Freedom Muffins?

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In the comments thread of my most recent edition of Wise sayings, our friend from across the Atlantic, Mr. Barry Coidan, posted a preemptive and seeming defensive comment about Americans (me in particular?) blaming Brits for the super-awesome oil volcano in the Gulf of Mexico. In my case that actually wasn't so, and I in fact agree pretty much 100% with Mr. Coidan's comment because let's face it: BP is not a Merrie Olde Company run by and for a jolly bunch of droll, quick-witted Limeys, but a global multinational energy corporation that is no more or less profit-crazed, ruthless, and unethical than any of the other five "supermajors" such as, say, ExxonMobil, Chevron, or ConocoPhillips. (U!  S!  A!    U!  S!  A!)

There's probably no news in this here Mobile Press-Register report (Mobile, Alabama, that is) about the spill that you don't already know if you're even halfway following the saga. But take a look at the comments thread, such as this one from the appropriately named "yellohamr":

The British are no better at fixing oil leaks than fighting the Germans. American will half to bail tham out of both.

Yes, perhaps the hapless Brits will half to depend on American Halliburton, everybody's favorite American oilfield services corporation, with headquarters in good old American Houston, Texas, America, to bail tham out! You remember: good old American Halliburton whose Chairman and CEO works and lives in Dubai, UAE, "to Focus [the] Company’s Eastern Hemisphere Growth." I wonder if the United States has an extradition treaty with the United Arab Emirates.

Meanwhile, it seems like Barry C. was justified in his prophetic defense. Americans can be expected to trade in their Freedom Fries for Freedom Muffins. Starting in the Deep South, predictably.

Wise sayings

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Golf balls. Fucking golf balls!

Incoming

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Seems like I've spent the past month, psychologically and socially, in a place much like Porky Pig depicts in my previous post. Except I share none of Porky's good humor on the matter.

One implication of my hiatus is that I'm rejiggering this journal of mine to some extent --- something I may have already hinted that I was thinking about.

Another agenda item, less important except in terms of personal vanity, is that I'm about sick of the StuporMundi ID. I borrowed it from one of my previous incarnations during this current life, sometime in the '78 - '79 timeframe. At that time the moniker was borrowed from a medieval emperor, who also used it as a nickname. It means Wonder of the World. Although I'm not surrendering that status, I'm about ready to surrender the handle. And I'll do it as soon as I figure out what to replace it with. Suggestions are welcome, but that don't mean I'm gonna listen to them.

Watch this space for more exciting details soon!!!

Toilet paper debate resolved

Since yesterday's foul mood did not lift after my having committed two assaults and shoplifted a 50 lb sack of ice-melt from Home Depot, I decided to fill my mind with something important to displace the gloom. While hanging a vintage toidey-paper holder to provide a little more elbow-room in my nano-bathroom, my supreme apperceptive capabilities resolved the eternal toilet paper debate in an empirical way that avoids value judgments and satisfies the requirements of practical logic. The answer, of course, is that it depends on the holder.

Figure 1 illustrates a holder dating back to the dawn of scrolled toilet paper as we know it today. This type of device was a wooden cylinder held by a simple wire bail, which was attached to the wall (outdoor or indoor) with some sort of cleat or clamp. As Figure 1 shows, the overhand hanging method is most appropriate for one of these old-timey fixtures; the underhand method would leave the end sheet of the paper in a position to adhere to the wall via static cling (or indelicate residues), slightly complicating the task at hand for the user.

Figure 2, by contrast, shows a typical modern recessed fixture, which seems to be purpose-designed for the underhand hanging method; this design provides a "grasping margin" between wall and paper, owing to the paper's pseudo-cantilevering effect as it emerges from the recess and falls under the unconstrained influence of gravity. Using the overhand method with this type of modern fixture creates, psychologically, a more aggressive incursion into the bathroom's living space because the paper creates a sort of inverse knee-wall or short partition that gives the illusion of reducing potty elbow-room.

And that, as legendary WGN morning man Wally Phillips used to say, is why we call this "The Learning Place."