Yo, Vatican slammers: this is how you criticise the Pope. Sample:

As John Paul II, he is Holy Father of the Church, but as Karol Wojtyla, he is in many ways a typically myopic post-modern European.

Stone Cold Warren. (Via Kathy Shaidle.)

Thgis is amazing stuff, better than an X-Phile episode: Airborne Archaeologist Challenges the Myth of a Pristine Wilderness:

For the past decade, Erickson has used aerial images—borrowed from the military, scientists, and even oil companies—to guide his fieldwork. What he’s discovered about the prehistoric Amazon challenges many textbook teachings. Before Columbus, he argues, the area was heavily populated and agriculturally advanced. His work has led to a surprising supposition: Humans may have engineered nearly every aspect of the Amazon landscape.

Of course there are detractors to the theory, but their arguments, at least as presented here (sneers and scoffs), aren’t very compelling.

Via Cronaca.

Here are more articles on the “terra preta” – the “dark earth,” and the excavations of traces of early Amazon civilizations in the area where it is found:

More Information – Amazon Archaeology
Black soil that may hold the key to end hunger
A Terra Preta website
There was a BBC special on this
Amazon Civilzation Before Columbus

Brian Tiemann at Peeve Farm is usually more careful; but here, in a brief mention of an incident at Denny’s where a manager allegedly tried to alert the FBI to a possible terrorist sighting and was allegedly ignored by that agency, he misses something rather obvious. In the article he cites on the incidents of racism at Denny’s, he says:

Denny’s is known for being rather pathologically racist in its hiring practices across the country

But the article only recounts the numerous incidents of racism towards customers, and the hiring practices mentioned all speak of the efforts after the incidents had been brought to light to make the restaurant chain more racially diverse. It says nothing about being racist in its former hiring practices.

Update: bolds added in the quoted section for clarity.

So, to some Europeans America is too religious; to others, we are a soulless, materialistic, spiritually-shallow culture. So what are we? Among other things, we seem to be a snare and a temptation for those who can’t face the problems that are occuring closer to home.

It’s us or the bicycles, people. You know it’s true; you are just afraid to speak out. Well, I’m not. I say we must band together and rise up against this two-wheeled scourge– Hold on, there’s someone at my doo

(Via Sondra K.)

You know, some day I am going to tell the world about the shocking goings-on at the Methodist church I went to in my childhood. Not only did we actually have to dress up in nice dresses and hats and little white gloves (in Florida, a torture), but then after the sermon we’d do the circle dance where we’d wave knives and chant “death to all homosexuals and Catholics and fashion models!” and then we’d all line up to eat raw baby. I never much acquired a taste for it. Presbyterians cook the baby first, but we were Methodists, so raw baby it was.

What? You don’t believe me? Well heck, that’s at least as believable as this story in the Village Voice. Note to Mr. Perlstein: maybe when you write something this silly you should leave out breathless exclamations like “It was an e-mail we weren’t meant to see” and “But now we know” and so on. It gives your revelations (oops! pun not intended) a vaguely fraudulent and cheesy air. I’m just saying.

(Mark Shea fell for it.)

(PS: for those who don’t get my Methodist thing, I remind you that George Bush belongs to that church. Methodists aren’t really known these days for their hellfire attitudes and intense interest in the Apocalypse. But I guess it’s really easy to fool people in New York who work for the Village Voice when it comes to certain religions.)

Ian McKellen, one of my favorite actors, cleverly deals with some occasionally silly questions in the Independent.

JIm Treacher sums up life, the universe, and everything – at least as it is for bloggers – in this part of what was ostensibly a post-Angel-finale review:

6. When they finally slammed the door on the whole “Shanshu” thing. You know, the ancient prophecy that Angel would someday become human again? The carrot that’s been dangled in front of him since the end of the first season? Gone, signed away in a heartbeat (so to speak) as a test of his loyalty to the secret society he’d infiltrated. WHICH WAS AWESOME. It summed up the whole show: You keep going even when there’s no hope, no possibility of reward. You just keep going. Hell, the guy is practically a blogger.

I am not worthy. He almost makes me regret never seeing one episode of the show. Almost.

Actually, I think the only important comparison one can make between the Harry Potter books and the Left Behind series is that the former is good storytelling and decent writing and the latter is utter crap in every way (except some of the jackets on the Left Behind books have nice Ominous Sunset imagery). Then again, I suppose that there has been a lot of cheese associated with Christian literature, but it seems to me that there also used to be a whole lot of good stuff, whereas today we are invited to either peruse the various volumes in the Help Yourself to Financial Success and Salvation (Because Obviously Jesus Didn’t Mean Christians When He Spoke About the Camel and the Needle’s Eye) genre, or…. to go back to some of the Old Ones if we want to read some good Christian literature for a change.

By the way: no, I don’t think the Harry Potter series are “Christian” – they are adventure stories written like the old ones used to be: for anyone of any age to read.

(Via open book.)

History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men.

(Via cut on the bias.)

PS: “Jeffery Godsick” – I love that name, it’s hilarious. I don’t believe it for one minute, though, it’s just too Wodehouse to be real. But I love it.

