Endomorphically endowed

The US has decided that 5 Iraqi political parties (including Chalabi’s, and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) can have their own armed militias/death squads, subject to some minor conditions that won’t mean a thing on the ground. ‘Cuz the warlord thing is working out so well for us in Afghanistan.

Although to be fair, the biggest Afghan warlord, Gen. Dostum, has supposedly just agreed to hand in his heavy weapons, in exchange for absolute power in the north, a seat in the Cabinet and millions of dollars of international aid.

Of course most of what the world community sends to Afghanistan is in exchange for the now plentiful poppy. A Guardian columnist notes that the US has suddenly gotten interested again in that harvest. “The reason for the belated concern is the fear that it is funding the wrong warriors - the resurgent jihadis and the Taliban.”

If you like freak shows (and who doesn’t?), you should be following the trial in Germany of the man who posted on the Internet asking for volunteers to be killed and eaten. Indy headline: “Cannibal Says He Was Lonely and Dreamt of 'Brother' to Disembowel.” The Times has “Eaten by a Thoroughly Modern Cannibal.”

Russia has decided to kill the Kyoto Accord, rather than simply ratify it and then break the rules and fail to meet the targets, like everyone else.

Something I just heard that may not be wrong just because I read it on the Internet: the Israeli “wall” will not only put 10% of West Bank land on the Israeli side, but 50% of the water.

The Cincinnati coroner rules the beating death of the 400-pound guy by the police a homicide.

Gerhard Schröder is in China, calling for the EU to resume arms sales to that country, which has been under embargo since Tiananmen Square. Of course it was only last week that China threatened to go to war with Taiwan if it holds a referendum on independence. France also backs arms sales, but when doesn’t it?

Polls show that Bush’s Thanksgiving stunt earned him 5 points in the polls.

Melvyn Bragg, author of The Adventure of English 500AD-2000, has pointed out that every word of Churchill’s "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills: we shall never surrender." is from the Old English except for “surrender,” which is French.

(Attention, people who googled in looking for a sound clip of the Churchill speech: there's one here, a zip file.)

13-day old kid most likely to need major analysis: “ a Palestinian baby who was born with a birthmark on his face that bears a striking likeness to the name of his uncle, Ala, right, a Hamas militant killed by Israeli soldiers after he allegedly masterminded a suicide bombing. Palestinians in the West Bank are travelling in droves to Bethlehem to pay homage to the 13-day-old infant, also named Ala. His family is convinced that the mark is a divine message of support for the Palestinian struggle against Israel.”

Remember Thailand’s war on drugs? Like the US, they stopped counting dead bodies on that one when it got embarrassingly high, 10 months ago, which I’m embarrassed to say is also the last time I mentioned it here. Anyway, they’ve declared victory, with a death toll of 2,300, and 52,364 of the usual suspects rounded up.

Every year the Literary Review, in London, sponsors a Bad Sex Prize for the worst sex scenes in literature (astonishingly, I quote from the winner every single year). This year’s was one by an Indian author, Aniruddha Bahal, and here’s the thing: his publishers flew him from Delhi to London to accept the prize.

From the Guardian: “Columnist and former Today programme editor Rod Liddle was almost struck out on the grounds that his sex scenes were actually rather well done, but his novel Too Beautiful for You, ("after a modicum of congenial thrusting, she came with the exhilarating whoops and pant-hoots of a troop of Rhesus monkeys") was reinstated after he said the judges were unqualified, since nobody on the Literary Review had had sex since 1936, in Abyssinia.”

The Times describes the winning passage as “too excruciating for a family newspaper.” So I got it from the Guardian: “She's taking off her blouse. It's on the floor. Her breasts are placards for the endomorphically endowed. In spite of yourself a soft whistle of air escapes you. She's taking off her trousers now. They are a heap on the floor. Her panties are white and translucent. You can see the dark hair sticking to them inside. There's a design as well. You gasp.

'What's that?' you ask. You see a designer pussy. Hair razored and ordered in the shape of a swastika. The Aryan denominator..."

Oh yeah, that’s some bad sex all right.