An annotated Pillage Idiot sampler

Given my decision to retire from writing Pillage Idiot after more than four years, I thought I'd leave you with a sampler of my writing, organized by subject matter. This is mostly a matter of vanity for me, a kind of proof of my own existence. And since it took me a while to retrieve all of this, it's nice to have it in one place.

I. Political Humor

A. Photo Comics

I was never a big admirer of Bill Clinton while he was in office, but I truly enjoyed writing Bill Clinton photo comics. I sort of imagined I was inside his head, expressing what he would have said candidly after about, oh, a half dozen beers. He was a little afraid of Hillary, but he had complete disdain for her political abilities -- she was "politically tone-deaf," and he, after all, was the politician par excellence. Still, she was his ticket back to the White House, and he had to put up with her. He hated Obama, who had arrogantly and falsely accused him -- the real first black President -- of being a racist, and yet Bill somehow couldn't stop himself from saying a bunch of vaguely racist things. And, of course, he was always looking for women. I also had him make a joke in each comic where he was smugly pleased with himself, and I used the same image of him half-smiling and half-smirking over it as the next frame, with no text.

So, first, Bill tried to get contributions for Hillary's campaign by arguing that she'd be really tough with our enemies. ("And then, she'd kick [Assad] in the nuts and take his wallet.") He mocked her plan for national health care. ("It's excruciating watching someone related to me -- even by marriage -- being so damn clueless. I feel my own pain.") But he stood up for her, sort of, when the Post's fashion critic wrote that Hillary had shown cleavage on the Senate floor. ("That's not cleavage. THIS is cleavage.") As the campaign went on and on, and Hillary's future looked bleaker and bleaker, he began to show the strain by verbally abusing a six-year-old girl interviewing him for her elementary school newspaper. ("What the hell am I doing talking to a kid who probably still wets her bed at night? Hmmm?") And he snapped back at the New York Times for criticizing the way he was campaigning. ("I'm gonna say this again: I did not have purple faced, squinty-eyed, finger-shaking tirades in this campaign.") Finally, after the primary votes were in, he agreed to campaign for Obama in the general election, but first he made him, figuratively, eat a poo sandwich. ("And then, I made him sing 'Swanee River' over dessert.") And once Obama had won, Bill explained why he'd forced Hillary on Obama as Secretary of State. Hint: We haven't seen the last of the former president.

Hillary was a less enjoyable character to use, possibly because, once you got past her total contempt for you and everyone else ("I'm a Yale-trained lawyer who lived worked in the White House for 8 years. This is my 7th year as a senator. And what have YOU done? Clean toilets in an office building?") and her disgust for "that son of a bitch I'm married to," there wasn't all that much there. But those themes were good enough for three comics -- her remixed speech announcing her candidacy (which somehow involved cow flatulence); her response to Kate Michelman's claim that John Edwards would be the first woman president ("Just because you're effeminate it doesn't make you a woman."); and her indignant response to Obama's claim she was making racist statements ("This is MY bus, and I intend to sit in the front. If Barack wants to be on the bus, he can damn well sit in the back and wait his turn.").

John McCain didn't appear often in my photo comics, because the only interesting thing about him was how much he despised conservatives. Hence, my comic of his speech at the CPAC convention in which he "reached out" to conservatives. The comic contrasted his actual speech with his own internal thoughts about how he hated the people he was addressing. And naturally, he got a little confused at the end about which was which.

George Bush showed up a few times. Yes, he stumbled over his words, as in this meeting with Putin. ("We all have the goal of reducing detentions -- uh, tensions -- in the world. So I'm pleased to announce that Pootskiy and I have reached an agreement to amelier -- ameri -- amerialate those tensions.") He struggled with crises, as in this conversation with the Chief of Control. (Bush: "Have you been reading the newspapers?" Chief: "Not exactly, sir. I've been dead for about 30 years.") And he had absolutely nightmarish dreams before meeting the press. (Reporter: "Mr. President, what Americans want to know about this wire-tapping is when I'm having phone sex with my boyfriend in New York, is it true the NSA can listen in?" Bush: "Your boyfriend wasn't in New York that night. I mean, what am I saying? Of course not!")

Perhaps I should mention at this point that Bush's two Supreme Court appointments come in for some action: the ever-correct, ever-proper John Roberts and the can't-take-the-blue-collar-out-of-him Samuel Alito.

Harry Reid played his repeated role as a funeral director, and others always seemed to be getting the better of him -- Harriet Miers and Nancy Pelosi, for example.

There were some characters I used only once: Ned Lamont running his miserable, losing campaign for Senate against Joe Lieberman after beating him in the primary, Al Gore objecting to everything, John Kerry meeting Bush at the White House to play a game of "nut wrestling," General Michael Hayden preparing for his CIA confirmation hearings by letting it drop that he had the goods on everyone, Barney Frank being Barney Frank, and Tom Friedman showing what makes him tick.

The single-frame photo comic about Cindy Sheehan that started it all is right here. (With follow-up by Condi Rice.)

And finally, in the non-comic but almost-comic category, here is a photoshop I did of the toast between Madeleine Albright and Kim Jong-Il, which tends to suggest that, from our perspective, the toast did not turn out very well. Also, this proto-photo comic involving George Bush and sweat (yes, sweat) from the last couple of days of the 2004 presidential election won me my first large infusion of visitors, though not an instalanche. (Glenn Reynolds did respond to my email, however, with one word: "Heh!")

B. Other Political Satire

It's not just the liberal TV comedians who think Obama isn't very funny. I've had a hard time doing any satire of him.

I did have a multi-part series called "If Barack Obama were Jewish, instead of the Second Coming of Jesus," in which the running gag was that a Jewish Obama was having a loud conversation on his cell phone with someone, usually his mother. This is a typical one with his mother. Here's one with his rabbi around the time Obama tried to disown Jeremiah Wright.

Obama did a few things during the campaign that could be poked fun at. When he sneezed during a speech and blew his nose, people actually applauded. When Bush spoke in Jerusalem, Obama narcissistically assumed something Bush said was directed at him, so I posted Obama's "responses" to the Gettysburg Address and two other famous speeches in history. After the vice-presidential debate, Obama practiced his wink to keep up with Sarah Palin. When Obama suddenly dropped some of his associates of his in light of bad publicity, I had him send a note to Sasha's second-grade teacher sort of disowning her. His national-security advisor recommended a study of Winnie the Pooh, so I came up with his next text based on another well known children's book. And in a parody of the Washington Post's "Date Lab," I reported on Barack and Michelle's blind date.

Naturally, Bill and Hillary also went on a blind date. I'm not sure which blind date scenario was more realistic. In my satire, Bill rarely appeared outside the photo comics, but I occasionally used Hillary. After she cited Obama's third-grade essay during the primaries to show how ambitious he was, I discovered her own third-grade essay. Because she was fighting on against all odds (some say, all reason), I listed milestones in the Hillary for President campaign but later gave 17 reasons for her to remain in it. My own personal favorite was a spoof of her exaggeration of her trip to Tuzla, where she claimed to have come under sniper fire. I had her coming under fire at the 7-Eleven in Chappaqua.

