Man of the Year

I resolutely do not go out in quest of news like this, but this just popped up in my inbox:

Canada: le «dépeceur» élu personnalité de l'année 2012

Les rédactions de presse au Canada ont élu Luka Rocco Magnotta, le «dépeceur de Montréal», l'homme qui a le plus marqué l'actualité en 2012 dans le pays.

You can read our commentary here:

Necrophilia -- Not that there’s Anything Wrong With That

And for a chilling meditation on sin and redemption,

The Penitent and the Impenitent Thief

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Got a Nook for Christmas?

Mazel tov!
Quick, stock it with the best in detective fiction:

http://murphybros.blogspot.com/p/read-murphy-on-your-nook.html

Things like this:

Murphy on the Mount

This is the first novel-length story featuring Michael X. Murphy and his brother Joey. Murphy takes on the most impossible of cases,
no leads, no clues, and then no client!

As the case unfolds, however, Murphy learns of the "Blasphemy Against the Holy Spirit"--the unpardonable sin! He proceeds with the
case now burdened with the concern that he may already have committed it and is thus irretrievably lost.

Murphy on the Mount is a humorous, thoughtful, and ultimately triumphant story of forgiveness and redemption.

(This, for less than a side of fries.)

Don't Mention It

This story first appeared in Alfred Hitchcock in May, 1988. It is included in the collection I Don't Do Divorce Cases, but if you're  looking for a single story to start your exploration of the world of Murphy, it's a classic example of David Justice's style.

Murphy and Joey start into what seems like a normal missing person case. But curious inconsistencies emerge in the client's tale.

(This, for less than the price of a pickle.)

WDJ: *Another* abject retraction

For reasons that utterly escape us, the slight post below now holds the record for the most-viewed item on this site.  More puzzling still, most of the pageviews occurred after Mitt What’s-His-Name became no more than a grease-spot on the buttocks of History.  Surely its ephemeral japery is by now O.B.E.

The suspicion, indeed, arises, that most of the supposed viewers are not real readers, but trolling robots.  To foil their evil schemes, we have removed the post from its original situs, and we re-post it here -- without a live link to this one  that a web-bot could exploit.

We’ll see.

While we’re at it, though, we cannot refrain from noting that the news of Mitt Romney being actually Black -- an exclusive scoop of the World of Dr Justice -- has now been explicitly confirmed by the President himself.   --  What, you don’t believe me?   Then witness this documentary footage, and believe your ears and eyes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlwilbVYvUg

Never doubt me again.

*     *     *

~ Commercial break ~

Relief for beleaguered Nook lovers!

http://murphybros.blogspot.com/p/read-murphy-on-your-nook.html

We now return you to your regularly scheduled essay.

*     *     *

~ ~ Original Post   ~ ~

WDJ:  Another abject retraction

It seems to be our sorry lot at this site  to release sensational revelations, the Talk of the Web, only to learn that we misspoke.  (Sad examples  here and here.)   Such is once again alas the case;  and once again the controversy concerns Mr. Mitford “Mitt” Romney, former moderate, former and future corporate raider, and current President-for-Life of People’s Islamic Azawad. 

This site was the first  outside of compartmented channels  to reveal that Mr. Mitt “Witt” Romney is -- to all appearances -- Black.  But appearances can be deceiving.

In a carefully-worded response to our claim, the Romney campaign would confirm only that the candidate is “of African descent”.   But which -- Maghrebi or Sub-Saharan?  It makes a difference.  The Arabs and Berbers of the Maghreb, howsoever dusky of hue, belong linguistically (and thus, in a loose sense, racially) to the Hamito-Semitic group, rather than to the Negroid (this latter group, or granfalloon, having a certain vague physical coherence, with some notable exceptions, and too much linguistic diversity to fall under any taxonomic rubric -- but we are informally using the traditional sub-scientific term) would not normally be referred to as  “Black”.  So which is it?

*     *     *

~ Commercial break ~

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TWpcZGE_q4

We now return you to your regularly scheduled essay.

*     *     *

I put the question to the candidate himself the other day, down at the yacht club, over drinks (single-malt in my case, Diet Cherry Coke in his).   So which is it, “Mitt”?

