Remember this, from yesterday? Of course you don’t. I’m the only person who cares about such things.
But still, somebody at the AP apparently objected to a headline so glorious, so they changed it. If you visit the same story now, you’ll find this: Palin implores GA. Republicans to back Chambliss.
Boring.
The real, original version is included. (Also, I love the terrible picture of Palin.)
I had no idea. I must say that I am absolutely shocked my core.
Since I estimate the existence of, at most, five regular readers, I’ll have you know that this website remains customer service oriented: just this week, I changed layouts to encourage faster page loading times for the Apostle and got rid of the ugly-as-sin StumbleUpon links for Virginia’s Droo.
And speaking of giving thanks, thanks for stopping by regulars: Mitch the Killer, Vegan Stewart, The Apostle, Virginia’s Droo, and, of course, evil arch-nemesis Haku.
This is fantastic. Number 8 is especially good.
Excuse me for being incredulous, but are California Mormons actually portraying themselves as the victim in the state’s Proposition 8 debate? Judging from the nonsense included in this article, it would seem that they’re determined to try. For example, this:
Many Mormons believe they are being unfairly targeted and compare the anti-Mormon sentiment to a witch hunt…”This is not fair – a lot of people wanted this passed, not just Mormons,” said Lynnette Black of Sacramento who rallied in support of Eckern in front of Music Circus last week. “We (church members) worked hard and within the law. It’s very hard to see this attitude toward Mormons.”
Frankly Lynnette Black, go straight to hell. It doesn’t matter if you’re working within the law if your goal is the disenfranchisement of other citizens, merely for the alleged crime of not adopting your specific beliefs. (Beliefs, mind you, that were endorsing polygamy as recently as 140 years ago.) Now, as for this nonsense about it being unfair that Mormons are being targeted for their despicable anti-gay hatred, remember that no gay is seriously proposing genuine legal retribution be visited upon Mormons. As opposed to, oh I don’t know, the damned Mormons who just contributed $20 million to write legal disenfranchisement into the Californian constitution.
It isn’t just Mormons, of course. Christianity has really adopted this notion that its being persecuted in America. Visit the predominant social conservative websites, and you’ll see the ever implicit, and occasionally explicit, idea that Christians are somehow an endangered species. Doesn’t matter that almost every member of every elected body in the United States is a Christian; doesn’t matter that we’ve had an unbroken string of Christian presidents for this nation’s entire existence, or that the vast majority of judges and police are Christian. To hear Christians tell it, they’re barely keeping their heads above water in the massive wave of repression being visited upon them here in America.
This is news to Chinese Christians or Sudanese Christians, who are risking jail or death to believe as they do. But of course, American Christians are rarely, if ever, consistent on anything (other than their hatred of gays). And now Mormons are adopting the same absurdist nonsense, despite having an entire state to themselves, despite a despicable record of racial relations, and a horrifying history of endorsed polygamy. To believe these idiots, it is unfair that gays would aim their animus toward them, because all they did was contribute half the budget of the pro-Proposition 8 advocacy, and did so at the direct instruction of their church. That Mormons would insist that they’ve done nothing wrong is outrageous.
Again, it is worth noting that Mormons actively campaigned to deny fellow citizens legal protection. Gays are merely pissed at Mormons. Any reasonable person would side with the gays against the Mormons, because the gays aren’t proposing genuine legal retribution that makes a Mormon a second class citizen in his own home.
I saw two movies this weekend, which is quite the accomplishment considering that I’ve got two kids and am in the middle of the academic rush season. (”What’s that student of mine? You say you can handle another paper? Fair enough then; it is assigned!”) Still, it was nice to get away from all that to revisit movie watching, also known as what was once my favorite activity.
I saw Role Models, which was perfectly profane and fantastic, which meant that the guys over at the The Onion AV Club had to bemoan the fact that the movie was in anyway sweet. Because, yknow, god forbid a film be both profane and sweet. That’s just ostentatious. Representing the cultural vanguard has got to be a daunting proposition, because you’re never allowed to just enjoy something; you constantly have to be lecturing even moviemakers sympathetic to your cause (like Role Models’ David Wain, who is about as AV Club as it gets). For once though, couldn’t the reviewer (in this case Nathan Rabin) explain how he would have handled a plot that has two man children sentenced to 150 hours of community service with actual children at a Big Brother/Big Sister facility? How else can you wrap it up other than the two adults, profane to the end, taking a bit of pleasure in their experience and ultimately giving something back to their younger comrades? What in the hell are you supposed to do? Because the only other obvious answer, and again it should be noted that I am nowhere near as smart as these hipper than hell reviewers, is to have the adults do their time with the kids, not learn a thing, and leave as if the experience didn’t matter. Of course, the film is a comedy, and it isn’t much fun seeing children abandoned, but then, I don’t think Modest Mouse is a particularly good band.
