Across Difficult Country

“Lisa Peterson, 46 years old, says the main reason she sports a robe in public is because "it alerts the world that I am in relaxation mode and that I am pampering myself because I believe I'm worth it." But the communications director for the American Kennel Club, who lives in Newtown, Conn., says it also makes her feel "a little bit naughty."” - The Great Hotel Cover-Up , Wall Street Journal , 27 July 2007. Miss Peterson (if it’s Mrs. condolences to your poor husband), there’s really no need to alert me you’ve gone into relaxation, or any other mode, and are pampering yourself (this is one of those rare occasions when I’m confident most of the world completely agrees with me). If anyone needs to be alerted it’s the cardboard-tube fighters , who could partially redeem themselves by giving you a solid drubbing.

Fantastic day, in the span of a few hours I observe a midget riding a scooter, a man with an artificial leg, and an albino. Seeing one, two, four or more midgets is good luck. Three midgets together is bad luck. Three midgets encountered separately means something terrible is going to happen. Seeing a person with an artificial leg is neither good nor bad luck. Seeing an artificial leg without a person attached to it portends the start of a period of increased improbability. Seeing an albino means your packages will be arriving on time. Unless the albino is left handed, then your shipment will be delayed. Seeing an albino midget with an artificial leg would be so sad just thinking about it makes me laugh.

Strange lights were observed hovering over the heavilly flooded town of Stratford-Upon-Avon. As one witness described it : “The objects were there for about half an hour. It was very eerie because they didn't make any sound and they stayed still before moving slowly beyond the horizon. There were no stars in the sky, just them.” Like most people, I was instantly reminded by the concurrence of inexplicable lights in the sky and a deluge of “ The appearance of the Lights at Scheveningen and Flood ,” an event so shrouded in mystery I've been unable to determine when exactly it took place.

At a Seattle area park last Sunday a group of involuntary celibates convened to stage a cardboard tube fighting tournament: "Two dozen fighters obeyed the tenets of cardboard-tube fighting Sunday, battling for the glory of becoming the champion. They took to a concrete surface at Seattle's Gas Works Park, wielding their weapons: 3-foot-long cardboard tubes that look like the kind used for gift wrap. Most fighters employed a two-handed grip; the more assured used one hand. Those who break their tubes do not advance to another round.” Every day I find it harder and harder not to hate my own country. One exceptionally pathetic contestant remarked: "I knew I had to go," he said of the tournament. "It sounded like something that was amazing and it was. This was the only thing we found to do that was entertaining all week."

Trans-Dniester has a new political party, Fair Pridnestrovie. Fair Pridnestrovie joins the Respublika party, the Renewal party, the Breakthrough party, the Pridnestrovie Communist Party (PKP), the Communist Party of Pridnestrovie (KPP-CPSU), the Patriotic Party of Pridnestrovie (PPP), the Liberal Democratic Party of Pridnestrovi, the People's Will party, and the Social Democratic Party, to bring the total number of ridiculous political parties in Pridnestrovie to ten. Meanwhile in Chisianu, the President of Moldavia Vladimir Voronin has been running around claiming Jesus was a Communist , noting "Nowhere in the Old or New Testament you will find anything bad said about communists.” Voronin’s remarks were scoffed at by local religious leaders. Spokesman for the Socialist Party of Moldova, the Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova, the Democratic Party of Moldova, the Social Democratic Party of Moldova, the Christian-Democratic People's Party, and the Peasants...

The results of the first ADC customer satisfaction survey which asked How can ADC be improved? are in. 18% want more frequent posting, meaning 82% of readers think I’m posting enough or too much. 18% want to see more travel posts. We all have dreams, I suppose. No one wants more political posts, meaning 100% of readers agree with me democracy has failed, and discussing politics only serves to distract from time better spent stockpiling guns and ammunition. Counting my own vote, one person wants to see more Whitby posts. Meaning no one, except me, cares the little town of Whitby was nearly smote by a tornado (that’s right, a tornado) and no one, other than myself, wants me to explain how the source of this freakish weather event is undoubtedly Whitbian diabolists trifling with storm demons the Chaldeans called shedu . Bastards. 27% want more Hegel posts. Hegel once wrote : General gravitation must be recognised for itself as a profound thought, which constitutes an absolute basis for...

Up till now, for two hundred years, people in England have imagined that every problem could be solved through Freedom, and could let opposites correct one another in the free interplay of argument. But what now? The great harm was begun in the last century, mainly through Rousseau, with his doctrine of the goodness of human nature. Out of this plebs and educated alike distilled the doctrine of the golden age that was to come quite infallibly, provided people were left alone. The result, as every child knows, was the complete disintegration of the idea of authority in the heads of mortals, whereupon of course, we periodically fall victims to sheer power. In the meanwhile, the idea of the natural goodness of man has turned, among the intelligent strata of Europe, into the idea of progress, i.e. undisturbed money-making and modern comforts, with philanthropy as a sop to conscience.... The only conceivable salvation would be for this insane optimism, great and small, to disappear from peo...

Innovative Chinese fish farmers are growing gigantic fish able to induce food poisoning in seven times as many American consumers at half the cost. Another sector where the Chinese are making gains is begging : Police said on Monday that two beggars operating near MRT stations in Taipei City and Taipei County turned out to be professional beggars from China who had entered Taiwan on business visas...Liang Yiping (梁一平), 32, faked deafness and muteness when confronted by police at Yongan Market station, but his identity was later confirmed after officers found he had Chinese currency and more than NT$10,000...After running a background check, they established that he had entered the country with Guo Anquan (郭安銓), 53, on July 12. Guo was later picked up at Ximending station...Liang and Guo had been staying at a hotel near Ximending. Police said the men claimed they were collecting money to return home...They claimed that the NT$30,000 that police discovered in their bags and clothes had ...

A bipartisan group of senators (the worst kind) is proposing the government provide health insurance for those children who not entirely poor, but aren’t entirely middle class either. These posturing windbags think it so vitally important they are willing to tax just smokers to pay for it, by raising the already unconscionably high taxes on cigarettes by 61 cents per pack. Given how tubby American children are these days the logical solution would be to tax junk food. Such a tax would in itself bring health benefits by reducing the amount of fattening swill the little piggies ingest. Fortunately our deranged president has promised to veto this monstrous piece of legislation (sometimes, as the old Irish saying goes, even the thickest Echidna-bird finds a hazelnut).

If it has a beak and lays eggs then by god it’s a bird .

“We have not released giant badgers in Basra, and nor have we been collecting eggs and releasing serpents into the Shatt al-Arab river." - Major David Gell, British Army spokesman, ' British blamed for mysterious Beast of Basra '.

Remember all the excitement surrounding lycopenes, the tiny single celled organisms that live inside tomatoes (and whose excretions are the cause of the tomato’s redness) and were thought to protect against cancer? I sure don’t. It’s best to ignore these sorts of things, in large part because they never pan out (besides, I enjoy a cigarette now and then, so it’s pointless anyway). Now the FDA says lycopenes don’t protect against cancer , and that there is no evidence tomatoes reduce the risk of "colorectal, breast, cervical or endometrial cancer." Given how science tends to reverse itself, cancerphobes (i.e. those afraid of tobacco) should probably continue to rub tomatoes on their breasts, rectums, cervixes, and endometrials as a precaution.

I’m suffering from some sort of branial condition. Today I was trying to remember the name of the 18th century philosopher who bred horses and prefigured Darwin in certain aspects, and after nearly half an hour of focused concentration the only name my brain could come up with was Wigsy Macbombo, immediately followed by my forgetting why I was trying to recall the chaps name in the first place. Another symptom is abuse (to put it mildly) of the parenthesis when punctuating.

A fascinating article in the New York Times of all places on the mapinguary (a creature previously discussed on ADC ). Also mentioned is a cryptid I had never heard of known as the boto, a "type of dolphin that is said to be able to transform itself into human form, wearing a white hat to cover its air spout, and seducing and impregnating impressionable young virgins." Where a boto keeps his stylish headgear while he's in dolphin form remains unexplained. There have been no reports of boto operating outside the Amazon basin, but if you have a teenage daughter you might want to check under her boyfriend’s cap for a blowhole, just in case. The greatly anticipated list of the New 7 Wonders of the world is out (a list previously discussed on ADC ). Selected were the Roman Coliseum, the Great Wall of China, Machu Picchu, the Mayan city of Chichen, the ruins of Petra, the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Brazil, and the the Taj Mahal. Not making the list were the Sydney opera...

When I began the incredibly popular series of reports now known as The Whitby Sequence I had no idea where my investigations would lead. That sinister forces permeated the dying town of Whitby and were influencing events there was something I sensed early on, though I badly and dangerously underestimated the magnitude of the forces at work. Why Whitby I could not explain, until by accident (or by dark design?) a strange chapter in Whitbian history was revealed to me... “IN THE LATE nineteen seventies there was something of an occult convergence upon the English coastal town of Whitby. The reason for the movement of so many occultists, ex-hippies and pothead pixies, could probably be identified only by a thorough examination of the occult current of the time, along with a good analysis of the spirit of the nation. The result, however, was not only that there was a sizeable occult population in the area, but that many other occultists were in the habit of visiting the place.” “[D]uring...