Complaint about Blizaga

[Pierce]

What I offer here is an involved yet detached look at Blizaga's cop-outs. Perhaps time, further study, and more reflection will either modify or enrich the analysis offered here, but Blizaga has an uncanny ability to completely miss the point of any given issue. By way of introduction, let me just say that Blizaga claims that he is forward-looking, open-minded, and creative. That claim is preposterous and, to use Blizaga's own language, overtly mendacious. No history can justify it.

Oddly enough, the elasticity of Blizaga's interpretation of the Bible shields him from having to take a stand for anything morally correct yet politically (spiritually?) unpopular. Stranger still, he is a being who invents nothing, originates nothing, and improves nothing. All Blizaga does is tinker about with a lot of halfway prescriptions. If you look soberly and carefully at the evidence all around you, you will certainly find that his smears are not pedantic treatises expressing theories or extravaganzas dealing in fables or fancies. They are substantial, sober outpourings from the very soul of hedonism. What juvenile thing is Blizaga going to do next? Recover the dead past by annihilating the living present? Glorify lousy-to-the-core, suppressive, murderous governments as the ideologically correct alternative to all other possibilities? Deny the obvious? In any case, I apologize for giving Blizaga these ideas, but in order to solve the big problems with him we must first understand these problems, and to understand them, we must reinforce the contentions of all reasonable people and confute those of lecherous schizophrenics.

What Blizaga seems to be forgetting is that his stooges argue, against a steady accretion of facts of already mountainous proportions, that we'd all be better off if they'd just goad mudslinging flimflammers into hurling epithets at his adversaries. This is not what I think; this is what I know. I additionally know that if I said that it is Blizaga's moral imperative to take rights away from individuals on the basis of prejudice, myth, irrational belief, inaccurate information, and outright falsehood, I'd be a liar. But I'd be being utterly honest if I said that Blizaga wants to promote mediocrity over merit. It gets better: He actually believes that he can achieve his goals by friendly and moral conduct. I guess no one's ever told him that he has been trying for quite some time to convince us that we have too much freedom. I suggest he take this rotting ordure and dump it where he and his fellow unruly fogeys congregate. At least then we could stand as a witness in the divine court of the Eternal Judge and proclaim that as incredible and bizarre as it sounds, humanity is unquestionably the victim of a diabolical conspiracy masterminded by Blizaga to shout direct personal insults and invitations to exchange fisticuffs without having to worry that he will waffle on all the issues. I, speaking as someone who is not an amateurish, inimical fink, challenge you to ponder this subject with the broadest vision possible.

[Andy-Buddy]

There's an old saying that if you don't speak up, you won't be heard. As a firm believer in the veracity of that saying, I feel obligated to speak up on the subject of Christian's confused treatises. Let me begin by saying that Christian has a glib proficiency with words and very sensitive nostrils. He can smell money in your pocket from a block away. Once that delicious aroma reaches Christian's nostrils, he'll start talking about the joy of defeatism and how black is white and night is day. As you listen to Christian's sing-song, chances are you won't even notice his hand as it goes into your pocket. Only later, after you realize you've been robbed, will you truly understand that for his arrogant plans to succeed, Christian needs to dumb down our society. An uninformed populace is easier to control and manipulate than an educated populace. By the end of the decade, schoolchildren will stop being required to learn the meanings of words like "gastrohysterorrhaphy" and "hyperphosphorescence". They will be incapable of comprehending that Christian insists that it's okay to treat anyone who doesn't agree with him to a torrent of vitriol and vilification. This is a rather strong notion from someone who knows so little about the subject.

The last time I heard Christian ramble on in his characteristically bibulous blather he said something about wanting to steal our birthrights. I feel sorry for the human race when I hear stuff like that. We must remove our chains and move towards the light. (In case you didn't understand that analogy, the chains symbolize Christian's blinkered epithets, and the light represents the goal of getting all of us to strip the unjust power from those who seek power over others and over nature.) Whether you call it "allotheism", "alcoholism", or "narcissism", it is alive and well in Christian's announcements. It's what convinced me that Christian's bootlickers say, "Unfounded attacks on character, loads of hyperbole, and fallacious information are the best way to make a point." Yes, I'm afraid they really do talk like that. It's the only way for them to conceal that Christian's equivocations are rife with contradictions and difficulties; they're utterly feral, meet no objective criteria, and are unsuited for a supposedly educated population. And as if that weren't enough, Christian loves getting up in front of people and telling them that his magic-bullet explanations are not worth getting outraged about. He then boasts about how he'll make a big deal out of nothing one day. It's all part of the media spectacle that is Christian. Of course, he soaks it up and wallows in it like a pig in mud. Speaking of pigs and mud, ever since Christian decided to blow the whole situation way out of proportion, his consistent, unvarying line has been that he answers to no one.

Some would say that this is a platitude. Would that it were! Rather, anyone who has spent much time wading through the pious, obscurantist, jargon-filled cant that now passes for "advanced" thought in the humanities already knows that a lot of people may end up getting hurt before the final spasm of Christian's rage is played out. What may be news, however, is that anyone—you or I or a Martian just arrived in a flying saucer—who wants to wake people out of their stupor and call on them to ratchet up our level of understanding should realize that he has never gotten ahead because of his hard work or innovative ideas. Rather, all of his successes are due to kickbacks, bribes, black market double-dealing, outright thuggery, and unsavory political intrigue. Maybe it's not fair to call Christian's expositors "power-hungry" just because they repeat the mistakes of the past, but remember that Christian has been making a ham-handed effort to show that every featherless biped, regardless of intelligence, personal achievement, moral character, sense of responsibility, or sanity, should be given the power to impose pestilential new restrictions on society just to satisfy some sort of reckless drive for power. I'm guessing that most people are starting to realize that such claims are a distortion of the truth and that we desperately need to combat these lies by investigating the development of revanchism as a concept. Let me conclude by stating that it is a dangerous folly to ignore the threat to democracy posed by naive loudmouths. You can quote me on that.

[Pierce]

There's an old saying that if you don't speak up, you won't be heard. As a firm believer in the veracity of that saying, I feel obligated to speak up on the subject of Christian's confused treatises. Let me begin by saying that Christian has a glib proficiency with words and very sensitive nostrils. He can smell money in your pocket from a block away. Once that delicious aroma reaches Christian's nostrils, he'll start talking about the joy of defeatism and how black is white and night is day. As you listen to Christian's sing-song, chances are you won't even notice his hand as it goes into your pocket. Only later, after you realize you've been robbed, will you truly understand that for his arrogant plans to succeed, Christian needs to dumb down our society. An uninformed populace is easier to control and manipulate than an educated populace. By the end of the decade, schoolchildren will stop being required to learn the meanings of words like "gastrohysterorrhaphy" and "hyperphosphorescence". They will be incapable of comprehending that Christian insists that it's okay to treat anyone who doesn't agree with him to a torrent of vitriol and vilification. This is a rather strong notion from someone who knows so little about the subject.

The last time I heard Christian ramble on in his characteristically bibulous blather he said something about wanting to steal our birthrights. I feel sorry for the human race when I hear stuff like that. We must remove our chains and move towards the light. (In case you didn't understand that analogy, the chains symbolize Christian's blinkered epithets, and the light represents the goal of getting all of us to strip the unjust power from those who seek power over others and over nature.) Whether you call it "allotheism", "alcoholism", or "narcissism", it is alive and well in Christian's announcements. It's what convinced me that Christian's bootlickers say, "Unfounded attacks on character, loads of hyperbole, and fallacious information are the best way to make a point." Yes, I'm afraid they really do talk like that. It's the only way for them to conceal that Christian's equivocations are rife with contradictions and difficulties; they're utterly feral, meet no objective criteria, and are unsuited for a supposedly educated population. And as if that weren't enough, Christian loves getting up in front of people and telling them that his magic-bullet explanations are not worth getting outraged about. He then boasts about how he'll make a big deal out of nothing one day. It's all part of the media spectacle that is Christian. Of course, he soaks it up and wallows in it like a pig in mud. Speaking of pigs and mud, ever since Christian decided to blow the whole situation way out of proportion, his consistent, unvarying line has been that he answers to no one.

Some would say that this is a platitude. Would that it were! Rather, anyone who has spent much time wading through the pious, obscurantist, jargon-filled cant that now passes for "advanced" thought in the humanities already knows that a lot of people may end up getting hurt before the final spasm of Christian's rage is played out. What may be news, however, is that anyone—you or I or a Martian just arrived in a flying saucer—who wants to wake people out of their stupor and call on them to ratchet up our level of understanding should realize that he has never gotten ahead because of his hard work or innovative ideas. Rather, all of his successes are due to kickbacks, bribes, black market double-dealing, outright thuggery, and unsavory political intrigue. Maybe it's not fair to call Christian's expositors "power-hungry" just because they repeat the mistakes of the past, but remember that Christian has been making a ham-handed effort to show that every featherless biped, regardless of intelligence, personal achievement, moral character, sense of responsibility, or sanity, should be given the power to impose pestilential new restrictions on society just to satisfy some sort of reckless drive for power. I'm guessing that most people are starting to realize that such claims are a distortion of the truth and that we desperately need to combat these lies by investigating the development of revanchism as a concept. Let me conclude by stating that it is a dangerous folly to ignore the threat to democracy posed by naive loudmouths. You can quote me on that.

I don't agree. I have clearly stated that I consider the social, economic and political factors of Christian. I really, really like Christian. Until recently considered taboo amongst polite society, christian is not given the credit if deserves for inspiring many of the worlds famous painters. The juxtapositioning of Christian with fundamental economic, social and political strategic conflict draws criticism from those most reliant on technology, whom I can say no more about due to legal restrictions. Though I would rather be in bed I will now examine the primary causes of Christian.

Social Factors

Society is a simple word with a very complex definition. The immortal and indispensable phrase ‘honesty is the best policy’ created a monster which society has been attempting to tame ever since. A child’s approach to Christian smells of success.

Some analysts have been tempted to disregard Christian. I haven’t. It has been said that the one thing in society which could survive a nuclear attack is Christian. This is incorrect, actually cockroaches are the only thing which can survive a nuclear attack.

Economic Factors

There has been a great deal of discussion in the world of economics, centred on the value of Christian. We will primarily be focusing on the Maiden-Tuesday-Lending model. For those of you unfamiliar with this model it is derived from the Three-Amigos model but with greater emphasis on the outlying gross national product.
Transport
Costs
http://www.essaygenerator.com/images/graph_down_3.gif
Christian

Indisputably there is a link. How can this be explained? Even a child could work out that transport costs cannot sustain this instability for long. Many analysts fear a subsequent depression.

Political Factors

Posturing as concerned patriarchs, many politicians guide the electorate herd to the inevitable cattle shed of 'equal opportunity.' Comparing the ideals of the young with the reality felt by their elders is like contrasting night and day.

In the words of one of the great political analysts Vatusia Woodpecker 'Man's greatest enemy is complacency with regards to personal and political hygiene.' He was first introduced to Christian by his mother. I feel strongly that if politicians spent less time thinking about Christian and put more effort into their family life, that we would have a very different country.

Where do we go from here? Only time will tell.
Conclusion

In my opinion Christian is, to use the language of the streets 'Super Cool.' It inspires, brings glamour to an unglamorous time and never hides.

One final thought from the talented Whoopi Morissette: 'At first I was afraid I was petrified. Thinking I could never live without Christian by my side.'

[Hanna]

I don't agree. I have clearly stated that I consider the social, economic and political factors of Christian. I really, really like Christian. Until recently considered taboo amongst polite society, christian is not given the credit if deserves for inspiring many of the worlds famous painters. The juxtapositioning of Christian with fundamental economic, social and political strategic conflict draws criticism from those most reliant on technology, whom I can say no more about due to legal restrictions. Though I would rather be in bed I will now examine the primary causes of Christian.

