Aimlessly Wandering

.
Der Spiegel's email said

------------------------------------------------------------------------
UNDER THE SCOPE
------------------------------------------------------------------------

New Book on Nazi-Era Humor: “Did You Hear the One About Hitler?”

A new book about humor under the Nazis gives some interesting insights into life in the Third Reich and breaks yet another taboo in Germany’s treatment of its history. Jokes told during the era, says the author, provided the populace with a pressure release.

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,434399,00.html

--------------------

which sounded interesting so I clicked it.

It was interesting. Then it prompted me to wonder about the state of contemporary Iraqi humor.

My quick but essentially fruitless google was cut short when I clicked on a hit that said

Stop The Spirit Of Zossen - History's Cruel Humor
Do you think the rumors about Bush bad sense of humor are just the fevered ... It's possible that someone studied a book called the “Arab Mind,” and thought ...

Well, I have no idea about the Spirit of Zossen, but the hit looked promising and SiteAdvisor had a green checkmark next to it, so I clicked it and landed here to see a blog post about the credibility of a story about Kola Boof being Osama bin Laden's mistress.

I'd never heard of Kola Boof, but the discussion following the post kept me reading. At one point a commenter gave me pause by writing that Hizbollah was "a part of the coalition of the Cedar Revolution gov that was once hailed, before it was bombed." That didn't square with my recollection, which is that Hezbollah sponsored massive pro-Syrian counterdomonstrations during the Cedar Revolution. Maybe I'm mistaken. Whatever.

So what about this Spirit of Zossen? I clicked on the title link at the top of the page and was taken to the current blog page, which as I write is a post with an interesting perspective called Returning to See Charred Boats. My interest was further engaged by the moniker at the bottom of the post: DrLeoStrauss, whose contact page refers one to the web site (watch the speaker volume if you click) http://www.stiftungleostrauss.com/, where the blog is hosted.

Woah! What's that all about?

The Leo Strauss Stiftung is a global leader offering militarized solutions in defense of Freedom, Liberty and Democracy. Since 1936 our clients have benefited from our esoteric commitment to the Athenian ideal.

* Our Award-Winning "Militarized Solutions Now" (tm) product offers immediate results from Low Intensity Conflict to Regime Change.

* International Cadre Identification and Recruitment.

* Transforming Societal Consciousness One Mind at a Time.

Nuts? Crazies? A bit over my head and outside my scope, so back to Google to find this blog post from The Remedy (the Claremont Institute's blog) saying it's parody. I was thinking it might be parody, but I can be pretty dense and couldn't tell for sure. Guess I hadn't looked enough. Anyway...

So what's up with this parody site that seems to host a serious highbrow blog? (I say "seems" because I still wonder if they're pulling my leg in the blog and I'm just too stupid to realize it. I'll have to read some more, which probably marks them as pretty good memesters.) It turns out their registrar is the same one I use, GoDaddy, and that they've used GoDaddy's "Domains By Proxy" service. Dead end there.

Enough already. This guy thinks the Strauss site is great. Good enough for me.