The Opinuary Column

The Opinion "And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God*" has been stomped on, tasered, riddled with bullets, blown up by a drone aircraft, disappeared, tortured, maimed, squashed, violated, raped, shit upon, pummeled, decapitated, buggered, imprisoned, murdered, squashed, assassinated, disemboweled, poisoned, asphyxiated, lynched, pulverized, deleted, flayed, cremated, thrashed, throttled, torn apart, bombed and bitten to death. The richest bastards in the game have paid off the Lord, and the glittering palaces and majestic boulevards of the Heavenly Kingdom reflect the new owners' aesthetics: the Gates of Heaven have been reinforced with fools gold, forged in the fiery battlements of Hell. The Opinion was bought out during a hostile takeover, and heaven has never looked more malevolent, removed, cold and cruel. Yahweh/God has accepted his golden parachute and exited the building, to pursue adventures in lands not yet created, to work on projects that remain a mystery to us all.

The Opinion was born in a quaint little thatched hut built of morality and justice, wherein it thrived wondrously in its modest confines, and spent its early days laughing and running and playing, while keeping an eye upon the horizon for something it could not quite see. Upon reaching adulthood it left home and wandered the countryside, often spying the common folk who labored in the sun and shivered in the cold--such experiences reminded it that the mystery of being was no less complicated for the poor than for the rich, except that the ability to exploit one's fellow man increased with the concomitant increase in capital. The Opinion came to know that a tension existed in the world, one of tidal movements that surged and ebbed as the times changed, and that sometimes things had to get really bad before the tide could come back in and wash away the crimes of man. Sometimes the crimes were so bad that no single tide could do the job, and the sands at the edge of the sea glistened with blood and despair. No matter: the Opinion knew that humanity had a greater depth than mere wealth and power, and so was happy to remind anyone who would listen that flesh is fleeting, but the essence of the universe was an eternal one, and all who lived participated in that eternity, equally and fully.

Late in life the Opinion started drinking heavily, and after a series of bad investments found itself on the verge of bankruptcy. Unable to fend off its lenders, it sold its primary insight to the wealthiest people on the planet, who rewarded it by hiring a squad of goons to kill it just as soon as was humanly possible. Heaven is now filled with some of the wealthiest motherfuckers this world has ever known, even as children die forgotten in the streets, guilty of the crime of being poor and condemned to suffer. Paradise has been leveraged by Hell.

In lieu of flowers the family of the deceased would like lots and lots of money given to them, to spend as they see fit.

Arrangements by the Supreme Court of the United States of America.

*Matthew 19:24

The Case of the Wizard's Homosexualist Ass Accessory

Students, faculty, and administrators at Emory University are all asking the same question: "What the heck happened at the Sigma Nu house early last Saturday morning?"

One student, a wearer of wizard hats who prefers to remain anonymous, says a drunken Sigma Nu alum bullied him because he was gay:

“This guy approached me and asked why I was wearing my hat. ... I said that I like the hat, just as you like your pink shirt. He then asked me if I was gay, and I said I was. He then started choking me with his elbow and put me into a head lock, and he dragged me out of the party by my neck.”

After the student was allegedly dragged the approximately 10 to 15 feet from the house’s common area to the door and thrown onto the front lawn, Smith was overheard telling other attendees “Hey, this kid’s a faggot.”

The alleged perp, Adam Smith, denies that homophobia motivated him to apply his invisible hand to the homosexualist's throat. He says the trouble began when he made an inquiry as to why the student was hiding his butt cheeks under a heterosexually-challenged wizard cap:

Smith...asked the student: "Why are you wearing this gay ass hat?"

According to Smith, the Wizard replied in a manner that reeked of disrespect for his revered status as one of Sigma Nu's most prominent drunkards. Indeed, the homosexualist sorcerer taunted Smith by declaring he was wearing the "gay ass hat" for the "same reason you're wearing your pink shirt."

Smith says he saw this response as a challenge to his commitment the heterosexual lifestyle and responded in the the only way his vodka-soaked imagination would allow: he assaulted the young wizard.

The above quotes come from an article in the Emory Wheeler. It describes a classic he-said/he-said confrontation. The wizard says he was assaulted after he admitted he was gay. The drunk claims he assaulted the wizard because the wizard implied that they were both homosexualists. Although some might say that the fact that an assault was committed is reason enough to condemn the aspiring wino, others would suggest that the reason for the assault is more important--it determines whether the act was a hate crime or not.

Thankfully, the Case of the Wizard's Homosexualist Ass Accessory is solvable. Adam Smith, like most hopeless inebriates, doesn't know when to shut up. He clarifies his statements to the reporter by posting a comment about the article:

I am in NO WAY at all a homophobic person. I have many friends at Emory who will vouch for me as a friendly guy and a genuinely great person.

[...]

This whole dumb event occurred because I was drunk and thought it would be funny to throw someone out to the wrath of the huge security guard at the door, and the most ridiculous person that naturally stood out to me was this Wizard dressed kid. I purposely egged him on a little bit, he snapped back at me, and I threw him out.

So chalk this up as me being a drunk asshole, a frat guy with too much testosterone, or whatever you want to call me I really don't care. I just want everyone to know that that's literally all it was, that's the honest truth. I'm not some ignorant bigot looking to bash homosexuals, so please don't think that.

So there you have it. It wasn't a hate crime. Adam Smith isn't a homophobe. He's just a drunk asshole who likes to beat up on guys who wear "gay wizard ass hats."

In another comment, a very self-aware young woman chimes in:

Alright, for one, if this happened to a heterosexual do you really think there would be article written up? Come on. Really. What makes gays so special? They're just drama queens that need to harden up. They are not a special species of human. Sure, give them the same rights as a heterosexual. I don't even think that even then they'd be happy with equality. Anyway, I think Adam was just having fun and letting off steam. I just don't understand what the big deal was. Was this kid hurt? No. Just his gay pride. When will this gay thing end? Seriously, it's getting ridiculous. Being gay is not a defense nor should be used as one. He got rejected because he wore a stupid hat and stood out like a sore thumb. Not because he was gay. Everyone should get over it and move on with their day.

An Ad for Rand Paul

Rand Paul: For an Orderly America

The Girlization of America

Diane Evertsen
Candidate, McHenry County (IL) Council, GOP
Co-Commander, Midwest Minutemen

Dear Mrs. Evertsen,

It's a shame your fear of the tolerance-o-fascists in the McHenry County electorate prompted you to delete your Midwest Minuteman blog. The true citizens of your county need to read your words, so they see what you stand for. They need to hear about the values you hold most dear, values like those expressed here:

Invaders from the Orient, Asia, Africa, Central and South America are invading the first world, and they are intent only upon conquest. [...] Americans have been duped by the left-wing notion of a “proposition nation” and by myths about third-world assimilation, neither of which will occur. Historically, nations have been built upon blood and soil, kith and kin, ancestral rites, and genealogical ties. A real nation is but an extension of a tribe, and this realization should be shared by all traditionalists, conservatives, paleolibertarians, patriotic liberals, union democrats, and moderates. The “creedal nation” (one only has to believe in propositions to be a good citizen) is a lie; it is but a Trojan horse to implement the third-world invasion of America.

The voters also need to see how you've avoided addressing an even greater threat to our nation. Of course, I'm talking about women, or as I call them, not-men. Sure, brown people are assaulting important parts of our culture with their hot chili dishes, danceable music, and sports that remove our Constitutional right to use our hands, but, good God, look what not-men have done to our nation. They've girlized it.

In my father's day, a man could scratch himself or loudy fart in public and no one would give a damn. Try doing either today, and you'll give everyone the vapors. And, of course, our Constitutional right to pee against a wall is completely gone. It went out with Billy Carter.

The thing is that not-men aren't like us. They can't grow cop mustaches. Their breasts aren't hairy. They don't wear mullets. Heck, from what I hear, most don't even have "little soldiers" down there. God dammit, I don't want to live in a nation where half the population isn't man enough to potentially sport a woody.

It just ain't right.

Heterosexually yours, in a chaste, biblical, and very white and manly kind of way,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot

Blessed are the Unregulated

More here and here:

When the voter followed up by asking, “Who’s protecting us?” [GOP House candidate Jesse] Kelly responded, “It’s our job to protect ourselves.” The exasperated voter asked once more, “Am I supposed to go to a chicken farmer and say I’d like you to close down because all of your birds are half dead?” Kelly once more answered, “There’s a new thing that comes along every day. But I know this: Every part of our economy that is regulated by the government doesn’t have fewer disasters, it has more.”

And a video:

Department of Book Reports: The Fall Classic

Stepping outside on a crisp autumn day, the sun shines, and you know that the World Series is right around the corner. And there is nothing sweeter to a baseball fan. (For those of you who hate baseball, your long national nightmare will soon be over.) And despite the sour season that this humble book reporter's team, the lowly Seattle Mariners had, (and the equally sour one that friend Dave von E had with his beloved Chicago Cubs) it is a time of year that excites the mind and passion.

And with a hat tip to an old friend and bookseller, Marilyn, who recently blogged about great baseball books, I wanted to point out a few of my favorites. And where else to start but with Jim Bouton's classic account of his season with the Seattle Pilots (a team that played only one season before moving to Milwaukee) Ball Four. At the time his story was controversial. The book named names; it was not a fiction. That was Mickey Mantle with his fellow Yankee teammates atop the Shoreham Hotel, attempting to glimpse through the windows of young, nubile guests! Or his manager, Joe Schultz exclaiming, "Shitfuck! Pound that Budweiser and we'll get 'em tomorrow"! Still the best parts of the book are Bouton's own descriptions of attempting to comeback, throwing a knuckleball to get out Major League batters with a modicum of success, and his relationship with his fellow Pilots, as well as trying to juggle his profession and raising a young family. And recently, I talked about Dirk Hayhurst's chronicle of his minor league career in this book report of The Bullpen Gospels.

