Monday, January 31, 2011

linKs Monday Jan 31

In case you missed the State of the Union. State of the…Let’s Just Skip to the 2012 Election



In case you missed Sarah Palin’s response to the whole “Blood Libel” thing. Because it Rhymes With Bible



The Scale of The Universe. Really puts things in perspective. Thanks Geordie!



An even MORE controversially uncontroversial version of Huck Finn.



“I Want to Know” by Ginger Beyda. Featuring The Razor, and an adorable kid!



Speaking of adorable: Baby Preacher with Subtitles. Thanks Brad!



http://mapofmetal.com/#/home



Earnst speaks wisdom! Thanks, Carl!



Crrrazzy over the top Indian action! Thanks, Mantis!



Yellow Savaughn Poison!



The year in K-View

Friday, January 28, 2011

Fealtish: The K Word

Fealtish: Showing Fealty. No more fealtish knuckling under to Mubarak, the people take to the street. Akin to slavish, but with perhaps a little more dignity. One could do a slavish cover of a song, for instance, and you're a bar band. When Joan Jett isn't trancending her source material, she sometimes makes a fealtish cover, as when she does "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?"







She looks cute in a bob! Love that Joan Jett. She's a little fealtish here.

Here she is transcending Gary Glitter.







--Dan Kilian

Zed


Praying For Rain

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

State of the…Let’s Just Skip to the 2012 Election

Klog is pleased to have gotten hold of a draft of tonight’s State of the Union speech. Obama goes into this presidential moment on an upswing, because, well, frankly, the American populace is a bipolar freak, and that’s just the way the pendulum is swinging. Also, a bunch of people got killed the other day, which is always good for public morale.

Heyyy, buddies! Glad you could all make it. The state of our union is…Uh-uh! Not that easy! I’ve got a few things to say first. First off, let me say…51 percent! That’s my approval! In Washington these days, that’s a landslide! Let’s see any of you jackasses make those kind of numbers! Suck on it! If I’d known accepting the Bush tax cuts would make me this popular I’d have come out as a Republican long ago!

Seriously, though, let’s talk more about why I’m so popular. I gave a hell of a speech the other day in Tucson. Still got it. Don’t worry if you missed it; I’ll be doing some excerpts of the high points later on tonight. I’m sure I share your surprise that I wasn’t the one who got shot, since that was clearly the goal of opposition rhetoric for the last two years. Nevertheless, we’re all glad that Congresswoman Giffords is making a speedy recovery. Michelle is sitting next to the gay Latino guy who saved Gabrielle’s life. I think this is an opportunity to propose a compromise on our immigration policy. Let’s stay really racist towards most Latinos, but let’s have a path to citizenship for the portly homosexual immigrants. I call it the Elton John Bill.

It’s really nice to see you all sitting together. It’s important, in the wake of the shooting in Tucson, that we engage in pointless symbolism for at least a week. Act as if not calling the health care bill “job-killing” is somehow spreading comity. We’ll get back to name calling in…what time is it?

I’ll tell you what time it is! It’s time for jobs! Investment! Job creation. Focusing like a laser! Kissing serious corporate ass! It’s morning in America again! I love Ronald Reagan! That’s right, I’m going for a third stimulus. My plan is to pretend we’re investing in this country, while the House pretends to slash everything to the bone. Let’s run parallel imaginary Americas as long as we can, until the inevitable government shut-down. Seriously, nothing’s going to get done for the next two years. India will crush us.

But at least I’m popular! Who are you going to run against me? A Massachusetts Mormon? Psycho Lady One or Psycho Lady Two? Oh, by the way, I look forward to Psycho Lady Two’s response to the response to my speech. Remember, you’ve set the bar pretty high, so make it really crazy! Way to keep the coalition from fracturing for at least the first half of January, Republicans!

Come on, economy! If I can ride the wave just right I’m going all the way to 52 percent! Until then, the state of our union is 51 percent! Suck it, and God bless America!

--Dan Kilian

Last year the tone was different! State of the U-Suck


Because it Rhymes With Bible

Friday, January 21, 2011

Yellow Savaughn

Of the nine standard Guild poisons, yellow savaughn was his favorite.  Inert until mixed with alcohol, it was relatively safe to refine and carry on one's person.  The toxin built up in the kidneys over the course of hours after ingestion, giving ample time to gain distance from the victim before its effects became apparent.  Even then it had no telltales to indicate that anything more than overindulgence played a role in the death – no blackened fingertips, no bloodied eyes, no spasms, just sleepiness that led to suffocation while asleep.  To be sure a trained surgeon would recognize the swollen kidneys of yellow savaughn poisoning, but by then the matter would be well out of their hands.

Unless, of course, the victim was one of the unfortunate few with a congenital allergy to savaughn root.  Then it would be only moments before his or her tongue would swell up and block the airway, gums bleeding profusely until the victim choked to death.  All while the assassin was no doubt nearby, perhaps stripping off a cook's apron and sprinting through the kitchen toward a convenient alley window.

It was under circumstances similar to this that Farningwold found himself crouching in a pile of rotting cabbage leaves, having leapt from the warm but suddenly inhospitable kitchen into one of the colder and danker of Sliorek's many blind alleys.  He took time to sloppily douse three throwing blades with black gall-resin thinned with turpentine -- his least-favorite decoction – before sprinting off toward the street.  He had just reached the mouth of the alley when the back gate of the victim's house slammed open as the house guard gave chase.  He let one blade fly and ran east, toward the Knot.

He wondered how he'd be able to collect the second half of his payment, since his contact had been sitting across the table from the eight-year-old boy that had been the target.  Funny thing, that.  As he approached a narrow spot in the street he palmed a second blade and nicked two women who had been chatting over a fruitseller's cart.  They fell almost immediately;  hopefully the fuss would choke the lane with good Samaritans.  He didn’t think they'd die from such a short cut.  A left and two right turns later he inverted his coat and shed his false moustache.

He also shed any pretense of maintaining the Guild code of client anonymity.  Why would Errick want his best friend and business partner's son dead?

--Steve Kilian
Regarding the Events off of Mayburn Key, July 23rd, 1964

Two For The Toad

Friday, January 14, 2011

Crazy Like a Fox, a Severely Deranged Fox, That Is

Since the tragedy in Tucson last week, there has been much conjecture as to the motivations of the Arizona assassin Jared Lee Loughner. Leftists have strained to link his mass murder to the caustic rhetoric of Tea Party politicians. Likewise, some right wing pundits have cited his reading of Karl Marx and use of marijuana. Analysis of Loughner’s writings reveal thinking too deranged to readily hang any coherent political viewpoint on. The most considered thinking is that that there is no way to understand what motivated Loughner.

Or is there? The received common wisdom has led me to the conclusion that I might be the best suited to plumb the motivations of this man. Why me? Because I have been, for at least the last twenty years, irrevocably and absolutely bat-shit insane.

Do you ever feel like it’s all building up to something? Don’t you think it’s all building up to something? The news? The so-called entertainment? The left-handed people who still use their right hands? The faces of the animals? Don’t you think it’s all building up to something?

I think it’s all building up to something. I wonder if this guy Laughner thought so. No, I don’t wonder, I know, because my neighbor’s cat told me so. Do you ever wonder why his name sounds like laughter? I sometimes hear people laughing at me, but when I look at them they pretend they weren’t. WHY IS EVERYBODY LAUGHING AT ME?

Who’s laughing now? Seriously, I want to know. I just heard someone laughing and there’s no one in here. Do you think it’s all building up to something?

In conclusion, regarding the pathologies and the motivations of Jared Lee Loughner, I’d just like to say bibblebibblebribbildy blip! That’s me, making a motor-boat sound with my finger and lips. Yes, we do that.

--Abraham Lincoln Erasmus Peter Pan the Third

Editor’s note: People with mental disorders do not deserve to be mocked. I though that writing from the “insane perspective” might be an amusing what-not. So I’m not really a horrible person. Read this with impunity, for the same reason it’s all right to like that Gnarls Barkley song.

--Dan Kilian

Because it Rhymes With Bible


Regarding the Events off of Mayburn Key, July 23rd, 1964

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Bad Fruit, Revisited

After the mistrial they killed and buried Richard – guilty as sin despite what the courts said – waist-deep in his front yard with his hand in his pockets, sunken-chested and hollow like a bathtub Madonna that someone had forgotten to fill with her Immaculate presence.  The sheriff made a point of not patrolling the cul-de-sac where the birds and raccoons plucked at his drying flesh.  Considering what he'd done there was no point – no justice, really – in tracking down his murderers.  Two winters passed and there was just a mound in the yard with a stone-fruit sapling to mark the spot.  Five years later the tree was heavy with its first crop.

Nice fruit from that tree, the neighbors said, but that was a lie.  It was hard and took a long boil to get it ready for jars, and even then no amount of sugar and cinnamon bark would cut the underlying bitterness.  But they put it up every autumn just the same, sending it off to distant relatives at the holidays.

The packages would be received, cards read, and solemn and empty vows would be made to reconnect with long-lost relatives in the new year.  The jars would find their way to the back of pantry cupboards, then to the top shelves in back hall closets (next to dried cans of paint), and then into cellars or attics.  Spring cleanings would push them into deeper corners.  The death of the homeowner – usually an aged grandparent or a neglected spinster -- would find the jars abandoned in the rush to cart out what valuable furniture remained in the old house.

Eventually rooflines would sag, screen doors would fall off of their hinges, and roofs would finally put an end to the tumultuous relationships with their chimneys.  Water would work the rafters and the houses would collapse in on themselves, pumpkins gone to rot.  As the wood and linoleum went back to mulch the jars would finally fall and long-dried seals would let go.  The poisoned seeds would spill out and wait for a dozen autumn's leaves to turn slick above them.  Then they would push forth their white roots, grubbing upward and outward, following the buried contours of cracked foundations.

In no more than a hundred years a new tree would drop its rancid bounty in a clear spot in the forest that the deer would avoid.

--Steve Kilian

The Line


When The Xylem Flows Beware!

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Because it Rhymes With Bible

The following is an early draft for the "America's Enduring Strength" speech by Sarah Palin in response to her critics after the Mass Murder in Arizona that included the assassination of Representative Gabrielle Giffords.

Let me join all right-thinking Americans in deploring the horror that has happened in the wake of the tragedy in Tucson. I am referring to the linking of this tragedy to my own statements and the imagery I've used. To link a madman’s assassination of innocent people to my using rifle targets in a campaign poster and accusing Democrats of euthanasia is Blood Libel. That’s right, I’m comparing criticism of me to the persecution of the Jews.

One of my aides has already explained that my campaign poster with the cross-hairs on it really had surveyor marks on it, even though my whole branding effort is rife with gun imagery, so you know we’re not defensive about that. All the talk about the so-called extreme statements made by me, Glenn Beck, and other prominent Tea Party figures is an attempt to rein in our sacred right to free speech. It’s right there in the First Amendment: “The right to free speech shall not be infringed by any criticism of the things you say.”

There is no evidence that this mad killer was influenced by any of my statements. He was talkin’ all about words having meaning, which is hardly a pet issue of mine, or I wouldn’t have used the term Blood Libel just now. That man was all crazy way before there was a Tea Party. There were no campaign posters with cross-hairs or Tea Party literature at his house, like you’d expect. It would totally make sense if there had been, but there wasn’t, so you really can’t pin this one on me.

Beyond that is another factor that makes the criticism I’ve been receiving of late so heinous. All my rhetoric was never intended to generate anything like this kind of violence. If you examine my statements, from my vice presidential campaign on, it’s clear that my goal is not to incite this kind of attack, but rather to incite the assassination of Barack Obama. I said he palled around with terrorists. I accused him of setting up Death Panels to kill babies and grandmothers. I accused him of espousing Socialism. Heck, he’s the first black president, so it’s not like every racist in the country hasn’t already drawn a target on him. Would I have said such horrible things if I didn’t expect some nut-job to take a few shots at the president? A congresswoman is really beneath my radar.

My intentions have always been clear: assassinate the president, not some people in Arizona. Maybe start a race war against Muslims, but that’s really a sidebar project. Accusing me of anything else is really Blood Libel.

--Dan Kilian

Sarah Palin and The New K Word


It Smelled Like Mint


The Line

Monday, January 10, 2011

Badfruit

The planting of the orchard was almost complete.  Sixty rows of sixty saplings had been laid out in the acreage reclaimed from the overgrowth.  Three thousand five hundred and ninety-nine neatly burlap-wrapped root balls had been dropped into their holes, optimistic cowlicks of foliage promising abundant harvests in the future.

But there was the one last tree.  It sat in a pool of oily water in the bed of a slat-sided truck.  The crooked trunk had barely any branches and no leaves, just tight clumps of woody gnarl where one might expect a hint of green.

The burlap had gone moldy and fallen away to reveal roots swollen with smooth white bolls, as if a pile of earthworms had somehow managed to swallow a pile of peeled potatoes or eggs.  They broke open under a little pressure, releasing the fluid that had puddled underneath the plant.  It smelled faintly of clam muck, and this -- along with the sensation of popping the root-tumors, so much like seaweed -- made Richardson think of childhood summers at the beach.

Much had changed since then.  He nodded to the foreman.  "Plant it," he said.

