Lorenzo St. Dubois

Just a sign of things to come

Where Boys Fear To Tread

Yakov Smirnoff, situated in his castle in the impregnable fortress of Branson, rules the southern regions of Missouri from his principality in the Ozarks with an iron fist, benign though it may be. He often gives presentations and decrees to masses gathered in his hall in Branson, and comments upon the nature of his homeland, the vast and unknown enigma that is Soviet Russia. Often times, while remarking on the unimaginable backwardness of his former homeland denizens of his in the front rows can swear they see the Glorious Leader getting misty-eyed as he delivers his biting commentary on the policies of Soviet Russia.

Rightfully so, for Russia has faced a serious problem that has not truly been experienced or comprehended by those of us outside of its enormous tracts of land. Russia, often decried by pundits and armchair experts as backwards, has a rightful reason for being so as it has been haunted and chased by a specter of unimaginable evil and terror. For centuries, tsar, premiere, and president alike have all stood against the one thing that the colossal empire has had to face again and again and has barely been able to defeat in a cataclysmic war for the very existence of the Slavic monolithic state: Zombies

Yes, most of Russia's massive resources and capital has been invested in controlling and attempting to eradicate a seemingly-unstoppable menace. It is this revelation that suddenly some of the less understood actions of the Cold War suddenly become clear.

Beginning with the early years of the USSR, Lenin was forced to create a top-down, centrally planned role for the citizenry of the Soviet empire, called the NEP. For years believed to be the New Economic Plan in the West, it is now known to stand for the New Eradication Plan. In the aftermath of the Revolution and Civil War, the zombie hordes had found numerous sources of nourishment in both the dead bodies littering the battlefields, and the massing amounts of Whites and Reds tromping through the countryside. In fact, a scene with zombies feeding on both dead bodies in the field and raiding a White camp at night were filmed for Dr. Zhigavo, but were edited out when it was realized that a movie over 4 days long was a tad bit too long for American audiences. It was this NEP that created an initial schism in the Communist party, as the more conservative branches wanted everyone to defend themselves while the liberals argued it was the duty of the state to defend everyone as it was the state's duty as a representative of the people. In the end, the NEP proved itself worthwhile as Zombie levels were lowered to pre-1913 (WWI) levels.

Stalin succeeded Lenin, and with it brought to the table a more radical and constraining policy for destroying zombies. Viewing Trotsky's policy of "exporting the revolution," a nice euphemism for Trotsky's hey-lets-dump-these-undead-jerkoffs-on-the-rest-of-the-world-and-get-ourself-some-rest-from-the-undead-menace ideology as being both too impractical and insane for the Soviet nation at the time, Stalin took it upon himself to declare "Socialized Zombie Killin' In One Nation" as his mantra. Taking it upon himself to lead an anti-zombie revolution from the top down, Stalin began several controversial plans to strengthen the Soviet people against attacks from the roaming undead. The first was collectivization. Taking into account the Jungian archetype of farmers armed to the teeth with firearms and Pabst Blue Ribbon, Stalin forced them to live and work together on farms owned by the state, hoping to turn each farm into a bastion of heavily-armed humanity should the war against zombies suddenly take a turn for the worst. The end result is a policy that starved the entire Soviet Union, as the farmers pooled their PBR and played chicken on massive Soviet tractors at a top speed of three.

The most lasting vestige of the Stalinist anti-zombie platform was the Five Year Plan. Realizing that keeping a bunch of peasants in their ancestral lands and far from the eyes of the benign Soviet anti-zombie organization, the NKVD. Realizing that the only way to keep the Soviet populace out of the zombie-infested wilds was to busy them building factors and metal smelting plants and whatnot, Stalin enacted a plan that, much to his surprise, not only successfully kept the citizenry from the grasp of zombiekind, but also catapulted Soviet Russia into a fully industrialized status that it never lost. The human cost was tremendous, but there was not a single record of a single human involved with the First Five Year Plan falling prey to the undead. No, they only fell to bitter cold, starvation, and gross ineptitude on the jobsite which was acceptable to Stalin, the Politburo, and the people of the USSR. In fact, it was so widely accepted as a victory against the evil dead that it was adopted by nearly every subsequent leader of the USSR.

