I leave the human cockroaches to discuss their heroin and child pornography.

This post is mostly fluffy. (But nothing to do with Fluffy).

First, the least fluffy: A mailing list I'm on has led me to think again, as I have in the past, that people who attack faith with arguments based on logic (or worse, their understanding of "logic") are much more tedious than people who try to proselytize for their illogical and even alarming religions.

I found myself practically sticking up for fundies! Me!

God save us all from people who think they are rational.

In other news, in my re-read of Tacitus (going more slowly than it should, but much faster than the first time I read it all), Suetonius Paulinus is about to put down Boudicca's revolt (in the Ann. version rather than the Agr.). The rebels have viciously destroyed Colchester and London and wherever Verulamium is! Will our Roman heroes be victorious?

Oh, I guess I already said. Never mind.

My train reading is "The Watchmen," which I last read some years ago. Something about seeing "X2" Thursday night made me want to read it again. Good stuff, with one of the best villains ever.

Speaking of...

(Skippable game dorkery)
( AD&D: PCs killed my villain! )

( One reason why I will probably never play Changeling in the Camarilla )

Thanks, amberspyglass!

Fine humor from McSweeney's. It is entirely possible that I have posted this twice already, or perhaps I am not posting this at all.

Dammit.

[...]

Zinn: You view the conflict as being primarily about pipe-weed, do you not?

Chomsky: Well, what we see here, in Hobbiton, farmers tilling crops. The thing to remember is that the crop they are tilling is, in fact, pipe-weed, an addictive drug transported and sold throughout Middle Earth for great profit.

Zinn: This is absolutely established in the books. Pipe-weed is something all the Hobbits abuse. Gandalf is smoking it constantly. You are correct when you point out that Middle Earth depends on pipe-weed in some crucial sense, but I think you may be overstating its importance. Clearly the war is not based only on the Shire's pipe-weed. Rohan and Gondor's unceasing hunger for war is a larger culprit, I would say.

Chomsky: But without the pipe-weed, Middle Earth would fall apart. Saruman is trying to break up Gandalf's pipe-weed ring. He's trying to divert it.

Zinn: Well, you know, it would be manifestly difficult to believe in magic rings unless everyone was high on pipe-weed. So it is in Gandalf's interest to keep Middle Earth hooked.

Etc.