--Steve Kilian

Join In


The Supreme Facts On Sotomayor

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Huck That!

There has been a bit of controversy in the publishing world with the announcement that NewSouth Books is issuing a new version of Huckleberry Finn that replaces the “N-word” (NEBRASKA) with the word “Slave.” Note: for the sake of our more offendable readers, the word “Nigger” has been replaced with “Nebraska” in this article. Literary purists are up in arms about this attempt to sanitize an American classic, pointing out that it is Twain’s capturing of the authentic language and social morays of the time which makes the book such an impassioned indictment of the evils of the previous century.

But does literature really have the right to be upsetting? I say the new text does not go far enough! For the period of slavery itself is humiliating to black people, and shameful for all Americans. I propose a version of Huck Finn wherein Jim is finally treated as an equal and a friend to Huck, not some runaway “slave.” Read this excerpt from Huck Finn, and see how, with some key alterations of the text, we can finally achieve equality in our great works of literature:

Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be an EQUAL at home where his family was, as long as he's got to be an EQUAL, and so I'd better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to tell Miss Watson where he was. But I soon give up that notion, for two things: she'd be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for leaving her, and so she'd GIVE HIM A TICKET ON A BOATRIDE straight down the river again; and if she didn't, everybody naturally despises an ungrateful FRIEND OF MINE, and they'd make Jim feel it all the time, and so he'd feel ornery and disgraced. And then think of me! It would get all around, that Huck Finn helped a FRIEND OF MINE to get his freedom (WHICH HE ALREADY HAD, BECAUSE WE ARE ALREADY FREE AND EQUAL); and if I was to ever see anybody from that town again, I'd be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame….And at last, when it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven, whilst I was ENCOURAGING a poor old woman's FRIEND OF MINE NOT TO HANG OUT WITH HER ANYMORE that hadn't ever done me no harm, and now was showing me there's One that's always on the lookout, and ain't agoing to allow no such miserable doings to go only just so fur and no further, I most dropped in my tracks I was so scared. Well, I tried the best I could to kinder soften it up somehow for myself, by saying I was brung up wicked, and so I warn't so much to blame; but something inside of me kept saying, "There was the Sunday school, you could a gone to it; and if you'd a done it they'd a learnt you, there, that people that acts as I'd been acting about that FRIEND OF MINE goes to everlasting fire."

Coming next: An animal cruelty free version of Moby Dick!

--Dan Kilian

White Wedding


Terminator: No Salvation

Monday, January 3, 2011

T.E.G.S.

"Tyger Tyger burning bright on a spit, preferably” --William Blake, paraphrased.

From Mowgli to Pi, mankind has feared the tiger. Since the elimination of the Sabretooth, the tiger has stood alongside the lion and bear as a fearsome enemy of man. The inherent danger and obvious evil or this striped beast reflexively breeds hatred in the core of human beings. Its imminent extinction and delicious flavor elicits anticipation and salivation in our hearts and mouths along with a grumbling in our stomachs to rival that of the great cat’s wicked purr.

It’s hard to believe, with the natural inclinations of man, that there are organizations that seek to halt the extinction and devouring on these monsters, but there are a number of them.

Save The Tiger Fund

http://www.savethetigerfund.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Home1

Tiger Friends

http://www.tigerfriends.com/RSF.html

Evidently the World Wrestling Federation has gotten in on the act.

http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/tigers/save_the_tiger/

There’s also a movie, starring Jack Lemmon, about saving tigers.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070640/

They even try to infiltrate the minds of our young with their pro-canine propaganda.

http://www.bopandtigerbeat.com/

Evidently these organizations are playing on the Tiger’s “Bad Boy” reputation in the animal kingdom to give them some jungle cred. It is in response to these tiger loving entities that a number of right thinking epicureans have created T.E.G.S. the Tiger Eradication Gourmet Society, devoted to the hunting down and cooking of tigers. Our end goal is to kill and eat the last tiger in existence. Surely the thrill of this rare act, coupled with the defeat of a great evil of nature, will outweigh any sentimentality currently in fashion.

If you would like to join our organization, or would like to sponsor it, please comment on this page. Good recipes for tiger meat are also encouraged. You should also follow us on Facebook HERE. We will be tweetering about it HERE. We encourage you to attend our gala fundraiser, Friday, February 4, at Local 269 featuring the following acts:

7 John Truelove

8 Orange Oven

9  A Mystery Guest! We can’t tell you too much about this one, but it’s a good one!

10 The Ks

11 Red Datson

12 Cocaine & Abel

Cook The Tiger!