Tuesday, January 7, 2003 (original)

New for the new year, a week late Forgot I had this one hanging round in the "ready to post" buffer ... I'm bored. I want to launch a jihad against someone. Any suggestions? I thought about taking on the weblog that this young chap's parents write for him, but it kind of seems like bullying. Not saying that I'm not going to do it, just making conversation; it seems like bullying. Also, I don't really care about Israel all that much, though I do note that it would be really quite funny for anyone who doesn't like the proponent of "benshapiroonline" to continually post sharply worded critiques of it every Friday evening to see whether his religious faith in keeping the Sabbath is greater than his desire to shoot his mouth off. Anyway, I don't think I'm going to, no matter how much fun it would be, mainly because there's something weird about that "benshapiroonline" site. When you click on a link to one of the articles, something about the way that the site loads means that it shows you the picture of Ben for a fraction of a second before scrolling down really quickly to the article. Which means that I've got a retinal image of Ben floating over the page as I read his writing, and it's rather disturbing. Thank God subliminal advertising doesn't work, or there's no telling what I might do. But anyway, impossible as it sounds, unassuming chap like myself, I find that I have run out of enemies. I suppose I really ought to continue my lifelong crusade against Eric Raymond, but frankly, can I be bothered? If anyone can come up with a suitable target, I will award a small prize (please note; I amusing the word "award" here in an extended, metaphorical sense which does not carry any implications that you'll actually get anything). Otherwise, I guess it's going to be Den Beste, without any great enthusiasm.

Wednesday, February 5, 2003 (original)
Responding to this, this, and this respectively

Shorter Steven den Beste As part of my New Year's Resolution to pick a really nasty fight with someone, and as a potential supply of more regular updates, I've decided to become a "watcher". I believe that this was all the rage in weblog circles about a year ago. Anyway, I want to do it, and nobody convinced me that there were better targets for a jihad than Stephen den Beste, so I picked him. It also helps that, as far as I can tell, he's incredibly thin-skinned (see my comments board somewhere for proof). Now, I thought of doing "Smarter Steven den Beste" (note that part of my strategy is not to use a consistent spelling of his first name), but that would probably completely dominate my blog, and besides "fisking" is like so five minutes ago. (Being a "watcher", however, is retro and cool). Besides, people don't necessarily want a Smarter Stephen den Beste. Part of the joy is watching a man who knows nothing about anything except the innards of mobile phones trying to understand a complicated world around him with no sources of information other than the Internet. What people want is a Shorter Stephen den Beste; one that doesn't take about ten thousand words to get from A to halfway through the downstroke of B. So I'll be posting one-sentence summaries of posts on the USS Clueless, on a reasonably regular basis, until I get bored. Here's today's batch: I've never served in uniform. My dislike of the French is independent of any facts about the world. No thanks, please, I do it for the love. Update: Fuck me, this is gonna be more work than I thought. Here's another one: I have intricate knowledge of the command and control structure of the Iraqi Army, and astonishingly enough, the news is Good For The War Party!

Wednesday, February 5 (original)
Responding to this

Shorter Steven den Beste more dispatches from this already rather onerous task: Boy have the French fucked up, assuming that my predictions of imminent rebellion by French Muslims and a cessation of diplomatic relations with the US are correct.

Thursday, February 6, 2003 (original)
Responding to this

Oh yeh, and a quick Shorter Stephen den Beste: (actually quite a succint post, but I skimmed it for meaning): Did I tell you how we could win this without France? Oh, right.

Thursday, February 6, 2003 (original)
Responding to this, this and