The devil is in the details

A Parable

2010-04-17T21:39:00.002-06:00

At about 10:30 am, Jack drives up to the McDonald's drive-through. He waits for the SUV ahead to order, then for the kid taking orders to be ready.

Out of the speaker: "Hello, would you like to try the new Angus burger today?"

"No thank you. I'd like two Sausage McMuffins with egg, please."

"We're serving lunch now."

"Excuse me?"

"We're not serving breakfast now. We're serving lunch."

"I can't order breakfast at 10:30 in the morning?"

The kid, interrupting, "It's 10:36."

"What time do you stop serving breakfast?"

"10:30"

"So you're telling me that you won't serve me breakfast because it's 10:36 and not 10:30?"

The kid, getting officious, "No, I'm telling you that..."

Jack doesn't know what he was being told, he isn't listening. Cutting the kid off: "Listen, why don't you go fuck yourself with the leftover sausage McMuffins that you won't sell me."

He doesn't actually get that out. The kid jumps in with: "No, you go fuck youself!" Jack, pissed off, slams on the gas, traction control chattering the wheels instead of a real peelout.

Going by where window where the kid takes the money, the kid calls out, "Goodbye", sarcastically. Jack slams on the brakes, skids it a little even with antilock brakes, stalls the car. Really pissed off now. Starts the car, puts it in reverse to back up to where the kid is, then changes his mind. Instead, Jack pulls up to the window just ahead, the one where you pick up your food.

The guy in there: "May I help you?"

"May I speak with a manager please?"

Not too long, then the manager, 30-ish woman who eats too many meals there. "May I help you?"

Jack, trying to control his voice, "Maybe you should tell the servers not to swear at the customers." Doesn't wait for an answer, just drives off.

Still really pissed.

Without the Bitterness

2010-03-24T09:49:00.002-06:00

Here's what I read on my Chipotle cup just now while... well, never mind what I was doing.

Sour Cream, Without the Bitterness

Left to nature, dairy cows produce up to eight gallons of milk a day. This natural way has worked well for man and cow for eons.

However, agricultural chemists have formulated a synthetic hormone that is injected into a cow to artificially increase milk production. Recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) is used in the United States, but banned in other countries. Many farmers report rBGH causes maladies such as udder infections and joint problems. Those synthetic growth hormones could end up in the milk we drink. While it's not clear how these hormones affect us, they're just another thing we, and the cows, could probably do without.

At Chipotle, we serve naturally raised meats that come from vegetarian-fed animals that are humanely raised and never given antibiotics or growth hormones. We think the same should be true for the dairy cows that produce our sour cream. So we've worked with our supplier, Daisy Brand, to ensure that none of their cows supplying cream for our sour cream receive rBGH.

We think producing milk the way nature intended is better for everyone. It's another step along our Food with Integrity journey - bringing you the very best ingredients from the very best sources.

I completely agree that I'd prefer my dairy products to come from non-rBGH cows. But much of this blurb is complete bullshit.

Cows produce milk for the same reason as all other mammals: to feed newborn babies. Depending on the breed, a calf needs milk for 4-6 weeks, and initially needs 6-12 pounds of milk per day: 0.75-1.5 gallons. At the outside that's 63 gallons total.
A dairy cow producing 8 gallons per day works out to 2920 gallons a year - over 45 times more than a calf would need in its life.

There's nothing even remotely natural about a dairy cow. Dairy cows have been bred to produce far more milk than they need to for their own purposes by artificial selection. Then dairy farmers keep the milk coming by pumping it out of them twice a day.

Humans don't "naturally" drink cow milk either. In fact, we had to adapt to be able to digest the lactose in cow milk; many humans can't even do it or lose the ability during their lives.

The reality is not "natural" dairy cows vs. "artificial" hormones. It's one kind of artificial vs. another kind of artificial. But I guess the truth doesn't make good propaganda.

-- Satan

Sleepy

2010-02-12T23:41:00.002-07:00

Up late, tired. The end of the week, I want to go to bed but there's work that has to get done tonight. So it gets done, slowly.

Reading old posts here. Amusing to me, but some really need a copyeditor.

-- Satan

Travel Advice

2009-04-02T23:21:00.000-06:00

Credit crisis, indignant demagoguery, grubbing for that stimulating pork – all told, there’s been a notable uptick in the number of people traveling to Hell recently. Many of our new voyagers are eschewing the traditional standards, the handbasket and and the bucket, in favor of the airplane. Sadly, despite all the good intentions along the way, we’ve had some difficulties. So, in an effort to keep the lines moving smoothly, here’s some advice for Air Travel to Hell:

1. As soon as the plane takes off, recline your seat as hard as possible into the kneecaps of the person behind you.
2. The seat belt sign is a suggestion only. Feel free to get up and walk around whenever you like. Seatbelts on airplanes are worth fuck-all anyway.
3. If you are in a window or middle seat and want to get up, do not ask the person in the aisle seat to get up. Instead, either squeeze by or climb over him or her, being sure to rub your ass in his or her face.
4. When walking down the aisle, try to elbow, shoulder, or kick as many people as possible.
5. The small sink in the lavatory is actually a urinal.
6. If you have to sneeze, try to have as many other passengers in range as possible.
7. To improve the air quality on the flight, do not wear socks, and take off your shoes as soon as you are seated.
8. If you are large and sweaty, wear as little clothing as possible. Tank tops and shorts.
9. While you are seated, position your elbow in the stomach of the person next to you.
10. If someone falls asleep, please wake him or her up and share your life story.

Enjoy the trip!

-- Satan

R.I.P.

2009-01-27T21:08:00.002-07:00

Like a feather caught in a vortex, Williams ran around the square of bases at the center of our beseeching screaming. He ran as he always ran out home runs--hurriedly, unsmiling, head down, as if our praise were a storm of rain to get out of. He didn't tip his cap. Though we thumped, wept, and chanted "We want Ted" for minutes after he hid in the dugout, he did not come back. Our noise for some seconds passed beyond excitement into a kind of immense open anguish, a wailing, a cry to be saved. But immortality is nontransferable. The papers said that the other players, and even the umpires on the field, begged him to come out and acknowledge us in some way, but he never had and did not now. Gods do not answer letters.

-- from Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu

Going down with all her lights blazing the great ship America.

-- from Rabbit is Rich

Rest in peace, John Updike.

Waterboarding is Torture

2009-01-15T15:44:00.000-07:00

Damn straight, Mr. Holder.

Satan's Picks

2008-10-04T22:23:00.003-06:00

Baltimore        4
Carolina        13
Chicago         12
Green Bay       10
Indianapolis     7
San Diego        9
NY Giants        8
Philadelphia    11
Tampa Bay        6
Buffalo          2
Dallas          14
New England      5
Pittsburgh       3
Minnesota        1

Last weekend was much, much too busy. I think I'll head for Japan to reduce stress.

-- Satan

Ask Satan

2008-09-27T22:05:00.005-06:00

Übermilf asked:

is taco dip one of your inventions?

Um, no... Why, does it feel sinful? Do you feel like you're getting extra help when you make it?

---

Ok, it's been slow here lately. I'm mostly just amused by the idea that the U.S. of A. Federal Government will soon own a huge part of the country's financial industry. Yeah, that's capitalism for you. To think Reagan and Bush (the Greater) really thought they'd beat socialism in the Cold War.

But moving from comedy to sports, the ancient and honorable competition of Finger Pointing has been great. Not as good as the F1 race at Spa (the actual race, not the stewards), but pretty good nonetheless. My favorite entry so far comes by way of that champion of the feet, both surgically and in his mouth, none other than Curt Schilling: Finger Pointing 101...

A revisionist masterpiece. Any other contenders?

-- Satan

Satan's Picks

2008-09-27T21:57:00.003-06:00

Here's how the current worldline will play out, before future interventions:


Atlanta @ Carolina          Carolina
Cleveland @ Cincinnati      Cincinnati
Houston @ Jacksonville      Jacksonville
Denver @ Kansas City        Denver 
San Francisco @New Orleans  New Orleans
Arizona @ NY Jets           Arizona 
Green Bay @ Tampa Bay       Green Bay 
Minnesota @ Tennessee       Tennessee
San Diego @ Oakland         San Diego 
Buffalo @ St Louis          Buffalo 
Washington @ Dallas         Dallas
Philadelphia @ Chicago      Philadelphia 
Baltimore @ Pittsburgh      Baltimore

Forgot to post these last week, so for the record:


Kansas City @ Atlanta        Atlanta
Oakland @ Buffalo            Buffalo
Tampa Bay @ Chicago          Tampa Bay 
Carolina @ Minnesota         Minnesota
Miami @ New England          New England
Cincinnati @ NY Giants       NY Giants
Houston @ Tennessee          Tennessee
Arizona @ Washington         Arizona  
Nawlins @ Denver             Denver
Detroit @ San Francisco      San Francisco
St Louis @ Seattle           Seattle
Cleveland @ Baltimore        Baltimore
Jacksonville @ Indianapolis  Indianapolis
Pittsburgh @ Philadelphia    Philadelphia
Dallas @ Green Bay           Green Bay
NY Jets @ San Diego          San Diego

Quiet week for me, actually - only three games revised. The main excitement was the faction who hate the Patriots waking up to the fact that just taking out Tom Brady wasn't enough to make the Patriots lose, so they had to step up and sell a little more...

-- Satan

Satan's Picks

2008-09-14T09:39:00.003-06:00

Amazing how many people wished Tom Brady ill -- enough to do something about it. And that was only the beginning of some interesting deals... Well, dear readers, in case you were misled in your investments by the advance version of reality reported last week, here's a chance to recoup. Less time for revisions this week. Though it takes only an instant if the intent is there...


Chicago       @ Carolina      Carolina
Buffalo       @ Jacksonville  Jacksonville
Oakland       @ Kansas City   Kansas City
Indianapolis  @ Minnesota     Minnesota
Nawlins       @ Washington    Nawlins 
NY Giants     @ St Louis      NY Giants 
Green Bay     @ Detroit       Green Bay 
Tennessee     @ Cincinnati    Tennessee 
San Francisco @ Seattle       Seattle
Atlanta       @ Tampa Bay     Tampa Bay
Miami         @ Arizona       Arizona
New England   @ NY Jets       New England 
San Diego     @ Denver        San Diego 
Baltimore     @ Houston       Baltimore 
Pittsburgh    @ Cleveland     Pittsburgh 
Philadelphia  @ Dallas        Philadelphia

-- Satan

Satan's Football Picks

2008-09-03T20:00:00.003-06:00

Gambling season is back. Here's what will happen this week - subject, of course, to deals made later by players, fans, bookies, etc. Ranked in order of certainty.


KC  @ NE   NE
STL @ PHI  PHI
CHI @ IND  IND
CAR @ SD   SD
SEA @ BUF  SEA
WAS @ NYG  NYG
ARI @ SF   ARI
DEN @ OAK  DEN
DAL @ CLE  DAL
MIN @ GB   GB
JAC @ TEN  JAC
DET @ ATL  DET
TB  @ NO   TB
CIN @ BAL  BAL
HOU @ PIT  PIT
NYJ @ MIA  NYJ

Feel free to use these to make money. Just don't blame me if you lose.

-- Satan

Palin

2008-08-29T16:42:00.001-06:00

By far the best move in politics this year.

Nice timing, too.

-- Satan

Decontextualize

2008-08-26T17:23:00.001-06:00

A quote taken out of context:

"...scientists were unable to distinguish between the head and rear of the cattle..."

Ask Satan

2008-08-09T07:25:00.002-06:00

I haven’t run an Ask Satan entry in a while, mostly because I haven’t received questions to answer – which in turn is because I don’t have many readers because I been writing much. So, faced with this blog-variety recession, I will eschew the option of no longer occupying Iraq and instead do the economic stimulus package. Here’s the question that’s been ripening in my inbox for five months. H. Lindy asks:

Dear Satan,

Besides George W. Bush, what is your proudest achievement?

Just wondering.

Lindy
Child of God

What an interesting question! So many things to say. I’ll start with the irony: here’s an apparently Christian inquirer putting the blame for Bush the Lesser on me, when we all know that it was the Christians who put the Decider in office in the first place, and kept him there. Where’s the accountability? I’m sorry, but it was people in your sect who bought the brand identity, the right-to-life no-gay-marriage God-Bless-America line cynically sold by the neoconservative powerbrokers. And people say the Third Reich had a great branding campaign. I’ll say this: that straight-arm Roman salute at least looks better than the televangelists on FOX News.

Curious also that you’d pick the Shrub as my greatest hit. Usually people pull out Hitler, maybe Stalin, Mao – or for the connoisseur, Il Duce, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Walt Disney. Though I can’t take any credit for Hitler, he’s one I just sat back and watched. I don’t actually find him personally all that interesting, more a little sad, but he did bring about some fascinating choices. Everyone likes to believe they’d hide Anne Frank in their attic, but the reality is that turning in your neighbor so they won’t take your child is a very real moral dilemma, and those are the choices I find most interesting.

But I digress. No, the cheerleader isn’t my proudest achievement. He’s really far too easy to twist around with a whisper in the ear to be much of an accomplishment at all.

So what is? Hmm. I could be trite and say "democracy" – which I do quite like, but while it’s a perfectly legitimate answer, and I could ramble on for a while about all the interesting choices it puts in front of people, in the end I don’t think it’s all that inspired an answer to your question.

I could also jab you with one of my forked appendages and answer "Lindy" – how would you take that? Heh.

No, here’s my answer: Christianity. Jesus – the real one – would be weeping in his fucking grave if he knew what a twisted, schismed, godawful set of monstrosities have been made out of what he was trying to say.

And yeah, I had something to do with that. But so did you.

-- Satan

Ask Satan might appear again if I get some questions. Any topic. Post questions in the comments or email them to me.

Cupcake!

2008-08-02T22:21:00.001-06:00

I am very happy to report that I recently received my first cupcake from Übermilf.

Grunt

2008-07-28T23:41:00.003-06:00

I have nothing pithy to say. But I have not posted in a week, so I'll just complain.

I hate the wave. I strongly dislike Joba Chamberlain. It is an embarrassment that Marvin Miller is not in the Hall of Fame. I do not understand how anyone can take seriously a sport that encourages players to pretend to be hurt on the field. I hate Ferrari. I can't decide which is worse for sports, instant replay rules or the drug testing arms race. I don't really care about the Olympics any more, except the stuff about the Speedo swimsuit, which is only because of the amusement of endorsement deals forcing people into inferior products.

What would the outcome be if we ran all the primaries over again from scratch, back to the beginning of fundraising? Or would the same endorsement deals still force people into the same inferior products?

That's all the crap I can come up with today, a day of confluence of bad events. Hope yours was better.

-- Satan

How Not to Win Friends and Influence People

2008-07-19T20:29:00.002-06:00

You know, it turns of to be somewhat unrewarding, this decision that I have enough time to squeeze in writing the odd blog entry, considering that I haven't yet carved out the time to look at any other blogs.

So, as I'm not really part of a conversation anyway, I'll just ramble on about the primaries -- something I really meant to say more about when it was a little more topical.

Clinton the Lesser. She's proven the name appropriate -- at least provisionally. I never came out and endorsed her, so you can't blame me, but how in the hell did she manage to blow an election that she once had in the bag? Even after she started to let it get away, I kept expecting her to get it back together and pull it out. But it never happened. Everything was too little, too late.

Or too much too late, some of it. Pulling out the stops on pandering just looks desperate when you're that deep in the hole. I know it's all been covered - the affected Arkansas accent, the gas tax relief crap (come on, this country doesn't even have a significant national gas tax to begin with), the "I don't care what economists think" bullshit, etc., etc. But I do have to say -- Crown Royale? You're trying to be all middle American in a bar, so you're going to do a shot of Crown Royale? Crown Royale? Um, you're aware that it's Canadian, right? You know it comes in a velvet bag? Christ, why not just order a cosmopolitan? Is it that hard to say Jack Daniels? Or Jim Beam? Or if you really want to go with imported liquor, do a fucking tequila shot.

It was all very, very disappointing. As things now stand, Clinton the Lesser's political career will be remembered primarily for her two major failures: the failure to get health care reform through in 1994, and completely blowing this primary.

Or will it? There is one possible future that would put her back on top, not to mention winning her a new name. Obama losing this election, and then Clinton winning in 2012.

So, will Clinton the Lesser fully back Obama? Or will she go with her own self-interest, and subtly try to sabatoge his chances?

-- Satan

The Currency We Deserve

2008-07-11T20:30:00.002-06:00

A post something like what I might have written months ago had I had time...

The new US $5 bill. I got my first one a few months ago. That big purple 5 in block lettering in the lower right on the back really jars pretty badly with the classic ornate engraved design characteristic of US currency. Formerly characteristic, that is. This 5 looks like it should be on the uniform of some new expansion sports team with bad color sense - should we expect the next bill redesign to feature teal?

Of course, the trend of making US currency in the colors of Monopoly money is entirely apropos, considering the value of the currency in the world is heading in exactly that direction.

On closer inspection, poor taste isn't the only reflection of modern America that's been incorporated into the latest currency designs. The five also has a distinct purple tinge, like it's been soaked in the Kool-Aid we've all been asked to drink. The ten and twenty both appear to have been soaked in something red - perhaps an attempt to use tomato juice to get rid of the skunk stink of the US image in the rest of the world? Or just Iraqi blood? The other amusing new feature pioneered on the twenty was the snow of little numbers falling around the White House. Should we take that to be a nod to President Bush the Lesser's drug of choice, or the static in his mind?

US notes used to be classic and distinct, the traditional and unchanging styling echoing the stability of the dollar, the reference currency of the world economy. For my money (pun intended), the old $2 bill, featuring an engraving of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on the back, is the finest piece of currency ever designed. Multicolor, multisize notes were for the rest of the world. To me, they all look like toy money. They say hyperinflation - the same Yugoslav dictator appearing in subsequent printings on otherwise-identical bills with extra zeros added each time.

Well, if this is where we're going, might as well stop worrying and love the ugly purple bomb.

-- Satan

Quote

2008-07-03T00:06:00.002-06:00

If there's a hell being prepared for me -- and I see no reason to think that there isn't -- it'll involve having to do all of Satan's ironing. And vacuuming.

Maybe this explains why they broke my iPod.

Inane Comment

2008-06-29T09:17:00.003-06:00

If I had to pick one or two pitchers, he'd be in the top three.

-- Buck Showalter on Curt Schilling
Jan 23, 2008, in the ESPN studio during the rain delay before the start of the Diamondbacks/Red Sox game.

Rolling Start?

2008-06-27T20:53:00.003-06:00

Well, I think I might be back.

I suppose I might have come back to regular blogging with a big splashy post -- say a long-winded reply to an old Ask Satan question or a commentary on how Clinton the Lesser turned in such a very, very disappointing performance. But if I have to wait to do that, who knows when I'd get around to it? Why write something interesting when I can write grant proposals instead?

So instead, we'll just restart slowly and see how it goes. I'll put up at least an inane comment at least once a week.

Call it a reinvention in honor of Robert Kubica, who became the first Polish driver to win a Formula 1 race at the Grand Prix de Canada in Montreal a few weeks ago. For those who don't know, or don't take pride in their Polish ancestry, Kubica's victory was particularly nice given his spectacular crash in Montreal last year.

Of course, you could also just call this a rolling start; then referencing an F1 driver is not at all apropos. Pick that spin if you're disappointed by this post.

-- Satan

Ask Satan

2008-05-26T04:00:00.003-06:00

Persistent reader FranIAm asks: I never thought I'd find myself asking this... but where the hell is Satan???

New Zealand.

Ask Satan

2008-04-20T23:01:00.003-06:00

Forthright reader Übermilf asks:

what, you're too good to blog now? Screw you, Satan.

No. I'm sorry I haven't been posting, but my professional responsbilities exploded on me recently, and combined with some other personal obligations, something had to give. The blog is more or less on hiatus for now.

But, as Barry Bonds told the faithful on Opening Day 2005, I will be back.

-- Satan

Congratulations

2008-04-04T09:39:00.003-06:00

Congratulations to Atlanta Braves manager Bobby Cox and pitcher Chris Resop (shown). They finally did something in a game that gets talked about a lot, but never actually done. They moved Resop to another position for one batter and then back to pitcher.

Resop, a right-handed pitcher, was pitching in relief for Atlanta against Pittsburgh in the top of the tenth. With a left-handed batter, Adam LaRoche, due up, Cox brought in left-hander Royce Ring to relieve Resop. But instead of taking Resop out of the game, Cox moved him to left field and took left fielder Matt Diaz out instead. Resop had been an outfielder in high school. After Ring struck out LaRoche, Cox moved Resop back to pitcher, took Ring out of the game, and brought in Gregor Blanco to play left. Resop then faced two move right-handed batters, Xavier Nady and Jose Bautista.

The Braves lost the game, as Resop gave up a run in the inning, but the strategy worked, as Cox got the lefty-lefty platoon advantage on LaRoche and the righty-righty platoon advantage on Jason Bay before him and Xavier Nady after him. Nice to see some creativity in managing instead of the knee-jerk orthodox LaRussian approach of using three pitchers for three batters.

-- Satan

Fagels

2008-03-31T22:32:00.002-06:00

Rage--Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds,
and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.
Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,
Agememnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles.

The opening of The Iliad. Read it next to other translations; Lattimore seems strained and Pope mere doggerel.

RIP, Robert Fagels.

Cross Reference

2008-03-29T23:59:00.000-06:00

I was going to write a post this evening, but instead I ended up writing a long comment on a post that FranIAm wrote as part of a discussion with me. Please see that comment if you're interested in what I have to say today.

