evil and insane, and you'd be right, but I ask you: if the United States doesn't step up to the task of killing people the United States has decided to kill, then who will?
Labels: running the world, warnography
posted by the Medium Lobster at 12:16 PM
Thursday, April 1, 2010
posted by fafnir at 1:55 PM
Thursday, March 25, 2010
"You know what day it is today?" says me.
"It's the Feast of the Martyrdom of Saint Willig, patron saint of haberdashers and turnips," says Giblets. "It's our blog's very own birthday!" says me. "Seven years of uninterrupted journalistic excellence!" "No, no, I'm pretty sure it's just Saint Willig," says Giblets flippin through a liturgical calendar. "Martyred on this day in 1309 while choking on a turnip." "The first thing I'd like to say about our blog is that it has the very best readers," says me. "They might not be the kindest readers or the smartest readers or the happiest or the most articulate or the best-smelling readers but they are our readers, and that says something, probably, about something!" "We don't have any readers," says Giblets. "No one reads the blog. Even you don't read the blog." "Sure I do," says me. "Why just the other day I read that thing... about the guy, who's mad about the stuff." "Giblets is going home," says Giblets. "It's all part of the rich tapestry of our history," says me. "Giblets is going home to work on his novel," says Giblets. "It is called This Is Stupid and Boring and Stupid and Shut Up." "What will the next seven years bring!" says me. "It is about a young man coming of age in small town America and being eaten by robot bears," says Giblets. Labels: blog ogg gog
posted by fafnir at 1:09 PM
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
AND NOW!!! FAFBLOG PRESENTS!! HISTORY'S AMERICA'S FINEST PRESIDENTS!!!
Labels: democratocracy, presidents
posted by fafnir at 1:03 PM
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
So I guess I musta slept late or forgot the alarm or hit the snooze too many times or somethin cause when I wake up this mornin I'm in the future. The future's a lot like the present only it's older and more used up. The streets are dusty and the the cars are pre-crashed and the ground's retired and the sky's closed for repairs so most people just stay inside and break things at home. I go out to get some breakfast but when I get there I'm already there. "Pleased to meet you, future me," says me. "I know, I remember," says future me. "Future Giblets wants waffles," says future Giblets but all the waffles have already been eaten by those bastards in the past.
There's not much to do so we head out to the movies. It's a remake of a sequel of a spinoff of a show about a show about the time we saw this show. "Looks pretty good," says me. "Ehh, I seen it before," says future me. "Future Giblets wants jujyfruits," says future Giblets. We head out to the lobby to get some snacks but by the time we get there we've already had em. We spend most a the afternoon diggin around in the backyard for scraps. I find half a Saturday morning and an old arrowhead an part of a used July but the guy at the scrapyard says he can only give us six-fifty for em on accounta they're all covered with people. We figure we'll get some ice cream on the way home but the ice cream's all melted and the truck's broken down and the ice cream man's been eaten by thousands of tiny mice so we settle for some popsicles instead. The next day we take a bus to the past. They're closed when we get there so we end up campin out in fronta the ticket booth with some woolly mammoths and a dodo. "Future Giblets wants an omelette," says future Giblets. "Waawk," says the dodo. Labels: true adventures
posted by fafnir at 8:56 AM
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