perfidy

Four out of ten municipal bus drivers in Pittsburgh are convicted felons. Of these, two are on parole.

Ministry Crony EDog is a busy man. He writes. He works. He has kids, and a Mrs. EDog. Inexplicably, he has decided that his true mission in life is to provide the world with lego webcomics. Well, maybe not his true mission. His true mission is to develop a team of superheroes and fight evil thoughout the world. This webcomic thing is just sort of to keep a finger in the whole superhero thing, until he gets his team together.

Behold.

[wik] He also started a new short story, which you can read over at his bloggy thingy. Will he ever stop? Check it out.

In a desperate but ultimately vain attempt to catch up on blog reading, I have been dipping into the Ministry Legion of Merit and speedreading all the fine material that has accumulated over the weeks of my neglect. One thing that jumped out at me was this post over at Texas Best Grok. John got hooked into a fascinating little speculative piece by Dan Simmons, the entirety of which can be found right here. Simmons has always been (well, since I started reading his stuff over a decade ago) one of my favorite writers. His science fiction is all sciency, his thrillers thrill, and his horror is creepy as all get out. The ease with which he slides from genre to genre is sickening to anyone who aspires to writing, and he is a storyteller with few peers. This little bit puts a creepy but all to plausible spin on something that has bothered me for nearly five years. Read it.

[wik] And also, congratulations to Mr. Lanius on his 200,000th visitor. Soon, he might be major perfidy.

All domestic dogs are descended from 9 wolves domesticated in Mongolia around 9,000 B.C. Curiously, they were all named, "Spot."

Once upon a time, actors and performers were considered no better than prostitutes. No sane or respectable person would ever imagined putting a prostitute behind a microphone to hold forth on matters of public policy, and the idea of listening to an actor do the same would have been only slightly less ridiculous. As in many other instances, we have ignored the wisdom of the past.

No particular outrage sparked this rumination, though I am sure if I looked, sometime in the last day or so, some celebrity has said something tragically ignorant or wrong-headed or offensive. If it's Alec Baldwin, he usually gets a trifecta and covers all three. (Googling… Googling… hey, today its Madonna.) You may be thinking, hey, Buckethead, you just don't like it 'cause they're all liberals and shit. Well, that plays a role, to be sure. Ignorant liberal ranting is in fact more annoying to me than ignorant conservative ranting. I hate celebrities holding forth on policy issues for precisely the same reason I hate call in talk shows. Ignorance.

If I am going to waste my time listening to someone else's opinion, I should like that opinion to be the finely honed product of a mind that has spent years, preferably decades, thinking deeply on the problem. That opinion should be a balance of hard-earned knowledge, relevant experience, nice judgment with a leavening of insight and authentic genius. That is very nearly the exact opposite of what I get listening to Tim Robbins, or some random jackhole who wants to hear his voice on the talkybox and can't be bothered to turn it off when he goes on air.

Everyone has the right to an opinion, and the right to say it. But not everyone's opinion is worth listening to. Including mine. However, I don't have Angelina Jolie's lips, chest or hips, so people aren't exactly breaking down my door for interviews. Despite the fact that those (exquisitely formed) body parts and an ability to make faces at the camera are her sole qualifications for media access to talk about whatever flits through her empty head.