July 05, 2006

• I sure am learning a lot of interesting vocabularly today.
• North Korean Special Weapon Facilities courtesy of Federation of American Scientists.
• So can you safely retreat to Australia? Fricking insanity.
• The dude really is nuttier than two fruitcakes. What's worse, he's trying to send a message to the U.S. What that message is, only he knows. WOW driving, you could work at CNN.
• None of them have actually hit Japan yet so not thinking of packing the J-family in a suitcase and retreating just now.
• Thanks, quid. Love you, too.
• OH SHIT YOU SARCASMED ME!!!
• Quid, feel free to step up to the plate if you think you can provide better commentary.
• Thanks for your permission, Captain Permission. I didn't want to comment again without a display of your incredible permission-giving skills. It's like you're a permission-god or something, bounding gaily from website to website granting people permission to do stuff. You're a permission superhero - "PermissionMan", I call you. Lookout, criminals - when PermissionMan gives permission, IT STAYS GIVEN. *READS A NEWSPAPER* P.S. - LET'S FIGHT, YOU PERMISSION-GIVING SUPERBASTARD.
• What is your problem, quid? Is it my admittedly not-so-brilliant commentary? Is it that I'm an American? Or is it just that you're an ass?
• Stop flinging literary missiles you two! I'm already dealing with enough explosions today as it is. Now kiss and make up. *crosses arms, taps foot*
• I thought your commentary was completely fine driving, I just wanted to needle you about it for yuks, and I apologise for offending you. But - to answer your question - yes, my problem is basically both that you are an American and I am "an ass", as you so delicately put it. Because I'm actually a racist "ass" who hates people based on where they come from, and because I am composed only of two buttocks and an anus. How I survive as an "ass" without being attached to a body, I'll never know - it's quite the mystery. Perhaps I got permission to exist that way from some kind of permission-granting superhero. However, I also sustain myself emotionally by hating people (i.e., Americans) for no good reason. GRR! How I hate them and their Freedom and Justice! Oh, if only I could join some an organsiation dedicated to hating their way of life - as "ass-Qaeda", if you will. Alas, there is no such society of ass-assassins.
• NOW FIGHT ME YOU ASS-HATING AMERICANO BASTARD!
• Monkeyfilter: composed only of two buttocks and an anus. Incidentally, Quidnunc, does that mean that "Talk to the Ass", a track on Steven Seagal's excellent new blues CD, is actually a conceptual echo of Dave Stewart's classic "Jack talking", but with you in the Jack Nicholson role?
• At first, I thought this post might be about Beloved Leader's blog.
• The thought of the quidass is making me want to 'launch a missile' of my own. Nnnnng *pop*
• You don't need hundreds of missiles. It only takes one.
• Listening to the radio this morning, I thought they were saying Type O-Dong missile. "Who names a missile after a dong? Sure, it's phallic and all, but it's the laziest kind of phallic around." Only after reading this blog did I realize that nobody named their missile Type O-Dong. In a way, I'm disappointed. We now return to our previously scheduled programming on the quidass.
• "So can you safely retreat to Australia?" Australia is still within range, &, being a close ally of Mr Danger, is a valid target for Mr Il. Or perhaps, given the content of this thread, it should be Asstralia. oh ho ho ho chuckles & guffaws
• *polite ass-cheek golf clap*
• I was getting all watery in the mouth, thinking that the superhero under discussion was PersimmonMan. Imagine my disappointment.
• Oh, and of course we should all be concerned about Weapons of Ass Destruction. Which it turns out of course IS a porno series title, but I'm not linkin' it.
• parsimonyman
• that joke will induce howls of derision from some quarters of monkeydom! /clutches sporran disturbing clouds of moths
• /howls in derision
• Parsnip-Man!
• I had to go to England at the age of 20 to eat a parsnip for the first time. Nobody eats them in my neck of the USA. Or even grows them, for all I know.
• I've used parsnips in potater soup, and roasted them once. But like all english vegetables, it's wildly overrated.
• *resists urge to make joke about 'english vegetables' at kit's expense*
• I despise parsnips
• WHAT'S WITH THE WHISPERING? Don't you know I'm hard o' hearing? And seeing? *squint*
• So, anyway, about these missiles.
• Well the Japanese media has said two are prepared and ready to go, but they haven't been fired yet. So the total is 7.
• So this pretty much underlines the hypicrosy & misguided nature of the Iraq war, eh? Chasing shadows in Iraq while a real threat grows in another direction.
• /sp
• The North Korea threat has been around for years though. At least you know about it when you live in this region. Isn't one of the biggest factors how China helps deal with this? It seems that they have been the ones to try and keep NK in check for so long. Iraq didn't have a China behind them to worry about.
• I have no fear of death.
• if I had a china behind I'd be worried!
