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Update:

This entry now serves as a monument to my lack of vision and haste to post. My intent was to write a fable mocking extroverted ignorance, and showing what can happen when people criticize what they don't understand, believing that all other people share their essential ignorance. Focused solely on alluding to this message, I tried out a couple of different metaphors. As it turns out, I chose a metaphor that has a much closer match to a more immediate political problem, the public fear of terrorism and suspicion of innocent people. I'll have to re-work the fable so that it says what I originally intended to say.

Further update: See the reworked version.
The first draft is included below.

But we're doing it for all the right reasons, honest!

"There is little to stop parents from providing these suggestions to their children."

The cat is out of the bag on how easy it is to implant false memories. Maybe we'd all like to force the furious furry back into the burlap, but science isn't like that. You can't un-tell a secret.

Parents can distort a child's perceptions easily enough without even trying. Now that we have known techniques to facilitate deliberate memory manipulation, how long will it be before some hack releases a bestseller instructing and encouraging parents to use them? The Idiot's Guide to Manipulative Parenting, anyone? I can only imagine what could result.

Parent: When Johnny was eight and overweight we told him a story. We said, "You may not remember it clearly, but when you were four, you were eating a chocolate egg. You shared a chunk of your chocolate with our new rabbit, Fuzzy. The chunk was just the wrong size and shape. Fuzzy choked on it and died." All we wanted to do was to stop Johnny from eating too much chocolate.

Counsellor: And did it work?

Parent: No. He kept on eating chocolate, and our neighbours started complaining that Johnny was trying to kill their pets.

From h2g2:

To be a good poet you need a tortured soul. Many notable poets were repressed homosexuals, instigators of incestuous relationships and, in most cases, just downright odd. Success is directly proportional to the number of neuroses maintained, and it is important to die young (and preferably in another country such as Italy) if you want any lasting fame. The cause of death should be a sexually transmitted disease, or just 'mysterious circumstances'.

Some have described me as odd so I guess I've a chance of being just a little bit poetic. Or maybe not, given this description of current poets:

Among others, wistful old people in New England and graduate students wasting away in small offices write poems about their lives and how they don't quite understand where they're going to or how they got to where they are.

You never realise how much of a burden self-knowledge is going to be until you acquire it. By then it's too late. Once you understand, you can never go back.

Noodly Appendage News
Wicked willful wascals
Novel use for your name
Bush Indictment Rumor
Future Food (via)
Wriggly Food Video (via)
Our Friend the Vulture

Cross-posted from PhaWRONGula: Voluptuously Veiled.

They're luminous, leggy and lissome,
In diaphanous drag. Don't dismiss 'em.
You see, I'm a sucker
For 'podes when they pucker,
But I can't find the courage to kiss 'em.

"Oh Nanny! I climbed the high turret today,
And I saw near the forest a gay little fawn
In the shadows and rays of the dawn through the trees;
May I go out and play with it please?"

"Elizabeth, the Master would be shocked!
We keep our castle locked to keep you safe
From monsters that seem playfully benign
But seek to lead your mind away from home."

"Oh Nanny! the view from the tower is grand,
And I saw to the edge of the land, where the hue
Of the sky changes into deep blue with white lace;
It's a shimmering beautiful place."

"Elizabeth, that sparkling blue is death
With freezing crushing depths to drag your heart
Away from this warm hearth where you belong,
Inside our castle's strong defensive walls."

"Oh Nanny! I climbed to the top of the gate
To see over the trees; there's a fete in the town
And some children are running around in the sun
May I go out and join in the fun?"

"Elizabeth, those children are diseased
Poor loveless waifs with fleas and scabby skin;
Their filthy lives begin and end in hate.
Stay here in this estate for your betrothed."

"Oh Nanny! it's obvious I'll never grow
To be happily-ever-devoted to him
Like some cosseted maid in a Grimm fairy tale
Always bound to the will of a male.

And Nanny, I wish there were some other way
But I'm damned if I'm going to stay in this tomb
To be kept as a trophy, a womb for his line;
This life can't be his; it is mine."

So Elizabeth made her escape late at night,
Down the wall, through the woods by the light of the moon,
Through the village where wrappers were strewn in the streets,
Past the glare of the signs and the beat from the bar,
And the twang of the bluesy guitars, to the guy
Asking "You from tha' castle up Ironbar Creek,
With tha' crazy-assed millionaire freak?"

The OEDILF server is currently down due to a crash. Apologies for
the interruption. Normal insanity will be resumed as soon as possible.

Update: It's back

[rant]

It's hard to understand exactly how stupidly prudish the family-valued-religious-right have become. Does America really need to fund a government investigation into how a game with a Mature 17+ rating that glorifies the violent use of a car to kill pedestrians, has been modded to allow it to show simulated S E X scenes? The game (without any modification) gives you kudos for wiping out innocent people stylishly, and Hillary's worried about it showing people engaged in mutual pleasure? Gosh! We wouldn't want our 17 year olds exposed to that now, would we? Let's keep them focused on lawlessness and gratuitous violence.

It's wonderful the way Hillary spins the phrase "fallen into the hands of young people across the country."

"Gee mom, I was like just playing this racing game where you kill people, and the 'hot coffee' mod just fell off the web onto my disc and installed itself! Honest!"

[/rant]

Drangilly-danglilly
Guðmundur Arason,
Bishop of Hólar and
Abseiling ace,

Cut short his job as a
Cliff-consecrationist,
Graciously granting the
Wicked their place.

I've been reading a book of Icelandic folk and fairy tales (thanks Sigga). I found the tale of the consecration of Drangey's cliffs amusing. Superstition had built up around the deaths of experienced bird-catchers who worked the sheer cliffs. Guðmundur Arason "the Good" (1161-1237) set out with his holy water and a crack crew of clerics to fight the fearsome forces of evil, working from the foreshore, from a boat, or suspended from the tops of the cliffs where necessary. During one bold belayed blessing, a grey hairy hand emerged from the rock and started to slice his rope with a sabre. A voice told him to bless no more, since the wicked needed a place of their own, too.

Seeing the bishop had a double-dactyllic name, I had to write a double-dactyl for him.

Cockless in Cupertino
MuffPod backlog
A Big Ad!
Satisfying the Needs
Zoom to the Moon (via)
Curse of the White Robe
Dog Disguise
Stepford Babies (via)
Rhetoraoke (via)