perfidy

You may be painfully aware of the Ministry's ongoing series, "Great Mottoes for Lackluster States." We felt that it was unfair for the United States to get all the abuse, and Loyal reader #0018, Nicholas has cheerfully stepped up to the plate and contributed, exclusive to the Ministry of Minor Perfidy, a list of slogans for his homeland of Australia:

• Yes, we have beer.
• If not the Great Southern Land, at least a Pretty Good Southern Land.
• The land of broad expanses, and expansive broads.
• More didgeridoos than you can shake a hollow stick at.
• Now with electricity!
• Come see our bridge.
• No worries mate. At least not after you've finished the other 6-pack.
• Hotter than a monkey's bum.
• More than just a string of beaches, but seriously, who cares?
• Go to the beach and let it all hang out. Well, your stomach, anyway.
• Boasting the best marsupial to tourist ratio in the world.
• Marry an Australian girl, and Bob's your uncle!
• Instead of a Starbucks, we have a pub on every corner.
• Kind of like a cross between Canada and Hell.
• Our national dish is charred meat.
• Texas is small and densely-packed by comparison.
• Cricket - There's no better excuse to drink continuously for 5 days.
• Home of The Big Sheep, The Big Pineapple, and other Humorously Large Items (such as the Prime Minister's eyebrows).
• Did I mention we're all descended from criminals? Hey buddy, nice camera.
• More Wombats per square kilometer than anywhere else.
• Visit Woolloomooloo - It's our Mississippi.
• Strewth!
• England's Alcatraz.
• The land our Prime Minister once called "the arse end of the world". In one of his more polite statements.
• Our national emblem is the cooler.
• If you go home sober, you were somewhere else!

Getting into the spirit of things, here are a few additional slogans which may or may not reflect the true nature of Australia:

• It'll never fly
• Not just a nation, a continent
• Demographically, Australia's people are like soap scum around a sand-filled tub
• We'll fight in any war that has English speaking people in it
• The Greater West Oceania Co-Prosperity Sphere, What'd ya think?
• That's not a knife, this is a knife

Interesting, and I'm half way there.

NASA admits that even the effing chicoms could get back to the moon before they can. Sad, sad, sad.

New York, queen of cities, and city of queens. But did you know that New York isn't just a pestilential shitheap of urbanization gone mad, but an actual state with a capitol and everything? It's true.

• You may love NY, but New York Loves You, I mean, Loves You
• More Jews than Judea!
• The Go F#@$% Yourself State
• New Safe Version -- Now With 30% Fewer Murders!
• Get your 9/11 FunPass!
• Birthplace of Organized Crime
• Gateway to Quebec
• We may be close to, but we insist that we are not New Jersey!
• Come be our Senator!
• You Have The Right To Remain Silent...
• We're more than a big city; we're a state!
• The Affiliated Businesses of 9/11-Related Tourism State
• Like we care about a motto
• When we say “Empire” we mean “Empire.” You’ll see.
• English spoken here; sometimes
• Yes, We Have Some Other Cities
• Better Air Than New Jersey
• I got your motto right here!
• Come get mugged in New York!
• Just try to spend more for gas!
• Born Free, Taxed To Death
• The smell isn’t so bad since we got rid of the garbage mountains
• Home of Buffalo, but not proud of it
• Whatta You Lookin' At, Punk?
• The Only State
• Come for the skyline, stay because you were mugged and don't have cabfare to the airport.
• Our Thing
• Cosmopolitan and Provincial
• Home to the two most impressive presidents in US History: Martin van Buren and Millard Fillmore
• Yes, Millard Fillmore was the President
• If you get real close, you can look up Lady Liberty’s dress
• Uncomfortably close to Pennsylvania
• New Netherland
• While it is still illegal to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, you can float down the East River in one
• Please somebody tell us what the fuck a “Kickerbocker” is
• Not the only state named after poncy British royalty

[wik] Did you know the capitol of the United States was once a bar in Jersey? True fact.

After a long - and perhaps justified - hiatus, the Ministry educational series, “Know your state mottoes” returns with that most statelike of states, New Mexico:

• I am become death, the destroyer of worlds
• Lizards make excellent pets
• We have reservations
• Yes, those are crosshairs on our flag, why?
• We may be new, but we’re not New Jersey.
• We’re the bomb
• Alien Welcome Center
• Like Old Mexico, Only Less Old
• We are TOO a State!
• Turquoise, Turquoise, Turquoise
• Just Deserts
• Bam!
• The Complimentary Bolo Tie State
• More than Just Sand, Rocks and Heat. Okay, Just Sand Rocks and Heat
• Soon to be Old Mexico
• It’s a dry heat, but then so’s the inside of an oven
• Really New, unlike faux new states like New Hampshire, New York and New Jersey.
• Almost as many nuclear explosions as Nevada
• It grows as it goes
• Birthplace of the fucking bomb
• Everybody is somebody in New Mexico, and therefore nobody is anybody
• Better than the Old Mexico
• The Elephant Butte State
• The Potash State
• Home of the New Mexico Cutthroat Trout
• You did make a wrong turn at Albuquerque

[wik] One of those mottoes is the actual state motto of New Mexico. Can you guess which one it is?

