CIA – Bumbling Bees

Last Week in Weird

18 January 2018 by Darien Sumner

Boy, did we get in trouble last week! I better not say anything controversial this time.

Nothing to see here

Everybody remembers where he was when Pearl Harbor was attacked. Everybody — with one tiny, insignificant exception — remembers where he was when president Kennedy was shot. Everybody remembers when science discovered that there is an infinite multiplexity of genders that can be changed at will. Now, friends, be sure to center yourselves and enter into your permanent memory banks your exact location when North Korea launched nuclear missiles at Hawaii.

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The Rule of Men

21 April 2017 by Darien Sumner

Don’t worry; the Trump administration is hard at work protecting America from the truth. By which I mean: they’ve apparently concocted an ambitious network of excuses to ~~kidnap and torture~~ ~~dispense summary justice upon~~ deliver a charming Uncle-Sam-o-gram to Wikileaks editor Julian Assange, who has, as of the time of this writing, been holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London for seven years. Of course, the Official Media Gatekeepers — by which I obviously mean: fake news — are only too happy to help sell this atrocity to the American people.

The US view of WikiLeaks and Assange began to change after investigators found what they believe was proof that WikiLeaks played an active role in helping Edward Snowden, a former NSA analyst, disclose a massive cache of classified documents.

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Last Week in Weird

17 April 2017 by Darien Sumner

Did I meet him? At the open house?

I don’t think I’ve ever been so jazzed to slap that foam finger on an image before.

No doubt you’re familiar with Easter. It’s the holiest day in the Christian liturgical year, celebrating, as it does, the resurrection of Christ — something of a momentous event. Indeed, the entire week leading up to Easter is quite significant — Holy Week, it’s called — and is one of the seasons in which Christian spirit is riding its highest; arguably only Christmas week is a more important, and more religious time for most Christians.

Which makes it all the funnier that the perpetually clueless Libertarian Party chose to celebrate Holy Week by running this great ad aligning itself with the Satanic Temple.

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Last Week in Weird

23 January 2017 by Darien Sumner

The doctor is out

You knew it was coming, friends: Doctor President Barack H. Obama, PhD is no more. We’ll talk about that loud new gentleman in a bit; for now, I’d like to focus on the accomplishments of our last Dear Leader. Specifically, I’d like to focus on the lovely way he refused to go gentle into that good night without blessing us with another science article in a peer-reviewed journal, this time the esteemed, eponymous Science.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: hey, his last peer-reviewed science article was a huge scam, but that couldn’t possibly happen twice, could it? I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader, but if you’d like a hint, your ever-so-humble narrator is only too happy to oblige: it’s about climate change. Do you detect the fine aroma of intellectual dishonesty wafting from the pages? It is a mystery!

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Last Week in Weird

16 January 2017 by Darien Sumner

Golden slumbers fill your eyes

There is nothing so bizarre that the mainstream press won’t report it — so long as they think it’ll make Donald Trump look bad, anyhow. To wit, Buzzfeed simply couldn’t help itself; in a move that it desperately wants the American people to believe is just normal, everyday journalistic practice, Buzzfeed’s highly-paid staff of journalismic integrisaurs published this report — without verifying it at all — which is riddled with typographical and factual errors, reads like something written by a less-than-especially-bright teenager, and, above all, makes the following startling claim:

According to Source D, where s/he had been present, TRUMP’s (perverted) conduct in Moscow included hiring the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton Hotel, where he knew President and Mrs OBAMA (whom he hated) had stayed on one of their official trips to Russia, and defiling the bed where they had slept by employing a number of prostitutes to perform a ‘golden showers’ (urination) show in front of him. The hotel was known to be under FSB control with microphones and concealed cameras in all the main rooms to record anything they wanted to.[everything sic]

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Last Week in Weird

26 December 2016 by Darien Sumner

Letter of the law

Breach of contract, n.: failing to perform any term of a contract, written or oral, without a legitimate legal excuse.

The contract is the cornerstone of civilization, and I would argue that the civil suit for breach of contract is the thing that separates free men from barbarians; in a free society, failure to live up to the terms of a contract is brought before an independent tribunal that judges the merits of the case and determines what punishment, if any, is appropriate. In a barbarous society, failure to live up to the terms of a contract is punished directly by the aggrieved party, who takes the law into his own hands.