McCain came in for some ribbing about his "me too" political views: he and Obama played "The Price Is Right." When McCain did well in the Saddleback "debate," some people with the Obama campaign accused him of cheating, so I made a list of ten ways in which McCain has cheated over the years.

I had a few items about Nancy Pelosi when the Democrats took over the House in 2006, including her to-do list, and a cartoon about what I saw as the likely outcome. On the more general subject of the Democrats' taking over the House, I did a Mark Foley spoof in the style of the Capitol Steps.

Then, there was a series of posts, modeled on the old NY Daily News feature called "The Inquiring Photographer," in which a question was posed and various random citizens were photographed and asked for an answer. In my series, it was the politicians who answered. The first, and probably the best, was called "The Inquiring Photographer: Where will you invade?" (Sample answer: "California. There aren't any Mexicans left in Mexico any more. You know that, right? They're all in California." Tom Tancredo, R-Colorado) Bonus: I grossly "misunderestimated" Barack Obama.

Remember Ron Paul? I wrote a four-part series called "Ron Paul chats with his cocker spaniel." The joke was that "Dr. Paul" would hold a one-way dialogue with his dog, in which he'd confide his feelings about his campaign, and the dog would be silent in response -- at least, until the very end, when the dog would make some sarcastic or cynical comment. Here's an example, the second installment in the series. Later, when Paul endorsed the Republican candidate in a highly Democratic congressional district in Maryland, I had the candidate chat with Ron Paul's cocker spaniel. In one of my stranger experiences at Pillage Idiot, the candidate actually emailed me to complain about the piece. (Footnote: He received a whopping 13% of the vote in November -- through no fault of mine.)

A pair of political "top tens": The top ten signs that Josh Bolten, Bush's chief of staff, is Jewish ("3. Condoleezza Rice beats him up for his lunch money."), and the top ten signs that (former) senator George Allen's mother is Jewish ("2. Picked his campaign slogan: 'It would hurt you to vote for him?'")

I wrote a radio commercial for Justice Kennedy, advertising in support of his single-minded pursuit of justice . . . or whatever: "If you think your rights have been denied, call Justice Kennedy at 1-800-KEN-NEDY."

I came up with some political anagrams. First, miscellaneous anagrams. Then, anagrams for Samuel Alito. (As a result of this, I was mocked by the Columbia Journalism Review for not having a life. Really. My response: "Who spent the time trolling the blogosphere for Alito anagrams? Not I.") More recently, anagrams for Obama and Biden and McCain and Palin. Did you know that "Barack Obama/Joe Biden" can be made into "Rabbi made a bacon joke?"

And in my final political satire piece, last month, I spoofed the dealings between Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois and Rahm Emanuel. A news item indicated there were tapes of multiple conversations between the two, and I "transcribed" the appropriately foul language they exchanged. Don't worry; it all ended well.

II. Non-political silliness

Take a look at the Pillage Idiot Advisory System. My theme here is immaturity, or to put it more accurately, I'm immature personally, and that virtue of mine fairly permeates my humor writing.

Starting with code yellow (juvenile), I related my conversation with Julie, the voice of the automated scheduling system at Amtrak. When she complained to me about the garbage she has to put up with on a daily basis, I actually felt sorry about her plight, until she turned out to be sort of an anti-semite.

I made a list of things I've learned in my life, which started with "10. Your wife is right." It also included one of my profoundest insights ever: "5. Men get older, but women stay the same age, and pretty soon they're the same age as your daughter." If you're a middle-aged guy, you'll know what I mean.

When the TV series "Commander-in-Chief" was announced, the premise of which was that a woman, played by Geena Davis, had become President, Drudge posted a somewhat revealing photo of the actress, and I raised the question whether the Constitution permits the President to show cleavage. Part 2 of "President Cleavage" has the sophisticated constitutional analysis, but part 1 has the photo.

Also related to women: Many people have wondered about the female sense of humor. Why is it that women don't find things funny that obviously are funny, like The Three Stooges? I discoursed on this scholarly subject here, in a post that began with the joke about how many feminists it takes to screw in a light bulb. (Answer: "That's not funny!") After Christopher Hitchens wrote an article arguing that women weren't as funny as men, Gene Weingarten invited various women to respond in his Washington Post magazine column. As I pointed out, they weren't funny.

Speaking of women, how come women don't know how to take part correctly in a flush-a-thon? In a post that combines my interests in baseball and toilets, I looked at the flush-a-thon the Nationals engaged in at their new stadium before it opened, testing the ability of their plumbing to cope with the beer-drenched demands of their fans. ("Ladies, it's not one toilet every 10 seconds; it's every toilet every 10 seconds.") I'm still steamed that I wasn't invited to take part.

If the Post can write about flush-a-thons, why can't the New York Times business section write about body odor at work? It can! It can! And I, too, expounded upon the subject for longer than you might care to know. (One tip: "Don't walk into [the co-worker's] office or cubicle holding your nose. Instead, ask him politely whether it's possible that a dead rat is living in his office. When he says no, you reply, 'Well, process of elimination means it's you.'")

At one point, I had an occasional series of posts called "Naked News," discussing news stories involving odd things done by naked people. I used to say it was a shameless attempt to increase my site traffic. But it was, on the whole, so dumb that I won't even link those posts here. Instead, I'll merely mention some others that are not in the series: "Naked before God (and naked without Him)," concerning Christian nudists and nude campers, and "Naked before God (dyslexic version)," involving naked dog-walking. Last, in case you've ever wondered whether dead relatives can watch you from heaven, including when you're nekkid in the shower, a medium has now answered this profound question.

For some reason, flatulence was a theme of some of the humor here. Some day, someone will have to explain the fascination. Maybe it's that certain herring couldn't survive without flatulence, because that's how they confuse their predators, with flatulence. I've also wondered what it would be like to be a recognized expert on flatulence or to have an unusual name that shows up in Google only regarding a question the person posed about flatulence. It couldn't possibly be as bad as making a career out of being "Mr. Methane." Paging Sarah Palin: Moose flatulence as a cause of global warming? Then there was a lawsuit for patent infringement involving "farting dolls." I analyzed the opinion of the federal court of appeals and linked to (and quoted) the oral argument in the matter. A local court in West Virginia considered charges brought against a suspect who deliberately passed gas on the officers booking him for DUI -- not a smooth move, by the way. Finally, I issued a warning about eating the wrong kinds of food before flying but, more important, about trying to cover up the crime by lighting matches on board the plane.

I guess we're into code orange (puerile) or red (infantile) by now. Anyway, I'm not sure why guys seem to be fascinated with stories about what I call MMM (male member mutilation). Is it, "There but for the grace of God go I"? Is it, as I suggested in a discussion about condom sizes, that the issue is relative -- as in, "if half a billion Indian men got the short end of the stick, you personally just moved way up on the scale, relatively speaking"? Whatever the reason, I've noticed that MMM sometimes happens when you do your business outdoors. I've even coined a new adjective to describe that activity: "externomingent." (Google it.) If you want to know what the dangers are of externomingent acts, check out these two posts. More serious cases of MMM are found in Thailand, an American convenience store (turned out to be fake), and on the streets of Baltimore. Also, you know you're really in trouble when the doctors say that your "quality of life was severely affected." And perhaps my most profound rumination on the general subject, reflecting on the differences between men and women, concerns a case in Moscow, which raised many troubling questions, including this one: "Why was this man sitting naked in front of a woman he'd divorced and obviously didn't exactly get along with?"

III. Serious and semi-serious topics

A. Maryland

It seems appropriate to begin locally with a discussion of issues in this state, which has veered well to the political left in the 20-plus years I've lived here. Four days after Governor O'Malley took office, a light dusting of snow turned I-95 into a parking lot and prevented me from getting Mrs. A and our daughter to the airport. So I suggested we need to impeach the governor. After some people on a news forum at the Baltimore Sun's web site began discussing my suggestion in total earnest, I had to add a note explaining that I wasn't serious. At least I wasn't serious at the time. Later.... I did a photoshopped political cartoon about the Governor's plans for the special legislative session in 2007, which I called "Gov. O'Malley's budget math." The Governor's "to-do list" included passing a huge tax increase, adding spending, and showing courage by doing these two things. Of course, O'Malley is far from the only Maryland official worthy of mockery. I suggested a "You Can Be A Prosecutor Correspondence Course" based on an incident involving Doug Gansler, who at the time was our county's top prosecutor and now, as a result of the Peter Principle, is the Maryland Attorney General.

Maryland is just a strange place. The state thinks it can effectively repeal the law of supply and demand by requiring all government contractors to pay their employees a "living wage." It thinks it can reduce its budget deficit by allowing slots. (I offered a much better idea.) And it thinks -- at least, Gov. O'Malley thinks -- that it needs a progressive tax code in order to make the rich pay a lot more than the poor.

I wrote more than a few times about crime statistics in Maryland, especially in Baltimore, and about the death penalty. A few highlights: "Looking for bias in all the wrong places" examined the fallacious argument that Maryland's death penalty discriminated against black murderers, an argument not justified even by the study it relied on. More on this subject, when I criticized our former governor, Parris Glendening, for making himself a race hustler. (My response to another argument that "too many" black men are in prison included this: "When you invoke race in order to reduce the black population in prison, you are consigning law-abiding blacks to an increase in violent crime.") Our current governor announced he was in favor of abolition of the death penalty, and I tallied up the murder and violent crime statistics for the state. Shortly thereafter, the legislature narrowly missed enacting abolition, and I again did a statistical analysis, pointing out that the governor's grandstanding was irresponsible. And just to be fair to Gov. O'Malley, I also criticized the current mayor of Baltimore for her simplistic attitude toward violent crime, concluding, in a reference to O'Malley, the former mayor: "But it all boils down to one of the central reasons that government exists: to protect people from each other. If the government can't even do that, then the answer is obvious: Vote the politicians into higher office." (As a footnote, this phenomenon isn't limited to Maryland. I wrote about "Kerryism" in New Jersey, the effort to turn us into European elites, by abolishing capital punishment.)

On a somewhat lighter note, I repeatedly made fun of the folks I called the "cucumber people," a group in Montgomery County who wanted to change the sex ed curriculum to include a video demonstrating how to put a condom on a cucumber. Seriously. You might think that it's pretty obvious how to put on a condom, but then, you're probably not a right-thinking, left-leaning, good-government-espousing resident of Montgomery County. ("The letter writer, an adult with teenaged children, insists that her children's college-aged friends had no idea how to put a condom on (the subject of a controversial video that was supposed to be part of the sex-ed curriculum). More amazing, this woman apparently had no idea herself how it was done before watching the video when it was screened for parents.") So I had a pretty good time mocking these people, and I even drew a simple instruction sheet for condom installation using MS-Paint, thereby rendering the curriculum and video unnecessary. What can you expect from folks who say there are three types of abstinence?

Last, I wrote a fairly lengthy criticism, complete with photos, of a new bicycle bridge in Rockville, where I live. Nothing wrong with the bridge, except that it was hugely expensive and connected parts of the city that can be reached over other bridges. I called it the bicycle bridge to nowhere.

B. Jewish politics and religion

My first-ever post at Pillage Idiot was called "Jew in America." I guess you could call it a love letter to the United States. I discussed what it was about the founding that made Jews welcome here, told a story about my immigrant grandmother's love for America, and suggested that American Jews should be grateful to God for having made us Americans.

Given the fact that the Jews are now well established in America and are subjected to only relatively minor social discrimination, the question necessarily is why Jews vote so differently from almost all other Americans. I don't think anyone has a very good answer for this, although I've certainly tried to figure it out. I've thrown around the term "shtetl mentality," by which I mean "a view that, just as on the shtetl in Eastern Europe, Jews in America are somehow at risk of death, or at least forced conversion, from the neighboring gentiles." It's not a totally satisfying analysis, but it does begin to account for the Jews' inability to see the danger of anti-semitism on the Left, a subject I discussed in "Boiling the Frog."

American Jews overwhelmingly choose to live in communities that are part of "blue" states (those that went for Gore in 2000) -- 75% of American Jews, to be precise. One of my possibly original thoughts was that, instead of being amazed that Jews vote predominantly "blue," maybe we should start with a benchmark for the Jewish vote of 75-25. In fact, exit polls in 2004 showed about 75% of the Jewish vote for Kerry, but based on my personal experience and a lot of anecdotal evidence, I argued that there was a hidden Jewish vote for Bush, perhaps as high as an additional 5%. In 2006, the polls showed about 26% for the Republicans, a figure well in line with my benchmark. More on the subject here.

Nearly all of my Jewish friends are liberals, and I have a lot of respect for them as people. But some political positions drive me nuts. I've asked several times how Jews can be so big in calling for action in Darfur at the same time they've been so much against the war in Iraq: "If we can stop genocide, by all means let's do it, and do it now. But where were these people when we were trying to rally support for toppling Saddam Hussein, who was responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, for gassing the Kurds, and for numerous other unspeakable acts?" And just what kinds of solutions are they suggesting for Darfur? American troops? As for Iraq, I discussed a small bright spot in the Jewish response, a Reform Jewish dissenter on Iraq.

