Boviosity!

Take that, hatahs!

This ought to send a chill down the spines of the bitter-enders who criticize Pres. Bush no matter what:

Washington, DC -- President Bush has announced a series of events next week designed to silence once and for all the critics of his successful war in Iraq, the war on terrorism, and the economic policy which has been blamed for upturns in GDP and downturns in unemployment. Dubbed "Christmas For America," the events include: a new plan to make things instantly perfect in the Middle East with no further bloodshed; an initiative to end the brutal regime of North Korea's Kim Il Sung without offending anyone in the whole world; and a pay-per-view blow-job for Koffi Annan in the well of the UN Security Council, with proceeds going to retire the World Bank debts of Mexico, Venezuela, and Vanuatu. Rumors that he will also have enormous wings surgically attached to his body so that he can fly to the moon and bring back enough green cheese to end world hunger could not be confirmed at press time.

Reached for comment, Howard Dean's campaign manager stated, "My candidate blew Koffi Annan for free back in '98." John Kerry said it's unfortunate the Middle East solution would be bloodless, as endangered blood-eating desert slugs would probably fall extinct, "their beautiful night cries replaced with the sounds of industry." Wesley Clark issued a challenge to the President: "My plan for perfecting the Middle East would take three days to implement; how long will yours take, punk?" And Al Sharpton was blunt in his disdain for the name of the program: "Christmas For America? What about those who don't celebrate Christmas? Sounds like a perfect way to marginalize Muslims, who are largely of African-American descent in this country. Have a nice, White Christmas, Mr. President."

While We're At It

A little satire/jokiness of my own:

I've taken to stating as fact that the anti-war anti-Bush folks have lost the debate. This sounds like handwaving of the emptiest kind but I'm truly tired of the endless debate over 9/11, the reaction thereto, the war, etc. I like to be able to say new things, and the debate doesn't give me that chance. Talk about needing to move on: I believe there are serious things that need to be accomplished. Convincing Bushisachimp@aol.com to get behind the war effort ain't one of them. Not any more.

So naturally I tell jokes.

Here's one I heard from Jackie Martling. I think it also serves as a neat allegory:

A guy is out hunting with his .22 rifle when he sees a bear. Thinking he has a good shot, he aims for the bear, but of course, the small round does nothing but piss off the huge beast. It comes over to where the hunter is standing, pushes him down on the ground, and fucks him in the ass.

The hunter is outraged and humiliated at this and runs to a sporting goods store. "I need the biggest gun you've got!" he cries, and walks out with an elephant gun. He returns to the woods, stalks down the bear, and shoots him with the elephant gun. The bear shakes off the round, however, comes over to the hunter, knocks him down, and fucks him in the ass again.

The hunter can't believe his poor fortune. He gets up and runs to an Army/Navy store. "Give me the biggest gun you've got!" He returns to the woods with a shoulder-fired rocket, hunts down the bear, and shoots him with it. The bear dodges the rocket, and as he's approaching the cowering hunter, says: "You're not here for the hunting, are you?"

Lefty Satire Watch

After you read this, you'll probably ask, "Why 'Lefty Satire Watch,' Bovious?" Because most lefty satire seems to contain a seed of this type of trendy, theatrical despair, leavened with contempt for the "sheeple," i.e. those who think differently from them.

That's right: Lefty Satire Watch as Lefty Suicide Watch. Holy shit. This guy sounds like he's about to put a bullet in his brain pan.

I fear that this one gesture will be the tipping point past which * re-connects with wavering white males and so-called independents. The media is ga-ga over this farce of a visit. The messages from the whore centers will get much more syrupy and orgasmic as the weekend approaches cultminating in a literal ejactulation of praise and wonder on the sunday talk shows. Even Democratic senators will be stepping all over themselves to praise *'s holy visit as an act of courage and daring-do. It won't be pretty and it won't be easy to take.

I feel in my gut that this changes everything. The sheeple are just beginning to pay attention to the dawning political season and, for many, this stunt will be their initial waking image: "Our President is indeed a cool guy. Our President is indeed brave and true. Our President risked his life to visit our troops." And yada yada yada yada .....

Counter that with Dashle, and Biden, and Zell Miller, and all the rest of the regular cast of mealy-mouthed spinless Dems who, mark my words, will end up praising the piss-ant poseur, and what do you have? You have the very real makings of a blowout landslide for fascism and all that is transparently un-american gaining unambiguous approval in November of 2004.

This is the worst I've felt in my entire life on this shithole of a planet in this shithole of a country. I can't image what I'll feel like in early November 2004. I can't imagine feeling worse than I do right now but I've got to prepare myself for something I dread and fear to the very depth of my soul: The final and irrevokable loss of our democracy to fascism.

What the f**k have we become? In the final analysis it was all just so much sand sifting through our fingers. Just so much sand.

(Link via Boortz)

Looney Looney Blog Entry

I'll be owning the Looney Tunes DVD sometime soon, oh yes I will. But this post is here just to observe: reading the titles on this DVD is like reading the names on a get-well card from a particularly cool group of people. I remember times when I've seen just about all of them. Not just the material, mind you: I remember sitting in the actual living room watching the actual TV with my actual brother and my actual father and mother and howling with laughter.

Prediction: This DVD will become a cultural icon. To HAVE. Bring on the next package.

Where There Is Bread

Dean has a short post describing his rationale for renouncing Christianity (he disagrees with fundamentalists on the heavenly status of non-believers.) The post has generated 115 (!) responses, many of them longer than the original post. So I thought a post from a believer who once thought like Dean might be of interest.

I renounced Christianity, and God, during my 20's and 30's largely because I viewed it as a tool of evil men used to control credulous, fearful and superstitious people. I believed that (if he existed) Jesus Christ had been a good man, perhaps a perfect man, but that his time on earth had been wasted if all that came of it was Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and their ilk.

And I was utterly convinced that Robertson and Falwell were representative - moralizing, threatening, filled with condescension and vitriol for those who did not share their beliefs. Christianity was about who's in and who's out, and nothing else.

Now, don't get me wrong: I still believe that religion is frequently used as a tool by evil men to control people. But, hell, I also believe in guns, and that's also a pretty apt description of how they're frequently used. I also believe that this will have to end if the work of God is to be done on earth. And that's what has changed about me: my understanding of the work of God.

I kept going to church during my renunciation, of course. American social life is set up so that it's very difficult to avoid stepping foot inside a church at some time or other. I was married in a church, and attended that church for several months in the runup to my wedding. Also, at my wife's insistence, my son was baptized in the church that my in-laws were attending at the time, and we attended a few events there also. But at those times, I was incurious about what was going on and looking for things to carp about. I readily mocked (still do) the pastors' desperate reliance on insights gained from TV shows. And the scriptural references all seemed so much gobbledy-gook.

Then, something changed. You'll laugh, I guarantee you will. I have no defense against your laughter so I'll just come out and say it:

I started listening to Dr. Laura.

Heavy-handed moralizing? Check.
Sneering condescension toward non-believers? Check.
Reliance on easy answers based on hastily-considered scripture? Check.

But. But. But.

There was no denying that she was a smart lady. And there was no denying that she was doing good work: her foundation was helping the poor and sick, and she was obviously putting her heart (not to mention her blood, sweat and tears) into it. I admired that. And, most importantly of all, I found that I never, or hardly ever, disagreed with the advice she gave her callers.

This post is not intended to be a defense of Dr. Laura, and comments attacking her will be ignored. My intent is to describe how I started thinking differently about religious people. She was the first religious person I'd ever heard who I didn't want to immediately put into a sack and drown. And so she got me to thinking.

I thought about people like C.S. Lewis, T.S. Eliot, J.R.R. Tolkien - believers all, and people who I knew to be brilliant. How is it, I thought, that I have rejected out of hand (and out of ignorance) that which these brilliant people have believed? Am I really that much smarter than them? Or, for that matter, that much smarter than the preachers I'd heard? What made me think I knew, really knew, what was going on in their hearts and minds? The preacher who preached about last week's episode of "Touched By An Angel" had, I knew, at least twice as much education as I did; maybe he'd learned something. Maybe I'd learn something by listening to him or someone like him.

I told my wife I wanted to start going to church. She was happy to oblige and we started exploring. I set some ground rules: I would walk out if I heard people I loved attacked. I would walk out if I was threatened with Hell. In short, I would walk out if I found the church living down to my previous, easy stereotype of it.

None of these things ever happened. I think I might have been lucky. We stuck largely to Episcopal churches for Tasha's sake, and Methodist churches for my sake (I'd attended a Methodist church during a teen "believing" phase, where "belief" is defined as "belief that it was a good way to get next to some girls who went to the church.") I heard nothing overtly offensive, although I noticed some things that bugged me. For instance, I felt compelled to tell someone once that I could tell the difference between the thrumming of a low pedal key on the organ, and the Spirit moving me. (I'm still cynical about showmanship's place in the church, no doubt about it, although I sing in the choir.)

Things stayed this way for about a year, until we moved to our home in Gwinnett County. We'd been living in a Buckhead apartment and had never settled on a church. We'd felt like outsiders everywhere we went, probably because we felt like outsiders in our own lives - we hated our apartment and so we hated (largely) our lives.

Then when we moved, we started attending one church regularly. St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in Snellville is a smallish but rapidly growing parish with a wonderful man named Doug Coil as rector. The people were accepting and seemed genuinely glad to have us there.

All that was fine as far as it went, but after a few weeks there we stopped going - Tasha was pregnant and our daughter was born in December. To our surprise and delight, Fr. Doug appeared in Tasha's hospital room and blessed Annie, and then fell asleep in one of the chairs in the room.

So we started attending again after Annie came home. And something else started happening. I started feeling a new relationship with the world and the people around me. I looked inward and found something there that I'd never seen before. Just as visiting a gym every day and climbing onto the treadmill will eventually strengthen your heart, I found a part of me being strengthened that I'd never paid serious attention to before. It's hard to describe - it was an acceptance of people's flaws, a desire to see the best in the world, a hope for the best for the people around me, a hunger for knowledge beyond the remotely intellectual. I call that my spirit.

I listened to the liturgy and the homilies and was reminded of what I'd read of Eastern spirituality, of the duality of existence and the importance of seeing the now for what it is, and more importantly the past and future for what they are not. Scripture that I'd previously read as rotely proscriptive of feeling or doing fun stuff, I now came to read as pointing to a new understanding of the fun stuff, of its insufficiency to fill the Now, of the distance it places between us and the Now.

This is all starting to sound gobbledy-gooky again. The important thing to me, and the reason I willingly recite the Nicene Creed every Sunday, is because of my gratitude to God's church, for what it has done for my spirit, and for what I believe it can - must - do in the world - one believer at a time. Contrary to every media representation of the church, and there are plenty, I have never been threatened with Hell at any church; I have never been singled out for any behavior and told that it was sinful. Some of the people are tiresome, but largely they're happy tiresome people, and that makes a huge difference.

Bottom line: believing in God has changed my life for the better, and nothing but the better. I am an example of Hell being defined as separation from God, because I separated myself from God and I know that's where I was.

I don't want any of my atheist or agnostic friends and family to think that this means I think they should change or that I'm better than you are. I believe, as Fr. Doug once told me, that "Evangelism is showing a hungry man where there is bread." I long ago gave up my mind-reading attempts, and so I will not presume that you are among the hungry just because you're not eating at the banquet I have found.

Jorn, Where Are You?

My first blog ever was Jorn Barger's Robotwisdom.com. I checked it several times every day because Jorn could always be counted on to find cool things. I learned of the Telegarden, Hojoy, Terraserver, Elliott Smith, and many other things though robotwisdom.

Also, through various hints and occasional links, I realized that he, like me, was a fan of Kate Bush.

I also saw a disturbing glimpse into the mind of pro-terrorism, pro-palestinian America, complete with conspiracy theories and jew-bashing. Oh, at first I was able to believe that his support for divestiture from Israel was the product of an honest political difference; and that his detailed and disturbing interest in the USS Cole bombing was something other than cheerleading. That was before he posted a link to a story about Israeli self-preservation under the headline, "Is Judaism simply a religion of lawless racists?" Now, the page has become a gateway into commondreams and other disturbing (not in the "makes you think" sense, I hasten to add; they'd take that rightfully as a compliment. No, I mean in the, "What the hell are these people on ?" sense) anti-American sites, links to Ted Rall, Michael Moore, and the like (usually described as "righteous".) It became quite a slog, but the occasional interesting science, photography or programming link made it worth a continued look.

The site hasn't been updated since early October and I wonder what's up with Jorn. Especially since numerous things have happened since he stopped posting that I would expect him to be very interested in posting on.

For instance, a couple years back, Elliott Smith couldn't fart without Jorn posting on it. And now Smith has died, a suicide. Nothing on Robotwisdom.

The changing situation in Iraq and Israel should have the place humming.

Needless to say, commondreams is still publishing. He usually links two or three of their articles per week.

Jorn's last usenet posting was, apparently, at the same time robotwisdom went dark.

He's taken time off before, notably in December of 2001 due to financial difficulties. But that was alluded and hinted at long prior to his dark period.

What's up with Jorn?

Jorn, if you're out there, say hello. I worry about you, yah lunatic yah.

Update: Commenter Eric Wagoner reports that Jorn is also physically missing. Damn, damn, damn. Those who can pray over this will surely do so. The rest of you, keep him in your thoughts. Jorn, we care about you!

Lefty Satire Watch II

Andrew Sullivan catches Michael Kinsley pulling a Jon Stewart, only this time in a "serious" commentary:

Mike Kinsley pulls off the astonishing feat of trying to tackle how president Bush went from being an anti-nation-building realist to a liberal internationalist in a few years without mentioning a certain incident that occurred, oh, say nine months or so into his presidency.

If I were a Democrat, I'd be really shocked and disappointed at this kind of thing. But then again, I was a Democrat during the Clinton years, and was so shocked and disappointed at this kind of thing that I stopped being a Democrat.

Sullivan goes on:

For them, 9/11 changed nothing important; it meant relatively little; it was a distraction from more important issues like Enron, as Paul Krugman opined, during the height of the Raines madness. These people don't just have blinders on; they've attached them with super-glue.

I think he gives them too much credit. It isn't blinders; they haven't forgotten 9/11 and its memory surely sears their hearts as much as it does mine. No, they just see some kind of political value in behaving as if 9/11 hadn't occurred.

I think they're wrong. We'll certainly see.

Jody is...

My web-friend Jody is of little interest to scholars who would look for resistance and transgression in either the text (Fiske) or the medium (Mele). Don't believe me? Go see for yourself!

Carnival Of The Vanities

Lord alone knows why, but I submitted to this week's "Carnival Of The Vanities" so I suppose blog-honor requires that I link to it. Anyway, there are a few interesting things going on over there.

Can't Hardly Wait

I've been excited ever since I noticed that Peter Straub has a new novel out. I'm even more excited because the Janet Maslin, in this review, hints at something that Straub, alone among horror writers of my experience, excels at:

[...]in addition to the standard-issue frissons to be found here (and one of the most startling involves only a light bulb)[...]

and

With a section of his book entitled "A Rip in the Fabric," Mr. Straub centers his story on the possibility of slipping from the ordinary into an adjacent evil world. To the book's credit, this does not seem drastic.

Man oh man, that's Straub in a nutshell. This reminds me of the classic moment in "The Throat," when a phone call prompts the detective to tell his caller to turn out all the lights in his house and get down on the floor. See, that sounds lame, but I guarantee you that in the book, it's a sock to the gut.

And in "Ghost Story," the moment (I'm paraphrasing all these moments here...I really need to reread these) where Straub somehow manages to create a moment of palpable fear for the reader that seems to come from OUTSIDE the realm of the book...it's really hard to explain, but he does it.

This takes nothing away from, say, Stephen King (it takes much away from Dean Koontz but that's another post.) When King is on, he can be spooky and chilling and all those things you want in a horror novelist. But Straub gets under your skin in an entirely different way. King cajoles you and promises he won't scare you too bad, and anyway why did you sign up for this ride if you didn't want me here. Straub just appears there (under your skin) and scares the living crap out of you and then disappears, and you never know if he's finished with you or not.

I like that in a writer.

If Clinton Had Been A Republican...

Prominent Clinton Administration Operative To Publish Topless Photos of Rape Victim

Vile.

UPDATE: The story has now been changed, with no indication of the former status of the story. And now the original satiric headline above doesn't make any sense. The original story was about Flynt's insistence that he would publish the photos.

Guess I should've gotten a screen shot. The link now shows a story about how Flynt bought the photos but won't publish them because "she is a good kid[...]."

What a prince.

Screen prints are your friend! Wish I'd taken one.

Here's the story I originally read at ajc.com, as seen at antimusic. And I have a screen cap, although I know that an antimusic screencap isn't quite as good as an AJC screencap:

Hustler magazine claims that it has topless photos of Jessica Lynch. Lynch, an Army private, became a media sensation after she was rescued from the hands of pro-Saddam forces that were holding her as prisoner of war. Hustler reportedly has photos taken of Lynch “frolicking topless with male soldiers before she went off to war”, according to a New York Daily News story published today (Nov 11).

The only word from the Lynch camp came from the publisher of her new book, "I Am A Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story". Paul Bogaards of Alfred Knopf told the New York Daily News, "Jessica Lynch was left for dead and left as a prisoner of war. If she can survive that, she can survive anything."

Larry Flynt the publisher of Hustler said that he plans to run the photos in the magazine’s February issue. According to Flynt, the magazine got the photos from two soldiers that used to serve with Lynch.

When the subject was broached that the photos might not really be of Lynch, Flint said that he hired an outside photo enhancement lab to verify that the photos were of the 20-year-old private. "You think I'm going to publish nude pics that aren't her?" asked Flynt, "I like owning my company."

Flynt apparently sees this move as a strike against the war in Iraq. “I'm not interested in bashing Jessica Lynch, who really was a victim in this," Flynt said according to the New York Daily News. Flynt feels that the TV movie that aired on Sunday and the new book "should have been an honest portrayal of her role in the war. Everyone wanted a hero from this war."

Really, it looks to me like Flynt changed his mind in mid-story and the bigs are scurrying to cover his tracks for him. I can't think of any other way that the original quotes, which sound like Flynt in full anti-Republican belligerent-mode, got out.

PROBABLY FINAL UPDATE:

Here in the New York Daily News is what seems to be the story in its entirety, documenting Flynt's change of mind.

Again, I have kept a screen shot.

Caution: May Cause Cranial Explosions

Just click.

Link courtesy the Dreaded Purple Master

Stealth Boviosity Bingo!

I forgot to mention that Friday's Best Of The Web Today opened with the story featured in Thursday's "Beyond Parody" Boviosity blog entry. Now, Taranto usually credits contributors by name, and he didn't thank me, but nevertheless I claim partial bingo because I sent him the item on Thursday but neglected to include my name.

Dry Powder Is Best

Anybody besides me utterly unsurprised that the Jessica Lynch movie & book are bringing the old discredited lies about her capture and rescue out of the woodwork? I should have predicted it back then: these stories might have lost some of their luster at the time they were discredited, but that's no reason to believe they wouldn't have been dusted off for future consumption, like now.

I think a game of Long-Discredited Lie Bingo is in order. Especially during the run-up to the Election '04, there's no downside for these folks to bring up things they know to be false, as long as it will hurt the other side. But it might be fun to point and laugh.

Any ideas on how to counter this tactic? And that's exactly what it is: a tactic. They're relying on the fact that, once asserted with just a few words, it takes many, many more words to rebut the lies. And by that time, their target audience has lost interest.

Which book of the bible are you?

You are Psalms.


Which book of the Bible are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Via One Hand Clapping, a blog I've just figured out is pretty good.

OK, it's now beyond parody

I struggle, when trying to convince people to change their minds, or at least when trying to make my views plain, not to engage in name-calling and hand-waving. I don't always succeed, as anyone who has argued with me will surely attest.

That said, I hope I'm not supposed to take these people seriously:

Blacks say Bush played race card with court pick [...] Prominent blacks charged President Bush deliberately chose a conservative black woman so it would be harder for senators to vote against her.

Coffee Catechism

Coffee you make at home for yourself should, of course, be brewed exactly to your liking.

However, office coffee, which is shared, should only be brewed strong.

If it is brewed strong, those who like their coffee weak need only dilute the coffee with hot water until it's to their liking.

However, if it is brewed weak, those who like it strong have no recourse but to get their coffee elsewhere.

Therefore, since strong coffee can satisfy all types of coffee drinkers in the office but weak coffee can only satisfy one type, office coffee should be brewed strong.

Feel free to print out and post on your office coffee machine. And -- good luck. You don't know how many times I've had weak-coffee drinkers respond to this catechism with the response from the weak-coffee BCP: "But I don't like strong coffee!" So just repeat it until they understand. Or, do what I do, and drink the *&%(% tea instead.

Sleepy Hollow Finale

Sleepy Hollow is over and done. I still need to share out my stipend (unlike other directors at New London, I split the meagre stipend with my Stage Manager.)

Nobody should read the Confessions Of A Director (just scroll down, I'm not going to bother linking it) as attacking myself. No, I do that whenever I'm tempted to get the big head and/or whenever I perform such a large and complex task as directing or stage managing a play. I fully support my brother's comment that the show rocked in every possible way. After the sellout on Saturday we had a 3/4 full house on Sunday, pretty good for a matinee. I only wish that Friday Halloween show had been better attended, but whatcha gonna do?

It's going to be nice to be home most evenings for the next couple of months. I'll be stage managing again come January, and also taking guitar lessons in case I'm needed or wanted for Cotton Patch Gospel. I'll also be in rehearsal for my church's Christmas Lessons & Carols service (by far my favorite service of the year.)

Sleepy Hollow SELLOUT

Tonight's performance of Sleepy Hollow SOLD freakin' OUT. And they loved it! If you're in the Atlanta area, you must come see this show. Final performance is tomorrow (Sunday, 11/2) at 2:30PM.

My favorite part of the evening (don't read any further if you want to be surprised) was when the audience CHEERED after the first pass-through of the horse chase...they thought that was all! But we had three more passes to show them...they clapped and laughed louder for each one.

Lordy, what a great show. Now, it's happened before - we nearly sold out the Sunday show of Adventures Of Tom Sawyer in February - so here's hoping we do the same tomorrow!

I actually think the 60 or so folks who saw the show on Friday night were a gift from God - and this is probably the last time we do a show on a Halloween night. But hey, I could be wrong.