The Genocide Appropriation Project

As members of the Genocide Appropriation Project, our goal is to appropriate images of the Nazi Holocaust and other historic crimes and use them to dress up our political or cultural cause du jour.

We find it easy and convenient to exploit the suffering of other people in order to persuade the ignorant, and to shock those who oppose us into silence.

The Genocide Appropriation Project is not a membership organization. We count as members of the GAP any person who has ever used a specious analogy to promote their own agenda. For instance. we are very proud to associate ourselves with former President Ronald Reagan, for his famous declaration (in front of an African American group, no less) that marijuana smoking was "Twentieth Century slavery".

So, if you are having a hard time getting people to listen to your eleventy-twelfth repetition of your opinion on some subject, just call muster on the unquiet dead of the long and bloody history of our species, preferably invoking a crime committed against a group which does not include your own ancestors (or even committed by a group who are your ancestors). You're sure to win lots of friends, even if it's only among your fellow Appropriationists.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Patience, like genius and unlike stupidity, has its limits."\\

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's day to all mothers.

To mothers who have raised their children.
To mothers who are raising their children.
To mothers who have children who are far away in a war zone.
To mothers who are far from their children on account of being themselves in a war zone.
To mothers who have to put their children to bed every night in a war zone.
To loving mothers.
To mothers who find they don't love their children, but do their best by them anyway.
To mothers who suffer from postpartum depression.
To mothers who are too sick to look after their children.
To adoptive mothers.
To birth mothers.
To stepmothers.
To divorced mothers.
To non-custodial mothers.
To mothers who hate the fathers of their children, but never criticize them in front of the children.
To single mothers.
To lesbian mothers.
To men who do the Mommy work, not just once in awhile but day after day as their children grow up.
To mothers who are forced to work all day and see their children only in glimpses as they grow up.
But perhaps most of all, to mothers who have lost a child.
Or two.
Or three.
It may seem inappropriate to wish them joy on this day, and yet I can only hope that it finds them, today, or someday.
Happy Mother's Day.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "God bless you all."\\

Westphalolgy

My cousin Raymond Westphal has created Westphalogy a really nifty site for posting family pictures.

I recommend it to all Westphals and Burts, as well as selected Botteros and so on.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Everybody is related to everybody else, eventually."\\