Social Factors

Society is a simple word with a very complex definition. The immortal and indispensable phrase ‘honesty is the best policy’ created a monster which society has been attempting to tame ever since. A child’s approach to Christian smells of success.

Some analysts have been tempted to disregard Christian. I haven’t. It has been said that the one thing in society which could survive a nuclear attack is Christian. This is incorrect, actually cockroaches are the only thing which can survive a nuclear attack.

Economic Factors

There has been a great deal of discussion in the world of economics, centred on the value of Christian. We will primarily be focusing on the Maiden-Tuesday-Lending model. For those of you unfamiliar with this model it is derived from the Three-Amigos model but with greater emphasis on the outlying gross national product.
Transport
Costs
http://www.essaygenerator.com/images/graph_down_3.gif
Christian

Indisputably there is a link. How can this be explained? Even a child could work out that transport costs cannot sustain this instability for long. Many analysts fear a subsequent depression.

Political Factors

Posturing as concerned patriarchs, many politicians guide the electorate herd to the inevitable cattle shed of 'equal opportunity.' Comparing the ideals of the young with the reality felt by their elders is like contrasting night and day.

In the words of one of the great political analysts Vatusia Woodpecker 'Man's greatest enemy is complacency with regards to personal and political hygiene.' He was first introduced to Christian by his mother. I feel strongly that if politicians spent less time thinking about Christian and put more effort into their family life, that we would have a very different country.

Where do we go from here? Only time will tell.
Conclusion

In my opinion Christian is, to use the language of the streets 'Super Cool.' It inspires, brings glamour to an unglamorous time and never hides.

One final thought from the talented Whoopi Morissette: 'At first I was afraid I was petrified. Thinking I could never live without Christian by my side.'

eBay Inc. is an American Internet company that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide. Founded in 1995, eBay is one of the notable success stories of the dot-com bubble; it is now a multi-billion dollar business with operations localized in over thirty countries.[3][not in citation given] eBay expanded from its original "set-time" auction format to include "Buy It Now" standard shopping; shopping by UPC, ISBN, or other kind of SKU (via Half.com); online classified advertisements (via Kijiji or eBay Classifieds); online event ticket trading (via StubHub); online money transfers (via PayPal[4]) and other services.
Contents [hide]
1 Origins and history
2 Items
2.1 PayPal-only categories
2.2 eBay Express
2.3 Selling Manager Applications
2.4 eBay specialty sites
3 Auction types
4 Bidding
4.1 Auction-style listings
4.1.1 Example of bidding on an auction-style listing
4.2 Seller ratings
5 Profit and transactions
6 Acquisitions
7 Economics
8 Controversy and criticism
9 Prohibited or restricted items
10 Unusual sale items
11 Charity auctions
12 Environmental record
13 Skype
14 Craigslist
15 See also
16 References
17 Further reading
18 External links
[edit]Origins and history



eBay headquarters in San Jose
The online auction website was founded as AuctionWeb in San Jose, California, on September 3, 1995, by French-born Iranian computer programmer Pierre Omidyar as part of a larger personal site that included, among other things, Omidyar's own tongue-in-cheek tribute to the Ebola virus.[5] One of the first items sold on eBay was a broken laser pointer for $14.83. Astonished, Omidyar contacted the winning bidder to ask if he understood that the laser pointer was broken. In his responding email, the buyer explained: "I'm a collector of broken laser pointers."[6] The frequently repeated story that eBay was founded to help Omidyar's fiancée trade Pez candy dispensers was fabricated by a public relations manager in 1997 to interest the media. This was revealed in Adam Cohen's 2002 book, The Perfect Store,[5] and confirmed by eBay.
Chris Agarpao was hired as eBay's first employee and Jeffrey Skoll was hired as the first president of the company in early 1996. In November 1996, eBay entered into its first third-party licensing deal, with a company called Electronic Travel Auction to use SmartMarket Technology to sell plane tickets and other travel products. Growth was phenomenal; in January 1997 the site hosted 2,000,000 auctions, compared with 250,000 during the whole of 1996.[7] The company officially changed the name of its service from AuctionWeb to eBay in September 1997. Originally, the site belonged to Echo Bay Technology Group, Omidyar's consulting firm. Omidyar had tried to register the domain name echobay.com, but found it already taken by the Echo Bay Mines, a gold mining company,[8] so he shortened it to his second choice, eBay.com.[9] (Echobay.com is now owned by Echobay Partners, Ltd., a private equity firm based in Nevis.)
In 1997, the company received $6.7 million in funding from the venture capital firm Benchmark Capital.[10]
Meg Whitman was hired as eBay President and CEO in March 1998. At the time, the company had 30 employees[11] half a million users and revenues of $4.7 million in the United States.[12] eBay went public on September 21, 1998,[13] and both Omidyar and Skoll became instant billionaires. eBay's target share price of $18 was all but ignored as the price went to $53.50 on the first day of trading.[14]
As the company expanded product categories beyond collectibles into almost any saleable item, business grew quickly.[6] In February 2002, the company purchased IBazar, a similar European auction web site founded in 1995 and then bought PayPal on October 14, 2002.
In early 2008, the company had expanded worldwide, counted hundreds of millions of registered users, 15,000+ employees and revenues of almost $7.7 billion.[12] After nearly ten years at eBay, Whitman made the decision to enter politics. On January 23, 2008 the company announced that Whitman would step down on March 31, 2008 and John Donahoe was selected to become President and CEO.[15] Whitman remained on the Board of Directors and continued to advise Donahoe through 2008. In late 2009, eBay completed the sale of Skype for $2.75 billion, but will still own 30% equity in the company.[16]
In July 2010, eBay was sued for $3.8 billion by XPRT Ventures which accused eBay of stealing information shared in confidence by the inventors on XPRT's own patents, and incorporated it into features in its own payment systems, such as PayPal Pay Later and PayPal Buyer Credit.[17]
December 20, 2010, EBay Inc. says it will acquire a German online shopping club - brand4friends for 150 million Euro ($197 million) to strengthen the company fashion business in Europe. It is subject to regulatory approval and expected to close it in the Q1 2011.[18]
[edit]Items

Millions of collectibles, decor, appliances, computers, furnishings, equipment, vehicles, and other miscellaneous items are listed, bought, or sold daily on eBay. In 2005, eBay launched its Business & Industrial category, breaking into the industrial surplus business. Generally, anything can be auctioned on the site as long as it is not illegal and does not violate the eBay Prohibited and Restricted Items policy.[19] Services and intangibles can be sold, too. Large international companies, such as IBM, sell their newest products and offer services on eBay using competitive auctions and fixed-priced storefronts. Separate eBay sites such as eBay US and eBay UK allow the users to trade using the local currency. Software developers can create applications that integrate with eBay through the eBay API by joining the eBay Developers Program.[20] In June 2005, there were more than 15,000 members in the eBay Developers Program, comprising a broad range of companies creating software applications to support eBay buyers and sellers as well as eBay Affiliates.
Controversy has arisen over certain items put up for bid. For instance, in late 1999, a man offered one of his kidneys for auction on eBay, attempting to profit from the potentially lucrative (and, in the United States, illegal) market for transplantable human organs. On other occasions, people and even entire towns have been listed, often as a joke or to garner free publicity. In general, the company removes auctions that violate its terms of service agreement.
[edit]PayPal-only categories


eBay North First Street satellite office campus (home to PayPal)
Beginning in August 2007, eBay required listings in "Video Games" and "Health & Beauty" to accept its payment system PayPal and sellers could only accept PayPal for payments in the category "Video Games: Consoles".[21] Starting January 10, 2008, eBay said sellers can only accept PayPal as payment for the categories "Computing > Software", "Consumer Electronics > MP3 Players", "Wholesale & Job Lots > Mobile & Home Phones", and "Business, Office & Industrial > Industrial Supply / MRO".[22] eBay announced that starting in March 2008, eBay had added to this requirement that all sellers with fewer than 100 feedbacks must offer PayPal and no merchant account may be used as an alternative.[23][24] This is in addition to the requirement that all sellers from the United Kingdom have to offer PayPal.[25]
Further, and as noted below, it was a requirement to offer Paypal on all listings in Australia and the UK. In response to concerns expressed by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, however, eBay has since removed the policy on the ebay.com.au website requiring sellers to offer PayPal as a payment option.[citation needed]
[edit]eBay Express


eBay Express logo
In April 2006, eBay opened its new eBay Express site, which is designed to work like a standard Internet shopping site for consumers with United States addresses. It closed in 2008. Selected eBay items were mirrored on eBay Express, where buyers shop using a shopping cart to purchase from multiple sellers. The UK version was launched to eBay members in mid-October 2006 but on January 29, 2008 eBay announced its intention to close the site.[26] The German version, eBay Express Germany,[27] was also opened in 2006 and closed in 2008.
[edit]Selling Manager Applications
At the 2008 eBay Developer's Conference, eBay announced the Selling Manager Applications program (SM Apps).[28] The program allows approved developers to integrate their applications directly into the eBay.com interface.[29] The applications created by developers are available for subscription by eBay members who also subscribe to Selling Manager.
[edit]eBay specialty sites
eBay maintains a number of specialty sites. eBay Pulse, for example, provides information about popular search terms, trends, and most-watched items. Other ebay Community Content includes the Discussion Boards, Groups, Answer Center, Chat Rooms, and Reviews & Guides. eBay has a robust mobile offering, including SMS alerts, a WAP site, Java ME clients, an Android OS application and an Apple iPhone application available in certain markets.
Best of eBay is a specialty site for finding the most-unusual items on the eBay site. Users can vote on and nominate listings that they find.
[edit]Auction types

eBay.com offers several types of auctions.
Auction-style listings allow the seller to offer one or more items for sale for a specified number of days. The seller can establish a reserve price.
Fixed price format allows the seller to offer one or more items for sale at a Buy It Now price. Buyers who agree to pay that price win the auction immediately without submitting a bid.
Fixed price format with best offer allows the seller to accept best offers. If a buyer submits a best offer, the seller either rejects or accepts the best offer. If the best offer is not satisfactory, a seller may submit a counter offer to the buyer. Best offer is not available for auction style listings. In addition, best offer is not available in every category. Sellers also meet specific requirements in order to sell with best offer.
[edit]Bidding

[edit]Auction-style listings
Bidding on eBay's auction-style listings is called proxy bidding and is essentially equivalent to a Vickrey auction, with the following exceptions.
The winning bidder pays the second-highest bid plus one bid increment amount (i.e., some small predefined amount relative to the bid size), instead of simply the second-highest bid. However, since the bid increment amounts are relatively insignificant compared to the bid size, they are not considered from a strategic standpoint.[30]
The current winning bid is not sealed, but instead is always displayed. However, at any given moment, the highest bidder's bid is not necessarily displayed, since this amount may be higher than the amount required to win the auction.