A policy not adopted by later leaders was the policy of the gulag. Stalin, believing a zombie science only in its infancy, mistakenly believed that the zombie infection of Solanum was a chronic infection rather than an almost instantaneously terminal disease. A result of this misinformation led him to assume that anyone coming into contact with zombies was infected, and slowly becoming a zombie from the inside out (We now know that the virus can only be transmitted via saliva and blood, and instantly attacks the brain). Thousands were shipped to the prison camps of Siberia in a paranoia of a sudden outbreak of zombies in urban centers and new workplaces created by the Five Year Plan, and many took advantage of this to report in personal enemies as possible threats sending untold innocent civilians to a harsh prison life.

World War II and its aftermath brought about a new paradigm to the zombie conflict. After signing a security pact with Nazi Germany, Stalin began to focus his efforts on eradicating the zombie menace within the frontier of his nation. Unbeknownst to Stalin, the Nazi empire had weaponized zombies and enlisted them into elite armed groups that swore fealty to der Fuher alone. Called the Sombie Soderkommandos, or SS, these elite forces wreaked havoc across Europe from 1939 to the cessation of combat in 1945. It was this that made the German attack against the USSR so devastating and successful. The Soviet soldiers, seeing hordes of their greatest enemy wearing the uniform of another nation, were shocked to the point they were destroyed piecemeal by the advancing Wermacht. Following the Soviet destruction of the elite 6th Zombie Army in Stalingrad, The tables had turned and the USSR took its war against zombie-kind to Germany itself.

The Cold War was rife with anti-zombie activities for the USSR and its new-found superpower status. Armed with an atomic bomb they tested against a mammoth group of zombies corralled into a pen in Kazakhstan, the USSR was ready to commence a world-wide crusade against zombies. It was at this crucial moment that Stalin, that heavy-handed benign dictator that ruled the USSR with clarity and grace passed into a zombie-fighting warlord's Valhalla and was replaced with Nikita Khrushchev. Khrushchev was an oddity in terms of zombo-political ideology. He commenced his reign by immediately decrying Stalin's plans of the secret zombie police and the gulags, but was only able to do so with due to latest information being provided by the isolation of Solanum by Soviet necrologists, proving the gulags were an unnecessary blight on the face of the Party; however, hindsight is always 20/20. Khrushchev embarked on a worldwide PR blitz against zombies, although this was widely interpreted in the West as a savage attack on capitalism by an uneducated Ukrainian farmer with no respect for decorum. Some of his most famous supposed faux pas in the international relations arena were actually zombie related. For instance, when telling then-vice president Richard Nixon "We will bury you," it has gone unnoted by most Western media that he was pointing to a zombie that had infiltrated the press section. When banging a shoe in the UN, he was actually demonstrating to the Filippino ambassador how he had once killed a German zombie during World War II, not responding as an attack against capitalism as reported by Western media. It was his exportation of anti-zombie nuclear warheads to Cuba that finally did Nikita in, as his forced withdrawal of the weapons from the island led to even the most staunch Khrushchev supporters in the Politburo-now-renamed-Presidium to vote him down.

In the years following Khrushchev, the leadership of Brezhnev, Cherenkov, and Andropov were unimaginative and zombie population growth actually began to hinder the economic output and growth of the USSR. In these dark days, even the collectivized farms began to encounter zombies and the farmers were more concerned with increasing their marksmanship on an increasing number of undead and swilling PBR than tilling their land or whatever it is a collectivized farmer actually does. During this time, the USSR began to fall into disrepair and the sort of apocalyptic fatalism ever-present in a Romero film, despite the fact that the zombie population was far from out of control.

Enter Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev. A visionary in a time of dismay and stagnation, Gorbachev came to believe that the USSR could be refined by the combination of two ideas: Glasnost and Perestroika. Glasnost is roughly translated into "openness," but is only short for "openness to new ideas for killing the undead scourge that plagues our massive nation." Perestroika translates into "restructuring," in English, and like its counterpart Glasnost is short for something else, namely "restructuring of the way we can kill those buggers." A radical interpretation of these ideas was undertaken in the Ukrainian city of Chernobyl, with incredible anti-zombie effects (Chernobyl and parts of southern Belarus remain zombie free to this day). Unfortunately, the people of the USSR misinterpreted Gorbachev's policy as meaning democratization of the Soviet system and Party and allowance of free market elements inside the Communist haven, and Gorbachev, believing he was seeing a mass-adoption of radical ideas of zombie killing, mistakenly allowed it to proceed until he realized that the USSR had actually been destroyed by his measures taken to save it. In fact, it wasn't until the August Coup that Gorbachev realized how misinterpreted his policies had become. So, on 25 December 1991 at 7:30 pm Moscow time, the USSR was replaced by a plethora of new states, each facing a varying level of zombie population.

