Or, perhaps today’s HERE WE GO HERE WE GO HERE WE GO Moment:

US contingency plans for air strikes on Iran extend beyond nuclear sites and include most of the country’s military infrastructure, the BBC has learned.

It is understood that any such attack – if ordered – would target Iranian air bases, naval bases, missile facilities and command-and-control centres.

The US insists it is not planning to attack, and is trying to persuade Tehran to stop uranium enrichment. The UN has urged Iran to stop the programme or face economic sanctions. But diplomatic sources have told the BBC that as a fallback plan, senior officials at Central Command in Florida have already selected their target sets inside Iran.

* Comics on release this week

7.44am. Kill me. Gently.

(Wide iceberg ahead)

Jess Nevins always has the best stuff:

(axis mundi)

(85)

* “Holy god. That’s sadder than watching a puppy try to lick a dead kitten back to life. And the puppy has cancer.”

* CRECY: The Opening

* Bookscan 2006: how graphic novels really sell in American bookstores

(meaning of life, no charge)

“…after her initial shock, she began enjoying the idea of a captive a little too much, and I had to teleport out before she fitted something spiky and frightening to my virginal backside.”

Birthday. Will catch up with news etc late tonight GMT.

John McCain soon to be caught telling Asian-American children that he “fucked gooks like your daddy right in the gall bladder, back in ‘Nam.” But first…

…on February 23, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) will be the keynote speaker for the most prominent creationism advocacy group in (America). The Discovery Institute, a religious right think-tank, is well-known for its strong opposition to evolutionary biology and its advocacy for “intelligent design.” The institute’s main financial backer, savings and loan heir Howard Ahmanson, spent 20 years on the board of the Chalcedon Foundation, “a theocratic outfit that advocates the replacement of American civil law with biblical law.”

It’s interesting, watching these early shuffles for position. Mitt Romney slid right of Republican-moderate while Governor, Brownback has a Christian network underpinning him, and Rudy Guiliani has law-and-order cred and the “America’s Mayor” bullshit behind him: McCain, who knows this is his last chance and is all but visibly drooling for it, is obviously being told to push hard-right to isolate Guiliani. Which apparently means doing a monkey dance for creationists, sucking off Jerry Falwell, getting into bed with Project for the New American Century and proposing bills banning use of the Internet unless under armed guard with a dog’s head up your bum.

Seriously. Next to sumo, this is the greatest spectator sport on earth.

“Attorneys: Man who gutted cellmate had mental problems”

The man accused of killing his prison cellmate, then gutting him and hanging his intestines from a clothesline in his cell, has a history of brain injuries and untreated mental problems that would have made it difficult for him to think clearly, plot a murder or “resist impulses,” defense attorneys said today.

If you even look at them funny, this could happen to you:

A woman who says she was forced into sexual slavery took jurors on a stomach-turning journey through her S&M hell yesterday, testifying against the captor who called himself “God.”

…Jodi described the whippings, mutilations and torture she said she received at the hands of Glenn Marcus, who sold comic books and lived with his parents on Long Island.

Marcus also lorded over three other female slaves he dubbed “Doggie,” “Nameless” and “Robot, ” Jodi said. But after Jodi agreed to submit to Marcus’ fantasies, she became his “ultimate slave,” the one he called “It,” she said. He initiated Jodi by shaving her head and branding the letter “G” on her buttocks, she said. He later carved “Slave” on her stomach, Jodi said.

Prosecutor Pamela Chen played a rambling 2005 phone conversation recorded by Jodi in which Marcus conceded, “I don’t know, maybe there’s something dreadfully wrong with me.”

The defense is arguing that Marcus’ relationships were consensual.

Oh, this is useful:

Astronauts’ spacesuits may one day be covered in motion-sensitive proteins that could generate power from the astronauts’ movement, according to futuristic research being conducted by a new lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US. Such “power skins” could also be used to coat future human bases on Mars, where they could produce energy from the Martian wind.

The episode of Dan Goldman’s KELLY that Nerve declined to publish.

The Weather Inside

Brides Of Kong

The Music Lovers

* Fox News Tries a Daily Show: Fails

* “But there will always be a Photo Thread. There always has been a Photo Thread. Photo Thread has always been at war with Photo Thread.”

* Chips push through nano-barrier

* (oh shit i’m doomed)

The “Power Jacket” is an inflatable exokeleton that weighs only four pounds: