Okay, just a couple more...

The insane blogging frenzy continues!

A couple more things I meant to mention -- no, really! Just a few more and I'll shut up. Honest I will. Just one or two more. Maybe three at most. Certainly no more than four. Four... five, tops. Six more things at the absolute most...

Anyway. On this whole Larry Craig "wide stance" thing -- I mean, seriously, Senator Craig, what the fuck, dude? Since I got this last job I'm spending at least a few minutes most days in a men's room stall at work, and I'm forcibly reminded of what should be an obvious truth here, at least, to any guy who has ever sat down in a stall in a communal crapper to take a crap -- you cannot possibly take a 'wide stance' while doing this, because your pants are around your ankles.

There is simply no way, while you are seated on the throne in a bathroom stall, that you are going to get your foot under a stall wall far enough to brush up against someone else's foot unless you either (a) still have your pants pulled up, or (b) no longer have your pants on. The first... well, if you go into a men's room stall and sit down with your pants pulled up, you ain't there to use the facilities in the conventional manner, and however wide your stance may be when going to the bathroom, it really doesn't matter, because clearly, you weren't there to go to the bathroom.

As to the second possibility, well, if you go into a public men's room, enter a stall, close the door, prop your suitcase against the door so as to block any view under the door from the front, and then take your pants off... well, that would seem to speak for itself as to your intentions.

Now, the police report on the Craig arrest states that Craig was 'seated to the left', which would indicate that he didn't go into the stall just to piss because all the urinals were occupied. That's about the only way anyone in a men's room stall could possibly take a 'wide stance' that might conceivably touch someone else's foot in a neighboring stall. But if you're sitting down, and you're there to 'go to the bathroom', well, I don't care how wide your stance is, the only way you're getting your foot into someone else's stall is if you really, really want to.

So that's that.

Second, on a completely different subject --

I just finished reading Stanley G. Weinbaum's THE BLACK FLAME, something I found in a second hand store a few months back. The stilted prose style, cardboard characterizations and "classic" plotlines indicated pretty strongly that this particular book was written back in the 30s or 40s, but as I got towards the end, one particular passage sent me scrambling for the original publication date:

She gave him a curiously sardonic smile. "I'm not afraid to tell you now... what was in the package I took from the amphimorph. Would you like to know?"

"Of course."

Her voice quivered excitedly. "In that package was an atomic bomb!"

"An atomic bomb?"

"Yes. And do you know where it is now?" The voice rose exultant, fanatically elated. "At the wall behind the Throne of Urbs! Behind the Throne where the Master's sitting this moment!" She laughed at his horrified face.

Now, here's the thing -- the 'wall behind the Throne of Urbs where the Master's sitting this moment' was, like, in the next frickin room. I mean, seriously, what this nutjob was saying was, she planted an atomic bomb forty fucking feet down the hall. And now she's standing there, having a fucking chat with some guy! So I read this and I'm thinking Holy SHIT you crazy crackhead BITCH you've DOOMED EVERYONE, INCLUDING YOURSELF!! WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU????

And then Our Hero, whom she's just spilled all this to, goes tearing towards the room where the atomic bomb is hidden to save the woman he loves, who is naturally inside, and I'm thinking, okay, what the hell, buddy? It's an ATOMIC BOMB, MOTHERFUCKER! What are you going to do, smother it with a couch pillow? Dump it in a barrel of water? Heave it out the window? Holy SHIT!!! YOU'RE ALL GOING TO DIIIIIIE!!!

But, before he can even get there:

A thunderous roar reverberated in the vast hall like the rumbling thunder of a collapsing mountain. A continuous screaming bellow like the clamor in hell rose in an ear-blasting crescendo, and beyond the glass doors rolled billowing clouds of steam, shot through with jagged fires.

And now I'm thinking Jesus H. Christ on a holy pogo stick, what the fuck kind of punk-ass atomic bomb is THIS? So I turn to the front pages of the book, and see --

"The Black Flame" copyright 1938 by Better Publications".

Okay. Well, nice try, Stanley, but you were just a leetle bit off in your hypothesis as to what the blast from an atomic bomb would be like.

"Beyond the glass doors." Riiiiiiiiighttttt...