Today, Russia is plagued by both a resurgent zombie problem and constant misinterpretation by Western media. Fighting a constant war against a chronic zombie outbreak in Grozny, the world has come to condemn Russian attrition against what it misconstrues as a ethnically diverse people in the south of Russia. This problem has only be excabberated by the subsequent school crisis in Beslan and theater hostage crisis in the heart of Moscow. Recent actions taken against a zombie horde assembling in the main square in Minsk, Belarus was interpreted in the West as a sign of autocracy by Europe's last dictator, and Putin's backing of him as yet another sign of the democracy that Putin doesn't believe in.

Don't for a second be fooled. If anything, the actions of the USSR and seemingly-autocratic leadership of Putin is the only damn thing saving this world from its most fearful plague and threat. Do you think Putin has it easy, facing a threat no one thinks is real and is constantly under attack from the nations of the world for being a dictator-in-presidents clothing? No.

Remember, without the Soviets and Putin, you could be one of them

What Is and Should Never Be

I saw a movie.

It was some time ago, close to a month or maybe close to two. It was a while ago, which is the point, and I've been so swamped with work since then that I've lost track of time, which isn't even remotely related to any point that might possibly be brought up in this vaguely-worded entry. I saw this movie with two people, Michael Herring who avidly wanted to see it, and Daniel Hall who went along for the ride. I was pretty much in the middle, as the trailer looked interesting but I was pretty ambivalent about its outcome or any sort of theatrical criteria.

This movie, my God this movie. It had a plethora of CGI, an abundance of gizmos that allow things like breaking any law of physics and the so-called "pocket dimensions." There was a strong heroine who was not only capable of beating numerous male enemies with strength, but also allowed her heart a bit of freedom and let her emotions free instead of bottling them up in some kind of strange femme-assassin stereotype. The move was dystopian, with a leader who is horrible and sick and twisted to the extreme. This film was something new, in ways, but more of a sort of reinvention of a meme.

The movie was Ultraviolet, and it sucked.

My avid fan friend, Mr. Herring, was touting the trailer for months, showing the High Definition trailer on his parents' Mactel to anyone who would sit still long enough to see it (Which, is not too hard to do, given the amazing trailer being played on the amazing Mac box). Unfortunately for us, the trailer contained every single last bit of that movie that was even approaching anything close to decent. The movie's plot was full of holes the size of the greater Little Rock metropolitan area, there was a definite overwhelming tendency to throw massive amounts of technology and terminology inside the movie with little or no backstory behind most, or any of it. Horrible acting. A dependence on CGI as eye candy to distract the viewer from the atrocious plot was a key element, one that is insulting to anyone who has an IQ above 30.

After researching this, I found that there was a strikingly similar television series in Britain. Airing in 1998 on Channel 4, the series name was Ultraviolet. Both series are about vampiric beings, and both try to explain the vampire mythos by creating a new, more scientific basis to the mythos rather than that bloody awful demon crap. In the movie Ultraviolet it was a pathogen that made people light-sensitive and strong and fast and such. In the TV series science could beat the vampires via carbon bullets instead of stakes, allicin (an antibiotic element in garlic) gas grenades, and special ultraviolet (haha!) lamps to fry the vamps. While I'm not too sure about this, I think there's a definite correlation between the two series, enough to initially support the idea that Ultraviolet is an adaptation of Ultraviolet.

Now, Anglophilism has a firm footing in the United States. Adaptation of television shows from Britain fill our channels, with a ill-fated adaptation of the The Office being on lately, Who's Line Is It, and other type shows are around. Now, there is one show above all else that proves once and for all that British Television does not necessarily instantly mean it is better television.

People's evidence 1: Heil Honey! I'm Home!

Sweet. Jesus. Christ. In. Heaven. This show is proof, once and for all, that television is hell. The synopsis and idea definitely goes beyond the pale in terms of shock and just outright bad ideas. The synopsis is:

Adolph Hitler and Eva Braun live in suburban Berlin, right next door to the Goldensteins. Take a wild guess what ethnic/religious group they would be from. The show, despite never lasting longer than its pilot, managed to make every single Jew joke in the book.

Which book? The National Socialist's party manifesto.

The show is like some retarded cousin of I Love Lucy. The male neighbors can't stand each other, the women love each other and are responsible for most of the hijinks. For instance, Hitler orders Eva to not tell the Goldensteins that Neville Camberlain is coming over for dinner (If you don't get the irony of this thing, go back to your high school history). Of course, Eva accidentally lets this tidbit of information slip and it ruins Hitler's dinner with the PM of Britain.

I cannot bring into being the words necessary to express the ideas of lunacy and insanity that must have allowed Channel 4 to bring this show to bear. All I can say is watch it yourself and sit with your jaw open. Then look at Ultraviolet. Make your own conclusions.

Song to Aotearoa

There aren't many places in the world that cause someone to feel a certain admiration in when they read about it. No, in this cynical age all we mostly feel disdain for other nations, or laughing contempt, or even outright pity quickly erased by a very dark sense of humor. For instance, often times the only thing most Americans can talk about on the subject of France is their military track record. We all know this history too well, and we all know the jokes (Why do French rifles have rubber on the bottom? So they can throw them down without damaging them! OH NOES!). In academia, the joking takes a more professional turn when France is analyzed:

5 Republics
2 Empires
Innumerable Anarcho-Communal Interim Governments

Yes, simply put, the United States is full of cynical people now who probably delight more out of relishing the taboo and finding humor in the darkest situations one can find (A good example is an episode of Curb Your enthusiasm where Larry David finds out that his agent's cousin was a gay Jew in Poland, to which Larry laughs and responds "Some luck, eh?"). But every now and then someone will find a state or idea or person that they can trust and believe in and admire. For some, it borders on a philia as with the case of Anglophiles or even Europhiles in general. Of course, we can't overlook the otakus and their Nipponophilism.

For some time, I have considered myself an Anglophile. I love Parliament. Watching it on CSPAN is better than some pro-football games I've seen, with those Brits ranting and raving and what not. The Eye of London, Westminster Palace, 10 Downing Street, Piccadilly Circus, St. Paul's Cathedral, the Ghille, Hyde Park, Trafalger Square, Buckingham Palace, Royal Albert Hall. Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Stones, The Who, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Mescaleros. Douglas Adams, George Orwell, William Golding, HG Wells, Charles Dickens. John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, etc. You get the point.

Well, something happened recently to change my mind. The more I've been reading and studying it, I've falling more and more in love with New Zealand With many thanks to Jennifer Miller, I'm totally in the Zealophile camp. See, New Zealand is, without saying, one of the most beautiful countries in the world. Despite it being thoroughly industrialized and developed, it has escaped the ravages of industrialization that would have otherwise ruined the beautiful landscape of the two emeralds of the South Pacific. Not only that, but they have a proud history of fighting alongside their brethren in the Commonwealth and are completely dedicated to the idea of the global community and international cooperation, but not the point where their unique political views and needs are sacrificed for the whole. For instance, a US-Australia-New Zealand defense organization (ANZUS) was nullified on New Zealand's part when they refused to allow nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed ships inside their water as it was against their national ecological laws. The US cancelled their obligations to uphold the mutual defense of a nation that picked and chose their parts of allowable defense. I see it as a nation asserting their will and not being afraid to stand up for themselves. Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead.

Well, getting back to the lovely Ms. Miller, she sent me an email today with a collection of the greatest thing I have ever seen. A vodka company, 42 Below, has launched the greatest PR campaign since French Connection, United Kingdom (FCUK) launched their line of fragrances named cocaine, heroin, and so forth. Behold, I give you the greatest alcohol ads since Absolut confirmed Steve McQueen was the "absolut man."

Enjoy.








Thanks a ton, Jennifer

Serpentine Calculation

There is a fear currently gripping this nation, as well as most of the world, of a nuclear Iran. In fact, it is considered an issue with consequences and reprecussions so strong and awe-inspiring that the world is actually taking every step possible to avoid an armed confrontation instead of doing what we usually do (Proxy wars and unilateral invasions are our normal modus operandi). Despite this, it is publically known that an armed strike against the Islamic Republic's nuclear sites has not and will not be ruled out by the current administration nor any predecessor administrations. Yes, much talk is going around about a surgical airborne strike by either commandos or by stealth bombers of some sort. Maybe a mass rushing of fighter-bombers right over their targets. Maybe a B-52 flying over them with a lone Texan-esque character making the Final Ride in a Strangeloveian fashion. It is in these times that we forget the most potent weapon available to mankind.

See, the thing best suited to killing is something reptilian in nature. Cold-blooded. Methodical. Calculating. Instictive. Heat-seeing. Possibly poisonous. Possibly a constrictor. Brightly colored, or donning perfect naturl camoflauge. Titanic in scale with length larger than that of a man and weight more than a small horse, or so small and incognito that no one ever sees what it was that hit them. Silent and deadly, or hissing and loud to pysche out the opponent. Capable of stealthy escape in seconds flat, or holding their ground and inflicting fatal wounds in seconds. Yes, reptilian is an apt metaphor for the kind of cold-blooded killing machine necessary for such missions that require nerves of steel and a constantly flicking tongue.

In fact, the United States has in its past experimented not with instilling this values in its men in uniform, but rather putting uniforms on these things that embody these traits best. During the Great War, it was an alligator hailing from Louisiana that stored in the Red Baron's plane that finished him off. During the Revolutionary War, the famous Turtle was not so much a ingenious sub design so much as it was a powder-laden sea turtle. After attempting a brief tenure with mollusks and a botched under-the-table-bomb with a squid against Hitler, the United States renewed its reptillian agenda with new fervor, inflicting enormous casualties in North Africa by unveiling the simultaneous new tactics of carpet bombing and heavy usage of the spitting cobra bomb. It was during the Cold War that the Department of Defense (DoD) found the greatest reptile suited for the task. After a strategy meeting, the DoD found one reptile above all else was perfect for weaponization.

What was it that led to the downfall of man in the Garden of Eden according to lore?

What was it that killed Cleopatra?

What are poisonous, primitive creatures that slither and slide and frighten us to our core, making us pull our feet back in fear from under dark desks and away from the undersides of beds?

What was the Anaconda Plan, that infamous Union plan to destroy the Confederacy, named after?

What is the one and only goddamn thing that Indiana Jones is scared of?

SNAKES

Having decided on the weapon, there was still a question of delivery, with careful consideration for realistic limitations, cost vs. benefit, research and development, and so on and so forth. Looking at the vast American arsenal that lay before them, the DoD took into consideration intercontinetal ballistic missiles, sub-launched ballistic missiles, artillery shell delivery methods, amphibious ship delivery, and even inserting snake "sleeper cells" deep into Soviet territory that only required an encoded message to go from incongruous Soviet ctizens to insane killing machines (In fact, there are still some of these cells waiting for the code word in the zoos of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kiev, Odessa, and Minsk, relics of a bygone time). After much deliberation, the delivery platform was decided upon as well.

What was the vehicle that allowed the Pearl Harbor attacks to be so successful?

What also allowed the bombings of London, Dreisedn, Berlin, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki possible?

What vehicle did Tom Clancy use to destroy a joint session of Congress in his book Debt of Honor?

What started the War on Terror?

What did Americans invent before anyone else could?

PLANES

So, what is the most terrifying weapons that this world has ever seen? A weapon so frightning and awe-inspiring that calling it Biblical would be an understatement? A weapons system so fear-inspiring that it would have even more of a deterrent capability than our aging nuclear arsenal?

SNAKES ON A PLANE.

Allahu ackbar.

In Praise of Longshanks

What else can one say for Wales besides it has geographical situation in the British Isles analogous to an appendix?

Well, as my good friend Eric Turner describes it, "The Welsh are Irish who couldnt swim and have the first known language created by bashing a keyboard." I'll come back to the keyboard thing later, I want to talk about Wales proper. With such scenic names for hamlets like Gorsafawddacha'idraigodanheddogleddollônpenrhynareurdraethceredigion and Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, who wouldn't want to visit one of the constiuent nations in the United Kingdom, one that can lay claim to such national treasures as the flocks of sheep that roam the rocky hills and barrows of the principality?

Simply put, Wales is insane. I mean it in every sense of the word. One need only to look at the two town names listed above to realize this in a superficial manner, but a more in-depth discussion of Welsh history via their own language helps to convey this point more cloesly and in an indsiputable manner:

'r Cymraeg , cara odiaeth Celtic bobloedd , ca 'n hwy hanes 'n reddfol i mewn 'n hwy 'n arddun caerau chan haggus a fawn. 'r Cymraeg made enw achos themselves ar ôl yn adeiladu 'n hwy brifddinas caer chan Hagguspeatgerg , 'r 'n amlyca haggus a fawn caer y tu allan i chan Budapest , a gostega arferiadau hyn 'n organaidd ddefnyddiau i mewn adeiladaeth at hon iawn ddiwrnod. Rhywbryd am 'r chordda chan 'r calendr Cymru benderfynedig at arhosa yn bod fel gwareiddiad a jyst anhedda i lawr fel bagad chan dafad amaethwyr a jyst fel damweiniedig at areithia yr un dafodiaith. 'n hysbys chan 'r yn prifio bygwth chan 'r Saesneg , hynny Celts a could nofia did fel a 'n ddihangol at Eyre blwc arall ran gogledd a ymarferedig yn ergydio logs a yn llithro chlegrau ar draws hiâ blwc yn gwisgo kilts mewn gobeithia a 'r Saesneg would ca 'u fel bizzare a goresgyniad barnwyd 'n orffwyllog cystal ( 'n Anffodus achos 'r Albanwyr , 'n hwy herwhela chan yn taro feinedd b i mewn i feinedd dyllu lawer buarthau ar gerdded 18 adegau ar barnwyd esmwythyd fabolgamp at 'r Saesneg a 'n barod goresgynedig ). Bu yn ystod hon amsera 'r Cymraeg discovered baen 'n anllythrennog fel chrynswth. Hefyd , bu yn ystod hon amsera na Darwin a eiddo damcaniaeth involving filiwn epaod acha deipiedyddion came at 'r hystyriaeth chan 'r Cymraeg 130 blynedd ar ôl 'r chyhoeddiad chan Gwreiddyn chan Rhywogaeth yn ystod 'r ddyfodiad chan 'r Chyfrifiadur Heneiddia. Yn gobeithio at ddod hon damcaniaeth at test , arbenigwr banel chan simians aeddfedwyd a archebedig at chlepia i maes chyfres chan chymeriadau acha allweddell. Hun canlyniad was fel yn boddhau at barnwr a bu benderfynedig 'n hwy 'n gyfa 'n genedlaethol 'n ysgrifenedig dafodiaith. Fel , 'r yn clepian chan a syphillitic cynddeiriogedig epa ag 'n dlawd eyesight a a 'n anaelau chyflwr chan chynddaredd 'n droëdig i mewn i 'r 'n genedlaethol dafodiaith chan Cymru.

In simple, basic, God-bless-Edward I-for-conquering-them English, it goes something like this:

The Welsh, like most Celtic peoples, have their history rooted in their beautiful cities of haggus and peat. The Welsh made a name for themselves after constructing their capital city of Hagguspeatgerg, the most famous haggus and peat city outside of Budapest, which still uses these organic materials in construction to this very day. Sometime around the turn of the calendar Wales decided to stop existing as a civilization and just settle down as a bunch of sheep farmers who just so happened to speak the same language. Aware of the growing threat of the English, those Celts who could swim did so and escaped to Eyre while other ran north and practiced throwing logs and sliding rocks across ice while wearing kilts in a hope that the English would find them so bizzare that invasion was deemed insane as well (Unfortunately for the Scots, their game of hitting a small ball into a small hole many yards away 18 times over was deemed a luxury sport by the English who promptly invaded).

It was during this time the Welsh discovered they were illiterate as a whole. Also, it was during this time than Darwin and his theory involving a million monkeys on typewriters came to the attention of the Welsh 130 years after the publication of Origin of Species during the advent of the Computer Age. Hoping to put this theory to test, an expert panel of simians was gathered and ordered to bang out a series of characters on a keyboard. One result was so pleasing to a judge that it was decided their entire national written language. Thus, the banging of a syphillitic enraged monkey with poor eyesight and a fatal case of rabies turned into the national language of Wales.

Yes, Wales will always be an oddity in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and North Ireland. Even when compared to the kilt-wearing, haggus-eating, log-throwing, bagpipe-playing Scots, Wales still comes in at number one for stranges principality in the UK simply out of virtue of one of the most insane languages ever seen in the Latin alphabet. Even Serbian and Bosnian looks great in Latin compared to that mess. There's a reason they have no representation in the Union Jack. Now you know why.

Codified Proselytizing

Within a few weeks, the University of Central Arkansas was visited by two different groups of far-right Christian proselytizers, come to spread the gospel of hellfire, damnation, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and other messages of Jesus Christ's love for humanity.  It's all in the Bible, under the Gospel of Douche and the Epistle to the Westboro Baptist Church.  If you don't have the same version as these fine exemplars of Christ's love then I'm afraid that you've just bought yourself a one-way express ticket to hell.  Also, if you're a male and have long hair, shorts, premarital sex, drink, smoke (anything at all, including tires when showing off for some Sigma Kappa's on the sidewalk), are Catholic, masturbate, curse, or don't give unquestioning drone-like service to the Republican Party you will go to hell.  If you're a female, then you're going to hell if you have short hair, wear short skirts, tank tops, spaghetti strap tops, halter tops, tube tops, smoke, drink, curse, have premarital sex, take or practice any birth control, aren't subservient to a male of any sort, or adorn yourself with jewelry.

The second group, a group of people who looked like a fine collection of rejected extras from Witness with their bonnets and skirts and whatnot, had probably the most offensive display of pro-life paraphenalia I have ever seen.  There's one way of going about informing people of the pro-life arguments, and then there's forcing your beliefs down someone else's throats by abusing a free speech area to fill it with repulsive images of supposed abortions right outside of where people eat lunch.  What are you trying to prove?  That you have no sense of where to draw the line?  That your life is so pathetic and worthless you have to forgo a normal life for yourself and your children to throw your collective efforts into a cause so you can have enough meaning in your life to justify you not being aborted?  Indecent in the least, and absolutely disgusting at the most, this is just a more radical version of a geist that has been sweeping UCA for some time now:  Over-zealous Christian proselytizing.

What is it that makes these people think and act the way they do?  Why do these people pursue their goals with a fervor equal to that of a mujahedin?  Well, luckily for us, there have been numerous excavations done in Israel in recent years, uncovering a plethora of ancient Christian texts and various materials.  The Gospel of Judas has filled our news recently, but there have been numerous unearthings just as important as this apocryphal text, one in particular.  Found in an Essene fortress close the Dead Sea, a simple list carved into a stone tablet in classical Hebrew discloses a set of rules for the budding religion of Christianity and its adherents.  Without any further time wasted on trivial details, I give you the Ten Commandments For On-Campus Protestant Proselytizing.  (Amazing that this actually predates Protestantism by a good 1300 years.  Our God is an awesome God, and crap.)

I - Thou shalt not recognize nor respect the simple command of "no."  Yea, these heathens are but an uneducated lot, who must be taught the particular version of the Gospel that thou hath adhered to by promising fealty to the (name of particular sect is missing here).  Much like the babe who will not sip upon a cup of warm ale to cure his colic, the Word of Our Saviour must be forced down their throats in order to save their wretched and unworthy souls from the damnation that they other deserve (and we still secretly believe they are going to).

II - Thou shalt act in accordance with that of an oppressed minority when rejected by an infidel, even though thou art the clear majority in the nation, being white, middle class, and Protestant.
Yea, for whilst thou art simply a religious professionary, your rejection means that you are, most assuredly, being rejected because thou art Christian.  Let there be woe!  Gnashing of teeth!  Crying!  Whining!  Seeking of camaraderie and empathy from other people in a comparable and secure socio-economic standing.  Yea, for whilst thou art spared the lions and the cross and the floggings and public humiliation and immolation and slave labor that befell your religious forefathers, you must believe and claim that you are as, nay more! persecuted than ever before despite the fact that ye constitute well over 65% of the nation's religious identity.

III - Thou shalt abuse free speech areas for radical diatribes of whatever Christian ideology you have.
Thou shalt read the introductory paragraphs to see what model thou shalt follow.

IV - Thou shalt adopt a seemingly innocuous appearance of nomenclature to make the congress of believers seem more "cool."
Verily, calling thine church services on Wednesday night "Wednesday Night Worship Service" is not enough!  Take on a name worthy of a failed PR campaign for a nightclub!  Thou shalt design a logo and make flyers, banners, bumper stickers, and keychains!  Thine name shall be of a most short nature, like StuMo, The Rock, The Well, Elevation, WOW, 2fifty2, WOW, YOW, Ye Church ALIVE!, The House, and Greek letters that are only slightly incognito on campus.

V - Thou shalt try to lure people into taking the Gospel by offering them a most generous slicing of pizza.
Ethics be not of concern!  Ye Olde Gospel is of priority to thee!  Not telling the folk partaking of the pizza and the chips and Dr. Pepper gone flat in plastic two liter bottles is a tacit, and subconscious, encouragement for the witnessing of the Gospel!

VI - Thou shalt have not a single second of education in theology nor philosophy, yet thou shalt declare thine self a theological prodigy.
Whilst this may appear contrary to the cause of Mother Church(es), it is most necessary.  Yea, spouting thine mouth off on basic philosophical issues and misinterpreted verses to anyone who will listen to thine idiotic banter is the most Christian thing a true believer can do.  Verily, making statements contrary to Christian theology and arguments such as humans will never understand the God who made us is the most Christian of arguments and will most assuredly draw heathens into the fold.

VII - Thou shalt not convey love, nor peace, nor hope, nor anything of Christ.
Verily, thou shall use a most illogical version of reverse pyschology to draw them into the faith of a man who preached unconditional love, peace, friendliness, acts of kindness, and so forth.  Yea, thou shalt be ornery, cold, unresponsive, elitist, gossipy, and as hypocritical as possible for this will appeal to their heathen intellects in some manner which we haven't thought out yet.