On Israel, one rabbi said American Jews are schizophrenic. I responded: "American Jews aren't 'schizophrenic'; they're nuts." I wrote during the 2008 Democratic primaries that "Israel's security does not depend on superficial support from American politicians. It depends on American power. A strong America indirectly benefits Israel. A weak America, an America that that is constantly running away from confrontation, indirectly hurts Israel." There are fewer and fewer friends of Israel on the Left, but still the Jews haven't adequately appreciated those conservative Christian philo-semites who are strongly pro-Israel. In fact, some Jews have gone out of their way to criticize them, despite our having few other pro-Israel allies. As I suggested, "Some Jews think their left-wing political views are far more important than support for Israel." One Jewish liberal who did show appreciation was the late Congressman Tom Lantos, whom I quoted in "Christian Zionists and left-wing anti-semites." The question of how to respond to Christians whose dogma excludes Jews from salvation is even more controversial among Jews, and I may in a real minority here, but my view is that our response on dogma should be, "Go ahead and believe whatever you want," while our response on conversion should be, "No, thanks." We need to focus on making Judaism more meaningful for Jews; it's secularism more than Christianity that's the threat. And here's why Jews should say "Merry Christmas." (To Christians, that is, not to other Jews.)

I was raised in a Conservative Jewish synagogue, and my level of observance should make me comfortable there today, so why am I not? Could it be the way politics has infiltrated the religious sphere, as in, for example, the decision to ordain gay rabbis? When you deal with the place of homosexuals in the synagogue under Jewish law, you need to address the issues not only with a good deal of sensitivity toward the people but with proper respect for the law. I've always liked what I read in a newspaper article some years ago. An Orthodox homosexual was quoted as saying that God gave us 613 commandments, and He can't be too upset if I observe 612 of them. So I refer to them as the 612 Club -- people who recognize who they are, without insisting that the law be changed to suit them. And what's the other great issue of politics that finds its home in the Conservative movement? Environmentalism, of course, to the point of strangling the economy. A rabbi who's the top fundraiser at the Jewish Theological Seminary wishes we could celebrate a lack of oil, not regret it. I couldn't believe she was so clueless she didn't understand "why donors have money in the first place: They have money because they engage in commerce." The environmentalist rabbi, of course, invoked "tikkun olam" in support of her efforts to kill the economy, but this is part of a widespread abuse of the concept of "tikkun olam" that I discussed in connection with a remarkable essay in Commentary by Hillel Halkin.

If you've ever spent the days before Passover frantically preparing your kitchen, and your house, for the holiday by removing the chametz, and suddenly you have to deal with the issue of kitniot, perhaps my essay "The four stages of kitniot" will speak to you. For the record, the four stages of kitniot are denial, anger, fear, and humor. "The fourth and last stage is humor. Unfortunately, most people do not reach this stage. Psychologists will tell you how hard it is to get beyond the fear of kitniot. (See generally Markowitz, On Transforming Our Fear of the Non-Chometzdig Yet Asur, 14 Journal of Kitniot 245 (1995))." I owe my friend Martin a great deal of thanks for lending me his hilarious letter to kashrut.com, which I quoted in its entirety.

On a personal note, after my father died in early 2006, I spent the next 11 months going to shul two or three times a day to say kaddish. Attending services so often led me to make some religious and sociological observations, and I'll leave you with two of them. The morning service (shacharit) started at 6:30 a.m. or earlier, in order to allow people to get to work on time, and it seemed a little repetitive to me, so I distilled it into a "One-minute shacharit," only six words in English. Toward the end of the 11 months, I started computing how many times I'd end up saying the kaddish. Answer: A lot.

C. Miscellaneous

1. One topic I wrote about fairly often was classical music. I'm a classical music fan, a former French hornist, and a little bit (little?) of a smart aleck.

My wife and I like to say that the average age of the folks at the concerts we attend is "deceased." So I wrote about an essay I read that discussed the cause of death of classical music. (Bonus: Bugs Bunny has something to do with this topic.) The following year, I did a postscript, discussing Allan Kozinn's argument that the rumors of the death of classical music are greatly exaggerated. I'm not so sure I'd put much stock in Kozinn, however, based on his attack on French horn players, which I took up in a post called "Splat!" It includes a discussion of why hornists make mistakes.

If you're not a fan of classical music, you might think that it's a deadly serious endeavor, but it's not. As with any form of art, we should be able to recognize that some classical music -- and here I'm referring to Mahler's First Symphony -- really sucks (eggs). Any form of art, that is, with the possible exception of painting: "Walk around any major museum and eavesdrop on the conversations of people looking at the paintings. Tell me whether you ever hear anyone say, 'This painting sucks.' And I don't mean that pimply 14-year-old wearing his cap on backwards and being led around by the scruff of his neck by his angry schoolteacher." I'm not totally sure I'd say that Haydn's Symphony #94 ("Surprise") sucks eggs, but it's pretty close to suckitude, as I explained in "Dissin' Papa Haydn." By the way, the nickname "Surprise" "apparently stems from an incident in which Haydn's wife unexpectedly returned home one afternoon while Haydn was in the middle of banging some fortissimo chords in the dominant."

Beethoven's music not only doesn't suck eggs; it's astonishingly brilliant and often is based almost entirely on themes, harmony, rhythm, etc., that are unremarkable in themselves. When I wrote about the donation of a manuscript of Beethoven's piano four hands transcription of his "Grosse Fuge," I discovered that the Japanese translation is "large Hu moth."

Finally, in response to Tim Page's list of 25 top 20th century compositions, some of which are hardly even music, I offered my own list of great 20th century music.

2. As the product of a brand-name college and law school, I developed a deep antipathy to the attitude that a lot of these colleges display, a sense that they are better than you and above the law. (Example: "Yale under scrutiny.") So I had an occasional series either criticizing them or making fun of them, mostly the latter. Harvard redefined plagiarism by allowing its professors to use a bunch of student ghostwriters, some of whom were less than meticulous with their sourcing. A magazine catering to Harvard alumni had a list of the top 100 Harvard alumni of 2007 and put Al Gore above George Bush. (The magazine's writeup of Bush was unremittingly negative, to boot.) When Harvard was looking for a new president, I wrote a poem recommending a candidate. (It began, "I think that I shall never see / At Harvard University...") And considering that both Yale and Harvard were doing their usual outrageous things (like defending the admission to Yale of a former spokesman for the Taliban), I set forth the moves and counter-moves as the two rivals headed toward nuclear confrontation. Yale, of course, being the "Hooters of the Ivy League." Most recently, I showed utter lack of concern with Harvard's shrinking endowment by joking that Harvard was going to seek a bailout from the federal government.

On a more serious note, I had a report with photos sent by a source at the Columbia protests against Ahmadinejad and a long critique of writings of Harvard professors who misunderstand what America is all about.

And my disgust really wasn't limited to strictly Ivy League schools. I wrote about how Tufts recruits by politics, offering applicants an opportunity to include a politically loaded essay. Also, many if not most colleges game the system in order to improve their admissions numbers.

3. In the "really miscellaneous" category, a little law and a little political theory. I rarely wrote about law, because I considered it a busman's holiday. But I came up with two legal innovations, one sort of serious and one sort of not too serious. The sort of serious one was about "John Doe immunity," for people reporting suspicious activity. I suggested that statutory immunity probably couldn't be made effective enough to keep John Doe defendants from having to pay for lawyers, and that we really needed an organization that would have a relationship with seasoned litigators willing to work pro bono on behalf of John Does. My sort of not serious innovation was a remedy for flag burning that doesn't involve a constitutional amendment. My idea was to provide "a defense to a charge of simple assault for someone who reacts to a flag burner by slugging him." It's not as ridiculous as it sounds. The rules are: "No excessive violence is allowed. No weapons, no serious injury. That is, no aggravated assault. If you're charged with simple assault for roughing up a flag-burner, you have a defense."

