The "Simple Sabotage Field Manual" (Office of Strategic Services, 1944) describes many amusing ways a saboteur can wreak havoc upon an unsuspecting enemy. In addition to describing many ways you can break electronics and foul mechanical systems (pour sand into machines! jam a pencil into air filters!), it has a large section on how to use the enemy's bureaucracy against him.

From the "General Interference with Organizations and Production" section:

1. Organizations and Conferences
   1. Insist on doing everything through "channels." Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.
   2. Make "speeches." Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your "points" by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate "patriotic" comments.
   3. When possible, refer all matters to committees, for "further study and consideration." Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five.
   4. Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
   5. Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.
   6. Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.
   7. Advocate "caution." Be "reasonable" and urge your fellow-conferees to be "reasonable" and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.
   8. Be worried about the propriety of any decision - raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.
2. Managers and Supervisors
   1. Demand written orders.
   2. "Misunderstand" orders. Ask endless questions of engage in long correspondence about such orders. Quibble over them when you can.
   3. Do everything possible to delay the delivery of orders. Even though parts of an order may be ready beforehand, don't deliver it until it is completely ready.
   4. Don't order new working materials until your current stocks have been virtually exhausted, so that the slightest delay in filling your order will mean a shutdown.
   5. Order high-quality materials which are hard to get. If you don't get them argue about it. Warn that inferior materials will mean inferior work.
3. Office Workers
   1. Make mistakes in quantities of material when you are copying orders. Confuse similar names. Use wrong addresses.
   2. Prolong correspondence with government bureaus.
   3. Misfile essential documents.
   4. In making carbon copies, make one too few, so that an extra copying job will have to be done.

It goes on and on.

And here's a bit from the "General Devices For Lowering Morale and Creating Confusion" section:

1. Give lengthy and incomprehensible explanations when questioned.
2. Report imaginary spies or danger to the Gestapo or police.
3. Act stupid.
4. Be as irritable and quarrelsome as possible without getting yourself into trouble.
5. Cry and sob hysterically at every occasion, especially when confronted by government clerks.

Good to know that office life in the 40's was essentially identical to office life today.

Spot the IT consultant

The Gates of Hell Just Opened In Guatemala

We were in Wilmington NC this weekend, doing an overeating / overdrinking marathon. Good times.

By coincidence, Wilmington is the town where they filmed a lot of David Lynch's "Blue Velvet", in which Dennis Hopper plays the crazed and evil Frank Booth. And, of course, Dennis Hopper died this weekend. So, we did a quick tour of the places which show up in the movie (and which are still around).

This is the building used for the exterior of the apartment where Isabella Rossellini's character lived.

This is a great little bar called the "Barbary Coast" which was used as the exterior of a nightclub/brothel. Word is that there are interior scenes from here in the outtakes on the DVD.

The police station was used in the movie, but was recently demolished - so recently that it's still on Google maps. And there's a coffee shop which was a diner in the movie.

Anyway, that's probably as close as I'll ever get to the late great Dennis Hopper.

Newcastle? Fuck That Shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!
(from Lula's, a basement, backalley pub)

The Credit Card Concierge Experiment

Man dies of uterine cancer

Short answer: there is no short answer. There's too many possibilities for a short answer. But there's a long answer over at the Weather Underground.

Here is a pretty good wrap-up of the whole Lost arc. Apparently it was written by a writer from the show.

Spoilers below!
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Perhaps we could lower Obama down to the site of the smoke monster's birthplace oil geyser and let him re-insert the Giant Magic Cork Of Power. Sure, he'd sacrifice himself, but he would save the rest of us.

And really, isn't this the exactly the kind of thing we expected of him when we chose him to replace that last guy (George, Jacob, Jingleheimer, Schmidt - or whatever his name was) ?

Cause... this oil thing is fucking horrible.