Abort! Abort!

The author of IOZ has authorized me to reveal this much: the one cause, and how it pains me to even write that word, that we support with money and time is abortions.  Sorry dudes--in the end, only the ladies get to see the inside of our man-sized safe.  Planned Parenthood may be dowdy and progressive, but those gals are on the side of the angels, and if I have but one regret in this life, it's that I can never get knocked up in order to proudly avail myself of their cervixes, ahem, services.  Plus, I have always hated those fucking country-club Komen frauds.  So it is with immense pleasure that I watch them get dragged through the mud by a gang of abortionists.

De la terre à la lune

So apparently Newt Gingrich is insane because he wants to establish a moon colony, but not because he wants war with Iran.  You would quibble, perhaps with an Iranian war as a, uh, a policy position, but it would be completely sane, whereas a lunar colony, why, that's nuts!

Tinged with Bravado

NATO discovers that its opponents are not reading its press releases.  Priceless.

Waiting for Superman

Artist Mike Kelley has passed away at his home in Los Angeles, having apparently taken his own life. The tragic news was confirmed to BLOUIN ARTINFO by Helene Winer, of New York's Metro Pictures gallery, a long-time associate of the artist. "It is totally shocking that someone would decide to do this, someone who has success and renown and options," said Winer. "It's extremely sad." She added that the artist had been depressed. -ArtInfo

I met Mike Kelley once, ever-so-briefly, at the last Carnegie International, in which he had a prominent installation.  He seemed like a nice enough guy, and certainly very smart.  I made out with one of his installers, actually.  In any case, if he was depressed despite his "success and renown," then I will suggest it is because he realized that he was a fraud; his art mere fashion; any and all talent which he seemed actually to have had burned up for naught--his soul quite literally sacrificed to the demonic pantheon of the self-regarding artworld illiterati.  I'd kill myself too if I suddenly found myself a muppet making crafts for rich suckers looking to blow their wads at Gagosian.

Angels and Demons

That plot “shows that some Iranian officials — probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime,” Clapper said in the testimony, which was submitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee in advance of a threat assessment hearing Tuesday. “We are also concerned about Iranian plotting against U.S. or allied interests overseas.”

-WaPo

Leaving aside the fact that "that plot" was a wild American invention that had an Iranian-American used car dealer hiring a gang of Mexican drug dealers to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador, a plot that makes Dan Brown blowing up the Vatican with antimatter seem like the pinnacle of narrative realism and political verisimilitude, what I like about the latest Iranian hijinks is that everyone is so forthright about the fact that any increase in Iranian bellicosity--ahem, "real or percieved"--is the direct result of American sword-rattling. There's not even a stutter in the direction of circumlocution. It's all straight up: "Senator, we are concerned that the Iranians may respond if we go to war with them." It may necessitate a war!

Gosford Snark

I have a slightly nutty aunt who is absolutely obsessed with British aristocrat hoohaw; she knows all the goings-on in the royal family and the difference between a baronette and a duchess and a valet and a lady-in-waiting; she reads Hello! and Harry Potter with equal fervency, and she finds it impossible to imagine that some of us don't actually care which peer of the realm is dressing up like Hitler and getting his naughty bum spanked by a prostitute, or whatever weird fancy dress-cum-light S&M it is that our island cousins do to get their rocks off . . . indeed, I suspect she thinks we're slight nuts when she starts talking about Harry and we're all trying to figure out if she means Harry who went to Alderdice or Harry from the William Penn Tavern whereas all along she meant the younger prince of England.  Anyway, I am reminded of her every time I read one of these relentlessly dull whence-goes-Democracy-now jobs.  I guess the servants always squinted their eyes and tried to read the inscrutable lines of succession, but the whole thing feels like a bad evening on PBS, which I suppose, in a certain way, it is.