On the subject of law, it's hard to omit the story of a woman who was arrested for going topless in Manhattan one night. She then sued and obtained a settlement based on a New York court decision holding that ordinary topless women are not, uh, covered by a law banning topless waitresses. A concurring opinion argued that by specifying women the law violated equal protection, and I gave that opinion a skeptical look.

The final law-related item I've chosen had to do with the very large chip on Justice O'Connor's shoulder. She's "increasingly concerned about vitriolic attacks by some members of Congress and some members of state legislatures and various private interest groups on judges" and thinks it threatens the independence of the judiciary. Way to go! No one's allowed to criticize the judiciary! So she's working on teaching materials for the schools that will teach students . . . that they should never criticize the judiciary.

Last, in an essay about July 4, I expressed conservative reservations about celebrating our revolution. Even though it was a successful one, establishing a free republic, not a tyranny, it was still a revolution, and there's just something not very conservative about revolution. But I went on to discuss a totally deranged commentator named Cynthia Banas, who advocated marching on the Fourth carrying flags upside down. You won't be surprised to learn that she was active in the Iraq Peace Team, which tried to prevent the invasion of Iraq (but denies acting as human shields).

So again, thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed reading what I wrote even a fraction as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Attila

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Retirement

All good things must come to an end. After four years and three months of writing this idiotic blog, nearly 2,000 posts, I've decided to call it quits.

Do I mean permanently quits, or am I waiting for a massive outpouring of love to force me to return? I'd say permanently, but I'm not swearing on a stack of bibles that nothing ever could bring me back. Most likely, this is it. Almost certainly this is it, in fact.

I'm sorry for announcing my retirement without warning, but realistically, you can't give a warning about retiring from blogging without becoming a drama queen. You've all seen that kind of behavior. And I didn't want any of it.

1. Let me give my faithful readers a little explanation of my decision:

I've enjoyed writing at Pillage Idiot, but four years is a long time, and I feel I've run out of things to say. Some might suggest I ran out of things to say over four years ago. Maybe they're right.

In addition, writing under a pseudonym turns out to be more stressful than I'd anticipated. It's sort of like being a spy, but without the glamor, without the money, and without the treason. On the other hand, if I'd used my real name, people would have known I was a total idiot instead of merely suspecting it.

Last, I've sometimes said I've written mostly for my own amusement, but that's a cheap way of avoiding responsibility for my small readership. The fact is, no matter how high or low my overall traffic has been at any given time, I've never had more than you and several dozen other regular readers. I appreciate every one of you. It's just that there isn't much point trying to be something I'm not.

2. Out of vanity, and in an effort to collect some of what I've written, I've put up immediately below this a post called "An annotated Pillage Idiot sampler," which gives anyone who's interested some links to a sampling of my posts, organized by subject matter. Read them at your own risk.

3. Michael Swartz, a highly regarded blogger who writes at monoblogue, and one of the longest-time members of the Maryland Blogger Alliance, will be taking over leadership of the Alliance.

4. Finally, in case I get the urge to write some more stupidity outside of Pillage Idiot, and if you want to receive it in email form, send me an email (correct the address first), and I'll add you to the Pillage Idiot Retirement Mailing List. Some of you are subscribers to "Pillagemail," and you currently receive emails whenever I post. I'm going to assume you don't want to be on the retirement mailing list unless you tell me you do. In any case, I expect my post-retirement emails will be infrequent. Maybe even non-existent.

5. At least from my perspective, it's been a great run. Thanks one last time for reading. I really appreciate it that you've been willing to come back.

Attila

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New Year's linkfest

1. Thank goodness Hanukkah is over. Seven pounds of latkes?

2. Princess Caroline speaks a lot like Uncle Ted. Another version.

3. If even half of this is true, that's one great father who's one tough mutha.

4. Carjack-ee to carjacker: "I'm gonna blow your balls off!" (Warning: turn down sound before clicking; video starts right away.) (via HotAir)

5. Pillage Idiot ranked 10th most politically influential blog (conservative) in Maryland? Hmmm. "Influential" would not be in the first 50 words I'd use to describe Pillage Idiot.

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Attila, the movie

Some years back, USA Network showed a movie called Attila, which I'm sorry to say I didn't watch. Possibly because it sounded like a soap opera about my namesake the Hun, who, despite his foul behavior, deserves better than that.

But I recently stumbled upon the free wallpaper I downloaded back then from the movie's site, and I thought I should let you have a look.

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The Pillage Idiot No-Markup Store

A while back, I told you I'd tried to set up a Pillage Idiot store with Cafe Press but didn't like the goods.

I've just tried again and have been a little more successful. Two products: a white teeshirt with a large Pillage Idiot Advisory System image on the front, and a large mug with a small PIAS image on the back with an excerpt from a particularly immature post of mine on the front, about a woman who was held for questioning because she lit matches on an airplane.

You can see the products at this link. I've ordered both the products for myself to make sure they don't suffer from excessive suckitude. And I'm happy to report that the suckitude level is only Code Yellow.

When I say "no markup," I mean that you can buy them at Cafe Press's base price. I make nothing on the deal -- zero, zip, nada. I've often said I don't want to make money at Pillage Idiot, which is why I have no ads and why, now, I have no markup.

If you have any requests for new designs, feel free to email me about your ideas.

UPDATE: In case you want to see the images, I'm including them here. The large PIAS is roughly 6-1/2 by 10. This is a shrunken version of the image I used.



The front of the mug looks like this:

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Four years at Pillage Idiot

Q Pick a number from 1 to 10.
A That's just plain stupid.
Q C'mon. Pick a number.
A Oh, all right.
Q It's four, isn't it?
A Of course it's four.
Q I read your mind.
A Don't be an idiot. We're the same person.
Q So?
A So? This is like some drunken high-school kid's spoof of Tom Stoppard.
Q I knew it was four, because this is your -- our -- fourth anniversary here at Pillage Idiot.
A Yeah.
Q Four years is a long time to be doing this stuff . . . whatever it is you're doing.
A Right.
Q Can you explain what it is you do -- I mean, why you do it?
A Sure. As I've said before, I'm kind of a compulsive wise-cracker.
Q So I've heard.
A I'm a little like that kid in your sixth-grade class who shouts out a wise-crack while bouncing up and down in his chair. Then, everyone turns and glares, and he slinks down under his desk.
Q Except for those rare times when someone laughs.
A Yeah, "don't ever laugh" is my advice. Laughter is the nectar of the gods for people like us. One laugh can keep us going for weeks. And if you've emailed someone a link to what I've written? Nectar of the gods with caffeine.
Q You mean, laugh once, and we're stuck with you for a while?
A Even if you don't.
Q What do you mean?
A This kind of forum with anonymous readers lets me pretend that people actually enjoy the humor.
Q But . . .
A If they don't, they're usually too polite to say so.
Q I notice the "Plaudits" section on the right sidebar. You seem to revel in the impolite criticism.
A Not really. It's just that I recognize there's an element of truth in what they say.
Q Like the whole immaturity shtick?
A Indeed. Like the whole Pillage Idiot Advisory System up at the top right.
Q OK, I get it. But why are you still at it after four years?
A No one will talk to me in real life.
Q Not even Mrs. Attila?
A Mrs. Attila talks to me. But then again, she doesn't read Pillage Idiot.
Q Er, OK. Let me ask you a few questions that some readers may be wondering about.
A Go ahead.
Q Who are you?
A Look in the mirror.
Q No, I'm serious.
A You don't want to know.
Q It sounds like you don't want me to know.
A I'd prefer that you not know. I like to keep my real life separate from my Pillage life.
Q Why is that?
A I'm no one special in real life, but I don't think it would be wise to be associated with the immature stuff I write here. I once had a reporter call me at work to ask about something we were doing, and during our conversation, he mentioned something he had found by googling me.
Q And?
A It was something that was perfectly appropriate, but after he hung up, I googled myself, and one of the top items I found was a political contribution I'd made as a one-time deal in 2004. It got me thinking that I really wouldn't want posts from the world's most idiotic blog showing up under my real name.
Q You mean, you wouldn't want Supreme Court justices asking you about photo comics of them that you've posted here?
A I don't argue cases in the Supreme Court.
Q You know what I mean.
A I guess so. Yes, I wouldn't want that.
Q OK, what's your most satisfying accomplishment at Pillage Idiot?
A Probably the fact that we have over 50 members of the Maryland Blogger Alliance, a group I started as the only member, with a note on my sidebar asking people to email me to join my basically non-existent group.
Q What's the least satisfying aspect?
A My inability to tell the fools who google for "Helen Thomas Jew" that she's NOT Jewish, damn it; she's Lebanese.
Q What was the weirdest thing that's happened to you here?
A I did a post making fun of a Maryland congressional candidate and got an email from him complaining about it.
Q What did you do?
A I emailed him back.
Q Really?
A Yeah, I told him, politely, that he wasn't going to get anywhere if he spent his time obsessing about a stupid little blog that no one reads. And then, a few days later, the Washington Post did a profile of him, and my post was no longer the worst thing written about him. So I think he's moved past me -- although I still get press releases from him fairly often. This incident gives you another reason, by the way, that I don't want to reveal who I am.
Q What's your favorite post over the past year?
A May I give more than one?
Q I'm asking the questions here.
A Yeah, right. First, I did a spoof of Hillary's claim to have encountered sniper fire when she landed at Tuzla. In my spoof, she was describing her dangerous trip to the Chappaqua 7-Eleven. Second, toward the end of the primary season, Bill Clinton was taking hits from all over, and he seemed to be losing his patience. He did an interview with college journalists in which his answers barely concealed his hostility. So I did a spoof interview of Clinton conducted by a six-year-old girl for her elementary school newspaper. In it, Clinton verbally abused the poor girl. Third, when the Clintons were being attacked for injecting race into the primaries (and I think there's actually some basis for those attacks), I did a photo comic called "Hillary engages in some racial healing," in which she complained about the race accusations but also confirmed them by being way less than subtle about it. She ended by singing "We shall overcome."
Q You sound as if you can't stand the Clintons.
A Actually, not true. I developed some compassionate feelings toward them during the primaries, but the fact is, they were just begging to be made fun of.
Q One last question: How long are you going to continue to write Pillage Idiot?
A I don't know. I've been thinking about stopping since about December 2004, my third month, and I'm now entering, what, my 49th month. Go figure.
Q A presidential term is only four years.
A There are no term limits on stupidity.


Previous: Three years, two years, one year, no years.

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Fotonovelas

I don't usually write about nice things people have written about me. This is not because I suffer from undue modesty, mind you. It's because people don't write nice things about me.

So I was a little surprised to learn that Steve Heller, who writes for Print magazine -- apparently a graphic design publication -- cites me favorably in his blog, The Daily Heller. There, he writes about photo comics, which he says have popped up during the presidential campaign:

Fumettis (from the Italian word for comics) a.k.a. photo comics, especially the romance genre, have long been a popular in Mexico and South America where they are known as fotonovelas. During this presidential election year they are popping up in North America, particularly the non-romance genre. In yesterday's New York Post Governor Sarah Palin was the protagonist in "The Adventures of Sarah Palin" or "Here's what a hockey mom MIGHT have said if she hadn't been properly briefed by handlers..."

(Heller has the links at his post; I just haven't incorporated them in the segment I'm quoting.) Then, he goes on to cite Pillage Idiot, believe it or not.

But she's not alone: On the non-partisan political satire blog "Pillage Idiot" the classic fumetti form has made a dramatic comeback. See Messers Bush and Putin here; John McCain here; and Big Bill Clinton here.

Heller's being generous when he says I have a "non-partisan political satire blog." That description rather elevates what I do here. And calling me "non-partisan" is far more polite than what most people call me. I do try to make fun of all sides, but I don't exactly strive for balance.

But I don't mean to quibble. I'm really flattered to be included as an purveyor of this genre, by someone who writes about graphics, no less.

As they say, thanks for the link. And I really mean that.

Click here to read more . . .

Visitor of the day -- 9/19

What? Two in a row? Sorry, but I couldn't resist this one.

Because I'm here for pillaging, too.

Click here to read more . . .

We get comments

Shortly after Sarah Palin was announced as John McCain's running mate, I put up a post called "Sarah Palin is evil." Playing into the insane reaction to her from the lunatic left and the mainstream media (but I repeat myself), the post was a spoof of the site "Bert is Evil." That's Bert, as in Sesame Street. The most famous of the "Bert is evil" photos is one in which Bert is photoshopped next to Osama bin Laden. A sign with that photo on it actually made it into an anti-American protest in, I believe, Pakistan. (Correct me if that's been debunked.) So I photoshopped Palin next to OBL. She was saying, "I killed Bert, as you requested." Ha, ha. Get it? I later added a photoshop of Palin as Natasha, next to Boris Badenov.

In the past 2-1/2 weeks, I've had well over 1,000 visitors to that post from searches for "Sarah Palin is evil" and similar searches. Another 750 or so visitors have arrived from searches for "Sarah Palin idiot." Don't worry, we're just having a little fun with you, guys.

But one visitor overnight didn't see the humor. He (I assume it was a "he") left the following delightful message in the comments:

If there's any justice left in the world, then you conservative nazis will all get cancer and die a very slow and painful death. Sadly, there's really no justice left.

I've seen numerous comments like this at other blogs, so I don't find it shocking, even if it's obviously repellent. I have a section on the right sidebar called "Plaudits for Pillage Idiot," in which I quote commenters who've called me stupid, pathetic, etc. I don't think this comment qualifies.

Now, I have no intention of attributing this sickness to everyone on the left. To my regret, some conservatives will say horrible things about their adversaries, too. But I'll never understand how some people are so deranged they would think this, let alone write it, let alone write it in the comments to someone's blog.

Based on the IP address -- yes, you creep, I have your IP address -- this is someone who lives in, or around, Calgary, Alberta. In other words, a Canadian. Bwahaha! You have wannabe-fascist government agencies prosecuting people for "wrong" opinions on matters of public policy, and you call us Nazis? Let me know when you live in a free country, and then we'll discuss who's really evil.

Click here to read more . . .

Programming note

Scientists have concluded that it takes 3 (some say 4) brain cells to write Pillage Idiot.

I'm sorry to report that I can't spare those few brain cells this week. I'm going to be traveling on business and spending time preparing for that. If I'm lucky, I may have one or two posts by the end of the week. Feel free to check back here as usual, just in case -- or sign up for Pillagemail by putting your email address in the box at the upper left, and (this is important) activating your account when you receive an email about it.

Or else, just come here to click through to the blogs on my various blogrolls at the left. There's a lot of good stuff to read.

Click here to read more . . .

You get what you pay for, again

I couldn't tell you about this, for obvious reasons, but on Thursday, I got the dreaded email from Blogger telling me Pillage Idiot was being frozen while they checked to see that it wasn't a spam blog. Pillage Idiot is a lot of things -- most of them variants on "immature" -- but it certainly isn't spam.

It turns out it wasn't just me -- far from it. A large swath of the 'sphere got caught up in it, and not just small blogs like mine. Dr. Helen, the Insta-Wife, was shut down, too.

Fortunately, everything's been cleared up, and I've been unfrozen so I can post again. Blogger has posted a couple of apologetic notes about the situation. From the latter:

We want to offer our sincerest apologies to affected bloggers and their readers. We’ve tracked down the problem to a bug in our data processing code that locked blogs even when our algorithms concluded they were not spam. We are adding additional monitoring and process checks to ensure that bugs of this magnitude are caught before they can affect your data.

Some people were suspicious Blogger (Google) was targeting conservative blogs, but that never made sense. I just chalked it up to error, or perhaps my removal of the navbar. (I checked yesterday, and while it's a little unclear, it's apparently not a violation of the TOS to hide the navbar.)

I've said it several times before, but you get what you pay for. It's really annoying, but it's hard to complain too much about the service when it's totally free.

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Scheduling note

A note about the upcoming schedule at Pillage Idiot for the benefit of my small but devoted following:

This coming week, starting later today, I'll be celebrating my 25th anniversary with Mrs. Attila at a secure, undisclosed location. Our anniversary is actually in a couple of months, but I'm a proponent of partying early.

There might be some guest-blogging here in my absence, but I've pre-scheduled a bunch of "Best of Pillage Idiot" posts to make sure there's something here for you to read. These are re-posts of things you may have seen before, but I hope you'll enjoy seeing them again. It's possible, though I make no promises, that I may be able to post a few photos from from my secure, undisclosed location. (If I do, don't expect to see me or Mrs. A in any of them.)

A 25th anniversary, if you're as lucky as I am, is a time for celebration, but it's also a time for reflection. Basically, I'm still trying to figure out what Mrs. A saw in me. I think I know what she sees in me now, but I'm puzzling over what she saw 26 years ago.

The odds against a socially defective human being like me finding the woman of his dreams and having her think he's worthy of marriage are astronomical. The odds are even longer when you consider that the coincidences by which I found my wife were, well, flukish, as so many coincidences are.

I met my wife when she was sharing an apartment with a woman I went on a couple of dates (literally, two) with one summer. I'll call her X. The woman, X, was a year behind me in law school, and the year after I graduated, when she was a third-year student, I returned to the school for a few days to visit some friends. I accidentally bumped into X, and we had lunch. When she heard where I was living, she told me my wife was living only a few blocks away and advised me to ask her out. I already knew from having met my wife briefly when I picked X up at her apartment that my wife was smart and attractive and laughed politely at my jokes, so I didn't pooh-pooh the idea. But a socially defective guy doesn't just ask a woman out. He is tormented over the prospect for about six weeks before calling. Fortunately, in my case, my wife was expecting my call.

Now, it might sound odd in this day and age, but 25 or more years ago, when I was in my 20s, I had a pretty good idea of what I was looking for in a wife. I still think that when you're in your 20s, you should be evaluating relationships with an eye to whether they can lead to marriage, and not waste your time with ones that obviously cannot, but that's a topic for another time. My wife and I, in any event, had two long phone conversations before we even went out on a date, and by the end of the second conversation, I decided I was going to marry her. This is a true story. I don't recommend this strategy in general, because love at first sight, or second phone call, is usually a mirage. But in my case, my wife was way off the charts.

In the first month or two, there were a couple of missed signals that almost ruined my string of luck, but a year later to the day after our first phone call, we decided -- I should say she agreed -- to get married. And my life has been wonderful ever since.

I'm totally serious about that.

Click here to read more . . .

Attention Pillagemail subscribers

In the past month and a half, I've had a surprising number of readers -- i.e., more than one or two -- sign up for Pillagemail, my (almost) daily automatic email of my posts. See the form at the top of the left sidebar.

Thank you for you interest, but I need to tell you -- by which I mean not you but the other guy -- that you have to activate your subscription through the email that is sent out in my name by FeedBurner. If you don't activate, you're not going to receive Pillagemail. That's the way FeedBurner operates (and I think it's a good idea, too, for obvious reasons).

So for the several of you who signed up this month but didn't activate your subscription, go back through your mail to find it. It probably has a subject line something like this: "Activate your Email Subscription to Pillage Idiot." Also, you should certainly check your spam folder. If both of those methods are unsuccessful, you can re-subscribe and activate through the new email.

Finally, in case you'd like to have another look at my informal privacy notice, you can click the link immediately under "Get your daily Pillagemail."

Thank you.

Click here to read more . . .

Note from the underground

I know no one's surprised that I haven't posted anything over this three-day weekend. But I wanted to let you know that, aside from socializing today, I was busy formatting the hard drive on one of my computers and reinstalling Windows XP.

If you've never formatted and reinstalled, you don't know the pleasures you're missing. Why, just this evening, I had a chance to speak to Microsoft's representative in Redmond, India. I love the Indians, but he was just a little hard to understand. See, I had to call to activate the Windows software. My Dell restoration CD didn't boot, so I used a freestanding Windows CD I'd bought for another computer. When I tried to activate using the Windows key for the computer's OEM installation, it didn't work. It took me a while to explain this to the Microsoft guy, but finally, he read off the nine sets of six digits that allowed me to activate. Approximate elapsed time: 12 minutes. But a mere fragment of the time needed for the overall project.

I've given up for the night. Tomorrow morning is software installation time, followed by restoring my settings, followed by restoring my backed up files. All I can say is that I once had to restore a clone of my drive to a new hard drive, and it was a heck of a lot easier.