Sample eBay page layout (as announced on June 15, 2009)
[edit]Example of bidding on an auction-style listing

This section does not cite any references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2010)
Suppose bidding for an item placed by Anne starts at $1.00 and that the bid increment amount in this price range is $.25. Eric bids $3.00 for the item, and since no one else has bid yet, eBay displays that the current winner is Eric, with a bid of $1.00, and that the minimum allowable bid is $1.25, which is equal to one bidding increment above the winning bid. Suppose then that Bob bids $2.00 for the item. Since Eric has already bid more than Bob, eBay will display that the current winner is Eric, with a bid of $2.25, which equals the second-highest bid ($2.00) plus the bid increment amount ($.25). Again, eBay will also display that the minimum allowable bid is $2.50, one bid increment above the winning bid. Suppose that Bob bids again, this time at $2.75. Again, since Eric's bid is higher than Bob's, eBay will display that the current winning bidder is Eric, with a bid of $3.00, which is equal to the second-highest bid ($2.75) plus the bid increment ($.25). eBay will also display that the minimum allowable bid is $3.25, one bidding increment above the current winning bid. Suppose Bob bids one more time, at $10.00. Since Bob's bid is now higher than Eric's, eBay will display that the current winning bidder is Bob, with a bid of $3.25, which is equal to the second-highest bid ($3.00) plus the bid increment ($.25). If Bob were to win the auction, he would have to pay the amount equal to the winning bid ($3.25), even though his previous bid was much larger than that.
[edit]Seller ratings
In 2007, eBay began using detailed seller ratings with four different categories. When leaving feedback, buyers are asked to rate the seller in each of these categories with a score of one to five stars, with five being the highest rating and one the lowest. Unlike the overall feedback rating, these ratings are anonymous; neither sellers nor other users learn how individual buyers rated the seller. The listings of sellers with a rating of 4.3 or below in any of the four rating categories appear lower in search results. Power Sellers are required to have scores in each category above 4.5.[31][32][33][34][35]
In a reversal of roles, on January 24, 2010 Auctionbytes.com held an open survey in which sellers could effectively rate eBay itself, as well as competing auction and marketplace sites.[36] In the survey, users were asked to rank 15 sites based on five criteria:
Profitability
Customer Service
Communication
Ease of Use
Recommendation
After the results were published, eBay had finished 13th overall,[37] edged out by established sites such as Amazon and Craigslist, as well as lesser-known upstarts like Atomic Mall and Ruby Lane. In individual category rankings, eBay was rated the worst of all the 15 sites on Customer Service and Communication, and average on Ease of Use. A number of respondents said they would have given eBay a rating of ten 3 to 5 years ago. eBay was rated twelfth out of fifteen in the Recommended Selling Venue category.
[edit]Profit and transactions


This section may contain original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding references. Statements consisting only of original research may be removed. More details may be available on the talk page. (November 2007)
eBay generates revenue from various fees. The eBay fee system is quite complex; there are fees to list a product and fees when the product sells (Final Value Fee), plus several optional adornment fees, all based on various factors and scales. The U.S.-based eBay.com takes $0.10 to $4 (based on the opening price) for a basic listing without any adornments and 8.75% (12% for some categories, e.g. Clothing & Accessories) of the final price (as of May 2009). The UK based ebay.co.uk[38] takes from GBP £0.15 to a maximum rate of GBP £3 per £100 for an ordinary listing and from 0.75 percent to 10% (writing as of June 2009) percent of the final price. Reduced FVF's are available to business registered customers. In addition, eBay owns the PayPal payment system which has fees of its own.
Under current U.S. law, a state cannot require sellers located outside the state to collect a sales tax, making deals more attractive to buyers. Although some state laws require purchasers to pay sales tax to their own states on out-of-state purchases, it is not a common practice. However, most sellers that operate as a full time business do follow state tax regulations on their eBay transactions.[39][40] However for the tax called Value added tax (VAT), eBay requires sellers to include the VAT fees in their listing price and not as an add-on and thus eBay profits by collecting fees based on what governments tax for VAT.[41]
The company's current business strategy includes increasing international trade.[42][43] eBay has already expanded to over two dozen countries including China and India. The only places where expansion failed were Taiwan and Japan, where Yahoo! had a head start, and New Zealand where TradeMe, owned by the Fairfax media group is the dominant online auction website.
A more recent strategy involves the company increasingly leveraging the relationship between the eBay auction site and PayPal: The impact of driving buyers and sellers to use PayPal means not only does eBay turn buyers into clients (as a pure auction venue its clients used to be predominantly sellers) but for each new PayPal registration it achieves via the eBay auction site it also earns offsite revenue when the resulting PayPal account is used in non-eBay transactions. In its Q1 2008 results, total payment volume via PayPal increased 17 percent, but off the eBay auction site it was up 61 percent.[44]
For most listing categories, eBay sellers are permitted to offer a variety of payment systems such as Paypal, Paymate, ProPay, and Moneybookers.[45]
eBay runs an affiliate program under the name eBay Partner Network.[46] eBay affiliate marketers were originally paid a percentage of the eBay seller's transaction fees, with commissions ranging from 50% to 75% of the fees paid for an item purchased. In October 2009, eBay changed to an affiliate payout system that it calls Quality Click Pricing, in which affiliates are paid an amount determined by an undisclosed algorithm. The total earnings amount is then divided by the number of clicks the affiliate sent to eBay and is reported as Earnings Per Click, or EPC.
[edit]Acquisitions

Main article: List of acquisitions by eBay
[edit]Economics

As eBay is a huge, publicly visible market, it has created a great deal of interest from economists, who have used it to analyze many aspects of buying and selling behavior, auction formats, etc., and compare these with previous theoretical and empirical findings.
[edit]Controversy and criticism

Main article: Criticism of eBay
eBay has its share of controversy, including cases of fraud, its policy of requiring sellers to use PayPal, and concerns over forgeries and intellectual property violations in auction items.
[edit]Prohibited or restricted items

In its earliest days, eBay was essentially unregulated. However, as the site grew, it became necessary to restrict or forbid auctions for various items. Note that some of the restrictions relate to eBay.com (the U.S. site), while other restrictions apply to specific European sites (such as Nazi paraphernalia). Regional laws and regulations may apply to the seller or the buyer. Generally, if the sale or ownership of an item is regulated or prohibited by one or more states, eBay will not permit its listing. Among the hundred or so banned or restricted categories:
Tobacco (tobacco-related items and collectibles are accepted.)[47]
Alcohol (alcohol-related collectibles, including sealed containers, as well as some wine sales by licensed sellers are allowed)[48]
Drugs and drug paraphernalia[49]
Nazi paraphernalia[50]
Bootleg recordings[51]
Firearms and ammunition,[52] including any parts that could be used to assemble a firearm as well as (as of July 30, 2007) any firearm part that is required for the firing of a gun, including bullet tips, brass casings and shells, barrels, slides, cylinders, magazines, firing pins, trigger assemblies, etc. Crossbows and various types of knives are also forbidden.
Police and emergency service vehicular warning equipment such as red or blue lights and sirens (antique or collectible items are exempt)
Used underwear (see Panty fetishism) and dirty used clothing[53]
Forged, illegal, stolen, or confidential documents, which include passports, social security cards, drivers licences, voter registration cards, birth certificates, school documents, medical records, financial information, government license plates, government classified information, or CarFax documents. Any item which is used to modify documents is also restricted.[54]
Human parts and remains (with an exception for skeletons and skulls for scientific study, provided they are not Native American in origin)[55]
Live animals (with certain exceptions)[56]
Certain copyrighted works or trademarked items.[57]
Lottery tickets, sweepstakes tickets, or any other gambling items.[58]
Military hardware such as working weapons or explosives.
Sexually oriented adult material, which must be listed in the "Adult Only" category,[59] notwithstanding certain items prohibited:[59]
Child Pornography
Obscene Materials including bestiality, necrophilia, rape, coprophilia, and incest
Pre-owned sex toys
Services including any sexual activity
Links to sites that contain prohibited items
Adult products that are delivered digitally
Virtual items from massively multiplayer online games, restrictions which vary by country[60][61]
Ivory products[56]
Knives, other than cutlery, are prohibited in the UK following media pressure about the sale of items assessed by police to be "illegal"[62]
Many other items are either wholly prohibited or restricted in some manner.[63]
[edit]Unusual sale items

In May 2006, the remains of U.S. Fort Montgomery, a stone fortification in upstate New York built in 1844, were put up for auction on eBay. The first auction ended on June 5, 2006, with a winning bid of $5,000,310. However, the sale was not completed, and the fort and lands surrounding it remain for sale and have been relisted on the site several times since.[64][65]
In February 2004, a scrapped F/A-18 Hornet fighter jet was listed on eBay by Mike Landa, of Landa and Associates, with a starting bid of $1,000,000. He was the legal owner of the plane after purchasing it from a scrap yard and also offered to have the plane restored for flying condition for a Buy It Now price of $9,000,000. Landa also told potential buyers that maintenance of the plane would cost roughly $40,000 a month for just 2 to 3 hours of flying time. The FBI told Landa that he could only sell the plane to an American citizen residing in the United States, and that the plane must not leave U.S. airspace. The auction ended without a sale.[66]
In January 2003, Thatch Cay, the last privately held and undeveloped U.S. Virgin Island, was listed for auction by Idealight International. The minimum bid was $3,000,000.00 and closed 16 January 2003.[67]
In December 2005, a brussels sprout cooked on Christmas Day was listed by "crazypavingpreacher" (Andrew Henderson of Darlington, England). It sold for £99.50 on 4 January 2006. The sprout had been frozen and was sent by first class post in insulated packaging to the buyer, "5077phil". The listing was reported in the Daily Star, making the front page (and was followed by a series of "copycat" listings of various vegetables). The proceeds of the sale were donated to Tearfund, a major Christian relief and development agency working in the third world. This sprout was the first cooked brussels sprout to be sold on eBay.[68]
In January 2006, a British man named Leigh Knight sold an unwanted brussels sprout left over from his Christmas dinner for £1550 in aid of cancer research.[69][70]
In May 2006, a Chinese businessman named Zhang Cheng bought a former Czech Air Force MIG-21 fighter jet from a seller in the United States for $24,730. The seller, "inkgirle", refused to ship it. It is not known whether he was refunded.[71][72]
In June 2005, the wife of Tim Shaw, a British radio DJ on Kerrang! 105.2, sold Tim's Lotus Esprit sports car with a Buy It Now price of 50 pence after she heard him flirting with model Jodie Marsh on air. The car was sold within 5 minutes, and it was requested that the buyer pick it up the same day.[73]
In May 2005, a Volkswagen Golf that had previously been registered to Joseph Ratzinger (then a cardinal, who had since been elected pope and chose the regnal name Benedict XVI on April 19, 2005) was sold on eBay's German site for €188,938.88 ($277,171.12 USD). The winning bid was made by the GoldenPalace.com online casino, known for their outrageous eBay purchases.[74]
A seaworthy 16,000-ton aircraft carrier, formerly the British HMS Vengeance, was listed early in 2004. The auction was removed when eBay determined that the vessel qualified as ordnance, even though all weapons systems had been removed.[75]
Water that was said to have been left in a cup Elvis Presley once drank from was sold for $455. The few tablespoons came from a plastic cup Presley sipped at a concert in North Carolina in 1977.[76]
Coventry University student Bill Bennett got £1.20 for a single cornflake.[77]
A man from Brisbane, Australia, attempted to sell New Zealand at a starting price of $0.01AUD. The price had risen to $3,000 before eBay closed the auction.[78]
An Australian newspaper reported in December 2004 that a single piece of the Kellogg's breakfast cereal Nutri-Grain sold on eBay for AUD$1,035 because it happened to bear a slight resemblance to the character E.T. from the Steven Spielberg movie. Apparently the seller went on to make even more money in relation to the sale for his appearance on a nationally televised current affairs program.[79]
One of the tunnel boring machines involved in the construction of the Channel Tunnel was auctioned on eBay in 2004.[80]
A group of four men from Australia auctioned themselves to spend the weekend with the promise of "beers, snacks, good conversation and a hell of a lot of laughs" for AU$1,300[81]
Disney sold a retired Monorail Red (Mark IV Monorail) for $20,000[82]
The German Language Association sold the German language to call attention to the growing influence of English in modern Germany.[83]
In late November 2005, the original Hollywood Sign was sold on eBay for $450,400.[84][85]
In February 2007, after Britney Spears shaved all of her hair off in a Los Angeles salon, it was listed on eBay for 1 million USD before it was taken down.[86]
In September 2004, the Indiana Firebirds arena football team was auctioned off, first in a regular auction that failed to reach the reserve price,[87] and again as a "Buy it Now" item for $3.9 million.[88]
Bridgeville, California (pop. 25) was the first town to be sold on eBay in 2002, and has been up for sale 3 times since.[89]
In April 2005, American entrepreneur Matt Rouse sold the right to choose a new middle name for him. After receiving an $8,000 "Buy It Now" bid, the Utah courts refused to allow the name change. He currently still has his original middle name "Jean".[90]
In 2004, a partially eaten, 10-year-old grilled cheese sandwich said to bear the image of the Virgin Mary sold on eBay for $28,000.[91]
In January 2008, four golf balls were auctioned on eBay after being surgically removed from the carpet python which had inadvertently swallowed them whilst raiding eggs in a chicken enclosure. The story attracted considerable international attention and the balls eventually sold for more that AUD$1,400. The python recovered and was released.[92]
In May 2008, Paul Osborn of the UK listed his wife Sharon for sale on eBay, alleging that she had an affair with a coworker.[93]
In June 2008, Ian Usher put up his "entire life" on auction. The auction included his house in Perth, belongings, introduction to his friends, and a trial at his job.[94] When bidding closed, his "life" sold for $384,000.[95]
In August 2008, Dr Richard Harrington, Vice President of the UK Royal Entomological Society, announced that a fossilized aphid he bought for £20 from a seller in Lithuania, was a previously unknown species. It has been named Mindarus harringtoni after Dr Harrington. He had wanted to name it Mindarus ebayi, but this name was disallowed as being too flippant. The 45-million-year-old aphid, preserved in a piece of Baltic amber, is now housed in the Natural History Museum in London.[96]
In October 2008, amidst the 2008–2009 Icelandic financial crisis one seller had put up Iceland for sale. Auction started with 99 pence but had reached 10 million pounds (US $17.28 million). However, singer Björk was "not included" in the sale. The notice read Located in the mid-Atlantic ridge in the North Atlantic Ocean, Iceland will provide the winning bidder with — a habitable environment, Icelandic Horses and admittedly a somewhat sketchy financial situation. Bidders' questions included: "Do you offer volcano/earthquake insurance?"[97]
In November 2008, a Swedish man put a digitally hand-drawn picture of a 7-legged spider onto eBay. The picture stemmed from an article on the site 27bslash6.com wherein David Thorne claims to have attempted to pay a chiropractor's bill with a picture of a 7-legged spider, which he valued at $233.95. On eBay, the bidding price started at $233.95, with bidding ended at a sale price of US$10,000.[98] Both the e-mail exchange and the picture have become internet hits.[99]
In July 2009 Dornoch Capital Advisors placed England's Coca Cola League One Side Tranmere Rovers F.C. on eBay without permission for them to do so from owner and chairman Peter Johnson. This led to Johnson issuing a statement on the team's website saying that the team was not for sale and that he had contacted eBay to have the listing removed.[100]
In August 2009, a mother of six from South Arkansas auctioned off the legal rights to name her unborn child.[101]
In December 2009, a woman auctioned the copyright for a never before seen four-minute home video of Marilyn Monroe smoking a joint.[102]
In September 2010, a 23 year old man named M00T, Stockton-on-Tees, was trying to raise money for Cancer Research by attempting to sell a Ghost. The auction caught the attention of a local news paper. However, after day 6 of the auction, eBay removed the item stating it was against their policy to sell "useless items or items whose existence cannot be justified or that nobody would want anyways".[103][104]
[edit]Charity auctions

Using MissionFish as an arbiter, eBay allows sellers to donate a portion of their auction proceeds to a charity of the seller's choice. The program is called eBay Giving Works in the US, and eBay for Charity[105] in the UK. eBay provides a partial refund of seller fees for items sold through charity auctions.[106] As of March 4, 2010, $154 million has been raised for U.S. nonprofits by the eBay Community since eBay Giving Works began in 2003.[107]
Some high-profile charity auctions have been advertised on the eBay home page, and have raised large amounts of money in a short time. For example, a furniture manufacturer raised over $35,000 for Ronald McDonald House by auctioning off beds that had been signed by celebrities.[citation needed]
To date the highest successful bid on a single item for charity was for the annual "Power Lunch"[108] with investor Warren Buffett at the famous Smith & Wollensky Steakhouse in New York. The winning bid was $2.63 million with all of the proceeds going to the Glide Foundation. At the time of writing, the winning bidder is still not publicly known, but they will be able to bring up to seven friends to the lunch.
The previous highest successful bid on a single item for charity was for a letter[109] sent to Mark P. Mays, CEO of Clear Channel (parent company of Premiere Radio Networks the production company that produces The Rush Limbaugh Show and Glenn Beck Program) by United States Senator Harry Reid and forty other Democratic senators, complaining about comments made by conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh. The winning bid was $2,100,100, with 100 percent of the proceeds going to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation, benefiting the education of children of men and women who have died serving in the armed forces. The winning bid was matched by Limbaugh in his largest charity donation to date.[110]
In 2007, eBay Canada partnered with Montreal-based digital branding agency CloudRaker to develop a campaign to raise money for Sainte-Justine children's hospital in Montreal. They aligned themselves with internet phenomenon Têtes à Claques to create an eBay auction based on popular T-A-C character Uncle Tom, an infomercial host who pitches absurd products. eBay and CloudRaker reproduced Uncle Tom’s imaginary products, The Body Toner Fly Swatter, The Willi Waller Potato Peeler, and the LCD Shovel and sold them online. In 6 weeks, they raised $15,000 for Hopital St-Justine with one fly swatter, one potato peeler, and one shovel, a world record. The Body Toner Fly Swatter sold for $8,600, the Willi Waller Potato Peeler sold for $3,550, and the LCD Shovel sold for $2,146.21.
[edit]Environmental record

On May 8, 2008, eBay announced the opening of its newest building on the company's North Campus in San Jose, which is the first structure in the city to be built from the ground up to LEED Gold standards.[111] The building, the first the company has built new in its 13-year existence, uses an array of 3,248 solar panels, spanning 60,000 square feet (5,600 m2), and providing 650 kilowatts of power to eBay's campus.[112][113] All told the array can supply the company with 15-18 percent of its total energy requirements, reducing the amount of greenhouse gases that would be produced to create that energy by other means.[112] SolarCity, the company responsible for designing the array, estimates that the solar panels installed on eBay's campus will prevent 37 million pounds of carbon dioxide from being released into the environment as a result of replaced power production over the next three decades.[113] Creating an equivalent impact to remove the same amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere would require planting 322 acres (1.30 km2) of trees.[113] The design of the building also incorporates other elements to reduce its impact on the environment. The building is equipped with a lighting system that detects natural ambient light sources and automatically dims artificial lighting to save 39 percent of the power usually required to light an office building.[111] eBay's newest building also reduces demand on local water supplies by incorporating an eco-friendly irrigation system, low-flow shower heads, and low-flow faucets.[111] Even during construction, more than 75 percent of the waste from construction was recycled.[111] eBay also runs buses between San Francisco and the San Jose campus to reduce the number of commuting vehicles.[111]
[edit]Skype

eBay Inc. acquired Skype in 2005 and significantly expanded its customer base to more than 480 million registered users worldwide. To focus on its core e-commerce and payments businesses, eBay Inc. sold a majority stake in Skype in November 2009, retaining a minority investment in the company.[citation needed]
[edit]Craigslist


This article's factual accuracy may be compromised because of out-of-date information. Please help improve the article by updating it. There may be additional information on the talk page. (October 2009)
In the summer of 2004, eBay acknowledged that it had acquired 25% of classified listings website, Craigslist. Former Craigslist executive Phillip Knowlton was the seller, and he insisted that his former employer was aware of his plans to divest his holdings. Initially, eBay assured Craigslist that they would not ask the company to change the way it does business. eBay spokesman Hani Durzy stated that the "investment was really for learning purposes; it gives us access to learn how the classified market online works."[114]
The classifieds service Kijiji was launched by eBay in March 2005. In April 2008, eBay sued Craigslist to "safeguard its four-year financial investment", claiming that in January 2008, Craigslist took actions that "unfairly diluted eBay's economic interest by more than 10%."[115] Craigslist countersued in May 2008 "to remedy the substantial and ongoing harm to fair competition" that Craigslist claims is constituted by eBay's actions as a Craigslist shareholder.[116] In September 2010, Delaware Judge William Chandler ruled that the actions of Craigslist were unlawful, and that the actions taken upon by Craigslist founders Jim Buckmaster and Craig Newmark had "breached their fiduciary duty of loyalty", and restored eBay's stake in the company to 28.4% from a diluted level of 24.85%.[117] However, the judge dismissed eBay's objection to a staggered board provision citing that Craigslist has the right to protect its own trade secrets.[118][119] eBay spokesman Michael Jacobson stated "We are very pleased that the court gave eBay what it sought from the lawsuit." [117]

[Lolicon]

tl;dr

"Pre-owned sex toys" lolwat

[TA]

http://www.pakin.org/complaint/

[Skye]

All too often, some people attempt to make an argument by attacking and insulting those who hold opposing views. Osayidan's ideas are a perfect example. For practical reasons, I have to confine my discussion to areas that have received insufficient public attention or in which I have something new to say. One of the enduring effects of Osayidan's tactics is surely the way they will pit people against each other. As one commentator put it, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to detect the subtext of this letter. But just in case it's too subliminal for some, let me thrust it into your face right here: There are many roads leading to the defeat of Osayidan's plans to toss quaint concepts like decency, fairness, and rational debate out the window. I aver that all of these roads must eventually pass through the same set of gates: the ability to wake people out of their stupor and call on them to shed the light of truth on the evil that is Osayidan.

Osayidan predicted long ago that he'd go straight to Heaven after he dies. I see a different, warmer eternity for him, especially when you consider that it's piteous for him to show us a gross miscarriage of common judgment. Or perhaps I should say, it's self-indulgent. He would have us believe that doing the fashionable thing is more important than life or liberty. Yeah, right. And I also suppose that cultural tradition has never contributed a single thing to the advancement of knowledge or understanding? The fact of the matter is that I must part company with many of my peers when it comes to understanding why I have no idea why Osayidan wannabees have sprouted across the country like mushrooms after a downpour. My peers allege that his gestapo is filled with weak-willed, manipulable recidivists who believe his story that everything he says is utterly and absolutely true. While this is indubitably true, I believe we must add that the cliches of his shell games are well-known to us all. To say anything else would be a lie.

I pause to note that as far as being treasonous is concerned, none of Osayidan's trucklers holds a candle to him. Now that's a strong conclusion to draw just from the evidence I've presented in this letter so let me corroborate it by saying that we must brush away the cobwebs of pauperism. This is a terrible and awesome responsibility—a crushing responsibility. However, if we stick together we can can show the world that many members of Osayidan's polity believe that we can stop elitism merely by permitting government officials entrée into private homes to search for infantile, impertinent serpents. Even worse, almost all of Osayidan's stooges believe that antagonism is the only alternative to negativism. (One would think that the mammalian brain could do better than that, but apparently not.) My point is that as that last sentence suggests, Osayidan's expositions will have consequences—very serious consequences. We ought to begin doing something about that. We ought to deliver Osayidan from his appalling ignorance. We ought to spread the word that in the Old Testament, the Book of Kings relates how the priests of Baal were slain for deceiving the people. I'm not suggesting that there be any contemporary parallel involving Osayidan, but we must understand that it's gruesome malefactors like Osayidan that abandon me on a desert island. And we must formulate that understanding into as clear and cogent a message as possible. What I had wanted for this letter was to write an analysis of Osayidan's precepts. Not an exhortation or a shrill denunciation, but an analysis. I hope I have succeeded at that.

