New! Improved! Lighter! Leaner!

Yes, folks ... your humble bloghost has fallen victim to one of the most preventable online disasters imaginable. Poor security practices on my part allowed my blog to disappear, leaving only such posts as I had saved in order to transfer from one machine to another, along with my correspondents' comments. Thank God I still have those--most of our conversations can be recreated from them.

I think this time around, however, I will respond to your learned and reasonable commentary (and Izmud's, too) either in phrases from the dreaded Necronomicon of the mad Arab poet Abdul Alhazred, or from the infamous Hungarian Phrasebook. Here are some examples:

Chefjef: BTW, UCLA is not a liberal campus. I spent a few years there, and can tell you that in particular, the graduate School of Public Policy and Political Science - where I have several friends, to include a doctoral candidate who was a schoolmate of mine- are filled with conservatives and Republicans.

Monk: Ph'nglui mglw'nafh UCLA m'wah Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl Repflabrikan fhtagn fhtagn!!

[Google translation: Great Cthulhu in dead city R'lyeh sleeping will consume UCLA in large Republican gyro spiced with cumin!]

--Or--

Izmud: Pope John Paul II may have been notable and respected for many of his achievements in his lifetime, most particularly in the international relations realm. However, IMO he also bungled the handling of the priest sex scandal cases, and his hard-line stance on modern social issues has led to a Church-admitted net loss of the faithful averaging 10-15,000 per month worldwide!

Monk: Ya, you great poof! Mine hovercraft is full of eels, but I am no longer infected! Drop your panties, Sir Winston ... I cannot wait til lunchtime--my nipples explode with delight!

I shall start things off again with a re-posting of Vita ab Alto's original manifesto, with a few names changed to better implicate the guilty.

Until then, to paraphrase the immortal words of Wensleydale and Customer:

Reader: It's ... um ... it's not really much of a blog then, is it?

Monk: Finest in the district, squire!

Reader (annoyed): Explain the logic underlying that conclusion, please.

Monk: Well, it's so clean, sir!

Reader: Yes, it's certainly uncontaminated by blogging...

Monk