UPDATE (5/26): With time off to go the baseball game today (and get sunburned as all get-out), I'm about 95% of the way to restoring the computer. So I guess that means posting will resume soon.

UPDATE (5/27): Finally done with the tinkering. Let me say, though, that the unsung hero of this was Acronis TrueImage, a backup program that lets you clone your hard drive. I did a clone before formatting, and TrueImage allowed me to pick and choose what I wanted to restore. You still have to install software from scratch (assuming you're not simply reimaging your drive, which would defeat the purpose, anyway), but being able to select some file and not others, including the image on my wife's desktop out of gazillions of others, was a blessing.

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Expanded template

You may have noticed a change in the Pillage Idiot template to three columns. I owe the modifications to this amazingly clear post.

I did it, because I was concerned that my sidebar was getting way too long and that some of the important elements were being lost. The three-column format is a little busy, but I think I'll get used to it. I hope you will.

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Moronosphere blogroll

Thanks to doubleplusundead and Conservative Belle, there's now a moronosphere blogroll, which I've added to the sidebar, if you scroll down.

As I've mentioned, I'm really only an honorary member, but I'm on it, which is what counts.

Click here to read more . . .

Repost/reminder: Pillagemail

For those of you who want to keep us with the latest writing of an immature nature at Pillage Idiot, this is a reminder: You can sign up for Pillagemail on the sidebar.

Here is a repost of the announcement of Pillagemail from last year to explain in more detail:

Some of you may have been alert enough to have noticed a new feature on the sidebar. You can now subscribe to Pillage Idiot by email -- what I call Pillagemail, a once-daily email, currently set to go out shortly after midnight, containing any posts from the immediately preceding day. No posts, no email.

I'm not totally sure why I'm doing this, because if I send you Pillagemail, you won't come and look at Pillage Idiot, and then you won't count on my site statistics. That will leave me exclusively with people searching for nude photos of people you don't want to imagine in that state of undress.

But I'm a guy, and this is technology, so I'm in. Today, Pillage Idiot by email. Tomorrow, I'll beam it directly to that filling in your tooth.

Now, before I leave this subject, let me show you a sample. I subscribed to Pillagemail, just to test this out, and here's the result (click to enlarge):

As you'll notice, you can unsubscribe, too. Check out the privacy policy at FeedBurner, if you're concerned. You should know that FeedBurner gives me a listing of email addresses of subscribers when I log in and navigate to the page where I can set options. If that gives you heartburn, don't subscribe. Be aware, though, that I absolutely couldn't care less about having your email address. Don't want it, won't use it, won't sell it, won't disclose it even if I'm being waterboarded. Well, maybe if I'm being waterboarded. Anyway, you get the idea.

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Site problem

If you're having trouble viewing the whole front page of Pillage Idiot tonight, I think it has to do with Haloscan, my comments service, which seems to be down at the moment. Other Blogger blogs with Blogger comments are working, as is the Maryland Blogger Alliance site, which has no comments.

My apologies. I hope it'll be straightened out soon.

UPDATE: Working again.

Click here to read more . . .

Visitors of the day -- 11/13

Today, we have two visitors of the day.

I wonder what this person thought about the "Mr. Smith goes to Starbucks" post that turned up in the search.




And I've had many visitors looking for ways to get out of jury service, but this is the first time someone's tried a search from the courthouse. Must be one heck of a trial coming up.

Click here to read more . . .

The Clintons send their wishes

Previous: Two years, one year, no years.

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The abortive Pillage Idiot store

I've told you a number of times that because I consider Pillage Idiot to be a hobby, my goal is not only to spend no money but also to make no money. Hence, no ads, ever.

In keeping with this goal, I set up a store at Cafe Press, at which I hoped you'd be able to buy a few Pillage Idiot things at no markup. You know, the base price at which Cafe Press sells the stuff. I designed a mug and a tee-shirt (and sweatshirt).

The mug has these images on it.

The shirts and sweatshirt have an image I created by combining the first six frames of my first Hillary photo comic. It looks like this:


I didn't post this until I'd seen for myself how they looked. I ordered a tee-shirt and a mug, and they look pretty awful. I found Cafe Press's site almost totally useless in helping you see what your products were going to look like.

In the past, I ordered Pillage Idiot mugs from a different place, and they looked very good. Has anyone had better success with Cafe Press? Or should I go back to the other guys?

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Another feed problem

For reasons I'm not sure you're interested in, I've created a "pipe" at Yahoo for my site feed. I don't know whether you noticed today, but if you'd looked at my "Newest Posts at Pillage Idiot" below any permalinked post, you'd have seen that all ten newest posts were Thursday's "Tending the Lawn."

I did some testing, and something is messed up with the pipe. It looks fine to me on the surface, but it's not showing any newer posts. Until I figure out the problem, I'm reverting to my RSS feed.

For most of you, those who visit the site directly, this won't matter at all, and you'll notice nothing.

For those of you who subscribe to the feed, it might appear odd at first.

And for those of you who receive my Daily Pillagemail, I wouldn't be surprised if tomorrow's email isn't what you expect. It may be a whole bunch of posts you've already seen. In any case, I'm working on it.

My personal guess is that nothing I do will make any difference, and that it will be fixed by Yahoo without my intervention, leaving me puzzled but relieved. Stay tuned.

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Reciprocal blogrolling

It's been a long time since I last offered reciprocal blogrolling. It's always a little strange for a minor blogger like me to make this offer, but I've noticed a few blogs that have me on their blogrolls and aren't on mine.

As usual, the deal is: If (a) your blog is generally safe for work, and (b) you have me on your blogroll, then email me with the subject line "reciprocal blogrolling request" or something similar to that, and I'll add you.

Click here to read more . . .

Another reason not to use ads

I've mentioned a couple of times that I don't have Google Ads -- or any ads at all -- on this site, because I treat Pillage Idiot entirely as a hobby. I'm very fortunate to make enough money in my day job that a few bucks from ads on this low-traffic blog wouldn't be such a big deal. I don't mean to imply any criticism of bloggers who advertise, especially people who really need extra income, but for me, being ad-free keeps the site clean, my mind pure, and -- uh, wait a minute!

Anyway, here's another reason not to have Google Ads. Earlier today, someone visited Pillage Idiot by doing a search for "penal law 245.01 penis." To explain: In June, I wrote one post about the seal oosik, or penis, and another post called "De minimis non curat lex?" about a woman who'd settled a lawsuit against the City of New York that arose out of her arrest for walking topless in Manhattan in the wee hours of the morning. (That latter post alone, by the way, got me about 9,000 or 10,000 site visits, including 6,000 hits from search engines.)

I clicked on the link to the visitor's search and discovered this page. Click to enlarge it (oops, careful what I say!).


I realize that's a sponsored link at Google, not a Google ad, but considering the stuff I write about here, a context-based ad like that could have been on my front page. Yikes!

Click here to read more . . .