• not to belittle this situation tho. it's pretty scary. Saddam Hussein was a bad guy but I never perceived of him as just completely batshit crazy, where as lil kim appears somewhat...unstable??? even if it is really just saber-rattling it's disturbing, because the rest of the world cannot just ignore it, so what response do we make?
• I believe that what all the peeps in charge are saying to themselves now.
• Hussein was nuts, but not nuts enough to do anything that would have endangered his power. Kim Jong Il, on the other hand, is a freaking wackjob. Not only does he laugh in the face of the world with this immature display of firepower, but the man cannot properly dress or do his hair to save his life.
• Hey! Who you callin' a vegetable?!!11!
• My take on the way we (the US, not, you know, we lil' people) is that Kim is not half as crazy as he appears to be, and that a lot of his provocations are specifically designed to extract concessions (usually in the form of aid) from the US and his neighbors. The more apocalyptic the pronouncement, the more the press, et al get their panties in a wedge, and thus the larger the concession BUT that this little political dance was de rigueur, all the playesr understood the rules, and thus the potential for the US to take a more aggressive role in opposition to North Korea really wasn't necessary (notwithstanding the sizable army we have on the Notrh Korean border and have had there since, well, I don't know but a long time ago, anyways). Kim: acts crazy, but is really crazy like a fox and thus no problem || Saddam: acts foxy but is really crazy and thus trouble. I think this whole missile thing is just (a) more of this, coupled with (b) your basic face-save. North Korea has an interest in acting tough and belligerent (as it gets them attention and, more importantly, free stuff at the bargaining table) while a distinct disincentive to actually *ebing* belligerent (everyone in the entire would lay a can of whoopass on them the size of Everest, and pretty soon there wouldn't be any North Korea no more).
• please forgive my typos, but you get the drift
• They really just want some new trains.
• I hate it when a thread gets re-railed. Can't you people take your on-topic banter to Tracicle's blog, or some other safe place? Why must you clog this meowy-delcicious pissapalooza between the quid and driving with commentary that directly relates to the FPP? How are we to be entertained? Fucking twits.
• Fair point well made.
• Kim's Catastrophe
• U.S. missile defense system has been hit and miss
• Ha ha ha, 'missile defense'!
• Yeah, I thought the same thing. I feel a Doctor Strangelove moment coming on.
• Nobody has brought up the fact that at the same time, another major power launched a long-range missile capable of carrying nuclear weapons.
• Fes, lots of smart, knowledgable, people agree with you, but I still think you're wrong in your assesment of Kim and his regime. I think he's neither crazy or an oportunist. I think he's genuinely ideologically committed to the veiw that the DPRK is at the centre of world affairs and the core of American foreign policy. Furthermore, I think that if you look at North Korean actions through this lense, then they're a lot more predictable and consistent than the 'oportunist' or the 'batshit' schools would indicate. At the heart of this view is an appreciation for the particularities of North Korean communist doctrine. Many people in the West dismiss this as so much turgid nonsense (I once had a long and interesting debate with a US defence person who simply couldn't accept that anybody 'could beleive that stuff'), but I think that the North Koreans, and Kim in particular, take it very seriously indeed. This might seem a little off-topic, but I'm terrified of spiders. It's a silly phobia that I've had since childhood and that I've never been able to control properly. When I was a kid, my mum would say, in exasperation 'but don't you understand that the spider is much more scared of you than you are of him?' I think the North Koreans are very much like that small, scared spider. We are just as alien, as incomprehensible, to them as they are to us. But because of the concentration of power in one lively but not especially imaginative mind, because of the restrictions on dissent and restrictions on information, they are even less able to understand us than we are to understand them. In my opinion, we need to stop infantalising the DPRK and set about persuading them, using an intelectual framework that they can relate to.
• this is a great thread, I really appreciate the various viewpoints being expressed here (Fes, Dreadnought) that are quite different from my (limited) understanding of CW re this issue. and Dreadnought, I think we have the same mom. I too am pathologically afraid of spiders and NOTHING annoyed me more as a child than my mom saying that stupid quip to me!
• We trust not the spiders bearing missiles.
• But we do trust the spiders who catch those pesky mosquitoes. Thank you, anarchnid allies.
• (But if you crawl on us in bed, the alliance is broken.)
• Mosquito tickling in the night, just settle down and take a bite so I can slap ye, silly wight.
• I also think we should stop infantilising the North Koreans and treat them as spiders.
• I think we should start eating infant spiders in our dolsot bibimbab.
• That Kim Jong Il is SOME PIG.
• Now we're getting somewhere.
• Hitler! Aaaaaaand - we're out.
• the song of dolsat the infant spider's but a child its bibimbabble drives folk wild as round their jaws and thrusting limbs it winds a cord to make them slim obesity it cannot bear so stops folk eating everywhere
• Hackers target State Dept. computers Oh dear.
• *snort*
• This could get dangerous - it's a good thing we haven't depleted our military resources on some nebulous goal in the Middle East.
• /slaps knee
• What? You're looking at Myraq aren't you.