VIII - Thou shalt decry everything as a sin, worthy of much damnation and hellfire!
Sex, cigarettes, rock music, movies, Democrats, homosexuality, fine art, fine wine, fine cheese, Europe, Russia, Communism, free-trade agreements, foreigners, Jews, Oxygen TV, Disney, clothes, hairstyles, caffeine (for Mormons), the internet, secularism, humanism, philosophy, foreign-made cars, books not printed on onion paper, not going to church on Sunday, intelligence, critical thought, questioning the God-given mandate of the GOP, Barack Obama, abortion, microfibers, not driving SUVs, hybrid cars, not buying magnetic ribbons, not reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, the Bill of Rights.

IX - Thou shalt fuse politics and religion in one most highly divine mixture of bumper stickers and ill-informed single-issue votes.
The democratic process shalt be yet one more arena in which thou shalt bring the logic of all the above steps into half-informed political manifestos.  Yea, though not a single Republican hath taken a single step towards banning or limiting abortion, making them pro-choice by default, the votes of your spiritual brethren shall most assuredly be in their favor.  Also, God loves guns and every single Founding Father had a most red sanguine fluid basis to their life and was a God-fearing (name of sect missing).

X - Thou shalt, in a most impressive combination of any of the above commandments, make such an ass of thine self that any hopes for conversion is shot whilst either ruining a day for a heathen or providing unintentional comedic relief.

An Ethos for our Time.

"What Would Jesus Do?"

A fine question to ask one's self, the most personal idea of imitatio dei that has come about in recent times. This Christian revolution which, for all intents and purposes was just another clothing fad and directly predates the rubber bracelets we all wear today, but had some meat to its ideology. Who better for a Christian to try and live up to than their ultimate moral exemplar? Who better for Christians to emulate than the one who selflessly offered help to the poor and sick, fed masses (with a little help from a divine power), cured people with little care for return payment, and would smite the occasional fruit tree for not fulfilling its purpose. All but the last one considered, it is a worthy and admirable cause to try and follow the example of Jesus of Nazareth.

Too bad our world isn't ready for it. No, our world needs something that deals with the problems of today, today. It needs something that is strong and fair, but isn't afraid of self-defense and amazingly strong tactics. We need someone to follow who could truly stun the world over with his amazing prowess in multiple areas like escaping POW camps, driving Mustangs, playing poker, and getting the hot chicks, and all without having to fire more shots from his gun than necessary. He does it through intellect, homegrown skills, and pure manliness. Ladies and gentlemen, ask yourself from now on....

What Would Steve McQueen Do?

Yea, through a riveting Q&A session, let me prove to thou the validity of this one great lord. Our communion of raw steaks and black coffee, fitting of our lord, shall be served afterwards:

Q: O! cruel fate. Verily, I hath been incarcerated in a camp designed for the purpose of holding prisoners of war. How doth one go about securing the wherewithal to escape this most auspicious of prisons?
A: Truer words hath never been spoken, you are in a most fortunate spot. When thou doth ask WWSMcQD?, or more simply WWSMD?, remember these simple, easy to follow steps. First, thou shalt be a royal pain in the ass to the vanguard soldiers securing you stay in this facility. Then, thou shalt be constantly confined to a confinement that is indubitably solitary. Finally, thou shalt be let in on a adventure, romantic though it may be, to escape and flee across the verdant pastoral hills of Bavaria towards the land of the Swiss on a motorbike. Indeed, thou shalt be so fast in your flight, you shall arrive at your destination before a aeroplane in flight can. So sayeth the Book of the Great Escape

Q: Blast! A man I meant to converse with in a most interogative manner hath escaped in his Dodge Charger? Whatever is a person in my unfortunate position to do?
A: This one is quite simple, childe. Mount your iron-sided Mustang and give chase through the hills of San Francisco! Yea, our lord rewards his followers well, for your quandry will inevitably experience a crashing and burning the likes of which have not been seen since the Gospel of Bullitt.

Q: A desperate commune of yeomen have beseeched me for my help in defending their town from a gang of ignoble ruffians. Shall I help them?
A: Aye, help them. But beware! For while one man may be able to take down a platoon or even divison of stormtroopers, Western bandits are of a higher calibre. Thou wilst need at least 6 more men of a most magnificent character to defend this urban collective, all for the most meager of prices as our lord did in the epic The Magnificent Seven.

Q: I'm a Hollywood actor looking to make more money in my movies. How do I do so?
A: Do your stunts like the great Steve McQueen, ass.