[alsø wik] I think it explains a lot that the most famous New Mexican short of Smokey the Bear, John Denver, is from Roswell.

[alsø alsø wik] In some isolated villages, such as Truchas, Chimayo', and Coyote in north-central New Mexico, some descendants of Spanish conquistadors still speak a form of 16th century Spanish used no where else in the world today. Like the Millunjins from West Virginia.

Harristown, Pennsylvania was named for its founder, Ffloyd Snodgrass.

Go here. Now.

So this guy visited 21 states in one day, in his car. He drove 1706 miles in one day. Technically, that’s cheating a bit - he did his trip on the third Sunday in October, which gave him an extra hour with the time change, and he ended his trip in another time zone, to the west, which gave him yet another hour. Still, an impressive achievement for any day, even one that has 26 hours in it. Just counting the first 24 hours, he drove 1571 miles. I had thought that my single day driving record of 1288 miles was good, and he’s got me beat by almost 300 miles.

It would be pretty hard to top that record – perhaps you could edge him a bit on miles, but I find it hard to imagine how you could squeeze in any more states. I think I might be playing with googlemaps a little, later on…

[wik] He also did all fifty states in a week's vacation. This isn't as good as the Mongolian trip that Sortapundit was talking about before he sold out and started writing ads on his blog, but quite an adventure.

Despite being nearly two years out from the next presidential election, the shenanigans are in full swing. Fucking shenanigans. The Democratic Party candidates are already attacking each other, and the Republicans are doing their traditional Sloth and Emu imitations. I've seen reports of candidates withdrawing from the race that I not only did not know were running, but in fact had never heard of. As the campaign rhetoric heats up, the electorate will play its role in the quadrennial morality play - that of the Greek chorus. That is, if you imagine the Chorus from Aristophanes' The Clouds repeatedly muttering to itself, "Who the fuck are these people, and why can't we get someone cool to run for President, like John Wayne? Someone who won't bother to understand all that economics crap, but will put the fear of Jebus into the furriners?" When they're not muttering that, the mutters will center on the fact that despite the claims of diametrical oppositeness, the two parties seem to be strikingly similar in every important aspect - seriously considering as candidates people we would never allow alone with our children, pompous self righteousness, and shrill condemnation of anything or anyone that stands in the way of attaining, holding, and cashing in on power.

It is at times like these that the more thoughtful of the sheople will think, maybe another party will make a difference. Aside from the fact that the last time this was successfully tried, the new party ended being merely a slightly newer version of one of the original parties, which then gracefully (and miraculously) expired. The people will think to themselves, "Hey, that paranoid big eared guy did pretty well." If they are of a leftward tilt, they'll fantasize about a Green party victory. If they list to starboard, they might imagine a Libertarian triumph. Of course, any sane person would run screaming from the country if either of those things happened.

What is needed is a true alternative. One that has been slumbering for nearly a decade could be our savior. It is,

The Scorched Earth Party

WHY THE FOOLS MUST DIE

It's happened to you, no doubt.

You are somewhere public, trying to complete a simple task. Perhaps you are eating in a Dennys. Perhaps you are buying something at Costco. Perhaps you are just driving along on the highway. Then it happens:

Some stupid moron causes a problem. They put their trivial life ahead of your own existence, and as a result they move, however briefly, from the position of 'faceless drone' to 'obstacle'.

The waiter messes up your order. You can't get a refill of coffee because they're "too busy", despite the fact that the restaurant is empty. Some jerk cuts you off with their cart and there's no way around them now. That asshole who is coming up on your tail, flashing his brights, decides to cut around you on the right at about 90 mph just as you start signaling to get out of his way, and he honks wildly as though you're the one endangering everyone on the road.

And you think to yourself: This person must die.

The Scorched Earth Party is here to tell you: Yeah. Go for it.

The basics

Here at the Scorched Earth Party, we are dedicated to a few simple principles:

• that the concept of "life is sacred" is the best joke we've heard this year.
• that nothing satisfies like clubbing some moron to death with a lead pipe.
• that you can never get laid enough.
• that the world will continue to deteriorate until 90% of its population is eliminated.

True happiness will never be yours unless you rise up with us. Join the 10% with the lead pipes. Help save the world through random, messy violence, and then wallow in carnal pleasure among the ruins.

Now that would make the '08 elections more interesting.

Originally, the hour was merely an arbitrary period of time.