Trackback Test

Tales from Blogahnistan

Test.


Ta,

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Views from Bloggage Claim

The events leading up to my leaving E. Punditaly notwithstanding, I must say that the experience was not entirely worthless. For, while I'd rather not ever set foot in the confines of the place ever again lest I be hung from a public square by my toenails, I did pick up a few survival tips:

1) When in doubt attack your opponent's intelligence.
2) Never tell a small lie when a real whopper of a lie will do (useful for dinner reservations, btw)
3) Politeness is for those who don't want to make the Op-Ed page.
4) When having 'gravitas' issues, ditch the bow tie.
5) Champion the 'little guy' but always, in the end, blame the Private Sector.

In the end, it's a society built on Machiavellian principles. I remember travelling in the States a few years ago and making a similar remark to a man sitting next to me at a diner counter while reading about how the county government took a family farm to build a dog park in the local newspaper. He looked at me and said, "Hey buddy! This is America, speak English or go home!"

But, I can tell that here in Blogahnistan, things are different. It's about information and ideas... intellectual capital. It's a meritocracy. Be interesting... get paid, increase your stock. The people here hold their heads differently then in Punditaly, or worse Liasionstien. In those places a priveleged few get to set the terms of the debate, decide not only what we discuss but how we discuss it and with whom. Because of this no one knows what to think or how to express themselves. They just read what other people say and burp it back up like a baby besotted on Soy-milk formula and mashed bananas. Worse than that, they are, in the end, the very ones paying those others to do their thinking and emoting for them, protected, not unlike some endangered tree sloth. Actually, come to think of it, exactly like some endangered tree sloth!

The adage may certainly be true that opinions are truly like assholes, but at least here in Blogahnistan, no one is being forced to pay for and then watch you shake your ass in public.

Arriving in Blogahnistan

Good morning. So, glad to be here, finally!

There is a distinct odor in the air of Gate 147 of the Mondelinge Diarree International Airport in sunny, just-west-of-downtown Blogirisburg, the captial of Blogahnistan. What that odor is of I'm unsure but it reminds me of something not entirerly unlike fresh air. I have just finished up a two-week assignment covering the presidential elections in East Punditaly, which, for those who were educated in public schools, is west of Blogahnistan nestled in the valley formed between two tectonically-warring mountain ranges in the southern region of the continent Contentia. Interestingly, each year these two ranges creep closer together thereby increasing their own size at the expense of the land area of E. Punditaly. Because of this condition it has been, therefore, postulated by those who profess to be historians that this condition is the reason why E. Punditaly has always looked East to Blogahnistan and its wealth of natural resources (And further hence why 5 years ago the Punditalians added the 'East' to their country's name). Unfortunately for the Punditalians, the landscape of Blogahnistan is shifty and tricky to navigate. Military takeover is far too costly, as most Punditalians are loathe to doing any real, productive work, preferring, instead, just to 'have their man take care of that.' And, seeing as how the currency of Blogahnistan is 'information' the formerly-directionless Punditalians are similarly incapable of waging a mercantilist-economic kind of warfare.

You might have noticed the purality of the word 'elections' in the previous paragraph. That is not a mistake. For, and this was quite strange to me as an outside observer and resident of Outer Libertopia (not that there's an Inner Libertopia per se... at least not one I know of), there was no problem with how the first election was conducted. But, a group of people were quite unhappy with the results of said first election, decided that this was unacceptable to them and lodged a complaint. This is where things get complicated, and took me most of my time in E. Punditaly to comprehend. Lodging a complaint in E. Punditaly consists of writing an article in the national newspaper, Trovandosi in Pubblico, which delineates your problem. And, as a Mediacracy, once that is done, it is incumbent upon those who disagree with aforementioned complaint to produce counter-articles within a certain amount of time (the rules for which are spelled out, with painstaking detail I might add, in large books no one, including those who wrote them, have ever read). This process is repeated until one side stops publishing. Apparently, there is the provision in those unread regulations for 'agreeing to disagree' but that option is rarely ever considered, no less implemented. As you might expect, things can take a while to get resolved.

So, back to the Presidential elections of E. Punditaly. It seems that those of a professed tolerant nature were distressed that a majority of the people who voted in this election had chosen a man with few egalitarian tendancies. And, very much aside from their outrage at living next to and trading with such people, they argued that it would be against the Mission Statement of E. Punditaly to allow such a man to hold the office of president, or MHOO (Most Holy Opinion Offerer) as he is called reverentially in, Città Delle Campagne Sbavatura, the capital of Punditaly.

Writing from Madre Jonezzi, Clifton Elenorizzo stated:

...ascension of this man to MHOOhood would be akin to putting hand grenades in the mouths of starving children and pulling the trigger all the while calling it a nutritious school lunch.

Meanwhile Fran Friacci at Lettore Del Chutney offered this:

...as leader of the previously-unheard-of Militiamen Are People Too Party, Mr.Kazinski stated repeatedly that he was strenuously against government hand-outs of any sorts, especially Hand Grenades. "That's ridiculous! I mean, they're way too big for a 5 year old's hand."

A Google search yielded this diddy from Rassegna Nazionale, where Joaney Goldbertuzzi countered with:

Who cares what this guy Kazinski thinks?! I mean, he's just one of those Tofu-eating Enviro-tortoises.

Now, it is this correspondants opinion that Tofu is truly the work of the anti-christ but, be that as it may once the argument had reached this point the only thing that would appease either side was another election. So, that's exactly what the citizenry of E. Punditaly did. At great and terrible tax-payer expense they held yet another tiresome exercise in what Mencken called, "an advance auction of stolen goods." Because, as we in Outer Libertopia know, the only reason anyone wants to win an election is to control the access to that Pandora's Box called the Public Treasury.

Ta,