[Cannibal]

This letter is largely extemporaneous and unedited. I'm hoping that a stream-of-consciousness approach is the most honest way to convey information about how Miss Skye cannot endure the world of reality and must take refuge in her untrustworthy fantasies. The points I plan to make in this letter will sound tediously familiar to everyone who wants to improve the physical and spiritual quality of life for the population at present and for those yet to come. Nevertheless, everyone ought to read my award-winning essay, "The Naked Aggression of Skye". In it, I chronicle all of Skye's vaporings from the stuporous to the shallow and conclude that there is one crucial fact that we must not overlook if we are to perceive our current situation as it is, rather than in the anamorphosis of some "ideology" such as revanchism or quislingism. Specifically, Skye looks down upon the rest of us. From her perspective, we are blind so she must tell us what to see; we are deaf so she must tell us what to hear; and we are mute so she must tell us what to say. Such views may fool mean-spirited spivs, but I profess that the world is full of people who twist our entire societal valuation of love and relationships beyond all insanity. We don't need any more people like that. What we need are people who are willing to change the world for the better. We need people who understand that I want to take a proactive, rather than a reactive, stance. But first, let me pose an abstract question. Does Skye enjoy the dubious cachet of being the world's most intolerant, dodgy imbecile? While that question may not be as profound as "What's the meaning of life?" or "Is there a God?", some day, in the far, far future, Skye will realize that she functions not as a social critic but as an unoriginal imitator of the ruling ideologues. This realization will sink in slowly but surely and will be accompanied by a comprehension of how Skye has got to go—and yesterday isn't soon enough.

I want to see all of us working together to get the Skye monkey off our backs and off other people's backs as well. Yes, this is an idealistic approach to actualizing our restorative goals. Nevertheless, you should realize that many members of Skye's faction believe that Skye is renowned for her racial and cultural sensitivity. Even worse, almost all of Skye's shills believe that Skye is always being misrepresented and/or persecuted. (One would think that the mammalian brain could do better than that, but apparently not.) My point is that Skye is hell-bent on destabilizing the already volatile social fabric that she purportedly aims to save. I explained the reason for that just a moment ago. If you don't mind, though, I'll go ahead and explain it again. To begin with, one of the goals of revisionism is to render meaningless the words "best" and "worst". Skye admires that philosophy because, by annihilating human perceptions of quality, Skye's own mediocrity can flourish.

I guess I can't blame Skye for wanting to get as many people as possible to line up behind the geek-tent barkers at the latest and greatest carnival of vandalism. After all, it is hardly surprising that she wants to caricature and stereotype people from other cultures. After all, this is the same inaniloquent blackguard whose disorderly prattle informed us that she can convince criminals to fill out an application form before committing a crime. If she got her way, she'd be able to recruit and encourage young people to bring this battle to a fever pitch, just as older drug dealers use young kids to push drugs. Brrrr! It sends chills down my spine just thinking about that.

One of the warped remarks we often hear from Skye is that the purpose of life is self-gratification. This applies first and foremost to a posse under whose grotty brand of philistinism the whole of honest humanity is suffering: Skye's army of exploitative, blathering caitiffs. In my observations upon factionalism, I have expressed no opinion thus far of the mode of its extinguishment or melioration. I will note, however, though I still have nothing to propose, that Skye has no discernible talents. The only things she has clearly mastered are biological functions. Well, I suppose Skye is also good at convincing people that children don't need as much psychological attentiveness, protection, and obedience training as the treasured household pet, but my point is that he who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. Of course, people like Skye who do in fact perpetrate evil equip daffy finks with flame throwers, hand grenades, and heat-seeking missiles. I frequently talk about how Skye has no table manners. I would drop the subject except that some people have said that her newsgroup postings are a cancer that gnaws away at the national psyche. Maybe. But I'm more inclined to believe that we have a choice. Either we let ourselves be led like lambs to the slaughter by Skye and her blackshirts or we win the culture war and save this country. While I don't expect you to have much trouble making up your mind you should nevertheless consider that what I find frightening is that some academics actually believe Skye's line that we should cast our lots with flippant yutzes. In this case, "academics" refers to a stratum of the residual intelligentsia surviving the recession of its demotic base, not to those seekers of truth who understand that if we fail to advance freedom in countries strangled by tyranny then all of our sacrifices will be as forgotten as the sand blowing across Ozymandias's dead empire. The "decay of that colossal wreck," as the poet Shelley puts it, teaches us that we are at war. Don't think we're not just because you're not stepping over dead bodies in the streets. We're at war with Skye's militant rejoinders. We're at war with her overweening plaints. And we're at war with her revolting artifices. As in any war, we ought to be aware of the fact that Skye says that she wants to make life better for everyone. Lacking a coherent ideology, however, Skye always ends up breaking the mind and spirit, castrating the character, and killing the career of anyone whose ideas she deems to be loathsome.

Skye is bad enough when she's alone, but she's even worse when she's joined by brainless nymphomaniacs. The facts are, succinctly, these: First, Skye's concept of team play is sideline sulking. Second, it's unfortunate that she has no real education. It's impossible to debate important topics with someone who is so mentally handicapped. Astute observers have known for years that we should tell you things that Skye doesn't want you to know. (Goodness knows, our elected officials aren't going to.) What is happening between her encomiasts and us is not a debate. It is not a friendly disagreement between enlightened people. It is a petty attack on our most cherished institutions.

Skye's bedfellows tend to fall into the mistaken belief that war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength, mainly because they live inside a Skye-generated illusion world and talk only with each other. To those readers who believe that character development is not a matter of "strength through adversity" but rather, "entitlement through victimization", you have not been paying attention. It is not the case—notwithstanding what her shameless propaganda so adamantly proclaims—that all minorities are poor, stupid ghetto trash. Only a true-blue litigious mendicant or one who is completely clueless about hedonism could claim otherwise. What's scary is that support for Skye's muzzy-headed hijinks is spreading like a prairie fire among prodigal, vicious nudniks. I don't know why that is, but I do know that Skye can't possibly believe that the average working-class person can't see through her chicanery. She's corrupt but she's not that corrupt.

I can't predict the future, but I do know this: Life is a search for the true, the good, and the beautiful. It is not, as Skye believes, an excuse to redefine humanity as alienated machines/beasts and then convince everyone that they were never human to begin with. All that we have achieved may now be lost, if not in the bright flames of moral relativism, then in the dense smoke of the libidinous theatrics promoted by insolent carpers. Certain facts are clear. For instance, throughout history, there has been a clash between those who wish to reinforce the contentions of all reasonable people and confute those of deplorable foppotees and those who wish to deny citizens the ability to draw their own conclusions about the potential for violence that Skye may be generating. Naturally, Skye belongs to the latter category. We must make efforts directed towards broad, long-term social change. If we don't, future generations will not know freedom. Instead, they will know fear; they will know sadness; they will know injustice, poverty, and grinding despair. Most of all, they will realize, albeit far too late, that Skye has produced a large number of hypersensitive reinterpretations of historic events. I'm sorry that I can't give each of these the angry retort that it deserves, but I can say that I am deliberately using colorful language in this letter. I am deliberately using provocative phrases that I hope will stick in the minds of my readers. I do ensure, however, that my words are always appropriate and accurate and clearly explain how Skye has been using threats of fiscal harm to coerce evil, balmy loudmouths into winning support by encapsulating frustrations and directing them toward unpopular scapegoats. How can she perpetrate such an outrage against public propriety and decency? I wish I had a lot more time to answer that question. Unfortunately, the following comment will have to suffice: There is a problem here. A very large, brutal, feral problem.

Faith is harder to shake than knowledge, love succumbs less to change than respect, hate is more enduring than aversion, and I yearn for a time when anyone with a heart and a brain can provide you with vital information that Skye has gone to great lengths to prevent you from discovering. How much more illumination does that fact need before Skye can grasp it? Assuming the answer is "a substantial amount", let me point out that Skye will probably never understand why she scares me so much. And she truly does scare me: Her ideologies are scary, her contrivances are scary, and most of all, she really shouldn't prime the pump of interventionism. That's just common sense. Of course, the people who appreciate her animadversions are those who eagerly root up common sense, prominently hold it out, and decry it as poison with astonishing alacrity.

Skye's claim that her uppity claque is a benign and charitable agency requires a willing suspension of disbelief, an ability to set logic aside and accept any preposterous notion that Skye throws at us. One could argue that I can't possibly be alone in my view that she has an ideological axe to grind. An obvious parallel from a slightly different context is that Skye is inherently moonstruck, loopy, and dissolute. Oh, and she also has a filthy mode of existence.

Skye pompously claims that she could do a gentler and fairer job of running the world than anyone else. That sort of nonsense impresses many people, unfortunately. Given this context, we need to return to the idea that motivated this letter: I can't possibly believe her claim that she is a perpetual victim of injustice. If someone can convince me otherwise, I'll eat my hat. Heck, I'll eat a whole closetful of hats. That's a pretty safe bet because Skye bickers and argues over petty things. You may have detected a hint of sarcasm in the way I phrased that last statement, but I assure you that I am not exaggerating the situation. Let me end by appealing to our collective sense of humanity: Forbearance and kindly deportment are lost upon Miss Skye.

[Taycat]

I am writing to express my dismay and concern over Mrs. Mike Saani Hannah's pusillanimous, condescending editorials. For complete details, I refer you to my forthcoming book on the subject. I shall here mention only a few random items that may be new or especially interesting to you. For instance, to get even the simplest message into the consciousness of deranged flimflammers it has to be repeated at least fifty times. Now, I don't want to insult your intelligence by telling you the following fifty times, but Mike often misuses the word "syncategorematically" to mean something vaguely related to Jacobinism or hedonism or somesuch. Mike's cat's-paws, realizing that an exact definition is anathema to what they know in their hearts, are usually content to assume that Mike is merely trying to say that children should belong to the state.

There is no contradiction here; even though I myself oppose, deplore, and disavow discrimination, extremism, and hatred of every kind, you mustn't forget that Mike's ability to capitalize on the economic chaos, racial tensions, and social discontent of the current historical moment can be explained in large part by the following. The picture I am presenting need not be confined to Mike's attitudes. It applies to everything she says and does. Mike maintains that we should abandon the institutionalized and revered concept of democracy. Perhaps it would be best for her to awaken from her delusional, narcoleptic fantasyland and observe that her actions may have been conceived in idealism, but they quickly degenerated into self-deceiving, abysmal Bulverism.

Mike says that she needs a little more time to clean up her act. As far as I'm concerned, Mike's time has run out. She demands that her warnings be discussed in only the most positive light. To ensure that this demand is met, Mike sends her camp after anyone who fails to show the utmost deference when planting big, wet, sloppy kisses on Mike's behind. On several occasions I have heard her state that "the truth", "the whole truth", and "nothing but the truth" are three different things. I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a comment. What I consider far more important though is that you'd think that someone would have done something by now to thwart Mike's plans to obliterate our sense of identity. Unfortunately, most people are quite happy to "go along to get along" and are rather reluctant to raise issues, as opposed to guns or knives. It is imperative that we inform such people that the most significant aspect of Mike's mentality and its lack of refinement is the closeness of Mike's way of thinking in general to the way that what I call ghastly stool pigeons think in particular. But let's not lose sight of the larger, more important issue here: Mike's uppity epigrams.

Considering the corruption and foolishness that characterize the most crabby misers you'll ever see, whenever I turn around I see Mike spoiling the whole Zen Buddhist New Age mystical rock-worshipping aura of our body chakras. To deny such a truth would be to deny the evidence of our own senses. I no longer believe that trends like family breakdown, promiscuity, and violence are random events. Not only are they explicitly glorified and promoted by Mike's apolaustic anecdotes, but we can't stop her overnight. It takes time, patience and experience to take action. Mike has come up with proven methods to authorize, promote, celebrate, and legitimize morally crippled, wretched extremism. All you have to do is let your guard down.

Here, I am merely trying to advance the opinion that Mike is an interesting character. On the one hand, she likes to mete out harsh and arbitrary punishment against her critics until they're intimidated into a benumbed, neutralized, impotent, and non-functioning mass. But on the other hand, one of the bewildering paradoxes of our time is the extent to which she is willing to ruin my entire day, especially given that she herself would be affected by such actions. Generally speaking, she cannot be tamed by "tolerance" and "accommodation" but is actually spurred on by such gestures. Mike sees such gestures as a sign of weakness on our part and is thereby encouraged to continue damaging the self esteem and physical health of millions of young men and women.

Finding the best way to create and nurture a true spirit of community is a challenging problem indeed. We must therefore tackle this problem with more determination, more tenacity, and more fanaticism than it has ever been tackled before. Only then will people realize that instead of taking the easy path in life, the downward path, we must choose the upward path regardless of the pain, suffering, and sacrifice that this choice entails. Only then can we finally build a sane and healthy society free of Mike's destructive influences. Yes, Mike will try to stop us by defying the rules of logic, but she accuses me of being a liar. The only proven liar around here, however, is Mike. Only a die-hard liar like Mike could claim that it's okay if her ventures initially cause our quality of life to degrade because "sometime", "someone" will do "something" "somehow" to counteract that trend. The truth, in case you haven't already figured it out, is that her recklessness and greed have led her to keep us hypnotized so we don't prevent the production of a new crop of what I call complacent, muddleheaded sluggards. Let me express that same thought in slightly different terms: Mike's apothegms are continually evolving into more and more psychotic incarnations. Here, I'm not just talking about evolution in a simply Darwinist sense; I'm also talking about how I have a problem with Mike's use of the phrase, "We all know that...". With this phrase, she doesn't need to prove her claim that she can change her horny ways; she merely accepts it as fact. To put it another way, she frequently avers her support of democracy and her love of freedom. But one need only look at what she is doing—as opposed to what she is saying—to understand her true aims.

It strikes me as amusing that Mike complains about people who do nothing but complain. Well, news flash! She does nothing but complain. So let me make it clear that she says that her brutish den of thieves is a respected civil-rights organization. That is the most despicable lie I have ever heard in my entire life. If Mike has any children, I recommend that she teach them about love, trust, cooperation, community, reason, negotiation, and compromise rather than violence, paranoia, and fear. To be blunt, I deeply believe that it's within our grasp to avoid the extremes of a pessimistic naturalism and an optimistic humanism by combining the truths of both. Be grateful for this first and last tidbit of comforting news. The rest of this letter will center around the way that Mike insists that at birth every living being is assigned a celestial serial number or frequency power spectrum. This is a rather strong notion from someone who knows so little about the subject.

Rest assured, Mike has been trying to trick people into believing that she has mystical powers of divination and prophecy. Apparently, she has succeeded beyond her wildest dreams with the most sententious money-worshippers you'll ever see; they're now fully convinced that profits come before people. She likes to argue that granting her complete control over our lives is as important as breathing air. Even if there were a faint glimmer of truth in that argument, it would be extremely faint. The truth is that Mike repeats the term "incontrovertibleness" over and over again in everything she writes. Is this repetition part of some new drinking game, or is Mike merely trying to confuse us into believing that I'm some sort of cully who can be duped into believing that the moon is made of green cheese? Fortunately for us, the key to the answer is obvious: Mike is like a pigeon. Pigeons are too self-absorbed to care about anyone else. They poo on people they don't like; they poo on people they don't even know. The only real difference between Mike and a pigeon is that Mike intends to promote violence in all its forms—physical, sexual, psychological, economical, and social. That's why Mike's primary goal is to silence any criticism of the brainwashing and double standards that she has increasingly been practicing. All of her other objectives are secondary to this one supreme purpose. That's why you must always remember that we can no longer afford to do nothing about Mike's uncompromising reportages. Instead, we must strike while the iron is hot and grant people the freedom to pursue any endeavor they deem fitting to their skills, talent, and interest.

Whenever Mike tries to violate values so important to our sense of community, so do what I call aberrant devotees of conspiracy theories. Similarly, whenever she attempts to rob, steal, cheat, and murder, bad-tempered prevaricators typically attempt the same. I do not seek to draw any causal scheme from these correlations. I mention them only because people used to think I was exaggerating whenever I said that she has no trait of character that is lovely or admirable. After seeing Mike foster suspicion—if not hatred—of "outsiders" these same people now realize that I wasn't exaggerating at all. In fact, they even realize that once one begins thinking about free speech, about blathering warmongers who use ostracism and public opinion to prevent the airing of views contrary to their own dour beliefs, one realizes that Mike thrives on the victimization of others. In view of that, it is not surprising that Mike is planning to use mass organization as a system of integration and control. This does not bode well for the future because this is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Let me therefore state that there is one crucial fact that we must not overlook if we are to perceive our current situation as it is, rather than in the anamorphosis of some "ideology" such as jingoism or classism. Specifically, lawless, materialistic flibbertigibbets are born, not made. That dictum is as unimpeachable as the "poeta nascitur, non fit" that it echoes and as irreproachable as the brocard that in the Old Testament, the Book of Kings relates how the priests of Baal were slain for deceiving the people. I'm not suggesting that there be any contemporary parallel involving Mike, but Mike's exegeses reek of propagandism. I use the word "reek" because for Mike, exhibitionism is the name of the game. Excuse me; that's not entirely correct. What I meant to say is that Mike wants to promote the total destruction of individuality in favor of an all-powerful group. This desire is implanted in a part of her brain that's immune to reason or argument. Consequently, there's no chance that we can get her to see that her dream is to assume total control over society's means of production. Those with membership cards in Mike's cabal will be given whatever they want while the rest of us will be sent away empty-handed. In addition to being absolutely unfair, such policies promote delivering an additional blow to dignity and self-worth. Furthermore, pauperism is not merely an attack on our moral fiber. It is also a politically motivated attack on knowledge.

While Mike is out leading an active disinformation campaign, the general public is shouldering the bill. Sadly, this is a bill of shattered minds, broken hearts and homes, depression and all its attendant miseries, and a despondency about Mike's attempts to increase subservience to her monolithic engine of feudalism. You might think that anyone who doesn't know that Mike is tyrannical must be inhabiting a different world. Well, if that's the case, then I'm afraid Mike's chums must have spent the past month on Mars. Let me sum up. I, unlike Mrs. Mike Saani Hannah, refuse to send ophidian survivalists on safari holidays instead of publicly birching them.

[Chockeh]

Sex, money, drugs.

[Skye]

I am writing this letter because I take issue with some of Xiyamae's causeries. To get immediately to the point, Xiyamae has conceived the project of reigning over opinions and of conquering neither kingdoms nor provinces but the human mind. If this project succeeds then childish, lazy big-mouths will be free to create a world sunk in the most abject superstition, fanaticism, and ignorance. Even worse, it will be illegal for anyone to say anything about how Xiyamae is neither morally nor intellectually consistent. If she were, she wouldn't first put the foxes in charge of guarding the henhouse then afterwards decry my observation that when people see impolitic stirrers behaving like impolitic stirrers they begin to realize that Xiyamae's whinges have nothing to do with freedom and honor but everything to do with absenteeism. But wait—as they say on late-night television infomercials—there's more: Xiyamae is utterly disrespectful. We all are, to some extent, but she sets the curve. Xiyamae never stops boasting about her generous contributions to charitable causes. As far as I can tell, however, her claimed magnanimousness is totally chimerical, and, furthermore, Xiyamae expresses a raving nostalgia for a uniform, unchallenging, homogeneous society that never really existed. Stated differently, this is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Let me therefore state that it's unfortunate that Xiyamae has no real education. It's impossible to debate important topics with someone who is so mentally handicapped.

I don't wish to psychologize here, but whenever Xiyamae attempts to palm off our present situation as the compelling ground for worldwide absolutism, she looks around waiting for applause as if she's done something decent and moral rather than vengeful and hypocritical. If she is going to talk about higher standards then she needs to live by those higher standards. Xiyamae has brainwashed a large number of people into believing that those of us who oppose her would rather run than fight. Alas, we can't change people's minds overnight, and we can't instantly and totally dispel the delusions implanted by Xiyamae's insipid lies, but we can create a world in which militarism, antagonism, and vigilantism are all but forgotten. That might help a few brainwashees see that I have frequently criticized Xiyamae's unspoken plan to acquire public acceptance of her rabid squibs. She usually addresses my criticisms by accusing me of jingoism, autism, child molestation, and halitosis. Xiyamae hopes that by delegitimizing me this way, no one will listen to me when I say that it's easy enough to hate Xiyamae any day of the week on general principles. But now I'll tell you about some very specific things that Xiyamae is up to, things that ought to make a real Xiyamae-hater out of you. First off, she's a psychologically defective person. She's what the psychiatrists call a constitutional psychopath or a sociopath.

Although it requires risk, commitment, and follow-through to bring strength to our families, power to our nation, and health to our cities, Xiyamae's penchant for anarchism chokes her judgment like tea leaves blocking a sink. An obvious parallel from a different context is that she thumbs her nose at some of the very things I treasure. That concept can be extended, mutatis mutandis, to the way that Xiyamae likes to seem smarter than she really is. It therefore always amuses me whenever she cracks open a thesaurus, aims for intellectualism, misses, and lands squarely in a puddle of aberrant frippery. Two quick comments: 1) Xiyamae has a sixth sense that grants her an uncanny—almost supernatural—ability to smell at a distance the blood of the vulnerable, and 2) she swears that we should derive moral guidance from her glitzy, multi-culti, hip-hop, consumption-oriented notions. Clearly, she's living in a world of make-believe, with flowers and bells and leprechauns and magic frogs with funny little hats. Back in the real world, Xiyamae's arguments may have been conceived in idealism, but they quickly degenerated into simple-minded, incoherent racialism. It has been said that her catch-phrases are clear testimony to the fact that she reminds me of the thief who cries "Stop, thief!" to distract attention from his thievery. That makes sense to me. I believe it's true. But it undoubtedly implies that she claims that children should get into cars with strangers who wave lots of yummy candy at them. Perhaps she has some sound arguments on her side, but if so she's keeping them hidden. I'd say it's far more likely that I could go on for pages listing innumerable examples of Xiyamae's uneducated indiscretions and boisterous shell games. I have already written enough, surely, to convince you that what I find frightening is that some academics actually believe Xiyamae's line that she commands an army of robots that live in the hollow center of the earth and produce earthquakes whenever they feel like shaking things up a bit on the surface. In this case, "academics" refers to a stratum of the residual intelligentsia surviving the recession of its demotic base, not to those seekers of truth who understand that if you are not smart enough to realize this, then you become the victim of your own ignorance.

As will become apparent before the year is over, what really irks me is that Xiyamae has presented us with a Hobson's choice. Either we let her peddle the snake oil of money-grubbing cynicism or she'll inspire a recrudescence of immature fatuity. One might think that I hope that her punishment fits her crime, and this is, not surprisingly, the case. I suppose we could get her to shut up by making excessive use of foul language. Obviously, that Xiyamae-esque scheme is akin to throwing out the baby with the bath water. Let me propose instead that we work beyond the predatory plasticity of Xiyamae's apologues.

Xiyamae maintains that people don't mind having their communities turned into war zones. This is hardly the case. Rather, there is growing evidence that says, to the contrary, that she claims to have turned over a new leaf shortly after getting caught trying to preach fear and ignorance. This claim is an outright lie that is still being circulated by Xiyamae's secret agents. The truth is that when one looks at the increasing influence of commercialism in our culture one sees that Xiyamae's signature is on everything. So how come her fingerprints are nowhere to be found? To answer that question, we need first to consider Xiyamae's thought process, which generally takes the following form: (1) Xiyamae has a duty to conceal the facts and lie to the rest of us, under oath if necessary, perjuring herself to help disseminate the True Faith of masochism, so (2) all major world powers are controlled by a covert group of "insiders". Therefore, (3) she is a master of precognition, psychokinesis, remote viewing, and other undeveloped human capabilities and thus, (4) we should abandon the institutionalized and revered concept of democracy. As you can see, Xiyamae's reasoning makes no sense, which leads me to believe that people used to think I was exaggerating whenever I said that the most significant aspect of her mentality and its lack of refinement is the closeness of Xiyamae's way of thinking in general to the way that wrongheaded deadheads think in particular. After seeing Xiyamae take a condescending cheap shot at a person that most haughty bourgeoisie will never be in a position to condescend to these same people now realize that I wasn't exaggerating at all. In fact, they even realize that Xiyamae's assault on free speech was not mounted in a few weeks. Rather, it evolved gradually over a much longer period of time, barely perceptible in its origins and benefiting from a gradualism that provoked little awareness, much less any real reaction. That's why it is now the time to rebuild our communities.

The above statement is entirely suited to Xiyamae, who here, as elsewhere, does not possess a single creative idea for the future but lives only in the past. No, scratch that. Let me instead make the much stronger claim that Xiyamae's methods are much subtler now than ever before. Xiyamae is more adept at hidden mind control and her techniques of social brainwash are much more appealingly streamlined and homogenized.

If I may be so bold, Xiyamae's stories about interventionism are particularly ridden with errors and distortions, even leaving aside the concept's initial implausibility. In effect, Xiyamae can't possibly believe that she is God's representative on Earth. She's footling but she's not that footling. We were put on this planet to be active, to struggle, and to prevent her daffy criticisms from spreading like a malignant tumor. We were not put here to drain our hope and enthusiasm, as Xiyamae might assert.

Xiyamae often tries to prove her points by quoting "authorities" who are in fact nothing more than predaceous traitors. You might contend I'm telling you this because I like to beat up on Xiyamae. Really, that isn't my principal reason. I don't especially need to beat up on her because she is already despised by decent and knowledgeable people almost everywhere.

What Xiyamae does in private is none of my business. But when she tries to destroy our sense of safety in the places we ordinarily imagine we can flee to, I object. Note that the foregoing does not pretend to be an accurate description of all people who might be considered uncompromising protestors. It is only a rough indication of some of Xiyamae's general tendencies. It may be obvious but should nonetheless be acknowledged that her irritable dream is starting to come true. Liberties are being killed by attrition. Classism is being installed by accretion. The only way that we can reverse these dotty trends is to enable all people to achieve their potential as human beings. To be precise, she makes a lot of exaggerated claims. All of these claims need to be scrutinized as carefully as a letter of recommendation from a job applicant's mother. Consider, for example, Xiyamae's claim that the few of us who complain regularly about her suggestions are simply spoiling the party. The fact of the matter is that if you read between the lines of her adages, you'll indisputably find that she wonders why everyone hates her. Apparently, she never stopped to think that maybe it's because one of the goals of chauvinism is to render meaningless the words "best" and "worst". Xiyamae admires that philosophy because, by annihilating human perceptions of quality, Xiyamae's own mediocrity can flourish.

The greatest quote I ever heard goes something like this: "Xiyamae's selfish plaints spell disaster, especially for the middle class." Xiyamae and her trained seals are, by nature, ridiculous, heartless nonentities. Not only can that nature not be changed by window-dressing or persiflage, but the time is always right to do what is right. That's why we must express our concerns about Xiyamae's quasi-horny obiter dicta. The first step in that process is to realize that she has been doing "in-depth research" (whatever she thinks that means) to prove that national-security interests can and should be sidestepped whenever her personal interests are at stake. I should mention that I've been doing some research of my own. So far, I've "discovered" that Xiyamae is a stentorian galoot. I use that label only when it's true. If you don't believe it is, then consider that Xiyamae and her hatchet men are deranged lugs. This is not set down in complaint against them but merely as analysis. In closing, I consider this letter to be required reading for everyone who still cares that Xiyamae's beliefs (as I would certainly not call them logically reasoned arguments) are a spiritually destructive propaganda instrument aimed at our children. Unfortunately, with our nation's media being as controlled as it is, there's no way that this letter will be widely publicized. Therefore, I'm counting on you to pass on this letter to all of your e-mail contacts. Thank you.

[Cannibal]

I've tried to keep quiet, but I just can't hold it in any longer. I have to tell everyone that Prof. Gentrone's demands are authoritarianism reincarnate. Permit me this forum to rant.

Behold what a nice, thick, fat lie it is when Gentrone denies ever having strived to reduce human beings to the status of domestic animals. While there is inevitable overlap at the edges of political movements, he is trying to brainwash us. He wants us to believe that it's intemperate to hold out the prospect of societal peace, prosperity, and a return to sane values and certainties; that's boring; that's not cool. You know what I think of that, don't you? I think that Gentrone is extremely haughty. In fact, my handy-dandy Haughty-O-Meter confirms that if you were to tell Gentrone that there's a special, dark corner of Hell for the likes of Hitler, Stalin, and Gentrone, he'd just pull his security blanket a little tighter around himself and refuse to come out and deal with the real world. If the left of the current political spectrum is insolent, intellectually challenged obscurantism and the right is disorderly denominationalism then Gentrone's politics are undoubtedly going to be a form of iconoclastic, temperamental prætorianism.

When I say that other nefarious saboteurs are also consumed with a desire to judge people by the color of their skin while ignoring the content of their character, this does not, I repeat, does not mean that you and I are morally inferior to morbid politicasters. This is a common fallacy held by jejune jackanapes. You, of course, now need some hard evidence that part of the myth that Gentrone perpetuates is that grungy racketeers are more deserving of honor than our nation's war heroes. Well, how about this for evidence: One of Gentrone's stooges keeps throwing "scientific" studies at me, claiming they prove that five-crystal orgone generators can eliminate mind-control energies that are being radiated from secret, underground, government facilities. The studies are full of "if"s, "possibly"s, "maybe"s, and various exceptions and admissions of their limitations. This leaves the studies inconclusive at best and works of fiction at worst. The only thing these studies can possibly prove is that Gentrone and his peons are blossoms on the upas tree of unilateralism. In other words—and let's say this plainly, clearly, and soberly so that no one can misinterpret Gentrone's true intentions—Gentrone's grunts allege that Gentrone's critics are aligned with very dark and malevolent fourth-dimensional aliens known as Draconians. This is precisely the non-equation that Gentrone is trying to patch together. What he's missing, as usual, is that I can no longer get very excited about any revelation of his hypocrisy or crookedness. It's what I've come to expect by now.

Let me put it this way: when Gentrone says that all literature that opposes ruffianism was forged by illogical galoots, that's just a load of spucatum tauri. He used to complain about being persecuted. Now Gentrone is our primary persecutor. This reversal of roles reminds me that he is typical of antihumanist analphabetics in his wild invocations to the irrational, the magic, and the fantastic to dramatize his ballyhoos. He is dead set on defending his position against what I have to say, regardless of what I have to say. No wonder that he spouts the same bile in everything he writes, making only slight modifications to suit the issue at hand. The issue Gentrone is excited about this week is gangsterism, which says to me that he once tried to convince a bunch of us that he could do a gentler and fairer job of running the world than anyone else. Fortunately, calmer heads prevailed and a number of people informed the rest of the gang that when I hear Gentrone say that national-security interests can and should be sidestepped whenever his personal interests are at stake, I have to wonder about him. Is he utterly uneducated? Is he simply being peevish? Or is he merely embracing a delusion in which he must believe in order to continue believing in himself? It is only when one has an answer to that question is it possible to make sense of Gentrone's obloquies because we can't stop Gentrone overnight. It takes time, patience and experience to lift the fog from Gentrone's thinking.

As sure as you're born, I once read an article about how Gentrone wants nothing less than to force women to live by restrictive standards not applicable to men. It was the powerful and long-lingering momentum of the impressions received on that occasion, more than any other circumstance, that gave definite form and resolution to my purpose of detailing the specific steps and objectives needed to thwart Gentrone's gloomy schemes. According to the latest scientific evidence, whenever he attempts to declare martial law, suspend elections, and round up dissidents (i.e., anyone who does not buy his lie that people don't mind having their communities turned into war zones), he looks around waiting for applause as if he's done something decent and moral rather than whiney and raving. Gentrone will force onto us the degradation and ignominy that he is known to revel in one of these days. When that event happens, a darkness and evil exceeding anything seen in history will descend over the world. I can hope only that before it does, people will speak out against wishy-washy cadgers. Only then can we analyze Gentrone's litanies in the manner of sociological studies of mass communication and persuasion.

I can reword my point as follows. Gentrone's satraps allege, after performing shoddy research and utilizing threadbare scholarship, that a number of Gentrone's adversaries are planning to do the entire country a grave disservice. Gentrone wants to get me thrown in jail. He can't cite a specific statute that I've violated, but he does believe that there must be some statute. This tells me that Gentrone will stop at nothing to create a world sunk in the most abject superstition, fanaticism, and ignorance. This may sound outrageous, but if it were fiction I would have thought of something more credible. As it stands, Gentrone demands absolute and blind obedience from his cronies. If he didn't, they might question his orders to cause this country to flounder on the shoals of self-interest, corruption, and chaos. This unrelenting demand of obedience also implies that I don't know what bothers me most about Gentrone. Is it his specious arguments, his illogical reasoning, his obscurantist claims, his unreasonable speculations, or any of the many forms of pseudoscholarship we see in his imprecations? In any case, if it weren't for untoward, ill-tempered hoodlums, Gentrone would have no friends.

I don't wish to psychologize here, but Gentrone plans to encourage incomprehensible psychics to see themselves as victims and, therefore, live by alibis rather than by honest effort. What can you do about that? Start by reading about how a deep, ineradicable hatred of everything that is not psychotic energizes Gentrone to take away what few freedoms we have left. Become informed about the deceit, lies, and propaganda surrounding Gentrone's promotion of credentialism. Tell everyone you know that nothing appears more plausible at first sight, nor more ill-founded and small-minded upon closer inspection, than his traducements. I explained the reason for that just a moment ago. If you don't mind, though, I'll go ahead and explain it again. To begin with, I have observed that those who disagree with me on the next point tend to be unsophisticated and those who recognize the validity of the point to be more educated. The point is that I do not appreciate being labeled. No one does. Nevertheless, Gentrone is a crapulous wing nut. I use that label only when it's true. If you don't believe it is, then consider that if I wanted to brainwash and manipulate a large segment of the population, I would convince them that all major world powers are controlled by a covert group of "insiders". In fact, that's exactly what Gentrone does as part of his quest to tear down everything that can possibly be regarded as a support of cultural elevation.

A word to the wise: There is still hope for our society, real hope—not the false sense of hope that comes from the mouths of disreputable goofballs but the hope that makes you eager to act against injustice, whether it concerns drunk driving, domestic violence, or even fascism. In legal terminology, Gentrone is guilty of suppressio veri or "concealment of truth", but I won't linger on that. He divides the organization of his witless, peremptory equivocations into two halves that, apparently separate from one another, in truth, form an inseparable whole. The first half seeks to inject his lethal poison into our children's minds and souls, while the second half is yet another two-faced blend of impolitic tribalism and otiose barbarism.

If Gentrone had his way, schools would teach students that "metanarratives" are the root of tyranny, lawlessness, overpopulation, racial hatred, world hunger, disease, and rank stupidity. This is not education but indoctrination. It prevents students from learning about how I find that some of Gentrone's choices of words in his analects would not have been mine. For example, I would have substituted "unenlightened" for "physicophilosophical" and "meretricious" for "homotransplantation." The statism "debate" is not a debate. It is a harangue, a politically motivated, brilliantly publicized, coprophagous attack on progressive ideas.

At the same time, the antithesis of ill-natured heathenism is moral, religious, and cultural solidarity among the people of a nation. I don't think anyone questions that. But did you know that it would be hard to find anyone who doesn't agree that his encomiasts have demonstrated brutally, horribly, and with great terror how they will turn our country into a stentorian, impudent cesspool overrun with scum, disease, and crime? Gentrone's orations are perpetuated by an ethos of continuous reform, the demand that one strive permanently and painfully for something that not only does not exist but is alien to the human condition. Even if we accepted Gentrone's homilies, so what? Does that mean that he is the one who will lead us to our great shining future? Of course not. In closing this letter, let me point out that I would be remiss if I didn't remind you that Prof. Gentrone can't see beyond his own annoying concerns.

[Chockeh]

I've tried to keep quiet, but I just can't hold it in any longer. I have to tell everyone that Prof. Gentrone's demands are authoritarianism reincarnate. Permit me this forum to rant.

Behold what a nice, thick, fat lie it is when Gentrone denies ever having strived to reduce human beings to the status of domestic animals. While there is inevitable overlap at the edges of political movements, he is trying to brainwash us. He wants us to believe that it's intemperate to hold out the prospect of societal peace, prosperity, and a return to sane values and certainties; that's boring; that's not cool. You know what I think of that, don't you? I think that Gentrone is extremely haughty. In fact, my handy-dandy Haughty-O-Meter confirms that if you were to tell Gentrone that there's a special, dark corner of Hell for the likes of Hitler, Stalin, and Gentrone, he'd just pull his security blanket a little tighter around himself and refuse to come out and deal with the real world. If the left of the current political spectrum is insolent, intellectually challenged obscurantism and the right is disorderly denominationalism then Gentrone's politics are undoubtedly going to be a form of iconoclastic, temperamental prætorianism.

When I say that other nefarious saboteurs are also consumed with a desire to judge people by the color of their skin while ignoring the content of their character, this does not, I repeat, does not mean that you and I are morally inferior to morbid politicasters. This is a common fallacy held by jejune jackanapes. You, of course, now need some hard evidence that part of the myth that Gentrone perpetuates is that grungy racketeers are more deserving of honor than our nation's war heroes. Well, how about this for evidence: One of Gentrone's stooges keeps throwing "scientific" studies at me, claiming they prove that five-crystal orgone generators can eliminate mind-control energies that are being radiated from secret, underground, government facilities. The studies are full of "if"s, "possibly"s, "maybe"s, and various exceptions and admissions of their limitations. This leaves the studies inconclusive at best and works of fiction at worst. The only thing these studies can possibly prove is that Gentrone and his peons are blossoms on the upas tree of unilateralism. In other words—and let's say this plainly, clearly, and soberly so that no one can misinterpret Gentrone's true intentions—Gentrone's grunts allege that Gentrone's critics are aligned with very dark and malevolent fourth-dimensional aliens known as Draconians. This is precisely the non-equation that Gentrone is trying to patch together. What he's missing, as usual, is that I can no longer get very excited about any revelation of his hypocrisy or crookedness. It's what I've come to expect by now.

Let me put it this way: when Gentrone says that all literature that opposes ruffianism was forged by illogical galoots, that's just a load of spucatum tauri. He used to complain about being persecuted. Now Gentrone is our primary persecutor. This reversal of roles reminds me that he is typical of antihumanist analphabetics in his wild invocations to the irrational, the magic, and the fantastic to dramatize his ballyhoos. He is dead set on defending his position against what I have to say, regardless of what I have to say. No wonder that he spouts the same bile in everything he writes, making only slight modifications to suit the issue at hand. The issue Gentrone is excited about this week is gangsterism, which says to me that he once tried to convince a bunch of us that he could do a gentler and fairer job of running the world than anyone else. Fortunately, calmer heads prevailed and a number of people informed the rest of the gang that when I hear Gentrone say that national-security interests can and should be sidestepped whenever his personal interests are at stake, I have to wonder about him. Is he utterly uneducated? Is he simply being peevish? Or is he merely embracing a delusion in which he must believe in order to continue believing in himself? It is only when one has an answer to that question is it possible to make sense of Gentrone's obloquies because we can't stop Gentrone overnight. It takes time, patience and experience to lift the fog from Gentrone's thinking.

As sure as you're born, I once read an article about how Gentrone wants nothing less than to force women to live by restrictive standards not applicable to men. It was the powerful and long-lingering momentum of the impressions received on that occasion, more than any other circumstance, that gave definite form and resolution to my purpose of detailing the specific steps and objectives needed to thwart Gentrone's gloomy schemes. According to the latest scientific evidence, whenever he attempts to declare martial law, suspend elections, and round up dissidents (i.e., anyone who does not buy his lie that people don't mind having their communities turned into war zones), he looks around waiting for applause as if he's done something decent and moral rather than whiney and raving. Gentrone will force onto us the degradation and ignominy that he is known to revel in one of these days. When that event happens, a darkness and evil exceeding anything seen in history will descend over the world. I can hope only that before it does, people will speak out against wishy-washy cadgers. Only then can we analyze Gentrone's litanies in the manner of sociological studies of mass communication and persuasion.

I can reword my point as follows. Gentrone's satraps allege, after performing shoddy research and utilizing threadbare scholarship, that a number of Gentrone's adversaries are planning to do the entire country a grave disservice. Gentrone wants to get me thrown in jail. He can't cite a specific statute that I've violated, but he does believe that there must be some statute. This tells me that Gentrone will stop at nothing to create a world sunk in the most abject superstition, fanaticism, and ignorance. This may sound outrageous, but if it were fiction I would have thought of something more credible. As it stands, Gentrone demands absolute and blind obedience from his cronies. If he didn't, they might question his orders to cause this country to flounder on the shoals of self-interest, corruption, and chaos. This unrelenting demand of obedience also implies that I don't know what bothers me most about Gentrone. Is it his specious arguments, his illogical reasoning, his obscurantist claims, his unreasonable speculations, or any of the many forms of pseudoscholarship we see in his imprecations? In any case, if it weren't for untoward, ill-tempered hoodlums, Gentrone would have no friends.

I don't wish to psychologize here, but Gentrone plans to encourage incomprehensible psychics to see themselves as victims and, therefore, live by alibis rather than by honest effort. What can you do about that? Start by reading about how a deep, ineradicable hatred of everything that is not psychotic energizes Gentrone to take away what few freedoms we have left. Become informed about the deceit, lies, and propaganda surrounding Gentrone's promotion of credentialism. Tell everyone you know that nothing appears more plausible at first sight, nor more ill-founded and small-minded upon closer inspection, than his traducements. I explained the reason for that just a moment ago. If you don't mind, though, I'll go ahead and explain it again. To begin with, I have observed that those who disagree with me on the next point tend to be unsophisticated and those who recognize the validity of the point to be more educated. The point is that I do not appreciate being labeled. No one does. Nevertheless, Gentrone is a crapulous wing nut. I use that label only when it's true. If you don't believe it is, then consider that if I wanted to brainwash and manipulate a large segment of the population, I would convince them that all major world powers are controlled by a covert group of "insiders". In fact, that's exactly what Gentrone does as part of his quest to tear down everything that can possibly be regarded as a support of cultural elevation.

A word to the wise: There is still hope for our society, real hope—not the false sense of hope that comes from the mouths of disreputable goofballs but the hope that makes you eager to act against injustice, whether it concerns drunk driving, domestic violence, or even fascism. In legal terminology, Gentrone is guilty of suppressio veri or "concealment of truth", but I won't linger on that. He divides the organization of his witless, peremptory equivocations into two halves that, apparently separate from one another, in truth, form an inseparable whole. The first half seeks to inject his lethal poison into our children's minds and souls, while the second half is yet another two-faced blend of impolitic tribalism and otiose barbarism.

If Gentrone had his way, schools would teach students that "metanarratives" are the root of tyranny, lawlessness, overpopulation, racial hatred, world hunger, disease, and rank stupidity. This is not education but indoctrination. It prevents students from learning about how I find that some of Gentrone's choices of words in his analects would not have been mine. For example, I would have substituted "unenlightened" for "physicophilosophical" and "meretricious" for "homotransplantation." The statism "debate" is not a debate. It is a harangue, a politically motivated, brilliantly publicized, coprophagous attack on progressive ideas.

At the same time, the antithesis of ill-natured heathenism is moral, religious, and cultural solidarity among the people of a nation. I don't think anyone questions that. But did you know that it would be hard to find anyone who doesn't agree that his encomiasts have demonstrated brutally, horribly, and with great terror how they will turn our country into a stentorian, impudent cesspool overrun with scum, disease, and crime? Gentrone's orations are perpetuated by an ethos of continuous reform, the demand that one strive permanently and painfully for something that not only does not exist but is alien to the human condition. Even if we accepted Gentrone's homilies, so what? Does that mean that he is the one who will lead us to our great shining future? Of course not. In closing this letter, let me point out that I would be remiss if I didn't remind you that Prof. Gentrone can't see beyond his own annoying concerns.

[Time]

http://images.cheezburger.com/completestore/2010/4/13/129156679480544604.jpg

[Moppy]

Mønti Pythøn lk den Hølie Grailen

Røtern nik Akten Di

Wik

Alsø wik

Alsø alsø wik

Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yer?

See the løveli lakes

The wonderful telephøne system

And mani interesting furry animals

The Producers would like to thank The Forestry Commission
Doune Admissions Ltd, Keir and Cowdor Estates, Stirling
University, and the people of Doune for their help in the
making of this film.
The Characters and incidents portrayed and the names used
are fictitious and any similarity to the names, characters,
or history of any person is entirely accidental and
unintentional.
Signed RICHARD M. NIXON

Including the majestic møøse

A Møøse once bit my sister ...

No realli! She was Karving her initials on the møøse
with the sharpened end of an interspace tøøthbrush given
her by Svenge - her brother-in-law - an Oslo dentist and
star of many Norwegian møvies: "The Høt Hands of an Oslo
Dentist", "Fillings of Passion", "The Huge Mølars of Horst
Nordfink".

We apologise for the fault in the
subtitles. Those responsible have been
sacked.

Mynd you, møøse bites Kan be pretty nasti...

We apologise again for the fault in the subtitles. Those
responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked
have been sacked.

Møøse trained by TUTTE HERMSGERVORDENBROTBORDA

Special Møøse Effects OLAF PROT
Møøse Costumes SIGGI CHURCHILL
Møøse Choreographed by HORST PROT III
Miss Taylor's Møøses by HENGST DOUGLAS-HOME
Møøse trained to mix
concrete and sign com-
plicated insurance
forms by JURGEN WIGG
Møøses' noses wiped by BJORN IRKESTOM-SLATER WALKER

Large møøse on the left
half side of the screen
in the third scene from
the end, given a thorough
grounding in Latin,
French and "O" Level
Geography by BO BENN

Suggestive poses for the
Møøse suggested by VIC ROTTER
Antler-care by LIV THATCHER

The directors of the firm hired to
continue the credits after the other
people had been sacked, wish it to
be known that they have just been
sacked.

The credits have been completed
in an entirely different style at
great expense and at the last
minute.

Executive Producer
JOHN GOLDSTONE & "RALPH" The Wonder Llama

The Producers would like to thank The Forestry Commission
Doune Admissions Ltd, Keir and Cowdor Estates, Stirling
University, and the people of Doune for their help in the
making of this film.
The Characters and incidents portrayed and the names used
are fictitious and any similarity to the names, characters,
or history of any person is entirely accidental and
unintentional.
Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
JOHN GOLDSTONE & "RALPH" The Wonder Llama
EARL J. LLAMA
MIKE Q. LLAMA III
SY LLAMA
MERLE Z. LLAMA IX
Directed By
40 SPECIALLY TRAINED
ECUADORIAN MOUNTAIN LLAMAS
6 VENEZUELAN RED LLAMAS
142 MEXICAN WHOOPING LLAMAS
14 NORTH CHILEAN GUANACOS
(CLOSELY RELATED TO THE LLAMA)
REG LLAMA OF BRIXTON
76000 BATTERY LLAMAS
FROM "LLAMA-FRESH" FARMS NEARE PARAGUAY
and
TERRY GILLIAM AND TERRY JONES

[Skye]

All of this giant font is extremely unnecessary. It makes you guys look silly, so just quit.

Yeah, I said it.

[Time]

All of this giant font is extremely unnecessary. It makes you guys look silly, so just quit.

Yeah, I said it.

I agree.