I’ve come to the conclusion that the Guardian is on a mission to prove that a sizeable proportion of the people of America are, for want of a better phrase, completely fucking mad.

First there was the Clark County thing. If some American sent me a letter suggesting I vote for Tony Blair, or even Michael Howard, then I’d be quite pleased. It would be unlikely to swing my views, but it would at least make me more likely to go out and vote. And because I’m not an unbalanced whackjob, it wouldn’t lead me to send them hate mail.

So round one went to the Guardian. Round two started yesterday, with the Charlie Brooker piece mentioned below. Now, the pro-war British left didn’t exactly react to this in the spirit it was intended. But they remained reasonably friendly. Unsurprisingly, the American right was less so. Wankery, wankery, they’ve all got it, wankery.

I’ve already written the Guardian an email praising the column and asking them not to give into any pressure from its critics. I hope you’ll do the same – reader@guardian.co.uk, and that they won’t give in.

And right-wing Americans – get a fucking grip, OK?

Prince is back, with an extremely good new single. Cinnamon Girl is a return to his late-80s/early-90s sound; the best in my book (although my favourite Prince album is Squiggle, which I understand is an unusual choice…)

It’s also a lyrical return to form: the song (and video) look at the pressures that drive western Muslims to join crazy groups and blow people up, which is an interesting and under-explored topic. Underexplored mostly because when people try and explore it, an endless array of half-witted wankjobs suggest that they’re supporting terrorism.

Hopefully, any half-witted wankjob outcry this time round will serve chiefly to make the single a hit…

(via Apostate Windbag)

People who should know better are kicking up a fuss about Charlie Brooker’s latest Guardian humour piece (update – link changed to a mirror site), in which he concludes that should George Bush be elected or re-selected this time round, a "John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr" might be the world’s best hope for salvation.

They’re being wankers, and deserve a kicking. Of course it’s acceptable to joke about murder and assassination… it’s known as ‘comedy’. Although increasing numbers of people on the UK blog scene are refusing to acknowledge the existence of comedy, humour, or satire – at least when it’s nasty.

This trend is especially common among unrepentant pro-war liberals, presumably since surgical sense-of-humour removal is the only way they can keep a straight face while they attempt to justify their support for the disaster in Iraq and the broader Operation Fear The Bogeyman, Yes There Really Are Crazed Darkies Under Your Bed, Let’s Bomb Everywhere And Arrest Everyone.

While I approve of Mr Brooker’s article, his thesis is wrong. As I’ve already discussed, Bush’s assassination would put some equally bad motherfuckers in charge. Worse, whoever replaced him would gain the same kind of popularity boost as LBJ – and would almost certainly use it for evil (some crazy right-wing shit domestically, more slaughtering abroad) rather than for good.

In an ideal world, of course [*], Bush wouldn’t be assassinated. He’d be nailed to a cross next to Saddam, following their convictions for crimes against humanity. Each evil bastard could glare angrily at his arch-nemesis while both slowly expired. The whole feat could go on PPV television, while the sane world cheered and the lunatics who still support either man cried, ululated or both.

Oh, and a digression – I know you can get anything on eBay, but I’m sure this is illegal (ads on right hand side)…

And another one – this is funny, and has also met with pro-war left disapproval. Seriously, has Marcus genuinely never wanted to cut off a pompous idiot’s head, or crucify a vile bastard? What a sad, repressed person he must be…

Update: Eric the Unread is also a tedious humourless wanker.

[*] In an *ideal* world, he’d never have existed and nor would Saddam. I mean ‘in a world which is close to ideal as possible starting from where we are now’.

According to Short News (which disappointingly appears to feature news for the attentionally-, not the vertically-, challenged), John Kerry "voted against the $87 bill."

Damn right. American currency is already daft enough, even without introducing a $87 bill. That sounds exactly like the kind of half-crazed proposal you’d expect from an idiot like Bush. And I’m sure Halliburton would have got the printing contract.

SBBS is top on Google for "texan marshall cigar pussy". I know this because someone found SBBS via such a search. But I really, really, really want to know what the rumour they were trying to follow up was…

At Richard Herring’s fantasy funeral: "Not only should the church be full of weeping women who then lez up, but my hearse must be pulled by wailing women in black bikinis, accompanied by a man slamming chords on his guitar and then (as happened tonight) once the hearse stopped the women must do a kind of sexy trapeze act…. and then they should lez up too."

This is weirdly similar to the fantasy funeral I told a couple of friends about in the pub last week. Although mine included all my exes in a cage, which would have made it better.

It seems clear that Richard Herring is taking my amusing real-life and imaginary situations, making them less good so that people believe he could actually have written them, and using them as his own material. I guess this is reasonable penance for me doing exactly the same thing to him ten years ago…

Commenter: "This was a waste of time, DD"

D^2: "How can you say that when you have no idea what else I was proposing to do with the time?"

(from Crooked Timber)

My landlord has just given the gas boiler its annual inspection, accompanied by his pet CORGI. As a result, the heating and hot water have stopped working. I assume this is due to some tedious "not gassing people"-related nonsense.

Pleasingly, one of my flatmates in The Semi-Mythical Finsbury Park House has a mother who runs the All-England-Anti-People-Being-Gassed-By-Dodgy-Heaters-Because-I-Qualified-As-A-Lawyer-And-Am-Bored-Of-Being-A-Posh-Housewife-With-Nothing-Better-To-Do campaign. I’m hoping this will help us in the acquisition of lower rent…

The sensible, the surprising, and the disappointing. And it’s a sad day for moustache connoisseurs.

Peter C, in Harry’s comments: "It is Europe’s choice if it wants to spend its money on bulbous welfare systems and 35 hour weeks rather than the sort of military forces and economic power that win respect and influence in the world. But in no sense have they then the right to demand some of the influence that America won through her prudence. Yet again we see left-wingers utterly indifferent to the work that brought others success, happy to redistribute to the grasshopper the fruits of the ant’s toil."

Presumably, therefore, if I fail to spend my money on machine guns and petrol, then I’ve got no right to complain when an Aryan Nation nutcase shoots the family next door and burns down their house. It’s a point of view, I guess.

And no, I don’t think America’s military influence on the world is equivalent to that of a nutcase shooting everyone and burning down their houses. From country to country and campaign to campaign, it varies between that and the strongly positive (encompassing most shades in between). The point was the astonishing idiocy of the quote’s logic.