Are you kidding?

That's always the question with the Carnival of Satire. For example, this piece harks back to the bad old days, but if you know anything about that history you know that it's damned hard to satirize -- or easy, these days: you just quote it and nobody takes it seriously.

It's easy to beat up on government reorganization, but changing the name of the State Department to the "Pre-War Department" is inspired indeed. He's looking for a good replacement for CIA: how about "Cassandra Central"?

And goodness knows our national math and consumer skills suck; that's no joke. It sucks so bad that we keep electing people who sell us crap like this.

I'm not in the mood for this stuff today, I guess. Even International Respect for Chickens Day isn't doing it for me right now.

Well, maybe The Asian History Carnival will lift my spirits, though it's a bit small. Only edition four, though: growing pains. And the host cheated (not really!) and pointed out the Asian material in the History Carnival I still haven't read. ...

That gives me another chance to point you to 100WordMinimum's goofy architectural discoveries, a building to which only pictures could do justice. Also to re-raise the question of historians aggressively engaging with bad history (speaking of which, when's the next edition?!?!) and with hacks claiming to be historians.

It's not satire, but you gotta love a Renaissance Hunting Text Post like this:

I love the little deer grins. They're happy! And why wouldn't they be? They're deer, trapped in a deer park, about to be chased in a restricted area by a pack of howling dogs, then shot at close range with cross-bows!

I can just hear Michael Flanders in the background.... There's also discussion of fewmets, a word I think the blogosphere needs to embrace wholeheartedly. I'm gonna. Not literally, mind you; that's disgusting.

Ugh.