A couple of other minor tidbits:

The baseball team formerly known as the Tampa Bay Devil Rays changed their name this season simply to the Tampa Bay Rays. Presumably the change was made in order to have greater appeal to the conservative Christian section of their (potential) fan base that did not like "Devil" being in the name. I'd suggest they consider increasing their appeal even more by fielding a team that doesn't suck - though in fairness, the new ownership group is making progress in that direction. More entertainingly, the team is reportedly fining any member of the organization who uses the word "Devil" in connection with the team. Very amusing.

I am curious whether this situation may become one of those in which banning something makes it more popular.

I am also contractually required to publicly congrulate Davidson on their run through the NCAA tournament, and to encourage everyone to cheer for them to upset Kansas tomorrow (Sunday, 5pm Eastern on CBS) to get to the Final Four.

-- Satan

Starless and Bible Black

2008-03-22T15:29:00.002-06:00

(Disclaimer: the post title is borrowed from a King Crimson album, and is only tangentially related to the post itself.)

Distributorcap recently gave his take on some advice for bloggers, originally from a New York Times article. Here's my own take.

New York Times:
1. Don't expect to get rich.
2. Write about what you want to write about, in your own voice.
3. Fit blogging into the holes in your schedule.
4. Just post it already!
5. Keep a regular rhythm.
6. Join the community, such as it is.
7. Plug yourself.

Satan:
1. Rich? Why would I need money? If I need it I can just take it from somewhere. Or create it. Somewhat like the government.
2. Oh, I do write about what I want. But my own voice? I use different voices depending on who I'm talking to. Just like everyone else. I think my own voice might not work out so well. I'm reminded of a line from Broadcast News: What do you think the Devil's going to look like if he's around? C'mon, no one's going to be taken in by a guy with a long, red, pointy tail. C'mon, what's he gonna sounds like? Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarch?"
3. Holes in my schedule? What holes? If I waited around for holes in my schedule I would never post at all.
4. More or less what I do.
5. What is this, sex advice? Doesn't a regular rhythm conflict with posting in holes the schedule?
6. Ok. Nice cheap shot at the bloggers you're pretending to advise, by the way.
7. No. I'm sorry, but having a lot of people read whatever I write here in not my goal. If people like it to read it, that's nice, but I'm writing here for my own reasons, to amuse myself, not them.

Ask Satan is published irregularly per questions received. (And schedule permitting -- I have a great question pending but I just haven't had time to do it justice...) Have a question for Satan? Email it to Satan or post it in the comments.

Careful Where You Look

2008-03-21T23:42:00.001-06:00

Trying to catch up a bit here. Spring training is almost over and I've hardly written a thing about it - the battles for roster spots, the injuries, the triumphant return of amusing Steinbrennerisms, helmets and an ad-hoc strike for the benefit of coaches, etc. But here's one story on which I do want to comment: per his father and the girl herself, Red Sox rookie Clay Buchholz is apparently romantically linked to Penthouse Pet of the Year Erica Ellyson. (Though the polite euphemism seems somehow wrong. Can I just say they're fucking? Allegedly, of course.)

This story is a nice contrast to another one, about how Barry Bonds can't get a job. Chicks did the long ball? Have the Mitchell report and Clemens' lip-licking at Congress turned tastes away from supermuscular home run hitters to skinny dorky-looking kids who throw no-hitters?

Of course, maybe we shouldn't read too much into the judgement of Ms. Ellyson. Try a Google image search to see what Buchholz' flame looks like, and you are likely to focus on her denuded labia rather than her face. Most women, I think, prefer to conduct themselves in ways that keep these images off the top hits. But who knows, perhaps Ellyson is just insecure about her nose or something.

In other sports news, I notice that I neglected to give the final NCAA tournament answers yesterday. Kansas over Memphis.

Ask Satan is published irregularly per questions received. (And schedule permitting -- I have a great question pending but I just haven't had time to do it justice...) Have a question for Satan? Email it to Satan or post it in the comments.

Look Here

2008-03-20T23:24:00.001-06:00

I haven't been posting much recently. Hopefully the busy spring season will slow down soon. The NCAA tournament picks rush is slowing down (next is the actual tournament), as is most of spring training; school and job applications are ongoing. I have a list of things now I want to write about; hopefully closer to sooner than later.

I did find time to browse the blogs late at night here, though. A truly hilarious post and comments section chez Übermilf -- it made my day.

For those of religious faith, or also those who care to think, FranIAm has a very thoughtful and eloquent post. My job would be very different if more than a minority of those who claim to be strongly religious felt this way. Harder, and also more interesting.

Fran, I did not want to despoil your comments section, so a comment here. Whatever you might think about washing Dick Cheney's feet, or mine, I can tell you one little story about the actual person Jesus whose story you ritually recall (through a mirror, darkly) these three days. He washed my feet. And I washed his.

As for that NCAA tournament, in case you haven't made your picks yet, here are the answers -- though keep in mind that, as in the Superbowl, I may change them if the right deal comes along.

East:
1st round winners: North Carolina, Indiana, Notre Dame, Washington State, Oklahoma, Louisville, Butler, Tennessee
2nd round winners: North Carolina, Washington State, Oklahoma, Tennessee
3rd round winners: North Carolina, Tennessee
Final Four: North Carolina

Midwest:
1st round winners: Kansas, UNLV, Clemson, Vanderbilt, Kansas State, Wisconsin, Gonzaga, Georgetown
2nd round winners: Kansas, Clemson, Wisconsin, Georgetown
3rd round winners: Kansas, Wisconsin
Final Four: Kansas

South:
1st round winners: Memphis, Mississippi State, Michigan State, Pittsburgh, Marquette, Stanford, Miami, Texas
2nd round winners: Memphis, Michigan State, Stanford, Texas
3rd round winners: Memphis, Texas
Final Four: Memphis

South:
1st round winners: UCLA, Texas A&M, Drake, Connecticut, Purdue, Xavier, West Virginia, Duke
2nd round winners: UCLA, Drake, Xavier, Duke
3rd round winners: UCLA, Duke
Final Four: UCLA

Ask Satan is published irregularly per questions received. (And schedule permitting -- I have a great question pending but I just haven't had time to do it justice...) Have a question for Satan? Email it to Satan or post it in the comments.

Ask Satan

2008-03-12T22:27:00.000-06:00

One Mr. Labooziak asked:

Question for Satan- Is this hell and is it freezing over because it's not getting any warmer here in the Chicago area any time soon!

Nope. Well, the center of Hell is already frozen over, of course -- just check the travel guide, there's a description in the "Ninth Circle" section. But if all of Hell were freezing over there'd be obvious signs. In particular, the Cubs would have won the World Series. But as I'm sure you know, Dustiny got in the way of that, now all the apoplexy Sweet Lou can muster won't help with the karmic fallout once Sam Zell gets the naming rights to Wrigley auctioned off to the highest bidder. One hundred years may look like a drop in the bucket. (Who knew Sam Zell would be instrumental in forestalling the apocalypse?)

Digression aside, it's no big deal, it's just the weather getting more extreme as global climate change drives larger weather fluctuations. Worst in the middle of continents, actually. You may want to head for the coast. Well, a coast that doesn't get hurricanes.

It's still no 1979, though.

-- Satan

Ask Satan is published irregularly per questions received. (And schedule permitting -- I have a great question pending but I just haven't had time to do it justice...) Have a question for Satan? Email it to Satan or post it in the comments.

Different Things

2008-03-10T22:51:00.004-06:00

I'm taking a brief break from the seasonal overload I mentioned a couple weeks ago to share some thoughts about one of the different approaches people have been known to try. Perhaps it's even one of the things Diane was wondering about in the comments section.

One seasonal event that makes this time of year busy for me is that students are applying for college and graduate school - or to be precise, they have applied and are now hoping they'll get in. Some turn to me for help, others try to tilt the scales with messages like this (names changed to protect the guilty):

Dear Admissions Committee,

Sorry to trouble you, I am Cinnamon Spitzer, who has been admitted with full financial aid, but my boyfriend William Kennedy has not get any news from you. We are very worried about this now. If you cannot offer William admission with financial support, I have to be with him and join another school.

Or this:

I am very interested in your school because my girlfriend works nearby in Springfield.

Ok, just a little feedback:

1.) What the hell are you thinking? Do you think the admissions committee gives a flying fuck about your sex life?

2.) In reality, not a bad idea. Admissions is trying to fill a quota. If you convince them you will actually take their offer you have a better chance of getting in.

Just some thoughts, back to work.

-- Satan

Whiny Nitpicking

2008-03-03T23:28:00.003-07:00

Since Übermilf so enjoys what she calls my nitpicky whining, I figured I may as well bring something up that annoys the hell out of me.

Why the fuck does the Gay Pride rainbow flag have only six colors?

Real rainbows have seven colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. ROYGBIV. Kids learn this in grade school.

The use of the rainbow is allegedly meant to symbolize the inclusive nature of the Gay Pride, or LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered) movement. All orientations are deserving of equal treatment and all should be included. But the flag (shown flying over the Castro in San Francisco) always leaves out one of the colors – I’ve seen either blue or indigo omitted.

How is that inclusive? It seems to me that the omission completely inverts the meaning, making the six-tone flag symbolize exclusion rather than inclusion.

Either that, or it means that gays can’t count. (Which is clearly false, as I personally know quite intelligent gay, lesbian, and transgendered people.)

Any ideas?

-- Satan

Have a question or want advice? Ask Satan is published irregularly as questions are received. Email Satan or post your question in the comments.

Mission Accomplished

2008-02-28T23:10:00.009-07:00

Bush the Lesser gets hammered regularly for his failings, so I think it is only fair to credit him when he executes the duties of his office successfully. Yesterday, he honored the 2007 World Series Champion Boston Red Sox with a visit to the White House. Yes, it’s not an official presidential duty, one spelled out in the Constitution. But it’s a traditional duty, one that does hold meaning, and besides, the Constitution isn’t exactly Bush the Lesser’s strong point anyway.

At right you see the president looking up at David Ortiz, holding the World Series trophy, while Daisuke Matsuzaka looks on. You know what’s unusual about this picture? Here we have Bush the Lesser hanging out with two foreign nationals, and all of them are genuinely happy about it.

Congratulations again to the Red Sox!

---

This time of year is a busy one for me. High school seniors are waiting to hear back about their college applications. College seniors are sending out resumes or waiting to hear from law/medical/graduate schools. Academic job searches are in full swing. Baseball players are trying to win jobs in spring training. And then there’s tax season. Some people, in these stressful times, turn to prayer. Others, well, they try different things...

All that is a way of saying I may not have as much time to spend here in the blogworld over the next several weeks. But don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere. And I will still answer your questions and keep tabs on how Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama fare versus each other and John Sidney McCain III.

-- Satan

Have a question or want advice? Ask Satan is published irregularly as questions are received. Email Satan or post your question in the comments.

Wednesday Night Videos

2008-02-27T23:32:00.000-07:00

This week seems to be one for links to video clips. Here’s a link to a show Sam Zell only wishes his media empire could match: Japanese Bikini Pie Fighting. On vibrating saddles, no less.

Best blog post of the day: CTK links a 1969 debate between Noam Chomsky and William F Buckley Jr. Do yourself a favor and watch the whole thing.

-- Satan

Have a question or want advice? Ask Satan is published irregularly as questions are received. Email Satan or post your question in the comments.

Today's Quote

2008-02-26T14:50:00.002-07:00

Today’s quote is a very versatile phrase, a pair of words we have all used many times: “Fuck you.”

Now, I can’t cover all the uses of this phrase, so I’m going to focus on just one. No, not the way Jon Stewart used it in his commentary on Mitt Romney’s withdrawal from the Republican Primary. The recent usage I want to highlight today was by Sam Zell.

Background: Sam Zell owns the Tribune Company, which means he owns the Chicago Tribune, WGN, the Chicago Cubs, and a bunch of other newspapers as well. One of those papers is the Orlando Tribune. Zell’s “fuck you” was directed at Sara Fajardo, a journalist who works for that paper, during a Q&A session with Orlando Tribune employees. Listen to the full, unexpurgated exchange here (lower of the two video clips).

Are newspapers about journalism, about “informing the community,” to quote Fajardo? Hell, no. They’re a business. They’re about making money. Just like TV, as I wrote a couple weeks ago in reply to a question from Übermilf about Katie Couric. The bottom line is, well, the bottom line. The news that’s fit to print is the news that people want to read and will pay for, whether that’s the situation in Iraq or where to find strip clubs in Los Angeles. Journalistic ethics? Maybe they’ll help the balance sheet if they mean journalists are willing to ply their noble trade for less pay.

Now you may not like this situation. You may prefer your newspaper to contain accurate, unbiased, and complete coverage of important news issues, with a thoughtful and reasoned editorial stance. But that’s not what Fajardo thinks you want. “What readers want are puppy dogs, we also need to inform the community” is the full quote. Some respect for newspaper readership she has. Journalism is something unwanted you have to shove down the throats of the consumer? Nice. Maybe there’d be a couple of words I’d say to you, Sara Fajardo, only I think Sam Zell already did.

Of course, she’s right. Newspapers, just like TV, are largely vehicles to convey entertainment content. The comics, sports scores, John McCain’s hot lobbyist friend, who won the Oscars. If people really wanted news first and foremost that’s what the papers would have, because that’s what would sell. But it’s not. Is that Sam Zell’s fault? Do you want Sam Zell to force-feed you hard news? (Or Katie Couric? Which is scarier?) Or is it everyone’s fault? Do we want crap because we’ve been sold crap, or do we want crap because that’s what we really like?

Let’s get back to “fuck you.” Did Fajardo deserve it, for what Zell called her “journalistic arrogance?” He did seem to get pissed off, and usually he treats his employees well. He let’s them watch porn online at work, and even asks them to him know when they find good sites! He likes women, he’s been quoted as saying, “Everyone likes pussy. It’s un-American not to like pussy.” So was Zell out of line? Before you answer, there’s something the video doesn’t show: Fajardo turning her back on Zell and walking out as he answered her question.

-- Satan

Have a question or want advice? Ask Satan is published irregularly as questions are received. Email Satan or post your question in the comments.

Cost-Benefit Analysis

2008-02-25T18:46:00.008-07:00

Over the weekend, FranIAm graced me with the award pictured on the right. My first blog award, I don’t know what to say... So instead I’ll share my internal cost-benefit analysis of what this award means to me:

1. I’m flattered. Feeding feelings of vanity, one of the seven deadly sins. Definite plus.

2. Provides an easy blog entry for today, enabling sloth, another of the seven deadly sins. Another plus.

3. Award is obviously a pyramid scheme, as each awardee is meant to bestow the same award on ten other bloggers. Flavor of corruption is reinforced by resemblence of award logo to Enron logo, as noted in update to FranIAm’s blog entry. However, pyramid scheme is poorly implemented, as links only go back one level. Overall effect is mixed. To improve the efficacy of the scheme, I track the awarding path backwards:

FranIAm
BAC at Yikes!
Blue Gal
Skippy the Bush Kangaroo
Moue Magazine
Mary Ann at Maryannaville
Cotojo at Life
Stacey at Real World Mom
Tim at The Inflatable Soapbox
Stacey at Real World Mom

No, that’s not a typo – it looks like there’s a loop there…

4. Alleged link to this blog put up my FranIAm actually points here, to one Suzi Riot. Neither here nor there as far as the cost/benefit analysis, but amusing.

5. Obligation incurred to pass the award along to ten other bloggers. Awkward. I started doing this – well, I really started doing this on a lark, but I’ve continued doing it primarily for the rather masturbatory purpose of my own amusement. The problem is that I don’t actually have 10 other blogs I read, and the one I do are based primarily on the fact that they’ve left comments on my blog entries. Well, excuses aside, here’s what I’ve got:

Übermilf – impetus for initially starting a blog
FranIAm – hey, other people had loops…
Distributorcap NY
Mauigirl
Diane – though I am not sure a Lutheran minister will appreciate a link from Satan…

Hurm, that’s not many links. I’m still short five… Well, here are some completely different kinds of blogs:

Uni Watch
Baseball Prospectus Unfiltered
38 Pitches – Curt Schilling’s blog
On the Road with Pat Neshek
A Brief Message

-- Satan

Have a question or want advice? Ask Satan is published irregularly as questions are received. Email Satan or post your question it in the comments.

Ask Satan

2008-02-21T23:55:00.002-07:00

In the comments section of last Friday’s Ask Satan, Mauigirl brought up a question of theodicy:

How can evil exist if God made everything and God is all-good?

Perhaps you can explain this in a future post!

Dear Mauigirl,

Well I could just tell you the answer, but what fun would that be? Let’s approach this question instead as an exercise in formal logic, then we can talk about the details as we go.

The question you pose has two premises (“God made everything” and “God is all-good”); it implies that an unstated conclusion (evil cannot exist) follows from the premises but is false, leading to a paradox. Logically speaking, the paradox can be resolved in one of three ways, or in a combination: either the first premise is not true, the second premise is not true, or the unstated conclusion does not follow logically from the premises. Let’s examine each of these three possibilities:

“God made everything.” Did he? This statement can be negated trivially, by simply providing a counterexample, such a “I made my own breakfast, not God.” However, that approach is really a semantic dodge, as the premise statement intends to mean that God made the universe and its contents, physical laws, etc., not that he directly controls everything within the universe.

One nontrivial contradictory statement is “God made some things, but not everything.” Per Genesis, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Does “everything” include more than “the heaven and the earth”? For example, the planet Jupiter is not part of the earth, is it part of heaven? What about hell? It seems quite reasonable to suppose that there are things that are neither part of heaven nor earth, though the fact that Genesis does not mention their creation says nothing about who created them. More interestingly, perhaps God created heaven and earth, but not the universe – the universe being a setting in which all God’s creations were made. (Or similarly, God could have created the universe, but there could be other universes as well. They are irrelevant to this discussion unless they can affect things in this universe, though.) A related question is whether there was time before the beginning. Finally, one very interesting question in this general category is the question of how God was created. Did he create himself? Was he created by man? If God did not create himself, he did not create everything, which opens up the possibility of multiple creative agents.

Finally, there is the contradictory statement, “God made nothing,” most interesting due to its subset, “God does not exist.” That’s a question for another day – it’s a major thrust of theodicy, in fact.

Next premise: “God is all-good.” Is he? The fundamental question here is what is meant by “good.” In the context of this question “good” is taken to be the opposite of “evil.” In fact, it is not at all necessary to delve into the nature of good and evil to analyze the logic of the question, we only need the understanding that they are opposite and complementary. The primary question regarding this premise is whether good can exist or is a meaningful idea in the absence of evil. If it cannot, then for God to be all-good, there must be evil somewhere. This conclusion becomes very interesting when juxtaposed with first premise, because if evil exists, and God made everything, then God made evil, which would appear to contradict the statement that God is all-good – unless good does not require the existence of evil.

“Evil does not exist.” Does this conclusion follow logically from the premises “God made everything” and “God is all-good”? To start with, let’s accept the additional premise that good does not require the existence of evil to exist – if we do not, we’ve already assumed evil exists, so there’s not much to discuss! As such, it certainly could be the case that evil does not exist, as the all-good God could have created a universe containing no evil. (Note that we cannot argue that evil comes into existence spontaneously, as that would contract the premise that God made everything.) However, it is not necessarily the case that an all-good God would construct the universe to contain no evil. Suppose that God wishes to maximize the amount of good in the universe, but that the maximum amount of good is not achieved in a universe with zero evil. For example, relative to a universe with zero evil, what if a universe with an additional one unit of evil (whatever that means) has two additional units of good? Then it would make sense to add evil until good stopped increasing. (There could be a different metric, such as total good minus total evil instead of just total good, but that’s not the point – any non-zero-sum system in which the “good” metric is not optimized when evil equals zero has this property.) So, in fact, the conclusion does not follow from the premises.

Another view is to return to the second premise, and assume that rather than being the opposite of good, that evil is unrelated to good. However, this line of thought is not very fruitful in the context our paradox. If God is all-good and created everything, but evil is unrelated to good, then the two premises have no relevance to whether evil exists or not.

In summary, both premises can be questioned, but most importantly, the unstated conclusion is not a necessary consequence of the premises. To put the discussion in more specific terms, if God created everything, and God is all-good, God can still have created evil to give meaning to the creation of free will, in order to achieve a greater good. (The end justifies the means?)

Now, Mauigirl, since you asked me in particular, I imagine you want some insight into how things actually are instead of just an abstract discussion. First, God didn’t create everything, just some things. Second, in my experience God is not all-good, not in the sense people mean. He can be a real bastard, actually. (You can define good to be God and everything he does, of course, but then this whole discussion is completely academic.) Finally, even though the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premises, it’s not as wrong as it looks. Evil was already around, and in fact it does come about completely spontaneously, even in the areas that were created by God. He can’t keep it out. Free will just gives you the choice between the good and the evil – or more often, between the evil and the other evil.

Have fun choosing,

-- Satan

P.S. Taking off early for the weekend tomorrow, I’ll be back next week.

Ask Satan is published irregularly per questions received. Have a question for Satan? Email it to Satan or post it in the comments.

Momentum?

2008-02-20T23:55:00.004-07:00

Yesterday marked the latest rounds of Presidential primaries for both the Republican and Democratic parties, with results so closely following the script that they barely seem to qualify as news. As such, in case you haven’t heard about it, McCain beat Huckabee 55% to 37% in the Wisconsin primary, and reportedly also has a big lead in whatever the hell they think they’re doing in Washington state. Since the Republicans do winner-take-all, McCain is just plowing ahead. It’s garbage time. We should be rooting to see if McCain can dunk.

Over on the other side, Obama pulled off another substantial primary victory over Clinton, beating her 58% to 41% in Wisconsin. In Hawaii, he pulled off a superficially-impressive 76%-to-24% win, but as these are caucus results for fractions of state delegates they don’t mean the same thing. Despite the sweep, Obama only picked up 18 more national delegates than Clinton, thanks to the proportional allocation the Democrats favor. That proportional allocation is exactly what ensures that this primary still has a long, long, way to go.

Or does it? Proportional allocation means that it takes a lot of victories to build a lead, but it also means it takes a long time to come back from a deficit. Procedurally, Obama only gained a little yesterday. But the perception is a string of solid wins, and by the time the next primaries roll around on March 4, Clinton won’t have won a thing in a month. Does the perception of momentum coupled with the difficulty of gaining ground and the long cycles between primary events translate into actual momentum – even though Clinton has never been further back in delegates than right on Obama’s heels?

The driving issue for primary voters is electability, or at least the polls claim so. Both candidates are from groups previously deemed unelectable, so cynically speaking perhaps we should have expected this issue to be the big one. Obama certainly looks to be leading on this ‘issue.’ Does it mean we hold our sexism more dearly than our racism? There have also been arguments that Obama is not really black – he was raised by his white mother, he’s African-American by virtue of his father actually being from African, not at all the same cultural background as Nth generation Americans descended from slaves. But those arguments came from his opponents, not from Obama. Clinton even went so far as to claim she represented the latter group’s interests better, which, well, kinda didn’t work out so well. So far nobody’s tried to claim that Clinton isn’t a woman; the closest I’ve seen is the allegation that her husband would be be the power behind the throne.

Anyway. Care about actual issues, not the horse race or electabiilty? I found an interesting page today on which Physics Today attempts to asses the positions of the remaining candidates on issues related to science. I may review it later.

-- Satan

Ask Satan will be back tomorrow, to be continued irregularly per questions received. Have a question for Satan? Email it to Satan or post it in the comments.

Ask Satan

2008-02-19T22:46:00.002-07:00

Reader Übermilf wrote recently:

I recently learned that one of the students with whom I attended high school committed a treasonous act.

While in New York City on vacation, he visited the United Nations. He picked up a bunch of postcards from our nation's enemy state at that time, the Soviet Union, and sent them to his friends back home with the message: “The Revolution begins at midnight. It will not be televised.”

Should I report him to Homeland Security? Is there a statute of imitations on such deviant acts?

Dear Übermilf,

There is no statute of limitations for treason!

But you haven’t told the whole story. Your former classmate did not act alone. There was a second sender. One of these villains has admitted to being a practicing Muslim! As for the other, the story gets yet more sordid. I will have to change the names to protect the guilty.

Not only did he buy postcards, he bought a small Soviet flag. Back at your alma mater, he then brought that flag to a pep assembly to show off his evil ways. And then, during the National Anthem, coincident with the stirring line, “Oh say does that star-spangled banner yet wave?” he proceeded to wave the banner of the foe!

Fortunately, a righteous department head – let’s call him “Jhon Hires” – was on hand to confiscate the evil symbol. And soon, the miscreant found himself summoned to the office of the dean – let’s call him “Jaems Bonfield.”

Bonfield nobly began to lecture the young evildoer, stressing the evil that flag representing, using the finest oratorical flourish of Reagan-era Evil Empire anticommunist rhetoric. But the scoundrel would not listen. Instead, he argued that his actions were Constitutionally protected freedom of speech! What infamy! Not satisfied with that distortion, he went on to criticize expressions of school spirit! Merely because some students showed their allegiance to your school, known as “South,” by waving Confederate flags, which this rogue claimed likewise symbolized evil, the evil of slavery. Poor Bonfield was forced to retreat before these distortions, claiming that the school had cracked down on the Confederate flag displays.

It seems clear that you should bring your evidence forward to punish these criminals. Waterboarding would be too good for them. Treason is a hard crime to prove, but the postcard is the evidence. Do not be deterred by the fact that it seems obviously facetious, as everyone knows the revolution will be televised, 24/7, on CNN, FOX News, and MSNBC. Your cause is just, I am sure a coalition of the willing will step forward in solidarity.

A footnote to bring it home, Übermilf, and to highlight the need for action: the evil was more widespread. Upon returning to class, the flag-waver learned that another classmate, assuming a suspension was forthcoming, had already been organizing a walkout in protest. That organizer? Your ex-boyfriend.

May history be your judge,

-- Satan

In somewhat related news: Fidel Castro stepped down this morning. Bush the Lesser, welcoming the news, said, “The United States will help the people of Cuba realize the blessings of liberty.” Blessings? And here I thought your country held them to be inalienable rights. Well, except in the case of suspected terrorists. Or people who look like they might be.

Comments on the primaries tomorrow.

Ask Satan is published irregularly per questions received. Have a question for Satan? Email it to Satan or post it in the comments.

Ebb

2008-02-18T22:46:00.002-07:00

Took the weekend off from the blog to catch up on other projects. In the meantime FranIAm put together another Tour du Blog, in which once again she put in a link to these incoherences. (How she manages to write review articles when she has less time to blog escapes me. Maybe we can get Arlen Specter on it, it might involve technology.) I must confess that I am becoming concerned for Fran’s mental health, as she’s got me mixed in with some very heartfelt and forthright reflections on Lenten reflections and the week’s pastoral themes... Her link brought in some very interesting comments on my last post (to which I will reply soon) – thank you, Fran!

One topic discussed in a couple of the posts FranIAm linked was, very topically, the latest campus shooting, the Northern Illinois University edition. I am sure the memorial patch industry is out in full force by now, and I believe I already saw Ozzie Guillen wearing an NIU hat. Kind of a shame the lamentations and indignation doesn’t get at the root cause of these events, though. I recall a conversation after Columbine, when the prevailing meme was something like, “How could this happen here, in Littleton, cream of Denver suburbia, in such comfortable upper-middle-class surroundings? Why, our malls have all the best stores – we have Pottery Barn and Restoration Hardware!” I told a good friend that I thought they were asking entirely the wrong question. Instead of “How could this happen?”, I think the right question is, “Why doesn’t this happen more often?” Couldn’t have anything to do with the alienation of youth in this culture, locked away from society in institutions with others their own age, told it’s the best time of their lives, and instructed what to buy and how they can’t possibly aspire to be by a fully armed and operational American advertising Empire? Nah, that’s not it, it was Marilyn Manson and Doom.

In counterpoint, here’s an entertaining video on how to build Stonehenge without machines.

-- Satan

Ask Satan will be back tomorrow, to be continued irregularly per questions received. Have a question for Satan? Email it to Satan or post it in the comments.

Ask Satan

2008-02-16T00:53:00.003-07:00

Reader FranIAm writes:

Greetings Satan,

I do have several questions for you... What keeps you going? Is it self-directed energy or is it the energy of those who follow you? Do you like being Satan? Do you have a successor? What is the best part of being Satan? What is the worst part of being Satan?

FranIam

Dear FranIAm,

Wow, that’s quite a question. It’s almost like you’re requesting a manifesto! Hmm. I have generally avoided writing grand statements of purpose and the like. Most of what people think they know about me is based on the propaganda from the other side, and not entirely accurate. But that’s fine with me, for several reasons. I usually work with people one-on-one anyway, where I can simply communicate what I need to directly. More importantly, I don’t have a specific, monolithic alternative I’m endorsing; I’m really advocating that the full set of alternatives be explored. If I try to write down, “This is what Satan stands for!” I get a list of things that can contract each other, which doesn’t make for a very good manifesto.

But since you asked, let me try to give you a sense of where I’m coming from by way of a story, the story of how I got started. Actually, I’m sure you’ve heard part of it before. Now, this isn’t really what happened, which would be a much longer story, but it gets the idea across correctly; in other words, it’s true, but it’s not factual. The story starts with me and the guy you know as capital-G ‘God’ (which is actually his title, not his name, but never mind.) We used to be pretty good friends. We’d hang out, check out cool parts of the Universe, do experiments on different systems, and so forth. We wouldn’t always agree, but overall we got along great.

That all changed over one of his experiments, which was about free will. God’s contention was that he could create beings with free will, and because he’d created them and was obviously far superior to them, they would all – every one, without exception – worship him and behave as he suggested. I told him he was wrong, that with free will they’d do all kinds of different things. Some would decide to worship him, but not all of them.

So God went off and created his beings with free will – Adam and then Eve – and a nice habitrail for them, the Garden of Eden. Then he came back to me and said, “See? I made them and they’re worshipping me!” So I took a look, and yes, they were worshipping him. But the thing was, while Adam and Eve had free will, in the Garden of Eden, there weren’t actually any choices! So I went back to God and explained that to him, which led to a big argument about the nature of free will and the meaning of choice and so on.

So to make my point I went back to Eden and gave Eve a choice, which was the famous apple you’ve heard about. (Though by the way, my avatar that day was not a snake! It would have been useless to go as a snake because snakes can’t talk, so I couldn’t have talked to Eve, not to mention that snakes don’t have hands, so I couldn’t have given her the apple. My avatar that day was actually a lamia.)

I think you know the next part. When actually presented with a choice, Eve made a different choice than God wanted – and expected. God got really, really fucking pissed. He threw Adam and Eve out of Eden, and we had a huge screaming argument. That’s also when he allegedly threw me out of ‘Heaven” – which is not the way I remember it, but we were both really drunk so who knows. It’s also when I supposedly said, “Better to reign in Hell that to serve in Heav’n,” which I will stand by, though Milton was definitely not there so I have no clue how he heard it.

What happened after that was pretty interesting. Both God and I got very interested in these free-will beings he’d created, namely humans. As far as I can tell, God is basically on a huge ego trip wanting humans to worship him. For the life of me I can’t figure out what he gets out of it other than ego gratification, or else to prove me wrong if more of you worship him that don’t. He was pretty clever in picking the ‘correct’ patterns of behavior to be, in many cases, the moral ones that many people would do anyway, which gives him an edge, at least in his own terms.

My interest is really quite different. Contrary to what you’ve heard, I am not specifically interested in convincing people not to worship God, to go against his ‘correct’ behavior rules, or to act immorally. What I’m really interested in is seeing all the possibilities that can arise from free will and having choices. It is really amazing all the different situations humans can get into (or be put into), and all the different kinds of choices you can make. I don’t agree with his motives for doing so, but God really did quite a job when he made you. You’ve been able to reach some pretty impressive heights as a species by making different choices – in philosophy, in the arts, in understanding how the world works and making it work differently. But you wouldn’t have done any of that if everyone had worshipped God and followed his rules all the time. Your greatest accomplishments have often been made in times of great conflict, as a result of people making the wrong choices in moral or religious normative terms. If you want to know what I’m about in a nutshell, that last sentence may be it.

Well, FranIAm, that turned out to be a very long preface by way of getting to your questions, but hopefully now the answers will make more sense.

What keeps you going?

Humans. The range of different situations you face, how you face them, all the different decisions people make, and then how they react to the consequences.

Is it self-directed energy or is it the energy of those who follow you?

Between those two, self-directed, though I’m not sure those are the first words I’d have picked. Definitely not anything to do with followers. I’m really not interested in being worshipped, that’s the other guy.

Do you like being Satan?

Sure. Not that I have a choice, actually – humans have a lot more choice than most beings, as a consequence of the way the free will experiment was set up. (And since tweaked, heh.)

Do you have a successor?

A successor? As Satan? Unlike God, where that’s his title, Satan is actually my name. Do you have a successor as Fran?

My title is the Adversary, so in principle I suppose I could have a successor as the Adversary, but I don’t. I am eternal, but I am not immortal, which means I’ll be around unless someone kills me, which is possible. (God is also not immortal, by the way, although Nietzsche was a little premature about his death.)

What is the best part of being Satan?

Some of the truly bizarre situations humans get into sometimes, and the choices they require people to make.

What is the worst part of being Satan?

I’d have to say when people get into the same situations over and over again, and make the same decisions with the same predictable results, mostly by being stupid. I am very tired of people getting into severe credit card debt, for example.

Well, there you go, FranIAm. That was a different kind of thing for me to write, kind of fun, really. I hope you enjoy it.

May you live in interesting times,

-- Satan

Ask Satan will be published irregularly, depending on questions received. Have a question for Satan? Email it to Satan or post it in the comments.

Pitchers and Catchers Report!

2008-02-14T16:18:00.008-07:00

Today is the first day of spring. Not literally – the vernal equinox is over a month away and the pole still angled away from the sun – but symbolically, which is far more important. Today, pitchers and catchers report to spring training for teams. The annual cycle begins anew.

In honor of this day, a quote from the 2007 American League Rookie of the Year, Boston Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia. On September 7, Orioles fireballer Daniel Cabrera threw at Pedroia immediately after balking in Coco Crisp from third, Crisp having induced the balk by starting home. Pedroia on Cabrera after the game:

The guy's an idiot. I dropped my bat. It kind of freaked me out. I was upset they took him out of the game. He's good to hit. He's 9-15. The guy sucks.

Great story about Pedroia here.

Someone scheduled a consumerist flower/chocolate/greeting card company holiday for today as well. If you’re celebrating that holiday, I have two quiz questions for you:

1.) Does your religion recognize the man for whom the holiday is named as a saint, and is his feast day on your religious calendar? If not, why are you celebrating a feast that your religion has disawoved, or never had anything to do with in the first place?

2.) Can you state one fact about the saint in question?

-- Satan

P.S. The Ask Satan scheduled for today has been deferred until tomorrow. Questions are always welcome, in the comments of any post or by email.

'Bamalamadingdong

2008-02-14T00:06:00.002-07:00

Democratic voters are now taking cues from a thriving corner of internet porn: young black stud sticking it to the white chick. And an older woman at that! Three more primaries in the books yesterday, Virginia, Maryland, and DC. Decisive victories for Obama in all three, giving him eight straight dominant wins in the week since Super Tuesday. Momentum is overrated in football and baseball, but in politics it’s real. Here he comes, squeeze play, it's gonna be close, here's the throw, there's the play at the plate, holy cow, I think he's gonna make it!

Stop right there. Before we go any further, this primary is still a long way from over. Clinton has too much money, too many political resources, too much skill and knowledge to go down quietly. She’s behind now, and only close due to superdelegates, but there are still a ton of delegates out there. The race slows down dramatically from here – a week until the next three contests (Wisconsin, Hawaii, Washington II) and then two weeks until the next four (Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island, Vermont). Plenty of time for things to change, and Obama’s inexperience makes him potentially vulnerable. I, for one, still believe (and hope) that Clinton will keep it interesting and go all the way.

This recent trend is pretty interesting, though. Two things are clearly different since Super Tuesday. One is just the fact that was holding his own so long – it gives him a credibility he didn’t have before. It allows the vote-your-heart types who like Obama more than Clinton to go with their feelings without guilt. And there are a lot of them: remember there are people in the Democratic party who voted for Dennis Kucinich! (And that’s without even bringing up the half-votes some of them gave Bush the Lesser to put him over the top in 2000 by voting for Nader.)

The second different since Super Tuesday is that the Republican nominee became clear, which puts the head-to-head question into sharp focus. Does Obama have a better chance of beating McCain, or does Clinton? This issue, to me, is where Obama has picked up most of his newfound edge. I think Clinton will realize it too, and adjust her strategies accordingly.

The weather forecast calls for mud. Wear goggles.

A rushed post, missing my own deadline nonetheless. Pretend it was published Wednesday... If you need more to read, see FranIAm’s mini tour of some interesting blog posts. Well worth the time – although her judgment really goes south in the last paragraph.

-- Satan

Ask Satan

2008-02-12T23:58:00.004-07:00

Reader Übermilf writes:

Why is Katie Couric paid so much money, when she asks such inane questions of her interview subjects?

On yesterday’s “60 Minutes,” her expert probing yielded such vital insights as Hillary Clinton uses hand sanitizer and eats hot peppers to stay healthy.

Dear Übermilf,

I believe it’s because she has nice legs. She’s paid to look good on TV and be personable so that people will watch the network-sanitized news, which allows the network to charge the most for their primary product, national advertising time. Really, she’s a bargain.

I suspect there may be a misapprehension underlying your question, namely the belief that Couric is a journalist. Once upon a time, network news anchors were in fact journalists. For example, Walter Cronkite was a journalist. But that system was a relic of the time before the networks had any real idea how to maximize advertising revenue. When there were only three networks, and they all had the same misapprehension that it was a good idea to all have real news coverage at the same time, the old system was ok. But competition from cable and satellite TV changed all that. The networks had to improve their business models to stay competitive. Part of that change was morphing TV news into light entertainment, which is what viewers really want, as measured empirically by what they really watch.

Katie Couric asks softball questions because that’s her job. Hillary Clinton is on TV being interviewed by Couric because she knows she’ll get softball questions, likely pre-vetted ones at that. That’s how the system works. That’s what makes the network money.

There was a good documentary on this subject about 20 years ago, called Broadcast News. I recommend it highly, if you haven’t seen it. (Plus I do actually feel kind of badly about my role in giving the Oscar that year to Cher over the vastly more talented Holly Hunter.)

By the way, the actual news is now on cable, hosted by Jon Stewart. But I imagine you know that – it’s probably where you saw the Katie Couric softball questions to Clinton in the first place.

-- Satan

Other news: This is awesome.

Ask Satan will be back on Thursday. Send in your questions on any topic! Email Satan or write in the comments.

'Lectionation

2008-02-11T17:50:00.000-07:00

Interestinger and interestinger. The primaries continue not to disappoint! Despite my endorsee John Edwards pulling out of the race a couple week ago, the Democrats have really done a lot to bring a sense of credibility back to the process this year. At their best, the presidential primaries are near the top of the American sports landscape, but sadly, recent years have been all too reminiscent of the Superbowls of the 1980s. This year’s contest is looking like the best since 1968, and while we shouldn’t expect riots or assassinations like that epic competition, this year stands very well on its own merits.

Coming out of Super Tuesday, Obama and Clinton were neck and neck on the pledged ballot scorecard, with Clinton’s sizeable lead in superdelegates making her the frontrunner. But Obama swept four states this past weekend, scoring big leads in three caucuses and the Louisiana primary. He’s now got a lead of ~60 pledged delegates and has cut Clinton’s lead in total delegates down to ~30. If the convention were today, we’d have exactly the situation I hesitated to hope for last week: Obama with the lead in delegates somebody voted for, but the party machine giving the nomination to Clinton.

Next on the ticket: tomorrow’s bouts in DC, Maryland, and Virginia, all primaries. Can Obama keep the momentum going? Will the beltway ballots boot Mrs. Bill? Tune in next time, sports fans.

Now, in other election topics: FramIAm has a post up asking people to share why they favor their candidate of choice, with Obama and Clinton apparently being the allowed choices. I was thinking of posting something there, but decided against it, for two reasons. First – as I’ve said here before – I’m not going to make endorsements, given how they’ve backfired on me in the past. (Sorry, John, sorry, Rudy.) Second, everyone seems to play so nicely over there, I’d hate to screw it up. It’s really better to offend people here on my own blog, no?

While I won’t make an endorsement, I do want to comment on something FranIAm wrote. Quoting from that entry:

...as someone who follows Christ with great passion and deep faith finds something about Barack's Christianity unsettling. How I wish I could be clearer. I will get to the bottom of it one way or the other.

Wow. At first I was just speechless, I didn’t know how to react. Then I started jumping up and down and did my best Roscoe P. Coltrane, “I love it. I love it.” (By the way, am I alone in having Bush the Lesser remind me of Roscoe from time to time?) Fran, this is fantastic, thank you.

I mean, it’s not all that uncommon for those on the religious right to question a candidate’s Chrisitan bonafides. Happens all the time, especially if a Republican candidate seems ‘soft’ to them on the litmus tests of abortion or, in recent years, gay marriage. But someone supporting the other side of the aisle, for whom GOP candidates don’t even enter the thought process? Now that I don’t hear every day.

I say it’s fanstastic. It made my day. Who knew the turbulent discordant house-of-cards patchwork the Democratic party hopes is its base might be splintered even along lines like these? It's like a new world of opportunities has opened up before me.

-- Satan

Book Meme

2008-02-09T22:06:00.000-07:00

This is a book meme propagated here from FranIAm. I was not ‘tagged,’ so I will assert without justification that I need not tag anyone else.

You may find the outcome here slightly atypical.

Instructions:

Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. (No cheating!)

Ok. It’s Introduction to Elementary Particles by David Griffiths.

Find page 123.

Find the first five sentences and read them.

Post the next 3 sentences.

Ok…

But that simple observation had astonishing implications. For suppose we examine the mirror image of that same process (Fig. 4.8). The image nucleus rotates in the opposite direction; its spin points downward.

(This quote out of context is likely close to meaningless, so I will follow FranIAm’s example and add a little more information. The topic is the fact that parity is not a symmetry of our universe. In something closer to everyday English, if our universe were reflected in a mirror, the laws of physics would not be the same on the other side. Or in other words, when Alice went through the looking-glass, the world worked differently there. Some of the laws of physics were the same, some exactly opposite – and a few just slightly different in tiny ways. Every reader of Lewis Carroll knows this, of course, but it was a profound discovery when shown to be true of the real world as well, worth the 1957 Nobel Prize.)

-- Satan

Ask Satan

2008-02-08T22:24:00.001-07:00

Reader Übermilf asks:

Do you like Mardi Gras?