Then I saw what might be a critical darling: William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A. which, quite frankly, sucked. In fact, that descriptor may not quite be doing the film justice when you consider Friedkin was responsible for both The Exorcist and The French Connection. Both of those are good movies; this was just boring. The only good part - the twist toward the end - was marred by the partner’s transformation immediately afterward. That was stupid piled high on a fail sandwich. So predictably, in this article’s third paragraph, we see that the A.V. Club’s heavy hitters recommend this movie to somebody not particularly into the Friedkin oeuvre. Because nothing says pleasure like seeing Jane Leeves from Frasier as one of the movie’s sex symbols; likewise, does it ever stop being fun seeing William Peterson freaking out for the millionth time while inexplicably calling people amigo?
Needless to say, the AV Club and I disagree yet again. Yet it is the only collection of reviewers that I trust. God only knows what this means.
One of the pleasures (frustrations) of being a parent is talking with your child. The experience is generally fun, but it’s like pulling teeth to get my daughter to tell me what happened at school. She’s seven. She’s too young for this sort of thing.
So I tried another tactic the other day. I asked her to tell me one story about school, and promised I wouldn’t pester her for another one. She agreed, and then said, very matter-of-factly, “We had recess. I went to the monkey bars. I can now skip a bar.”
She’s been pretty excited about the monkey bars for the past couple of days.
She then added, “But I can’t go backwards anymore.”
“Oh no!” I said, genuinely, because she’d been pretty excited about figuring out how to go backwards on the monkeybars. “What happened?”
“I think it’s because of the cold.”
That, in case you’re wondering, is why it is fun to talk to your child. Her comment struck me as being out of left field, but I looked over at her, and she seemed pretty certain that the cold was affecting her monkey bar skillz. Who am I to disagree with her conclusion? We drove on.
At Target
Then she had the day off from school for Veteran’s Day, so I dragged her and Trusted Source Jack on a trip to Target. We were walking by the Christmas section, and she said, “Oh, hey, Dad! A white plastic Christmas tree. We should get one.”
At which point I went on my rant about fake trees (they’re awful) and white trees (they’re even worse) and explained that at no point in her life would I ever agree to even considering a white plastic tree decorating our home for Christmas. My rant took a couple of minutes.
At the end of which, she said, “Yeah Dad, I know. I was just trying to make you angry.”
Proof positive she’s a daughter of mine.
They’re so particularly adorable when they’re busy suggesting that it is impossible to know good if you aren’t religious. Or to quote the awful American Family Association’s Tom Wildmon:
“How do we define ‘good’ if we don’t believe in God?”
Yes, because knowing good from evil is impossible without regularly reading the insane rantings of men at much as 2000 years old filtered through an endless number of translations which has left us with the version of Christianity that even Christians can’t agree upon. It would be one thing if Christians could at least agree amongst themselves upon the book’s interpretation, but take five Christians and you can only guarantee that you’ll have five different interpretations of the Bible.
It’s the presumption of the religious that is so irritating, as the above quote makes clear. To assume that I can’t tell the difference between acts, that I cannot rank order behaviors in my head because of my total lack of interest in the Bible; it’s really a shocking allegation that is breathtaking in its utter rudeness. But of course, these particularly insulting Christians are the same ones who claim that they can love gays while systematically denying gays any legal protections, so it’s pretty clear that their connection to reality is tenuous at best.
Cue the following, “It was clear that their connection to reality was tenuous when they started believing the Bible in the first place.” I’m not necessarily interested in that, although quote’s like Wildmon’s make it easier for me to be.
-I loved doing What A Bad Idea. I had even been invited to allow my podcasts to be broadcast on a friend’s internet radio station. So predictably, Switchpod my hosting service revealed that I am over my free limit and now have to pay. But a cursory examination of their fees reveals I’m too broke to even think about hosting more podcasts. Until I can figure out another solution, they’re suspended. Hooray broke-assedness.
-Also, I just realized, I think, that I’m using a version of Wordpress that is 18 versions old, and I have no idea how to fix it. I have no idea how to do anything website related, actually. At this point, I don’t even know where the site’s code is, other than nebulously out in the ether somewhere. So…yeah.
I quibble with The Onion AV Club from time to time, but this is inexcusable: how do you interview Robert Davi and not mention his dynamic performances in the brilliant Maniac Cop 2 and Maniac Cop 3?
Both of those movies are classics and by “classic” I mean amazing cinema verite. At least, for posterity’s sake, find out about working with Z’dar
(This is probably the most insider post ever on my site, likely only to be enjoyed by Mitch the Killer. These are the benefits of having personal website.)
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