Whereupon Romney, speaking through an interpreter in his native Tifinagh, replied:

        “Oogoo-boogoo wagah,  noogoo-loogoo babah.”

(The interpreter wasn’t very good.)

Over at the bar, Romney’s prospective running-mate Donald Trump, speaking out of his anus, added:

“A Trump and Romney ticket is now accepted as inevitable.  But -- which of us will be at the top of the ticket?  That’s where the bookies are making odds.  Visit any of my casinos to grab a piece of the action.”

With that, the magnate winked, and clutched his crotch.

Frustrated, we put the question directly to his campaign staff:   From whence does Mitt “Mitt” Romney hail -- the Maghreb, or the Dark Continent beneath the Sahara?

After a hasty whispered conversation, a staffer replied:

“Whichever will offend the fewest voters.”

~ ~ This message brought to you by  Slow Boaters for Truthitude ~ ~

 For an equally extravagant fantasy, check this out:

Murphy Makes a Mitzvah

Toe-to-toe at the OK Corral

[An appendix to this post]

In an effort  better to understand the psychology of gun nuts  Second-Amendment fundamentalists, we’ll post from time to time  such anecdotes as may throw light on this.  The point is not to highlight fringe cases, but to explore what is indisputably a large part of the American mainstream -- and which has, after all, largely had its way, via the legislative process.

The following, for instance, which appeared in this morning’s Washington Post, does not concern some marginal wacko, but an actual Republican House majority leader.  Oh, wait …

FreedomWorks tea party group  nearly falls apart in fight between old and new guard

December 25

The day after Labor Day, just as campaign season was entering its final frenzy, FreedomWorks, the Washington-based tea party organization, went into free fall.

Richard K. Armey, the group’s chairman and a former House majority leader, walked into the group’s Capitol Hill offices with his wife, Susan, and an aide holstering a handgun at his waist. The aim was to seize control of the group and expel Armey’s enemies: The gun-wielding assistant escorted FreedomWorks’ top two employees off the premises, while Armey suspended several others who broke down in sobs at the news.

The coup lasted all of six days. By Sept. 10, Armey was gone — with a promise of $8 million — and the five ousted employees were back.

Presumably the moral of the story (NRA-style)  is that this tragic incident never would have happened, if only those two top employees had themselves been heavily armed.   Then Armey would have been outgunned.  Or, if he too was packing (concealed), they could have simply had a shoot-out, may the better man win.

The fellow who is to cough up the eight million is himself a pretty interesting character:

The force behind their return was Richard J. Stephenson, a reclusive Illinois millionaire who has exerted increasing control over one of Washington’s most influential conservative grass-roots organizations.

Stephenson wanted a substantial sum spent in support of Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), a tea party favorite and Stephenson’s local congressman, several who attended the retreat recalled. Walsh garnered national headlines during the campaign when he questioned whether his opponent, Tammy Duckworth, a former Blackhawk helicopter pilot who lost both legs in Iraq, was a “true hero.”

It is apparent that such thinking cannot be understood as simply lying at this point or that point on the traditional politico-economic spectrum from liberal to conservative.   Something else is going on.

* * *

Disclaimer:

Lest anyone imagine that I harbor mean and hurtful thoughts about guns per se,

check out the action at the site of my buddy,

the two-fisted, pistol-packing, wise-cracking pre-Consiliar private eye,

Murphy!

http://murphybros.blogspot.com/

* * *

[Update]  That crack about the “shoot-out” was intended as satire -- and not very trenchant satire at that, since it presumably portrays the principles as more extreme than they really are.  And yet someone just posted the following response to the WaPo article:

Liberals and other misguided leftists (are there really any other kind?) of course fail to take the lesson that this article contains. 
 Well, here's one lone American patriot who has. 
 If the three weeping women had Bushmasters--the gun of choice of patriots and "responsible" gun owners, they wouldn't have been weeping. And they might have watered the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants.  
 …  It seems that Brother Dick hasn't got his "man card" yet or he would have been carrying. 

Now, to me, that reads like satire as well, and rather broader.  Yet apparently a number of readers took it seriously,  and got all in a worrit.  These were then scolded by another poster,  saying that the original poster showed “irony …  so plain that his tongue was practically sticking out the other cheek? Lighten up, people.”

Since I don’t know anything about the original poster, I can’t be sure whether it reflects his actual politics.  Nor is that in itself of the least importance.    The point here is simply that it has become difficult, in some cases, to distinguish between satire and actual delusion.

[Update]  You can skip this next item, in that it does not feature prominent mainstream figures; but it does give an (acrid) aroma  of the terms of the 'debate':

The Journal News of White Plains, N.Y., on Saturday posted an interactive map with the names and addresses of handgun permit owners in New York’s Westchester and Rockland counties. Gun owners — many outside of the paper’s readership — considered the map and accompanying story a provocation and the liberal declaration of war they widely feared. All of which led the conversation to take a markedly nasty turn.

Some conservative blogs published the names and home addresses of the paper’s publisher, Janet Hasson, and its reporters and editors, including the man responsible for “Comics, crosswords, Jumble, Sudoku, movie clock.”

“Merry Christmas, Eva Braun/Janet Hasson!” read one blogger’s headline. “So. You want to use your liberal rag to publish the names and addresses of legal conceal carry gun owners in your area? Okay. But don’t whine squeal like a little stuck Gestapo agent when the tables are turned, Ms Hasson.” Jeffersonian, a commenter at Sauce for the Goose, wrote “Nice house. Wooded lot, too. Lots of places to hide.” Syuck in NY. . . . For Now added “Lol. That was the 1st thing I thought of when viewing those pics of her palace!”

The target expanded to include the home phone number and address of Gracia Martore, chief executive of the paper’s parent group, Gannett. (“House is loaded with highly valuable easily transprtable [sic] items,’’ a poster identified only as “vintovka” wrote on a Web site for assault rifle enthusiasts, according to Gannett’s blog. “As a promonent [sic] liberal from suburban D.C. she probably goes to a lot of well publisised [sic] funerals, during which her house would be empty.”)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ny-newspaper-posts-gun-permit-map-starts-nasty-online-battle/2012/12/26/747ae7d6-4fb0-11e2-950a-7863a013264b_print.html

[Update 13 January 2013]   A more significant update, indicating that we are dealing not just with lone-wolf loose-cannons, but those who figure largely in the Republican Party:

Undercover 'supply sergeant' helped bring down Alaska militia

In another life, William Fulton was "Drop Zone Bill," a bounty hunter who ran a military surplus store in Anchorage. You need a tactical vest? A bayonet that would clip neatly onto an M-4? Bill Fulton was your man.

"We do bad things to bad people," his company jackets said.

Fulton was also a go-to guy for Republican politicians who occasionally needed to reach out to the far right fringes of the party — those who spent weekends in the woods in camo gear and considered the 2nd Amendment an expression of divine intent.

When then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was plotting a move against the Republican Party chief at the state convention in 2008, Fulton was there strategizing over whiskey and cigars with Palin staffer Frank Bailey and Joe Miller, who later made a well-publicized run for the U.S. Senate as a tea party conservative.

That was the meeting where Fulton was introduced to Schaeffer Cox, an up-and-coming young firebrand of the far right who was running for the state Legislature and had, as it turned out, plans that went well beyond upending the Republican Party in Alaska.

It was a meeting that opened the door to a dangerous cat-and-mouse game that would transform the two men's lives and leave them at opposite ends of one of the federal government's biggest prosecutions of right-wing extremism on the West Coast.

Cox, 28, was sentenced Tuesday to 25 years in prison for heading a militia that plotted to kill judges and other government employees …

[Update 14 Jan 2013]  A fascinating glimpse of the sociopolitics of the NRA milieu, by Joel Achenbach:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-nras-true-believers-converted-a-marksmanship-group-into-a-mighty-gun-lobby/2013/01/12/51c62288-59b9-11e2-88d0-c4cf65c3ad15_print.html

[Update 9 Aug 2014

In nearly 30 years at Heckler & Koch, a legendary German gunmaker, Ernst Mauch designed some of the world’s most lethal weapons, including the one that reportedly killed Osama bin Laden.

Now the gun world sees him a different way: as a traitor. The target of their fury is the smart gun Mauch designed at Armatix, a start-up near Munich. The very concept of the weapon has been attacked by U.S. gun rights advocates even as it has helped Mauch resolve a sense of guilt that has haunted him his entire career. He knows children have killed each other with his guns. Crimes have been committed with them.

“It hurts my heart,” the 58-year-old gun designer said.

Mauch’s solution, the iP1, can be personalized so it only fires if the gun’s rightful owner is wearing a special watch connected wirelessly to the weapon.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/a-german-gunmakers-quest-for-a-smarter-weapon-infuriates-us-gun-rights-advocates/2014/08/06/4c78fd82-18cb-11e4-9349-84d4a85be981_story.html

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Seasons & Ceremonies

I have always been glad  to live in a land  with a proper four seasons.   And as Nature thus orders and segments the year (which our pagan ancestors did well to celebrate with festivals at each solstice), so too do the civic and ecclesiastical calendars  mark the stately procession of history through each of our lives.   And since (with a bit of leeway for moveable feasts like Easter) these latter occur with calendric regularity, they reinforce the sweep of seasons:  the Fourth of July and melting popsickles;   Christmas and snow.  In our town this year, the first snowfall came on Christmas Eve.  (Well, ice-pellets and sleet, but close enough.)

The worst of all worlds, in this respect, would be Arabia, with little in the way of distinct seasons (mostly just “hot” and “hotter”), and the religious calendar -- being lunar -- slides around the solar year, with no lasting seasonal association.

In time, I came to admire the crowded calendar of the Historical Church (in which I was not raised), especially the build-ups to a deepened meaning:  not just Christmas, but Advent; not just Easter, but Lent.

Yet now, my own season advancing into that of the sere, the yellow leaf, I mark these occasions less.   The Fourth -- well, by now I’ve seen my fill of fireworks; and as for the patriotism, I do that at my current job (minus the fanfare and rhetoric) every day.  Christmas?   It’s not the same when your child has grown up, and has no child of his own;  it’s a reunion like any other.  

And even the personal milestones.   Birthdays are no longer welcome when you already feel older than old.   For years, Suzanne and I celebrated the day of our first date, and continued to mark the date long after we married;  in time, that fell away, and we marked the wedding anniversaries only;  while now, though we each day  in some sense  celebrate our continued union, the actual date is of little moment:  we’ll take our “anniversary” trips when it’s convenient, not when the calendar demands.  Unsentimental, my wife often volunteers to work on Christmas, so as to give the other nurses a break.  (We’ll celebrate a couple of days late this year, when our son comes down.)

Several factors are in play, in this loosening of calendar-sentiment with age.

(1) A general stretching of the sense of time, leaving you less conscious of what year it is, or even which month.  (Plus no longer having the academic year to enforce the working-season.)

(2) Living more and more in thought, and less in immediate experience.  If you are dwelling on fundamental questions, it doesn’t much matter what day it is.

(3) Memory now plays a greater role (there being  by now  more personal past than prospect), and there is more of it to draw on.

(4) Just plain being tired.

(1) - (3) have their definite up-sides;  not that they are better than the way things worked for you in youth;  but they are different, and, given that retentive memory, the result is a more varied intellectual output.

As for (4), what can I tell you:  it sucks.  But here’s this bit of geezer’s wisdom:  Live with it; go ahead and take naps.

Ave Maria, Mater Mundi

At this hour, we remember her  who has just given birth,

to a new world …

Latin for your Loved Ones

All of us here at the World of Dr Justice (numbering in the hundreds), from the editorial department, the publicity department, the research department, the art department, the monostich division, the intelligence unit, the counter-intelligence unit, and the black ops Special Projects department, join in wishing you all the blessings of Christmas.   And it is our special pleasure to salute the publication of a brand new novel by our dear friend and colleague Dr Keith Massey, a delicious blend of espionage and latinitas :

That "ae" thingie is a digraph, b.t.w.

http://www.linguasacrapublishing.com/massey.html

Since it is available in Kindle as well as in a creamy-paged paperback, you can download it tonight for that special Young Adult (or bright adolescent) in your life.

And for more erudite examples of Dr Massey’s Latinity, click here:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/04/latin-ribaldry-and-revelry.html

Mental Health and Gun Control

This post has been updated here:
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/01/mental-health-and-gun-control-updated.html