It seems like your kind of thing, but it's a precursor to what must be your least favorite time of year.

What are your feelings?

Dear Übermilf,

I love Mardi Gras. A holiday based essentially on an excuse to go out and follow all your wild impulses in one big blowout? It’s a field day for me.

Lent, now, that’s an interesting time. With a lot of holidays, the original purpose has to a large extent been flipped, and I come out ahead in spades. For example, is Thanksgiving more about people being thankful for what they have, or it is about gluttony? On balance, for more people its about gluttony. Is Christmas about the birth my old debate buddy Jesus, or at least about the giving of gifts? Nope, more about consumerism now. But Lent isn’t quite so easy, being a season rather than a single event, and other than Easter itself it hasn’t been as easy to spin about.

It’s not all bad. There are some, like FranIAm, who really follow the themes of sacrifice and introspection, and in their cases my influences are a little less. At the other extreme, there are those who deliberately flaunt the whole thing, who break and mock the silly rules, generally playing the part of the Jews eating bacon cheeseburgers during Passover. For them, Lent gives me a little extra edge.

Overall it’s a wash at the extremes, but in the middle I think I win incrementally. Most Catholics follow the rules a little, but they’re just playing along. A little insincerity, a little hypocrisy, a little guilt when they realize they just ate bratwurst for dinner Friday night. The little crumblings of the soul around the edges. It’s not as flashy as Mardi Gras, but both dynamite and erosion can bring the mountain down.

Cheery, eh? Well, don’t worry about it too much. Have a cupcake!

-- Satan

Ask Satan will be back next week at lower frequency due to a shortage of questions. Send some in! Any topic welcome, not just politics, religion, and the soul trade. Email Satan or write in the comments.

The Results

2008-02-07T22:17:00.000-07:00

All the ballots and raised hands have been counted, the networks have all applied their knowledge of arcane voting procedures, and the estimated delegates have been tallied. So where are we now? Other than Karl Rove now being an election analyst, I mean?

On the Republican side, Mr. “No, I won’t sign your contract!” McCain carried over his South Carolina and Florida wins into a commanding lead. Mitt Romney pussied up and dropped out, confirming that it’s over.

In Romney's defense, he was operating under the handicap that his supporters kept holding up pictures of gloves instead of mitts. That, and he was having trouble getting around with the new asshole Jon Stewart ripped him. Maybe I should have gone ahead and publicly endorsed him, it looks like it couldn't have hurt.

At least the Democratic side remains interesting – in fact, fascinating. Clinton and Obama are in about as close to a dead heat as they could be in pledged delegates, with only Clinton’s big lead in superdelegates – the party machine’s thumb on the scale – giving Clinton a ~100 delegate edge. With Super Tuesday over, we’re in it for the long haul. Imagine all the nasty sniping we might hear! If I could hear a thing over Turd Blossom giggling, that is. Stop it!

I didn’t mention “electability” as a possible criterion on Tuesday. I wonder if that had anything to do with it.

For the first time in generations it could go all the way, we could score an open convention. Ah, the smoky rooms of yore. Riots may be a little too much to ask, but just think: what if Obama has more pledged delegates, but Clinton’s superdelegates give her the majority. Do you think we can call Warren Christopher and James Baker out of retirement again to supervise counting the later ballots?

Salivating aside, some other results: Nobody got my little trivia question from the last two days. Only CTK even tried...

The question: This year, neither party will run an incumbent or former vice president. When’s the last time that happened?

The answer: 1952, Eisenhower vs. Stevenson. (And before that, 1928, Hoover vs. Smith.)

If you’d like a history lesson:

2004 – Bush the Lesser vs. Kerry, Bush was the incumbent
2000 – Bush the Lesser vs. Gore, Gore was the sitting Vice-President
1996 – Dole vs. Clinton, Clinton was the incumbent
1992 – Bush the Greater vs. Clinton, Bush was the incumbent
1988 – Bush the Greater vs. Dukakis, Bush was the sitting Vice-President
1984 – Reagan vs. Mondale, Reagan was the incumbent and Mondale was the former Vice-President
1980 – Reagan vs. Carter, Carter was the incumbent
1976 – Ford vs. Carter, Ford was the incumbent
1972 – Nixon vs. McGovern, Nixon was the incumbent
1968 – Nixon vs. Humphrey, Nixon was the former Vice-President andHumphrey was the sitting Vice-President.
1964 – Goldwater vs. Johnson, Johnson was the incumbent
1960 – Nixon vs. Kennedy, Nixon was the sitting Vice-President
1956 – Eisenhower vs. Stevenson, Eisenhower was the incumbent
1952 – Eisenhower vs. Stevenson

-- Satan

Ask Satan will return tomorrow, but may go on hiatus or at least down in frequency next week, due to lack of questions to answer. So send me more questions! -- by email or in the comments.

Ask Satan

2008-02-06T19:24:00.000-07:00

Today I’ll expand on replies to a couple of questions from Übermilf.

About 10 days ago she asked, “I suspect that Jim Belushi sold his soul to you, leading you to take his vastly more talented brother out of the picture AND get his television show renewed every year. Is this true?”

No, it’s not. That would be far, far too much for me to pay for Jim Belushi’s soul. I might, at the outside, get his show renewed once. You really don’t need to invoke my influence to explain why TV is bad – people put an enormous amount of crap on TV without any help from me. I think the last time I did anything along those lines was with Suddenly Susan.

Jim Belushi, that was a real shame. Like picking a fruit long before it was ripe, from my point of view.

Continuing on, last week Übermilf asked, “Also, how many musical groups have actually allied themselves with you? Many have claimed it, but is it just posturing? And, are there some that HAVEN'T made such a claim, yet in actually ARE in league with you?”

This is a little tricky to answer, because it depends what you mean by ‘allied’ and ‘in league’. If you mean they’ve traded their souls to me for long-term success and fame, not really any. The deals are usually for one big break or one hit song. But the fact is that the vast majority of groups that think they need just one big break are wrong; if that’s all they needed they’d be there already. So if you’re looking for names in this category, think one-hit wonders.

(In point of fact, though, I’ve bought many more musicians’ souls with a different kind of hit...)

If you mean that the group members are actually my minions doing my bidding, one comment: The kind of people who just do what I tell them are mostly either schizophrenic, psychotic, meglomanic, they hold high elected office, or else they are just really, really stupid. For the most part they don’t have great musical talents. (Not that all bands have musical talent.) More importantly, I just don’t see much point in putting my own resources in this direction, because, as the saying goes, why buy the cow when you get the milk for free?

See, there are plenty of bands I get because they join up for nothing. There’s really not much difference between claiming to be my ally and actually being my ally. For the most part there are no marching orders, and many ways they can do their part. Now, since there’s no contract, they can back out, and some do – but sadly there are ways out of the contracts as well. (I’ve lost some tasty souls that way – I’m still sad about Johnny Cash.) But what can you do?

Now, I suspect this wasn’t the answer you wanted; you probably want to know if Black Sabbath or Deicide are getting anything, or maybe Debbie Boone and LeAnn Rimes, I don’t know. Perhaps you were really asking about David Soul? At any rate, sorry to disappoint you.

-- Satan

P.S. No answer to my trivia question yesterday, so I’ll ask it again. This year, neither party will run an incumbent or former vice president. When’s the last time that happened?

Also, Happy Birthday to Babe Ruth.

Have other questions or want advice from Satan? You can email them to Satan or post them in the comments for this blog entry.

Super Tuesday

2008-02-05T14:04:00.000-07:00

Today is the Big Day, when many in this country get to cast their vote in presidential primaries or caucuses. For many it’s their first meaningful primary vote, considering how the fantastic primary system we have usually picks the candidates long before most of the country has even had a chance to vote.

Here’s a quiz: When’s the last time neither major party was running their incumbent or their sitting or last vice president?

I am not making any endorsements today, not after the Edwards/Giuliani debacle last week. So you’ll all have to pick between two evils without my advice. What’s most important to you? Positions on issues? Ability to promise the world? Experience? Ability to sling cutting remarks off the cuff? Leadership? Inspirational speechifying? Integrity? Ability to compromise? Stated position on litmus-test issues reduced to binary choices by the media?

Don’t be afraid to choose the greater of two evils. Sometimes that’s the right choice.

-- Satan

P.S. Happy Birthday to Hank Aaron!

Ask Satan will return tomorrow. Questions welcome, by email or in the comments.

Ask Satan

2008-02-04T18:10:00.001-07:00

This is a question I heard last night. “What the hell was that!”

Maybe it wasn’t actually a question, come to think of it, but I’ll answer it anyway.

In case you weren’t watching: the Giants were down 4 with 1:15 to play, third and five on their own 44. The Patriots blitzed and got to Eli Manning. Two Patriots had their hands on him. The play would all but have iced a Patriots victory and a 19-0 season.

Seconds later, Manning had somehow gotten away and thrown a pass. David Tyree, well covered by the Patriots, somehow caught the pass on his helmet for a 32-yard gain. The Giants continue downfield to a touchdown and the win.

How much is the difference between the sack and the reception worth? I can tell you.

Exactly one soul.

Yeah, I know I picked the Patriots, but it’s hard to pass up that type of opportunity.

Plus now I can still say the ’85 Bears were better.

-- Satan

Have other questions or want advice from Satan? You can email them to Satan or post them in the comments for this blog entry.

Satan’s Football Picks

2008-02-02T10:12:00.000-07:00

Last night I had a dream that my brother had 3 tickets to the Superbowl but didn’t invite me. He called me after the game to tell me that the Patriots had lost. In the dream, though, his call woke me up because the game was played at 1:00 am Eastern time on Saturday, the Bills were the NFC Champions and had won another Superbowl a few years ago, and the game was played at the Meadowlands.

In the real world, I’m picking the Patriots. The probability that they will win is 71.8%.

(Yeah, I know, the title says “Picks” but this is only one pick. There’s only one game. You want multiple picks, you’ll just have to wait for a week with more than one game.)

-- Satan

Ask Satan

2008-02-01T17:57:00.000-07:00

Since it seems to be Politics Week, I’ll stick with the theme.

Reader CTK writes, “Were you sad to see Tom Tancredo drop out of the race? I can't see Satan being particularly pro-Mexicans. I bet you liked him.”

Dear CTK,

Why would I have anything against Mexicans? Many of my best clients are Mexicans. You think I’m only interested in your hypocritical little country? A country founded on intellectual ideas of equality and personal rights that revels in its anti-intellectualism? A country with Constitutional separation of church and state that requires its leaders to invoke God and its citizens to swear on Bibles and pledge allegiance to God? A country built by a diversity of immigrant groups, one with a national monument inscribed, “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses,” that restricts and abuses immigrants for not following some mythical American Way? No, CTK, it’s not so. I welcome the hypocrites of all countries, not just this one.

Tom Tancredo is a fucking idiot, I have no use for him. The problem with him is he actually believes his own crap. There’s no hypocrisy there. When he says Miami is a third-world country, he really believes it’s less a part of the ‘real’ America he made up in his mind. When he wants to eliminate all immigration, he really believes that America would be better off that way. When he says Islam is “a civilization bent on destroying us,” that’s really what he thinks. When he talks about “the siren song of multiculturalism,” he doesn’t see the irony that his archetypal American has deeply multicultural roots, his own only two generations back in Italy.

Put it this way: suppose Tancredo and Rudy Giuliani each put on a show trial to deport an illegal alien. Tom Tancredo would go home and night and sleep soundly, content that he had done right. Giuliani would go home and weep in his soul, knowing the whole thing was a sham to further his career, that he’d made specific people’s lives worse, and reflecting on the struggles of his immigrant ancestors.

If you want to be the Decider you have to be able to make decisions, and you have to be able to see both sides. You have to be able to know that you’ve done wrong and be content with it. If the world is black and white to you, like it is to Tom Tancredo, you’ll be a piss-poor president.

-- Satan

Have other questions or want advice from Satan? You can email them to Satan or post them in the comments for this blog entry.

Nothing

2008-01-31T23:58:00.000-07:00

I've got nothing today. I hope the two people who look at this blog aren't too disappointed.

I can't believe Giuliani endorsed that pain-in-the-ass McCain.

-- Satan

Ask Satan

2008-01-30T23:55:00.000-07:00

Reader Übermilf writes, “Who would Satan like to see win the presidency?”

Dearest Milfesty,

It’s been a long and pretty sad day here in Hell.

I’m generally a little reluctant to make endorsements. In some cases they come out spectacularly well, such as the 2000 South Carolina Republican primary, but more often than not they don’t. Still, in response to your question I was ready to use this space to endorse my favorites in both parties: John Edwards in the Democratic party, and Rudy Giuliani in the Republican. But today, each of them withdrew from the race.

John Edwards embodies a degree of mental flexibility uncommon even in politicians. In his career as a trial lawyer, Edwards made his name and his money gaining spectacular punitive damage awards in medical malpractice lawsuits, doing his part to drive up the cost of malpractice insurance and health care. As a legislator and candidate, he’s altered his viewpoint, arguing for changes in tort procedures and affordable health care for the poor. This type of flexibility, being able to completely change one’s position up to 180 degrees in response to what helps you at the time, is invaluable to a president.

I think Rudy Giuliani’s record stands for itself, really. National security could not be safer than in the hands of a man who has run more show trials than anyone. On immigration issues, who has cracked down on the petty crimes committed by more immigrants? Who better to unite the country than a man who has been a Democrat, an Independent, a Republican, and run on the Liberal Party ticket? Who could have better relations with business than the man who set up huge public subsidies to the Yankees and in return is paid by them through his security consulting business?

Well, with both of these fine gentlemen out of the picture, I will have to reconsider my positions. At least the next-best Democratic candidate is obvious, though I think I shall not make an endorsement hastily after what happened today.

Sadly yours,

-- Satan

Have other questions or want advice from Satan? You can email them to Satan or post them in the comments for this blog entry.

Today's Quote

2008-01-29T16:58:00.000-07:00

In honor of today’s faux Democratic primary in Florida, here’s a quote from John McCain. Accused (accurately) of being a carpetbagger in the 1980 race for Arizona’s 1st congressional seat -- McCain’s first run for elected office -- he snapped back:

Listen, pal. I spent 22 years in the Navy. My grandfather was in the Navy. We in the military service tend to move a lot. We have to live in all parts of the country, all parts of the world. I wish I could have had the luxury, like you, of growing up and living and spending my entire life in a nice place like the first district of Arizona, but I was doing other things. As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi.

Heh.

Just a quote, not an endorsement.

Ask Satan will return tomorrow.

--Satan

Ask Satan

2008-01-28T13:56:00.000-07:00

Reader Übermilf writes: “Is laundry avoidance a sin? I ask for a friend.”

Dear Übermilf,

First, I must say, I’m flattered that you chose to ask me. The Catholic Church would, of course, advise that you go across the way and direct your question to Father Bob. I’m pretty sure he likes cupcakes.

As I’m sure you know, there are multiple schools of thought – you might call them legal traditions – within the Catholic Church on how to determine if something is a sin or not. One simple approach is to ask whether anyone is harmed by your friend’s action, or in this case lack of action. Now, unless the dirty laundry is growing colonies of contagious disease or your friend’s children are getting beat up at school for wearing the same shirt with mustard stains three days in a row, it’s likely that putting off the laundry doesn’t hurt anyone. So by this logic, laundry avoidance is not a sin.

Of course, most thought in the Catholic Church doesn’t follow such libertarian tendencies. It would be far more common to interpret avoiding the laundry as an embodiment of Sloth, one of the deadly sins – albeit this example of Sloth would be only a minor venial sin.

A critical element of Catholic theology is the role of the conscience. Ultimately, in matters such as this, the conscience of the individual is the deciding factor. The conscience is informed by the teachings of the Church, and cannot go against points of infallible dogma, but much of the Church’s teachings are just the opinions of humans, and the individual has the right and obligation to follow his or her own conscience.

In this case, the bottom line is whether your friend feels guilty about not doing the laundry. If so, it’s a sin. This situation is technically known as a ‘mindfuck.’ An important corollary is, “If you have to ask, it’s a sin.”

Now, if you want my advice (not that you asked), tell your friend the hell with the laundry. She should do it when she feels like it and shouldn’t worry about it otherwise. Then it’s not a sin, see? And if her kids need clean clothes, you know what? I bet they’re old enough to learn how to wash and fold their own clothes. You know what else? You can pay other people to wash your clothes.

Take it easy,

-- Satan

Have other questions or want advice from Satan? You can email them to Satan or post them in the comments for this blog entry.

Ask Satan

2008-01-25T11:33:00.000-07:00

Reader CTK writes: “I think the blogreading public would like to get Satan’s take on modern sustainable farming practices in the face of globalization, an overheating planet, and Britney.”

Dear CTK,

Ok, here you go.

Britney: I suppose I could give a smartass answer about client privilege or not commenting on ongoing negotiations, but the fact is I just don’t care. I have no opinion.

Overheating planet: Speaking professionally, I love global warming. It creates so many moral choices, especially lots of nice small ones. You think burning gas is bad for the world but you still drive your SUV? Those are the little things that add such nice flavors to your soul. Tasty. And global warming isn’t just about seasoning – it’s got the big bold flavors too. The industrialized world was built up on cheap coal and oil, but now, you see, you know better, you’re going to have international climate treaties and convince China and India that shouldn’t dam their rivers and burn their sulfurous coal as they try to do the same. Oooh, moral indignation, and, yes, a little bit of racism. Good with a nice chianti.

Now, for me professionally, it doesn’t really matter whether the earth is getting warmer or colder, or whether humans did it or not. It just matters what people believe. So unfortunately, the people who sincerely don’t believe the world is heating up overall aren’t worth anything to me. Stupidity has no flavor. (Of course, there is willful ignorance – that’s not a bad taste.) “But it’s been getting colder here!” Such a nice educational system, people can’t tell the difference between a local measurement and a global average over many local measurements – but that’s another story altogether.

Now, the real questions are these: is it your fault, and can you do anything about it? The first one can legitimately be argued, unlike the fact of warming itself. There’s pretty strong evidence that greenhouse gases cause global warming. There aren’t legitimate scientific grounds for challenging the existence and sign of the effect any more. But the size of the effect is open to doubt. A lot of climate models predict much more warming than we’ve actually seen, some predict less. Climate science can’t prove that all the observed warming is caused by humans, only that some is. And hey, the world has had much bigger temperature changes in the past without humans to blame.

Now, from a policy point of view, the remaining ambiguity doesn’t matter, or shouldn’t. If there was actually something politically feasible that could be done about it, there’s more that sufficient cause to do it. But I’ve known you humans a long time, and it’s just not going to happen. Collectively, you just don’t have the resolve. The $500 barrel of oil will cut gas consumption more than any government policy, even in California. Of course, it will also make a lot of new sources of oil financially viable. Heh. By the way, are you sure that if you try to make people pay even a fraction of the environmental cost of the energy they use, you won’t lower their quality of life more that global warming ever will?

I think, in the end, you’re all just going to adapt to changing climate, wringing your hands all the while. Meanwhile, I’ll enjoy how your souls taste.

I’ll save the farming question for next time.

Stay warm,

-- Satan

Have other questions or want advice from Satan? You can email them to Satan or post them in the comments for this blog entry.

What to listen to while writing lecture notes

2008-01-24T17:09:00.001-07:00

Context here.

--Satan

Welcome Back

2008-01-23T22:50:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to my blog.

Really directed just at myself, I think. I doubt a blog with only two posts both over four months ago actually has any readers.

Well, if Ubermilf can blog every single day, maybe I can manage once a week at least. Tell me, hypothetical readers, what would you like to see here? An “Ask Satan” advice column? The usual blog fodder of random things I see that amuse me? Satan’s football picks? Explanations of how it all really works, from an insider’s perspective? My own comments on the high school reunion I went to over two months ago with Ubermilf and CTK?

Let me know.

--Satan

Boom.

2007-09-13T21:52:00.002-06:00

I felt I had to add something since I had only one post here. This picture is a little blurry because I took it out the window of a moving shinkansen. It just caught my eye, I have no idea what it means.

--Satan

Flash Fiction

2007-09-09T23:36:00.000-06:00

See here for the context.

“The sound rippled across the swamp's surface...”

“It wasn't a swamp, it was a lake.”

“Morons. It was a bog.”

“It was not, it was a marsh. A bog has a solid top layer with water underneath.”

An example of what passes for discourse when you take 14-year-olds out on a canoe trip. At least it wasn't about how to swallow air to belch louder. Or the Guinness Book of World Sex Records.

“Shut up, I'm telling the story! The sound rippled across the surface of the water in the night. It was an eerie, haunting sound, like...”

“In England a bog is a toilet.”

True.

“Shut up!”

Surprisingly, they did.

“It was an eerie, haunting sound, like the creak of the graveyard gate in the wind on a misty moonlight night.”

“It was just a loon.”

Also true.

“Shut up, Jason. You only know it was a loon because Mr. Allen told you. You don’t even know what a loon is.”

True.

“I do too.”

He did not.

“Yeah, then what is it?”

Jason squirmed, came out with, “It’s what made that sound.”

Not yet the dissembler he would become. Time to step in. “We all know what a loon is, it’s a bird. We saw a pair of them on the lake two days ago.” Except for Jason. He had been sitting in the middle of the canoe staring off into space the whole time.

One canoe trip. Ten days. All the time I ever spent with the kid. I hadn’t even met him until the morning of the day we drove up to Minnesota. His mom dropped him off, thanked me again for letting him come along because his troop never did things like this. But somehow I think I should have seen where he was going -- I could have done something different, a little push a different way at the tipping point, and it all would have come out different.