Magic talisman fail

I've repeatedly stated that guns are not a magic talisman and are no substitute for common sense and awareness of your surroundings. So here's a scenario for you. You are asleep at night in your tent in a campground, and you wake up to hear a bear rummaging through your ice chest. Do you:

• a) roll over and go back to sleep, knowing that you moved all the food from the ice chest into a bear-proof canister before going to bed and thus the bear is going to go away in a bit,
• b) grab a couple of pots and pans, unzip your tent, stand up to look tall, and start clanging and shouting in an attempt to scare the bear away, or
• c) grab your .45 ACP and a flashlight, and charge at the bear yelling at him "Go away or I'll shoot you!"?

If you chose c), congratulations, you're a dumbass and the bear's gonna tear ya a new asshole and shove that .45 up your bunghole. If you're going to haul a gun, use it. Don't wave it around like a magic talisman. The dumbass managed to pull the trigger as the bear yanked it out of his hand, and the noise did scare the bear away before the bear finished ramming the thing up his ass, but what this goes to show is that if you add stupidity (not putting your food into a bear-proof canister before going to bed) to guns, what you get is... uhm... stupidity with guns. Doh!

So anyhow, this dumbass managed to get a bear killed due to his stupidity. I hope he feels proud of himself, 23 stitches and all.

-- Badtux the Bearly Penguin

Bigfoot!

He turns out to be... a rubber Halloween costume.

Yet last week newspapers were uncritically printing press releases about how these jokers had found Bigfoot, had DNA, and so forth. It just goes to show you what kind of press we have here in America -- stenographers. Useless stenographers. You could replace pretty much every reporter in the American media with a tape recorder operated by a trained monkey without any difference in the quality of the "reporting".

-- Badtux the Media Penguin

A wonderful opportunity

We should just re-post Jonathan Schwartz's damning indictment of the so-called "leaders" of the hairless monkeys that infest this planet on every anniversary of 9/11. He said all that needed to be said. You might think that the following photo, of a now-orphaned girl who just had her family slaughtered before her very eyes by U.S. soldiers jumpy about suicide bombers, as a tragedy: But that is because you are a follower, not a leader. You are the ruled, not the ruler. To the deranged sociopaths who are the rulers of the hairless monkeys infesting this planet, this is an enormous opportunity. The money quote:

For normal people, it's an unmitigated tragedy when their fellow citizens are killed in terrorist attacks or wars. Normal people cry, become afraid, and think of children who now have no parents and parents who now have no children.

For our would-be "leaders," however—in every country—the situation is different. Of course, they pretend to feel the same as normal people. They give teary-eyed speeches about sorrow and suffering.

And yet, behind their tears, there seems to be something else. When they think no one is looking, you glimpse another expression flitting across their face. You think it couldn't be. But—yes, incredibly enough, they're smiling. Because before the bodies are cold, before the mothers have stopped shrieking, our leaders are thinking:

This is really a FANTASTIC OPPORTUNITY. And for them it is. It's an opportunity for them to do whatever they wanted to do before, but couldn't get away with. It's an opportunity for them to smear anyone who criticizes them as disloyal. It's an opportunity for them to become much more powerful than they ever could be in peacetime. Leaders love war. That's why there's so much of it.

Will the sheeple look up? Probably not. They never have before, after all. It is the very nature of a monkey to blindly follow its alpha male and hoot and howl and throw feces at monkeys from other troops of monkeys. Expecting more of the hairless monkeys called "humans" is futile. Sadly, a penguin in a time of chimpanzees is doomed to disappointment.

- Badtux the un-snarky Penguin

A question of color

One of the interesting things about being a Linux penguin is that Linux penguins have multi-colored plumage -- black, white, yellow, and maybe even a little green or red for the head fringe. So when this penguin hears about people being discriminated against because of their color, this penguin is confused. I've noticed people with a wide variety of plumage in positions of power, black plumage, red plumage, blonde plumage, grey plumage, what does a person's plumage have to do with it?

So I searched high and low and lo and behold, I have now found a case where a family is discriminated against because of their red plumage. While this penguin is not quite sure why red plumage would be an issue, at least it makes more sense than using the color of the skin underneath the plumage to judge the character of the person. I mean, c'mon. Even a fine-feathered waddling waterfowl knows that it's the color of the plumage, not the color of the skin under the plumage, that counts!

Sheesh. Monkeys. For you bald ones out there, how do you tell the difference between each other anyhow? Bald monkeys all look the same to me, whether we're talking Michael Jordan or Yul Brynner. Without plumage, how can you tell the difference?

-- Badtux the Well-plumed Penguin

How can you tell the difference, this penguin asks? They just look like monkeys to me!

Bipolar disorder

Black or white. Good or evil. Liberal or conservative. If you ain't wit us you agin' us. Ever notice that some monkeys seperate the world into two different poles and sort everything into those two poles, without ever acknowledging any shades of gray? It must be sad to have such a bipolar disorder, where you see only two poles - "us" and "them". As a black and white and yellow penguin in a world of monochromic monkeys, I can only express puzzlement at the inability of monochromic monkeys to see anything that is both black and white. Instead, they only see the color that they want to see, at which point this penguin becomes a white penguin for those who want to see white, and a black penguin for those who want to see black. Or a "liberal" penguin for those who want to see "liberal", or a "conservative" penguin for those who want to see "conservative". Sad, really. How odd, these monkeys that can see only one color at a time, and never revel in the black and white and yellow and green extravagance of the universe!

-- Badtux the Multi-colored Penguin