(more…)

Looks like I won’t be watching the Olympics this year. Not that I bothered the last time they were on either, but while the last Olympics all I had to avoid were the endless gooeysoft sob stories about how all the athletes had to overcome all sorts of “personal dramas” (death of parents, death of favorite teachers, not enough jelly on their pb&js) this time I’ll get to avoid the spectacle of the athletes being told to not fly the American flag or wear their colors because “We’re not the favorite kid in the world right now.” Well, hey, guess what, Bill Martin, you aren’t my favorite person right now either. Gee, hope that the corruption, steroid abuse and bribery don’t interfere in the fun too much this year.

Isn’t suicide a sin?

(Via Dustbury.)

Just a note before I go: why do people take pictures of themselves doing the nasty and then get all upset at their appearance in the public eye? I don’t just mean celebrities; by no means are Hollywood types the only people who can’t seem to do anything without a lens focused on them. I used to know someone who worked for a photo development store; this was before the widespread availability of affordable digital cameras. He used to tell us stories, and let’s just say some “mistakes” were saved, not thrown out; all I can say is there are things that people are willing to put into the hands of perfect strangers that I wouldn’t allow to be recorded on film if you offered me a billion dollars. Think of it: people would drop off at the local photomat their 35-mm rolls of the previous night’s swingers party, as if they were no more than pics of Grandma’s 80th birthday at the Baptist rest home. And now, in the age of the internet, people are putting things on their hard drives – and gee suddenly, out of nowhere, Aunt Marge is on a website in full birthday suit glory. That’s ‘cos Aunt Marge has no idea how to password-protect her computer or files, and stores her pics of herself in her Windows “My Pictures” folder under names like “menaked1.jpg” and her mischevious fourteen-year-old son had a fine idea of how to take mom down a peg or two for grounding him last week. Celebrities are no smarter than Aunt Marge; most of them are stupider than Aunt Marge’s handbag.

I… miserable… prospect… a… half-inch… [f]ornicator…

Bwah!

Ooh, I want to play:
(more…)

I’ve never understood the appeal of these shows where everyone sits on a couch and then someone bursts in (none of these shows ever have people locking the doors of their trendoid TriBeCa apartment lofts) and says something goofy and they all go “Whaaa-aat!?” and then the next scene they are in a bar and the hero inadvertently insults a waitress which results in a Comically Menacing Dude and/or Lesbian (this is the 21st Century) making threateny noises which gives the lead guys the chance to trip all over themselves in Comically Cowardly mode in that puppyish way that makes women go “Awww….!!” and then they end up back on the goddamn couch in the trendy TriBeCa (or Soho or West Hollywood) loft apartment which still has all its cute Craft & Barrel and Urban Outfitter gewgaws despite the fact that no one ever locks the fucking door on any of these shows.

I just don’t get them.

(Looks at calendar.) Come on, Change! Come on, Change!

By the way: not that there’s anything wrong with SDB, it’s just that uh, um… er… I have scabies! And liver spots. And I snore. Yeah. That’s it.

Dang, this is scary:

(Via a small victory.)

I’ve updated this post too many times, so here’s a fresh one on the same subject. Fred Reed has a typically acid take to the torture issue. I still say – if they didn’t play Air Supply while doing their dirty deeds, it doesn’t quite rise to the level of real torture.

I kid! Air Supply isn’t that bad. Well, at least I don’t get the urge to toss radios across the room when Air Supply songs come on them, but then that’s usually because the radios are in cars, and that would throw my back out.

I had another thought: I wonder if some of the problems in the military (how did all what Fred calls “special people” get in here) could be solved by ditching that dumbass “Army of One” advertizement. I keep imagining some yob taking this slogan to its logical conclusion because he’s been raised on a steady diet of MTV and beer: “Yeah, I’m a motherfuckin’ Army of One, and I rule!” I could be wrong, though. But I keep in mind that many of today’s commanding officers, who should have known better, are younger than me and therefore are more susceptible to degeneracy in the time-honored fashion of the older generation running down the younger.

No, as Fred says, it’s a problem indemic to life in wartime, and human history in general. Of course, we could go back to concentrating on being moral, pure, and above-it-all instead of getting our hands dirty in the grubby mess of the Rest of the World. That served us so well before. Sure, we will lose a few thousand people to sudden death by terroristattackitus, the cure of which is almost as bad as the disease, every few months or years or so. And millions of people not insulated by our wealth will suffer and no doubt die painful deaths. But our souls will be pure. They’ll look pretty in Hell.

(Via a commenter on Michael Totten’s blog.)

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t get supposed admirers of philosophy and philosophers who get so bent out of shape about a “long post” on the internet. Have these people ever read any actual works by philosophers, or just the Cliff Notes versions?

Equally hilarious is the fury of the commenters (paraphrased): “Augh! I read it! It hurt my brain!” So why did you read it? Did it only hurt your brain at the very end?

(Oh yes – updated to include the observance that of all the bloggers that commented upon Den Beste’s essay, the only one that didn’t seriously respond to Den Beste’s theories was the one at the portentiously named, Kant-invoking, self-consciously cerebral Crooked Timber. Make of that what you will.)

What do you call people who were on the verge of getting what they said they wanted, who then let it go for some trifle?

Speaking of losers – what do you call people who shoot two-year-olds in the head to make sure they were dead? Well, there’s a part of the world that calls them “heroes,” and it’s not just confined to the Middle East. But George W. Bush = Hitler, and Jews are the new Nazis. I see.

And then there is this fellow. It occurred to me once that the phrase “I want to crawl up inside you and die” is a curse more evil than a thousand so-called obscenities. It denotes the state of mind of a certain sort of person – someone, perhaps, like the person who could “ink” this cartoon and then write these words. There is something going on here, but I don’t know what it is – and what’s more, I don’t care.

I think I will now go dig out my tape of Troublegum. I need to clear my head.

I have had trouble with trolls in the past on my own site and currently on the couple of blogs I run. On the subject of Micah Wrongright. Sean Collins has advice for people dealing with trolls and other online neurotics:

My real point here is that people should remember that when they see someone acting needlessly belligerent or bizarre online, chances are good that there’s something wrong on the homefront too.

His solution to dealing with them is much kinder and gentler than mine, but then I am not as nice or as patient a person. Also, I haven’t seen any evidence so far that Wright has “alienated” his most devoted fans – on the contrary, the revelations of his dishonesty seem to have, by all accounts, upped his cred with a large number of these people. What that says about them isn’t very good, of course. Anyway, comment moderation, control, censorship, and the crushing of dissent on comment-enabled blogs and other online forums rule as far as I am concerned.

(Via Jim Treacher.)

I really would like a nice bowl of pho right now. Some of that lemongrass chicken would also go down quite nicely as well. And for desert – Banana-Coconut-Tapioca Pudding. Man, I love Vietnamese food.

Lileks is worried about what people think of his writing. I have one thing to say:

Aughhhh!!! Stop it!

Man, if I worried about what people thought about the ephemera and nonsense posted here, there wouldn’t be a “here” to get worried about. Now, let’s see if this posts in one click or takes several “publishes” and screen refreshes to show up.

Hey, I have a great solution to the “problem” of all those unwanted pregnancies that it’s a woman’s right to terminate etc.:

STOP FUCKING.

Thank you, I’ll be here all night.

Oh yeah, and no more coed dorms, bring back the idea that it’s shameful and degrading for teenagers to have sex, bring back adulthood – oh never mind, I’m dreaming again. But when I see pictures of people like
this woman – and I neither know nor care whose side she is on – I want to bring out the jackboots and the chastity belts and the public stocks. And I’ll bet this harridan would be on the side of whoever was administering them, so that’s a bad idea too.

Oh heck, I’m bored, I’ll play:

1. Grab the nearest book.

2. Open the book to page 23.

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

She trembled as she blew back the tissue paper over the engraving and saw it folded in two and fall gently against the page.

From Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert.

I wonder… where is “Christianity Awareness Month” or “Judaism Awareness Month"? Come to think of it, is there any other religion on the planet – Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Wicca, generic tribal shamanism – that gets its very own “Awareness Month“? You know, I’m not sure if the cute-ifying treatment that Islam is getting from us is a demonstration of the Edutainment Elite’s lack of backbone in the face of people who actually believe their own murderous rhetoric or a display of its embedded contempt for “those exotics and their weird yet charming ways.” Either way, I am guessing that giving Allah the Johnny Carson treatment isn’t going to appease the more rabid infidel haters in the Middle East, but rather the reverse.

(Via relapsed catholic.)

I still haven’t seen the new Jesus movie, but this interesting commentary from an atheist who saw it – and didn’t hate it – isn’t exactly dissuading me from one day ponying up my dollar bills for a ticket. Sample:

Gibson has really introduced nothing new here. He has attempted instead to revive a very powerful tradition upon which the book had been closed. Or so nearly everyone thought. He is reminding two billion christians that they’re mailing it in, that they are evading the central mystery of their faith.

Heh. If an atheist can see it– You know, I have a theory – it’s not exactly new – that a lot of the problems people have with religion is the fact that so many of their co-religionists are in it just for show. For example, many Catholics have told me that they left the church for anything else – atheism, Pentecostalism, Wicca – because all they got from their childhood church was rules and regulations. It is quite human to ask “what’s in it for me?” and if you don’t provide something, at least for the beginners (the children, the converts) you might as well close up shop.

(Via Jay Solo.)

Not much, really. Personally, I’m waiting for the first gay divorce. I’m guessing it’ll be Rosie O and that fluffy bit she tied the knot with. Anyone care to post odds?

Lost in Miami… trust me, that is something you don’t want to be. Unfortunately, it often happens – the latest victim of my hometown’s automotive labyrith is kewl warblogger Matt Welch’s wife, Emmanuelle, who is a reporter. She apparently was on assignment in Hellmouth on the Bay, and had a rather dreadful time trying to avoid the many traps the natives have set up to divert guileless visitors into our more “interesting” (code word for crime-riddled) neighborhoods. Miami is a casebook study on how building interstate highways causes crime. All of the neighborhoods lining either side of I-95 are mad, bad, and dangerous to know.

Now, you would think that it would be easy to find one’s way around the place. After all, Miami’s streets are laid out on a grid formation. Streets (and roads, drives and lanes and some other designations I forget) run more or less east-west. Avenues, courts, and… heck, I only moved away five years ago – anyway, they run north-south. The numbers start, at 1, right in the middle of Miami’s fistlike little downtown, which is bisected by a street that runs all the way to the swamp, aka “the Everglades” – the non-numbered Flagler Street. The “central” street that runs north to south and bisects the downtown area that way is the imaginatively-named Miami Avenue. North of Flagler Street, it’s called “North Miami Avenue.” South of Flagler Street, it’s called “South Miami Avenue.” And likewise, East of Miami Avenue, Flagler is East Flagler, and west of that road, it’s West Flagler. North Miami Avenue goes on and on into the north, and eventually becomes State Road 441, which if you manage to stay on it long enough, gets you out of Miami.

Still awake? There’s more! Like I said, the numbers start, after these non-numbered (or “zero") central streets, at number 1. The four quarters of the bisections of the streets are the south-east, south-west, north-east, and north-west sections. South-east is very small, mostly the downtown area, which abuts on Biscayne Bay; Miami on a map resembles a large, vaguely rectangular cookie with a very large bite taken out of the bottom right corner. The other three quadrants (I like using that word ‘cos it makes me think of Star Trek) are very large, especially to the south and west. The numbers continue as far as they are able – into the 300s in the south-west area. Or probably more since I’ve moved. Anyway, this is to show that yes, it is indeed possible for one to be at the corner of NW 87th Avenue and NW 87 Street. All you have to do is know how to count, and know east to west, and it’s easy, right?

Well yeah, sure, and monkeys could fly out of my butt – the problem with a system that simple is the slightest thing could fuck it up, and boy does it get fucked up. I haven’t even mentioned the little cities and townlets that make up the Greater Miami area that have their own system of street numbering, or worse, give their streets names and number the buildings by some arcane system that no one without a degree in Differential Equations can understand. For example, I grew up near, and went to high school in, the hoity-toity old-rich (for Miami) city of Coral Gables. This place had been built up by some rich dude with a jones for Spain, and everything was tiled, mortised, and fake-battlemented-walled to the max – and the streets all have names like “Sevilla,” they curve all over the goddamn where, and they don’t even put the street names on street signs – too gauche and crass for the Cultured Folk within – they put them on little white stones at street level. I learned a few basic routes around this part of the county, and never went in there without a map.

Then there is Hialeah. It has its own street-numbering system. It also has many roads with the Miami street numbers also on the street signs. If you happen to find yourself in Hialeah, you may as well give up, pull over, rent an apartment, and plan to stay, because you aren’t getting out of there.

I won’t get into Miami Beach because I have forgotten how to describe sheer lunacy. I will observe that it being actually impossible to park anywhere on the island (Miami Beach is an island across the Intracoastal Waterway), no one actually can settle down there. That’s how they planned it, I think.

I learned to drive in Miami. I’ll never be afraid to drive anywhere, now. When people in Orlando, where I live now, tell me that driving here is “bad,” I just laugh and laugh and laugh until they go away, looking over their shoulders at me in dread. I have driven in Los Angeles. I observed the curious fact that people there actually used their turn signals to signal turns, instead of leaving them on “left turn” forever, possibly to signal “I am a septuagenarian who refuses to get cataract surgery because I can see just fine what the hell did just I hit?” or simply breaking off that annoying little stick and throwing it out the window because that clicking noise is driving them crazy. When I put my turn signal on in Miami I often got people beeping at me irately, because like they care, bee-yotch, where I am going, or swooping around me at about fifty miles an hour because you know that having to slow for someone ahead of you to turn means you have one second more to be on the roads in Miami and all things considered that’s something you don’t want.

I was going to watch the Oscars. Anything for a glimpse of the Hobbits, right? But – I felt this vast indifference to the whole thing. I don’t really care about awards anyway, but that wasn’t why. Then I realized: Annie Lennox is, I believe, going to perform her song from Return of the King on the show. I hated that song. It was the only song on the soundtracks to all three films of the trilogy that I thought was crap. Also, the teevee is in the other room, away from my computer. Teevee always loses to computer.

Hmmm… Sean Penn should win an award for “Best Shrieking Like A Wildebeest With Its Nuts in a Vise.” If I ran the Oscars there would be such an award. (Yes, the dreaded Song moment has passed, so I turned it on. Thank you other bloggers for watching the show so I don’t have to!)

I watched, as I folded laundry (yep, nuthin’ but glamour in my life!) the gayest antiwar speech ever. Gay as in “stupid.” We “went down a rabbit hole” in Vietnam and “millions died"? What the fuck was that supposed to mean? The metrosexual dude who emitted this won for Best Documentary. Nothing will beat the Moore win from last year, that was too hilarious. This was just lame.

Oh my god, they’re singing some sort of folk song. Kill me now. Addendum: the singers (I think they were actors, actually, but I was in another room) must have done something funny, because there was a lot of whooping and hollering. I came out and all I saw were people laughing in the audience. I’m guessing some sort of Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake breast-exposure takeoff.

I heart Jack Black and Will Ferrell.

Ugh. The boring “Hearts of the West” won. Yawn. It’s just such a dull song. It’s nice that Annie’s all thrilled, though. But I’d rather that song from whatchamacallit – the “Triplets of Something” – won. It was at least lively.

Huh, Mark Steyn liked The Barbarian Invasion, so he’ll be glad it won an Oscar.

I must watch Master and Commander one of these days.

Oh god, not Robbins and Sarandon…

Why did I forget this will probably go on until at least midnight? Shit. I have to get up at four-thirty. But it’s too late – I caught a glimpse of Elijah Wood and now I want more. Yeah, pathetic, I know.

Dammit, I always miss something: “I don’t care what they say the rest of the night (e.g. “tanking” economy, Air National Guard) - the opening sequence where Michael Moore was crushed by a LOTR elephant was awesome!” – Viking Pundit.

Best Actress always goes to the woman who gives the weepiest, screechiest performance. Yawn. Folding laundry again.

Theron does a Streep… Time to play the music – oh god, she’s not going to thank everyone in South Africa individually, is she?

Sean Penn wins for Best Male Crying in a Role. His male weepiness can’t compete with the other Sean’s – Astin, that is. But Sean Astin wasn’t nominated.

Okay, ROTK won (and I suppose, by proxy, the previous two films did as well). Yay. Boy, I sure wish Jackson hadn’t given Barrie Osborne the podium. There were not enough shots of Elijah. Billie Crystal looked kind of pissed off at the end. The stage was boring – all pale blue, with giant weird Oscar statues. It looked like a stage set from an old Benny Hill show.

The following is a paraphrase of a comment I left on this post on Jeff Jarvis’ blog. The subject is still the Jesus Movie. The reason I am expanding upon my comment here on my own blog, is that I am sick of the trend of the argument that has taken place over the past few days between Christians and Jews over what is really a petty little thing, a mere artifact – a movie forgodsake. I want it to end, now. Here goes:

I don’t know whether or not the movie can be said to be anti-semitic (leaving aside the predilections of its director and his relatives), since I haven’t seen it, and there are so many totally opposed viewpoints from people who have gone to see it with an agenda. There is also an undertone to some of the criticism of the film’s elements that dips its toes into the waters of proclaiming Christianity itself to be anti-Semitic at its core, merely because to Jews its claims are heretical. As to whether the film will cause its viewers to engage in anti-Jewish violence (real physical violence, not just nasty words) – so far I haven’t seen any reports of such, though it is early days, and of course we must remain ever vigilant against the forces of darkness and stupidity. And most of the nasty words up to this point seem to come from paid commentators who could be said to have an agenda to get people to dislike the film; persons such as Maureen Dowd ("Here, you want to kick in some Jewish and Roman teeth. And since the Romans have melted into history . . ."), and Benyamin Cohen ("Well, after walking out of an advance screening, my first comprehensible thought was this: I really want to kill a Jew"). I don’t know what this says about the movie or people who approved of it, but it sure says a lot about the so-called cultural elite, not much of it good. But enough about our alleged Official Spokespersons of the press; from what I have read so far most Christians who didn’t hate the movie seemed to come away mainly with an urge to be better people – more faithful, less petty, and so on. But these are mostly bloggers I am talking about, hardly a representative group of people across the nation (though the fact that a person does not have a blog or a web page or even a computer does not mean he or she is not as articulate and well-read as many bloggers seem to be, just that their opinion is not as immediately available). But I digress…

To for the speculation as to whether the film will somehow incite Muslims to hate Jews and attack them, I’d say that ship has already sailed. We know (come on, we know) that Jew-hatred is endemic in the Muslim world, and the existence of Israel is certainly not the only reason (said state did not exist when Hitler went questing for Jew-haters in high places among the Arabs, and found them). I wouldn’t be surprised if we hear some spouting from some Muslim spokesravers about how Christians and Muslims should ally together against the Evil Jews because look! at what that movie shows them doing! – but that would be nothing new. What is a danger, to Jews and Christians (and Buddhists and Zoroastrians and Wiccans and of course non-raving Muslims) is if Jews and Christians destoyed their own hard-won relationship with each other without the Islamicist fanatics having to lift a finger, all over a movie.

Like I said, I want it to stop, now. It is non-productive, at the very least, for Jews to screech at Christians: “Ugh! This awful movie is full of Jew-hatred and Mel Gibson hates Jews and you’re an evil monster for seeing this movie you Jew-hating Christian heretics you!” Think back on all the times you were inspired to agree with someone and support them and be their best buddy after they cursed and insulted you and told you that everything you thought and believed was not only wrong but evil. Yeah, that didn’t take long, did it. And it is not at all helpful, Christians, to holler back: “Well, you just shut your mouth about stuff that’s none of your business! Quit playing victim! It’s our turn to play victim now!” You wish. Like it or not, Christian people, the days of being lion food in the Coliseum have long passed, you’ve been on top for quite some time now, and as annoying as insults and snubs can be, they are nothing to centuries of being hounded, persecuted, and killed dead by people in power who hated you over something that happened generations before you were born. You can quit poor-mouthing about your second-class citizenry in the land of People Who Don’t Appreciate You For the Wonderful People That You Are any time. And you might want to look up that word in the dictionary and ponder its meaning: you know the word – it starts with p and rhymes with “hide.”

Last update on this: for your reading pleasure, links to reviews and commentary about the Jesus movie (I should start calling it the “Jebus” movie, shouldn’t I, to keep my Blogsnark creds) that I found interesting:

Bloggers and other non-professionals:
Targetblank.
Christopher S. Johnson.
Dean Esmay.
Tainted Bill.
Sheila O’Malley.
Steven Silver.
Just added:redsugar.
Justin Katz.

Columnists:
Ezra Levant weighs in. It’s favorable towards the movie, and since he is either Canadian or at least this is on a Canadian website and you know how easily offended Canadians are this may be reassuring.

Gerald Warner in the Sunday Scotsman. It may surprise some people to know that there are Catholics in Scotland, but not me, a long-time Simple Minds fan.

And last but not least, Reihan Salam in the New Republic – a rundown of even more pundits. (By the way, is there another word I can use? I am getting sick of “pundit.") Anyway, Salam gives some good snark, especially about Frank Rich, who is the snobbiest of the culture snobs, but he is a bit too cute with his “chutzpah” thing. He’s got a bit of the old chutzpah himself, if you ask me.

Feb. 29, 9:50pm: One more! One more! Richard Corliss, whose name is not exactly synonymous with “Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy,” has something to say. Come on, all this is way more interesting than that Oscar shizzat.

Jeff Jarvis, church-going, brother-of-a-minister Christian, went to see The Passion. See his reaction:

Mel Gibson’s Passion would make me an atheist. Who would chose to believe in the God he portrays – a God who demands such incredible suffering of his own son to balance the sins of man?

In the comments to his post, his readers attempts to explain his own religion to him.

You know, I may have been raised in the wishy-washy Methodist church (the same hellfire creed that George W. Bush slaughters cute little lambs for – the church’s unofficial motto was, I believe, “nice girls wear gloves when drinking sherry with Reverend Fletcher") but I knew Jesus wasn’t killed by lethal injection and sent off to Heaven with a chorus of singing unicorns. Full disclosure – I made some fun of this movie back in the day (and by the way, Slate, I like my royalty payments in small, unmarked bills), but I have since read the reviews, pro and con, and I am almost intrigued enough to see this film. At the very least, it is supposed to be well-acted, and personally I dote on subtitled movies and archaic languages. Also, anything that annoys the Culturatti has those brownie points going for it. We’ll see.

I just find it interesting that people are grousing about the awful icky violence in I Can’t Believe He Took Jesus Seriously! – oops, excuse me, The Passion of the Christ (or as it is known here in Florida’s Bible Belt, “the Movie,” as in “I’m going to see the Movie with my church tomorrow") – while not long ago people (perhaps even the same ones? Perhaps tomorrow I shall utilize Google and do a compare/contrast) absolutely doted on the cartoon fountains-of-blood-and-severed-limbs that were by all account a major portion of Kill Bill. I am not necessarily condemning this viewpoint – “cartoonish” violence at least has the excuse that it is not really “supposed to be realistic – I mean, limbs aren’t that easily severed by a blond chick with a sword–” etc. etc. But I find it… interesting. And that’s not even touching upon the subject of avowed Christians who apparently reject the more uncomfortable aspects of their own faith. All that blood and sacrifice… No wonder so many people are so willing to drop trou for Muslims. At least the followers of Mohammed seem to be serious about their own beliefs.

Update: link to Jarvis’ post fixed; somehow a stray character snuck in there. I blame Satan.

Also: Russell (who should go back to blogging! Go!) provides a compare-and-contrast example of a Kill Bill violence good/Passion violence bad reviewer.

Jim Treacher, of course, has the last word. On like, everything.

Apropos of this article on Frontpage Magazine, garnered from Mike at Cold Fury, I have this to say:

This is one thing I can never, ever get: the continuing attraction lefties and so-called “liberals” among the creative classes (artists, you know) have for the ideology and the continuing practitioners of Marxism. I mean, the basic premise of the fight against the former Evil Empire is the fact that no one who lived there was allowed to leave. Not without a hard-won permission slip from Mommy and Daddy Politburo. I mean, think of the worst horror of a Baby Boomer’s adolesence: Not Being Allowed Out. Come on, you know what I mean: the Stern Parental Warning, the Dreaded Curfew, the Having to Sneak Out the Window At Night, the evil fate of being (shudder) caught and grounded when out after the allotted time. The Isley Everly Brothers even had a song about the disgrace inherent in being late: “Wake Up Little Susie.” Sometimes I think the entire “Free Love Peace-In Down With the Squares” movements of the Sixties were a reaction against the (no doubt) exaggerated shame brought down upon the heads of innocent yet erring teens who lost track of time back in the Fifties.

But then along comes, say, Castro, laving the same parentalist, authoritarian bullshit with fake cant about “the noble Workers” and “brotherhood of the proletariat” and the Boomers instantly prostrate themselves in adoration. Can’t they see it? Castro is The Man, he’s The Establishment – he is their parents! He keeps his kids (the Cuban people) indoors, he won’t let them have any fun. People in Cuba have to sneak out of the windows of their country by any means necessary.

You know, I think I’ve got it: the Boomers who love the Communists are jealous of the Commmunists’ slaves – they resent their own parents yet remember their childhoods as a time of peace and plenty and safety, where Dictator Dad may have fostered resentment, yet provided boundaries, paid the bills, and took “care” of them. They just see the (remaining) communist nations as a symbol of that ever-shrinking womb that they can never return to. Hey, I guess I do get it, after all…

The Stern Wars rage on – Jarvis has updated the post, and the comments are fast approaching the 200… 300…. Captain, I canna keep her goin’ much longer! range. The Stern fans and BushVader commenters, as well as the person who brought up that P.J. O’Rourke quote about today’s liberals being just like toddlers, brought to mind a scene I was recently witness to:

On my way home from work there is a Books-A-Million store I occasionally stop in, if I am not in a hurry to catch the next bus. A few days ago there was a family (mother, dad, and toddler son) at the store. At some point the child – a square little creature in this little sleeveless blue overall outfit that made him look like a miniature wrestler – started to stomp about and emit sounds. I believe he was trying to say “bullshit,” but he couldn’t quite handle the “sh” sound so what came out was more like “bull hit.” His father attempted damage control, but “stop saying that nasty word!” did not register on the tyke, who was probably no more than two-and-a-half years old. He was having a grand old time, ignoring his harrassed dad and strutting about the store, saying “Bull hit! Bull hit!” I left the store with my coffee to the dulcet sound of King Kid in charge.

Oh yeah: I forgot – mom. She was there, and she was totally ignoring her two male charges. I only knew she was the mom because she was pushing the (empty) stroller about and I had seen her have mom-type interaction with the Child earlier. But once he started with his act, she was “that kid? that wussy guy? Don’t know ‘em.”

Someday I’ll write my bio, and maybe I’ll title it I Was a Teenage Virgin. Then again, maybe not. But if you want to know why so many people shudder and say “ew” whenever the Seventies is mentioned, read this account of a panel of that era’s has-beens (some who were has-beens even then, but that was also the era of the Cultural Thing That Wouldn’t Leave) talking about ESS EEE EX.

Really, leaving aside the presence of Farrah Fawcett (who comes off as the most sincere and appealing member of the crew, go figure), none of these artistoid faux-intellectuals seems to have noticed any change in society since Love Boat was a big hit. Their attitudes are embalmed, and displayed in a red-leatherette-lined faux burlwood case with real brass fixtures:

“The artists have to take back desire.” - Jong at the end of a tirade about how the sexual revolution of the ’70s has been hijacked by pornographers putting college girls’ labia on the Internet.

Jackie Collins, clearly not afraid of exaggeration: “Everybody knows that everyman has a mistress and every woman has a lover.”

“I’ve been with the same person for nine years, and we have sort of a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy - Edmund White explaining that he and his partner sleep around because “we want each other to be happy” He goes on to boldly speak on behalf of all homosexual men and explain that the lack of monogamy is why gay relationships are better than straight ones.

Erica Jong flapping her dewlaps, Jackie Effing Collins and some ancient gay dude promoting homosexual promiscuity like AIDs never happened. Where is my stake?

(Via Matt Welch.)

Now this is the way to write the news. Think how newspaper sales would go up* if they approached every topic that way. Not just the obvious (celebrity sex) but any topic. Think of the possibilities… Hey, a contest! Write on the following topics the way this story in the News of the World was written:

• The weather.
• Sports.
• Local garden club announcements.
• The ongoing conflict in Iraq. (Really sex it up this time!)

The winner gets, uh, me pointing out* that he or she is the winner!

*No puns were intended here, honest.

(Via it comes in pints? That’s not a pun either! I don’t do puns! Quit it!)

Remember the NFL ("‘N’ Now Stands For ‘Nipple’!") Scandal? Yeah, I know – so two days ago. Still, here’s a little tidbit that may make you laugh – or cry:

There was also the debacle of Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl appearance. Bono had asked to appear, but was turned down amid fears that he might be too political (or perhaps because of his frequent swearing in public). The NFL are probably wishing they’d taken up Bono’s offer. Excluding swearing, I think even Bono would find it hard to “top” Jackson’s boob. You can’t get much more indecent than that…

Funny. They weren’t too worried about his “swearing” two years ago. I still have the U2 portion of that halftime show on tape. There was no swearing, nor was there any overt “political” shilling. (For what? World peace? Healthy Africans? Since when are the vague, hippy-esque causes U2 have mostly been known for considered controversial?) Whatever – yes, I am quite sure that the NFL honchos are firing whoever made the decision to send U2 a “sorry, no thanks” note.

Update: even more hilarious – here’s more from E! Online (no link, it was sent to a U2 email list I belong to):

Bono had hoped to perform his new song, “An American Prayer,” which he had planned to use as pitch to attract attention to the AIDS (news - web sites) epidemic in Africa.

MTV, which is producing the program, signed off on the performance, but the NFL flinched at the subject matter.

A spokesman for the NFL indicated that the organization didn’t find Bono’s message in keeping with the atmosphere it sought for the Super Bowl.

No further comment is necessary, is it?

Is “the Tasteful and the Tacky” (sorry folks, no direct link, the brave blogger took the post down, see the second update below) the twenty-first century’s version of “the Sheep and the Goats"?

(Source of the title to this post, because I really didn’t think I’d be able to find anything at all apropos Google came up with it on the first try.)

Update: the thing about the sheep and the goats comes from this:

And he shall separate them one from another,
as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats.
And he shall set the sheep on his right,
but the goats on his left.
– Matthew 25: 32-33

The sheep went to heaven, the goats went to hell. Here’s an artistic representation.

Update the 2nd: Well well well. The owner of the blog I linked to has taken the brave step of deleting the entire post, because apparently she thought that objections of some commenters, myself included, were attacks on her character or something. They weren’t, at least on my part, but since the evidence has been disappeared I guess you’ll just have to take my word for it. The last comment on this post is her explanation. Get it while it’s hot, because it looks as if that post is going into oblivion soon too. Yes, I am just a teensy bit furious, but I am more disappointed. Oh well, chalk up another blog I no longer feel welcome visiting.

Update the Third: the comments to the second linked post are now deep-sixed. It is to laugh.

I have decided: this will be a politics-free blog. Why? Because… because it’s only January and I am already hating this year. Yes I am so looking forward to ten months of freakass Democrat (if it were a Democrat in the White House I’d say Republican so stop typing now) “oh god please elect me pleeeeaase you sheeple you ungrateful ignorant no we mean Ordinary People Who This Administration Doesn’t Care About elect us goddammit if you don’t we’ll hold our breath until we die and then won’t you be sorry please elect us please” shenanigans. And yes, I am also looking forward to the succeeding four years of “Aaagghhh! Our Doom has come upon us!!!! And it’s all Your Fault!!” from whoever loses. I’ve already made up my mind to vote for Bush, and unless he is found pulling the entrails out of live babies to appease his Dark Masters I doubt there will be anything to make me change my mind. And no, thanks for emailing me, but a “Blogs for Bush” logo doesn’t go with my Lord of the Rings theme which I am keeping until kingdom come since it seems to annoy all and sundry and I live to annoy you people.

So I won’t be discussing the upcoming presidential food fight election on this blog. That sissy Tarzan gurgle Dean yelped out sure was funny though.

I’m afraid to watch the video (third one down) here. It’s a German AIDS-prevention/condom-promotion commercial.

It occurred to me as I hit “post” that the comment I left to this post of Acidman’s, wherein he wondered why some women want to get boob jobs, will probably get me flamed up the yin-yang. Because I can’t tell you how many women I have met who have told me that they want boob jobs and facial pulls (or whatever that plastic surgery procedure is where they pull all the skin in your face back and staple it to the back of your head so that when you come out of the bandages you have this constant look of hysterical surprise on your face and you have to wear a mask to sleep because you can no longer close your eyes without causing a rupture). Anyway, here is the comment:

I don’t get it either. (Why women want to get fake boobs – A.H.) To me surgery is for when you have to have a gall-bladder removed or something – in other words, it’s for when you are sick. Then again, maybe some sort of sickness is involved. I don’t think it’s one that can be cured by the knife, though.

I also forgot to add that I can see why women who have had a breast removed because of cancer or something would opt for a boob job, and plastic surgery to fix scars is also understandable, but I don’t get this “I must look like (insert current impossible ideal of the perfect female body based upon heavily airbrushed photos of anorexic fashion models)” coming from perfectly fine-looking women. They sure don’t do it for the men – most men (that any self-respecting female would want to have anything to do with anyway) seem to find the plastic surgery urge as incomprehensible as I do.

If the Borg built a church, this might be the result.

Hipsters Are Annoying. Dig it.

For some reason I’ve been listening to one or the other of Orlando’s two indistinguishable (from each other) rock stations. They’ve both been featuring a commercial for a modern version of what used to be called “aphrodisiacs” and are now usually referred to as “performance enhancement aids.” This one is some sort of “special blend of herbs” that will let you “be the sex machine your lover wants you to be.” What is funny is this sort of thing juxtaposed with the recitations of misery, bad relationships, failed love affairs and despair that forms most of the subject matter of the songs the stations play. Somehow I don’t think “blends of special herbs and other ingredients” will help.