Admit it. You’re expecting me to say that the modern United States is barbaric because of the government court monopoly. That’s where you think this is going. Well, your Christmas present is that I saved a spooky Holiday reverse from Halloween and I’m bringing it out now.

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Last Week in Weird

19 December 2016 by Darien Sumner

Ho Ho Ho

Hey, I’m a pretty laid-back guy, right? Other than everything I’ve ever written on this site, everything I’ve ever written for several other web sites, everything I’ve ever written for a print publication, and about two thirds of what comes out of my mouth when I’m speaking, I’m scarcely ever critical of others. In particular, I tend to give a pass to soggy leftists complaining that Christmas is offensive; that’s more of a mating cry than an actual argument, and I’ve always sort of considered it to be beneath refutation. I reserve the right, however, to alter or abolish that policy when the sog in question is especially clueless about theology while, at the same time, being of the cloth. So it is that I turn my baleful gaze to the Rt. Rev. Ruth Everhart, who is of a mind that the Blessed Virgin Mary is offensive to sluts.

Church culture tends to be fixated on sexual purity year-round, but during Advent, I’m tempted to blame it on the Virgin Mary. After all, she set an impossibly high bar. Now the rest of us are stuck trying to be both a virgin and a mother at the same time. It does not seem to matter that this is biologically impossible. Can you at least try?

No, you cannot. We’re done here, right?

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Last Week in Weird

8 August 2016 by Darien Sumner

Hat speech

One of the most enduring symbols of the American liberty movement is the Gadsden Flag. Designed by Colonel Christopher Gadsden in 1775, it consists of a bold yellow field emblazoned with a coiled rattlesnake — which had been used as a symbol of the American colonies since the 1750s — and the legend "don’t tread on me." Though it was originally designed as the standard to be flown by Commodore Hopkins’ flagship in the brand-new continental navy, its striking design and powerful message made it popular with liberty-minded sorts, and it was frequently used in the revolutionary government, and has remained in use to this day among the people opposed to what that government has become.

I’m sure you’ll be startled to hear that it’s racist.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is reportedly investigating the issue surrounding the ‘Don’t Tread On Me’ snake logo after an African American employee of a federal agency complained they [sic] were racially harassed when a co-worker wore a cap showing the symbol.

The complainant said he found the cap racially offensive to African Americans because the flag was designed by Christopher Gadsden, who [sic] he described as a ‘slave trader & owner of slaves’.

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Last Week(s) in Weird

30 May 2016 by Darien Sumner

(We’ve been dark for a few weeks, so, to celebrate the return of Last Week in Weird, we bring you a collection of weird and wonderful tidbits from the last several weeks!)

Vaporizeware

A few months ago, I bought a USB floppy drive. I know what you’re thinking: what’s a floppy drive? See, back in the dark age of technology, data was stored on removable media that could hold up to — up to, mind you — 1.44 megabytes. I distinctly recall carrying all the data I owned in the world around in my breast pocket on three such diskettes. Nowadays this technology has fallen by the wayside, and only crusty old codgers like your humble narrator still remember it.

Crustier even than I is the United States Department of Defense, which recently revealed that the coordination of the nation’s entire nuclear arsenal — which amounts to more than five thousand warheads — is performed by software loaded on original 8-inch floppy disks running on a 1976 IBM Series/1 minicomputer.

Defense has plans to upgrade its nuclear-related technology system soon. Lt. Col. Valerie Henderson, department spokeswoman, said: "This system remains in use because, in short, it still works. However, to address obsolescence concerns, the floppy drives are scheduled to be replaced with Secure Digital devices by the end of 2017. Modernization across the entire Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications (NC3) enterprise remains ongoing."

I’ll be honest with you: it’s fun to pick on the government, but the argument "this system remains in use because… it still works" carries a lot of weight with me, especially considering that you and I will be paying the tab for any upgrades. Honestly, I want these things (assuming they must exist at all, of course) upgraded as infrequently as possible. Since CNBC is shocked at the downright gaucheness of the government using "creaky" technology, I would like to suggest that CNBC foot the bill for upgrading it and leave the rest of us alone.

On second thought, I’d like to suggest that it not be upgraded at all; do we really want the Treasury Department’s ability to assess tax liability to be more efficient or (God forbid) user friendly? Do we really want the tax system or the nuclear launch codes to be an option when the next Guccifer decides to take the United States government for a ride?

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