Roger Kahn's The Boys of Summer is also classic. In it, he describes his time covering the Brooklyn Dodgers team in the early '50's, followed by interviews with the players as they were in the early '70's. The Dodgers front office at the time hated the book, for reasons best known to themselves. Probably the best of the interview style books, though, is Lawrence Ritter's The Glory of Their Times. Ritter searched the country looking for ballplayers who had played in the early part of the 20th Century, and the interviews he had, which included Sam Crawford, Chief Myers (the Native American catcher and Dartmouth grad who caught Christy Mathewson), Lefty O'Doul among many others, and all of them fascinating. Not just about baseball, but about what life was like in America at that time. Another great inteview book, and broken down by season, is Danny Peary's They Played the Game, which features the baseball careers of 64 different players who played from 1946 to 1964. They played some tough baseball in the post-war era.

Books I haven't had a chance to read yet, but am looking forward to include Jane Leavy's The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood. If her previous book, Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy (a biography framed around the perfect game Koufax threw against the Giants in 1965), is any indication, this book should be great. I've also heard wonderful things about Doug Glanville's The Game Where I Stand: A Ballplayers Inside View. Glanville was a good Major League outfielder and I've been told that his writing style is both elegant and poetic.

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention the finest of magazine reporter's, Roger Angell who's articles for the New Yorker were collected in The Summer Game and Five Seasons. In the latter book, in his discussion of one of the greatest World Series ever played, between the Cincinnati Reds and the Boston Red Sox, he leaves us with the following quote about why some of us take this game seriously:

It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitive as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look -- I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring -- caring deeply and passionately, really caring -- which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives. And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved. Naivete -- the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing and shouting with joy in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball -- seems a small price to pay for such a gift.

These baseball titles and many more are available from Jackson Street Books and other fine Independent bookstores.As always, books ordered here will have a freebie publishers Advance Reading Copy included as a thank you to our blogosphere friends.

The Opinuary Column

the autumn moon has seen it all
pledges and lies and folderol
parties of tea at its beck and call
everyone down on their knees

money is king and tv is queen
nothing left for the in between
the cats get fat when the times are lean
everyone down on their knees

take a walk in the chilling air
fair is foul and foul is fair
there's something here that's not quite there
everyone down on their knees

god--booga booga, ah-cha-cha
god--booga booga, ha-ha-ha
god--booga booga, fiddle dee dee
everyone down on their knees
if you please
everyone down on their knees

the government is demonized
full of thieves who hypnotize
shrink it down until it dies
everyone down on their knees

the proper life is a corporate state
let the market decide your fate
money is speech and you don't rate
everyone down on their knees
everyone down on their knees

god--booga booga, ah-cha-cha
god--booga booga, ha-ha-ha
god--booga booga, fiddle dee dee
everyone down on their knees
if you please
everyone down on their knees

we can't go forward and we can't go back
out of choices and out of whack
men with guns all talking smack
everyone down on their knees

nowhere to run, nowhere to hide
no more bread, only humble pie
we came to conquer and divide
everyone down on their knees
oh
everyone down on their knees

the autumn moon has seen it all
pledges and lies and folderol
parties of tea at its beck and call
everyone down on their knees

money is king and tv is queen
nothing left for the in between
the cats get fat when the times are lean
everyone down on their knees

take a walk in the chilling air
the color of fall is everywhere
nature is fallen and what do you care
everyone down on their knees

god--booga booga, ah-cha-cha
god--booga booga, ha-ha-ha
god--booga booga, fiddle dee dee
everyone down on their knees
if you please
everyone down on their knees

That special pink morality brand

Bill Fulton
Dropzone Security

CC: Norm Olson
Alaska Citizens Militia

Dear Mr. Fulton,

I'm very impressed by the operation against journalists you conducted for Tea Party candidate Joe Miller. Indeed, I'm so impressed, I'm offering you exclusive Alaskan distribution rights for my line of militia morale companions.

I believe this could prove very lucrative for the both of us. Your ties to the Alaska Citizens Militia are invaluable. From what I've seen of them, there isn't a group of patriots anywhere who are more in need of a few hours alone with a young, attractive, morale sheep. It'd sure take the edge off 'em.

All of our morale sheep are personally trained by the men of of my unit, The American Christian Militia. Before shipping, each ewe is given a special pink morality brand, certifying that it was trained in a condom-free environment.

Recently, we've expanded our line to include morale llamas. We think they'll be popular with older militia leaders, like Norm Olsen, who may have problems squatting down to line-up on their target.

We do not offer male sheep or ewes. We're patriots, not sick fucks.

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot