Rules for the Empire

The agenda is now public, thanks to PF at Forever in Hell. I bow before our new Empress.

Here it is folks, I'm laying out the Atheist Agenda™ for all the world to see: to leverage this minor blog into my becoming Empress of the Entire Freakin' World. I know, who would've seen that coming?

Anyway, so you can be prepared when I seize power (during an incident that will later be known as the Improbable Soup Disaster), I thought I'd give you a preview of what the Empire will be all about.

Hats. Everyone will wear hats because I like them. If you don’t like your assigned hat, you are welcome to fight someone else for their hat. If you think your hat looks stupid, that’s probably because I don’t like you. You're welcome to complain, but then again, maybe I was complimenting you with that hat- is that a risk you're willing to take?

Health care. Universal. Free. Will include dental and vision. If you don’t like it, you can feel free to die of an infected papercut.

Birth Control. Free, available at every gas station convenient store and it will come in designer colours.

Jeggings. Jeggings will be a form of punishment only. Due to the universal and free healthcare, we will no longer be able to incarcerate any but the most dangerous criminals. This will result in a series of increasingly bizarre and amusing punishments, eventually culminating in a Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome dance contest, after which I assume people will no longer commit minor crimes.

Gay marriage. Of course.

Religion. I will allow major religions, but only so I can promote quirky, offbeat religions, so I suggest you work out the tenets of your faith in advance. Extra points for pageantry that creates an element of otherwise avoidable danger!

Grammar. The Grammar Police will be consuming fully 25% of our former defense budget. I suggest everyone learn how commas work now, before soldiers in lavender berets waltz through your front door and teach you at the end of a bayonet. A reciprocating saw bayonet. And they will literally waltz. It will be delightful.

Food, shelter water, electricity, internet, heat. No one will do without. End of story. I don’t see why people should freeze or starve in the dark, smelly and ignorant of the world around them.

Access. I see no reason why the disabled shouldn't enjoy shopping, dining out, libraries, museums, movies and other forms of, you know, living life. Therefore, everything and every place will be made accessible immediately. Also, I'm going to publicly execute the first 50 closed captioners who caption live TV as nf5njn7qiurft?!, which should greatly improve the quality of future captioning. Or at least the captioning of executions.

Taxes. Will be epic.

Complaints about taxes. You will be forced to address complaints about taxes directly to the beneficiaries of said taxes. So go ahead and threaten to shrug your atlas, bad boy, I’ll put you in a room with the parents of a child with cancer and you can explain to them why you don’t want to pay for their child’s treatment. The parents will be provided with rope and a baseball bat. I wonder what order they’ll use them in?

The Armed Forces. Well, I'll be Empress of the Entire Freakin' World, so other than the occasional doomed rebellion, I'm not sure what I'd really need an army for. So I will disband most of it. I've got all the world's nukes after all. And probably some bitchin' biological/chemical weapons. Disbanding the world's armies will have the added benefit of paying for things we really need, like food. And shelter. And gas lines that don’t explode. And bridges that don’t collapse. And the Grammar Police.

Pears. Will be free.

Books. Every citizen will receive a $5,000 yearly book allowance. Any book you want, paper or electronic. This allowance will come in the form of a card that, when used, triggers a recording of me dramatically yelling, “Are you not entertained?!” (Well, I at least will be entertained.)

That's what the Atheist Agenda™ has so far. You should probably claim your overpaid cabinet position today.

Warning: these seas be completely NSFW

A small shanty from the crazed-looking seadevil, Tim Minchin

Where's the rum gone?

Avast, ye dogs! Listen up or it's the lash fer ye!

While a warship from those dogs what broke away from the accursed British East Inja Company dishonorably prevented a poor pirate ship from defendin' hisself against attacks, we don' hardly care fer that, now, do we? The Bay of Aden is halfway around the world, an' almost where the map tells us there be dragons. So enough of those scurvy wretches, then. We has more important things ta speak of.

There be rum wars afoot!

Aye, it seems that Puerto Rico is screaming like a midshipman getting his barnacles crushed because the Virgin Islands has stolen their rum. O' course, instead o' weighing anchor and hoisting the Jolly Roger, they be whinging about it like a cabin boy told it's his turn in the dress, saying that the Virgin Islands did some nefarious deal, when really, they just made Captain Morgan a better offer.

O'course, ye can trust me on this much; since Captain Morgan is going there, we'll just be calling them "the Islands" from now on.

America the Poorhouse

Words of wisdom from the Rude Pundit

In Fort Myers, Florida, the Salvation Army reports a 60% jump in families seeking its services.

In Tucscon, Arizona, a local soup kitchen has seen the number of people it serves nightly go from an 40 to 150-200.

In the last year, in Livingston County, Michigan, the number of people looking for food and cash assistance has risen by over 30%. In Jackson County, it's up over 24%.

In Texas, more than one out of every four kids under the age of 18 lives in poverty. That's higher than the national average of one out of every five. And over a quarter of the entire state is without health insurance. Charities there report 25-50% more demand for food and assistance since 2008.

In Steuben County, New York, homelessness has risen by 15% since 2009. And Catholic Charities says that it's serving 33% more people than last year.

In Minnesota, "At Families Moving Forward, a Minneapolis network of churches offering shelter to families with children, the number of calls for housing has shot up from 50 for every opening to 150."

According to the census, the poverty rate in the United States has risen from 13.2% in 2008 to 14.3% in 2009. For those of you doing math, that's one out of every seven Americans. Income has fallen. The number of people without health insurance has risen. Extended unemployment benefits are all that kept 3.3 million more people from falling below the cruel poverty line.

Oh, and by the way: "The top fifth of households accounted for 50.3% of all pre-tax income; the bottom two-fifths got 12%." When it comes to tax cuts and discretionary spending cuts, we're arguing about what now?

Submitted almost entirely without comment

...except to say that this is kind of awesome. I wonder if you can get this ice cream in the States? They've got to be loving the free advertising from the controversy.

Pregnant Nun Ice Cream Advert Banned For 'Mockery'

An ice cream company banned from using an advert displaying a pregnant nun has vowed to position similar posters in London in time for the Pope's visit.

Antonio Federici's advert showed a pregnant nun eating ice cream in a church, together with the strap line "immaculately conceived".

The Advertising Standards Authority has ordered it to be discontinued, saying it mocked Roman Catholic beliefs.

Antonio Federici says it will now put up new posters near Westminster Abbey.

Pope Benedict XVI will visit Westminster Abbey on Friday, before holding Mass at Westminster Cathedral on Saturday.

Antonio Federici, a UK-based company, has yet to reveal what image will be portrayed in the new advert, saying only that it would be "a continuation of the theme".

A spokeswoman for the company said the new image intended to "defy" the ban from the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). She added: "We are in the process of securing a series of billboards close to and along the planned route of the Pope's cavalcade around Westminster Cathedral."

A spokesman for the ASA said its rulings "must be followed and we are taking steps to ensure Antonio Federici do so".

He added: "We do not comment on the likely compliance of ads that have not yet appeared. However, we are continuing to conduct work behind the scenes, including with the advertiser, to ensure they comply with the rules."

Defending the banned nun advert, Antonio Federici said the idea of "conception" represented the development of their ice cream. It added that the use of religious imagery represented its strong feeling towards its product.

The firm said it also wished to "comment on and question, using satire and gentle humour, the relevance and hypocrisy of religion and the attitudes of the church to social issues."
...

The ASA banned another advert for Antonio Federici in July 2009 that showed a priest and a nun appearing as if they were about to kiss.

Your media narrative is going kill us all (part 2 - updated)

The current media narrative is that the elections in November are going to be a disaster for the Democrats, with massive numbers of Republicans getting elected. (This message is often accompanied by metaphorical battlefield narrative, with the victorious conquerors striding over the bleeding bodies of their fallen foes.)

And this has many people panicked about the fate of America, with teabaggers coming into office and strengthening the obstructionist Republicans who are doing their best to ensure that the first black president's term in office is an abject failure. Because, after all, Americans have notoriously short memories and will always choose instant gratification over long-term gains: it actually sounds plausible that, since Obama did not immediately create untold wealth and prosperity, the small-minded people will decide to give the keys back to the people who drove the car into the lake in the first place.

What they're failing to rememeber, of course, is that the media narrative is usually wrong. For one thing, it's being driven by people who are motivated to tell you that the Republicans will save us all.

While right-wing media chooses stories that serve its political agenda, progressive media increasingly covers the same "news." True, the focus is on disproving right-wing accounts, but from the "death panels" for granny to the alleged "Ground Zero" mosque, the right wing is setting the agenda for the progressive media.

No wonder Americans are unaware of President Obama's many accomplishments, or think that he, rather than President Bush, signed the unpopular bank bailout bill. With progressive media primarily focused on rebutting conservative "news," little time is left to promote stories that build support for progressive policies.
...

And, unlike progressive media, Fox and right-wing radio feel no obligation to cover stories that boost their opponents. The right-wing media avoids news that does not serve their cause, which limits stories from echoing through the broader public.

That's why so few Americans know about the Ensign, Vitter and other Republican political scandals, but everyone knows about Charles Rangel's problems. And why so many are unaware of the jobs created and preserved by the Obama stimulus, or about the many positive actions Obama officials at the EPA have taken to improve the environment.

Many noted how the media never connected former President Bush to the Exxon Valdez spill, but directly associated Obama with BP's reckless conduct. That's because Fox News and others made Obama the issue from the start, and traditional media either parroted this line or joined progressives in noting that the Bush Administration imposed lax oil drilling regulations; either way, Fox's framing of Obama as a central figure in the spill prevailed.

The slant even makes itself apparent in who they choose to tell the narrative. A new study from George Mason University School of Law shows that among the panel guests making up the Sunday Morning talk shows, "diversity" is a myth. The most common panelist is overwhelmingly an older, white, male Republican.

The study, of the five network Sunday shows from February to December 2009, found that while 14.6 percent of members of Congress were minorities, just 2.5 percent of the Congressional TV guests were minorities; and that while 16.9 percent of members were female, 13.5 percent of the guests were female.

A supplement to the study also singled out a group of “30 white, male U.S. senators in office six plus years” who represented 5.6 percent of the Congressional populace, but 61.4 percent of the TV guests.

Other fine examples of media compliance with promoting a false narrative can be found with allowing Republicans to call the act of allowing the Bush tax cuts expire a "tax increase," or the continual references to a community center as the "Ground Zero Mosque" (despite the fact that it's partly modeled on the 92nd Street Y, which is a Jewish community center, and nobody ever calls it "the Upper East Side Temple").

So, where does that leave us? Where should we turn?

Perhaps to the facts.

Flash back with me to February, 2008. Check out the headlines. If you alter the search terms from "Clinton leads" to "McCain can win", you get results like this. I love that first headline, don't you? October 29, 2008, just a couple of days ahead of the election, and the headline from the Seattle Times and others around the country is "McCain can still win..." Just for more fun, look at the news results for August-September 2008 when Palin came onboard -- she was a "game-changer".

We don't know what will happen. But really, we almost never do.

In the end, all we can bring away with us is that things are probably not as cut and dried as the "liberal media" would like us to believe.
____________

Update (9/16): So meanwhile, if you're looking for more reasons to doubt the media's narrative about the unstoppable GOP machine, perhaps you should consider that the Republican party is currently curled up in the corner, trying to gnaw its leg off. And as for the public, well, it turns out that while they don't like the Democrats much, they like the Republicans even less, and they believe the Democrats have a better chance of fixing the mess we're in. So, you know, calm down. And don't forget to vote.

Don't try to lay no boogie woogie

As a teenager in Germany, the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service had one channel of each to listen to. And, aside from the news and a couple of half-hour local-interest things, everything was syndicated and brought in from America.

I have no idea what the show was, but I first heard Long Tom Baldry on the radio, sometime after I was supposed to have been in bed, singing a song that I had only heard once until this week. But I have always remembered it.

He was a British-born singer who later became a Canadian citizen (there you go, Nicole - a reason to like him). At 6'7", you can see how he earned the name "Long Tom." He was one of the first British vocalists to sing the blues, and actually, listening to him now, his voice is most similar to (of all people) Welsh-born Tom Jones.

He performed with many of the best blues and rock (and pop, technically) musicians of the Sixties British scene - he was friends with Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts and Paul McCartney, and opened for or played in TV specials with both the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

In 1963, Baldry joined the Cyril Davies R&B All Stars with Jimmy Page on guitar and Nicky Hopkins playing piano. He took over in 1964 after the death of Cyril Davies. It became Long John Baldry and his Hoochie Coochie Men featuring Rod Stewart on vocals and Geoff Bradford on guitar. Stewart was recruited after Baldry heard him busking a Muddy Waters song at Twickenham station after Stewart had been to a gig at Eel Pie Island.

In 1965, the Hoochie Coochie Men became Steampacket with Baldry and Stewart as male vocalists, Julie Driscoll as the female vocalist and Brian Auger on Hammond organ. After Steampacket broke up in 1966, Baldry formed Bluesology featuring Reg Dwight on keyboards and Elton Dean, later of Soft Machine, as well as Caleb Quaye on guitar. Dwight adopted the name "Elton John," his first name from Dean and his surname from Baldry.

And the song I've always remembered, having only heard it once?

It was his biggest US hit, from his album It Ain't Easy. Well, let's go to Crawdaddy magazine and writer Paul Myers.

In order to fully appreciate Long John Baldry’s 1971 album, It Ain't Easy, it helps to know a little about the events leading up to its release. At the dawn of the 1970s, the British blues pioneer was sitting on the sidelines of rock, pondering his imminent plunge to the bottom after two wild rides to the top in the UK. His career had begun in the late ’50s and early ’60s, when the 6’7”, white, gay Englishman had become the unlikely father of the British blues, helping to promulgate the African-American art form in the London clubs with Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies’ Blues Incorporated, and later discovering Rod Stewart, whom Baldry featured in his band the Hoochie Coochie Men. Next came England’s "first supergroup," the legendary, if ephemeral, Steampacket, starring Baldry and Stewart with Brian Auger and Julie Driscoll. Additionally, Baldry directly inspired Mick Taylor, Keith Richards, and Brian Jones to form the Rolling Stones and even demonstrated to a young Eric Clapton that white English boys could in fact play the blues.

Then came a bittersweet misstep; he transformed himself into an Engelbert Humperdinck-styled balladeer and went, literally, to Top of the Pops in 1967 with a sappy hit called "Let the Heartaches Begin." While it probably netted him a few pounds, he all but stained his blues legacy in Britain forever, becoming the darling of housewives and schoolgirls, an audience he secretly had little time for. In the meantime, John Mayall, Clapton, and others stole his blues mantle out from under him. After the demise of his band, Bluesology—which launched the career of Reggie Dwight, the future Elton John—Baldry’s career soon dissipated into in a boozy haze of artistic and commercial recession.

By 1971, a despondent Baldry sat in his Muswell Hill, London flat, feeding his pet goat and finding himself suddenly in the rearview of history at the precise moment when his protégés, Rod Stewart and Elton John, were catapulting to rock stardom in the US.

To save himself, Baldry signed with Faces manager, Billy Gaff, who urged him to get back into the blues-based rock business, with not a moment to waste. Gaff enlisted Baldry’s two star protégés, Stewart and John, to pay back their mentor by producing what would become his American debut.

It Ain’t Easy features balls-up bluesy rave-ups with electric guitars screeching, back beats thwacking, and gospel-tinged female vocalists surrounding your charismatic host, Long John Baldry—a charming English sophisticate who sang like a man with a throat full of Mississippi gravel.

Stewart and John each produced one side of It Ain't Easy. in separate studios and on opposing schedules. This gave the album, in its side-segregated vinyl form, a slightly schizophrenic feel. The Rod Stewart side is more in keeping with his Every Picture Tells a Story album, while the Elton John side works with the piano-fied sonic palette he had employed on his own Tumbleweed Connection.

The first thing you hear, however, is the barrelhouse boogie of pianist Ian Armitt, vamping behind Baldry’s autobiographical spoken word soliloquy, "Conditional Discharge", in which Baldry recounted his late ’50s arrest for busking in London’s Wardour Street. He then slams seamlessly into the album’s rocking manifesto, "Don’t Try to Lay No Boogie Woogie on the King of Rock & Roll." It’s one of the great one-two punches in the history of recorded rock, and FM and underground radio frequently played the two as one long song.

John William Baldry died on 21 July 2005 in Vancouver, Canada, of a lung infection. Most people alive today are more likely to remember him as the voice of Dr Robotnik, in the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, or one of his many other cartoon voiceovers.

John_Baldry-Conditional_King_of_Rock_&_Roll from http://devin306.vox.com/"
h/t Devon306 (2 years late) on vox.com
_________________

Update (11/21/10): Well, vox.com went out of business. Probably due to the additional drag of this song from their bandwidth. I can't seem to find a legal audio version of the song anywhere, and don't feel like downloading it. Instead, here's the same song off Youtube, with a picture of his album cover.

Is this like syndication?

Ah, as my fame spreads, I will soon be establishing the Excellence in Blogging Network (or EIB Network).

More accurately, thanks to the kind invitation of Slutticia the Heretik, one of the co-writers at Mature Landscaping, many of my posts of a less personal nature (for instance, the one immediately previous to this) will also be cross-posted over at The Swash Zone.

And they have a set of relatively ferocious staff of writers and editors, so I'll be joining will be 18 other people dedicated to pointing out the ignorance of the many in America, the foibles of modern life, and reminding you about all that history you're forgetting. And kicking the louder idiots.

This doesn't mean that there will be less of me here, there'll just be a little of me spilled over there. (Here, let me get you a towel...) Now, if I could just find a way to get this to pay...

Your media narrative is going to kill us all

In case you've been living in a cave for the past several months, Terry Jones, relatively unknown pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center and Yosemite Sam impersonator, burst onto the world stage by threatening to burn Qu'rans on 9/11. Well, now he's cancelled that event, although he isn't clear on the reason: at first, he said he'd cancel if plans to build Park51 were scrapped, or perhaps if he got a call from the president.

Despite that, it seemed only fair to call it off, since he was told that this was a bad idea by pretty much everybody in the world, from both sides of every political and religious spectrum: from President Barack Obama to professional quitter and loudmouth Sarah Palin, to the Prime Minister of Canada; from every possible Islamic organization, to a major group of atheists and free-thinkers, to the National Association of Evangelicals and even the fucking Vatican.

The thing is, this wasn't something that should ever have been seen in the national news. This self-important pastor was a self-aggrandizing lunatic, known to create potentially newsworthy controversy, simply to increase his own notoriety. There were only fifty people in his congregation! How did he become an international headline?

It was the media who felt that his voice should be amplified, to be heard by the entire world. Terry Jones should have been ignored, except that "news" organizations, desperate for ratings, saw conflict in his story. Had he been simply overlooked, like some random racist screaming "nigger," he would have faded away as nothing more than a blip on the world radar screen.

(In a rational world, you could even ask why the burning of a group of bound pages would make anyone angry. Then again, ask PZ Myers why the "desecration" of the Eucharist would cause death threats and controversy. So we'll just take that argument as a given.)

Of course, as each voice spoke out to tell him he was wrong, Jones gained power. The President of the United States should have had nothing to say about some minor ruckus involving a redneck Florida lunatic with a bad mustache. But, by exaggerating Jones's profile, the media forced Obama's hand. (And god knows Obama seems more than willing to jump in whatever direction the media is pointing this week.)

Really, with every word Jones spewed out onto the public scene, this jumped-up Florida firebrand proved that he didn't even care about his own religion, much less the random mythology of the Middle East.

After all, he'd been denied a permit to burn anything. In order to perform his ignorant display of bigotry, Jones would have to break the law. And, just for giggles, what does the Bible say about that?

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. (Romans 13:1-2 NIV)

Of course, if you're going to be rude enough to go to the Scripture, you should also consider words from earlier in that same book.

Therefore you have no excuse, everyone of you who passes judgment, for in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things. And we know that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who practice such things. (Romans 2:1-2 NIV)

But it hardly mattered that Jones was a crappy Christian; he reflected the media's narrative about the "holy war" between Islam and the western world. And even better, this was a new slant - instead of a radical imam screaming "Death to America!" this was a radical priest screaming "Death to Islam!" (Sadly, a philosophy echoed far too often these days).

So the news networks gave Terry Jones his unjustified fifteen minutes.

In the end, the problem is simple. Radical adherents to any religion are dangerous. They don't need to have their voices heard - they need to be ignored. If Terry Jones hadn't been elevated to an international stage, he would have been considered a random lunatic with a minor cult following him. Instead of a flashpoint inciting riots.

But sadly, because of the current, violently partisan political scene, where the most insane people are considered newsworthy, there's a good chance it will happen again.

The best option? A counter-protest. But a relatively peaceful one (emphasis on the "relatively"). Terry Jones wanted headlines for burning the Qu'ran, and he got them.

So, with the news media in full force, you have to wonder what the reaction have been if he was met by a small group of people with no weapons and no combative attitude. Just fire extinguishers.

People willing to spray down everybody in the neighborhood with non-toxic white foam.

Sure. There would have been some danger - these aren't just idiots, they're armed idiots. But sometimes, your only choice is to change the narrative.

It's just a thought.
_____

Update (9/11/10): OK, so Shaw Kinawe just turned me onto this. I guess it's related...

Sarah Palin's Never Going to Run for President

A summation of what I've been thinking, by Lindsay Beyerstein on Big Think

Please note that my opinion is not even universal in my own house. The Trophy Wife (widely known to be a much better human being than I am) is scared to death of a Palin presidency, because she feels, with some justification, that there are just that many stupid Americans.

Will Sarah Palin run for president? Could she win? Garance Franke-Ruta argues that Palin's best strategy would be to remake herself as a leader within the Republican Party. She notes that female candidates in other democracies have used own-party leadership to break through the glass ceiling and attain executive power.

Franke-Ruta acknowledges that being a party leader in a parliamentary system is very different from being a Republican Party official, or a mover and shaker within the party. For one thing, you can become Prime Minister without campaigning for the job, which is one way to circumvent the ingrained sexism of the electorate. But let's set that issue aside for now.

If party leadership is Palin's most viable path to the White House, we can all breathe easily. It's too late for Sarah Palin to remake herself as the natural leader of the Republican Party. She's not even the undisputed head of the conservative wing of the GOP. If the GOP picks its nominee based on leadership within the party, Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi will blow Palin out of the water.

In order to lead a political party, as opposed to a cult of personality, you have seem like you give a damn about an institution larger than yourself.

Palin has made it clear at every step of her career that she's out for number one. That's a great script for reality TV, but it's not a path to the presidency of the United States. Palin went rogue on McCain's ticket and burned her remaining bridges in her memoir. She quit being governor of Alaska to flog her book on the lecture circuit.

I doubt Palin will ever run for office again. She clearly prefers being a celebrity without portfolio. She has to keep flirting with the possibility of running, because she knows her brand will go stale when her followers give up hope that she will hold national office. Her facebook updates are only compelling if you read them as promissory notes backed by some imagined political future.

When the moon hits your eye...

Pizza seems to be the all-American food, despite its suspicious Italianate origins.

Something very similar to pizza was served as street food in Naples, where it was modified from the Greek idea of herbs, olive oil and a little bit of cheese on a flat bread; the Neapolitans added tomato into the mix and chowed on this for years. It wasn't until 1889, when the Royal Palace commissioned a special pizza in honor of visiting Queen Margherita, which was made in the colors of the Italian flag - red (tomato), green (basil), and white (mozzarella), and voilà (to add yet another country to this story), we have the basic cheese pizza, referred to in Italian as the pizza margherita.

(Bonus trivia time: technically, Margherita Maria Teresa Giovanna of Savoy was only the Queen Consort to King Umberto of Italy, but nobody really cares about that. Also, the tomato was brought to Europe from America in the seventeenth century, but wasn't very popular after it arrived. Because it was a member of the nightshade family, they figured it was poisonous. But it grew easily in Italy, and became popular among the poor people in, for example, Naples. So there you go.)

Nobody can agree on when the pizza came to America first, but sometime, probably in the early twentieth century, Italian immigrants brought it to America, possibly to New York, or Chicago, or even possibly New Haven, Connecticut. But it's hard to tell, since 3.2 million Italians immigrated to the United States just in the first two decades, and several of them are claimed to be the first Pizza Guy.

But it actually took a while for pizza to catch on.

Food writers in the 1940s who were worldly enough to take note of the traditional Italian treat struggled to explain the dish to their readers, who persisted in imagining oversized apple-pie crusts stuffed with tomatoes and coated with cheese. “The pizza could be as popular a snack as the hamburger if Americans only knew about it,” The New York Times lamented in 1947, illustrating its plaint with a photograph of a pie subdivided into dozens of canapé-sized slices.

But when it finally took off, it did so in a big way. The standard estimate (widely spread across the internet, so it must be right) is that Americans eat 23 pounds of pizza per person per year. As a group, we eat 3 billion pizzas every year - around 350 slices of pizza every second, or 90-100 acres of pizza per day. A $30 billion industry, with almost 62,000 pizzerias across the country.

And yes, there is a pizza.com, to help you find pizza parlors in your area. (It has a couple of other pizza-related functions, incidentally. As you'd expect from "pizza.com," I guess.)

While rankings vary depending on who compiles the list, pizza is usually pretty high on any list of "Favorite American Foods." Unless the word "homemade" is added to the title. And that's kind of a shame, because pizza isn't as difficult as some people think.

First, of course, you need the crust. We used to use Alton Brown's recipe, but this one is actually easier - it's modified from a recipe by Andrea Meyers. We have a KitchenAid stand mixer - you'll have to adjust if you're using anything else.

(By the way, you need some standard all-purpose flour for the gluten to give you a crust, but I haven't figured how much yet. The flour needs to add up to 2 cups, basically - you can go with 100% standard white flour if you want.)

Pizza dough

Take:

1 1/3 cups whole wheat flour
2/3 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
2 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast (or 1 package of quick-rising yeast)
1 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of sugar

Stick them all in your mixer bowl with the paddle attachment, set at low, and add 1 tablespoon olive oil and 3/4 cup hot water.

(The yeast blooms better with a little warmth - not boiling, though. Tap water is fine. And you can use extra virgin olive oil or not. Nobody will notice.)

Once the dough comes together, switch out for the bread hook, and beat it on medium for just a minute to knead.

Lightly flour your work surface (cutting board, counter, whatever you want), take the dough (which should be a ball right now), and slap it down on the floured area. Oil one side of a piece of plastic wrap, and cover the dough. Let it rest for fifteen minutes (a half hour wouldn't hurt) while the yeast does its thing.

Once it's rested, preheat your oven to 500°, cut the dough in half, and deal with it. Two choices:

The easy way: Roll it out with a rolling pin. Make it round-ish. (The gluten won't really make a solid mesh, so it might fall apart on you a little. But you'll save time.)

The pizza way: Lightly flour your hands. Flatten the dough with your palms, then pick it up and hold it by the edge, rotating the dough in a circle. This stretches the dough and strengthens the gluten. Lay the stretched dough on a floured surface. Take that rolling pin again, and roll out the dough, rotating a quarter turn every couple of passes. Keep going until you have a 12" (or so) circle.

Somewhere between those two methods lies happiness. You'll have to judge exactly how much work you want to do.

(And to be honest, the true pizza auteur would eschew even that much rolling pin work, in favor of hand stretching - using your knuckles, press the pizza dough out in a rolling motion from the center and moving out, until it's about the thickness you want. It tends to be more amorphic than round, with the characteristic edge that marks a homemade pizza. If you're really into this whole thing, the traditional spinning is supposed to round the dough out with centrifugal force [although you'll lose a lot of dough until you practice]. Again, it all depends on how much work you want to do.)

You can do this on a cookie sheet, a pizza pan or peel (I agree with Alton Brown regarding unitaskers, though), or whatever you want to use. However, you need to dust it with cornmeal, or it's going to stick like duct tape.

Bake 10 to 15 minutes, until the edge is lightly browned; the bottom is usually done by that point.

Now, a couple of thoughts on the rest of the pizza:

• Spaghetti sauce is pizza sauce. Don't be fooled. If you like it on pasta, you'll like it on pizza.

• Too much sauce is a mistake. If you can't see most of the crust through a thin layer of sauce, everything's going to slide off on you. That's bad.

• The type of cheese doesn't matter. If you like it, run with it. Mozzarella is the standard, but I like adding a little bit of whatever cheese is around, for variety. Dust a little Parmesan on before adding the rest; feta isn't going to melt, so keep that in mind when you sprinkle it around; cheddar can overpower the pizza, so use half as much as you do mozzarella (unless you like cheddar). Just not too close to the edge, or it will melt off. And don't make it too thick (unless you like that) - remember, it'll be happy to slide off and mess up the oven.

• Some people like caramelizing the onions. I think it makes them too sweet - you lose too much onion flavor. I think you can just put them straight on; the Trophy Wife, on the other hand, prefers to sauté them (cook them at medium heat with just a little butter or oil) until they just turn translucent. Your choice.

• White pizza is not heresy. Sauté as much garlic as you want (start with four cloves - adjust later), add 3 tablespoons of flour, enough butter or oil to make a roux, add milk, simmer for a while, add more milk to loosen to roughly spaghetti sauce consistency.

• Precook the mushrooms. Trust me on this. If you put raw mushrooms on a pizza, they'll release a bunch of liquid, and your crust will be mushy. That's bad. Sauté them on medium (I like butter) until they release their liquid, and then darken just a little.

• There are no bad toppings, but round things roll off (and if you flatten beans, that's just ugly). I've had corn (don't go crazy - remember, rolling is bad), seafood (the tiny little squids adorning my trilingual pizza frucht de Mer in Trier nearly made my mother-in-law heave), spinach (chop reasonably fine and consider a white sauce instead of tomato), whatever you have lying around (for example, I like artichoke hearts). Just chop them to pizza-sized bits. The only rule is, the pizza is only as good as the toppings - bad sausage won't get better.

Pizza is easy. Life is hard.

Ta Daaah!!

(This image is openly stolen from the
somewhat brilliant PF, of Forever
in Hell. Go there. Read all her stuff.)

Bear baiting? Really?

There are some things that you just look at, and you know it's wrong. This is out of South Carolina.

A declawed, defanged bear is chained to a stake as hunting dogs bark and snap, trying to force the bear to stand on its hind legs. The training exercise called bear baying is intended to make the bears easier to shoot in the wild and it's only allowed in South Carolina.

Armed with new undercover video of four such events, the Humane Society of the United States is pressuring state officials to explicitly outlaw the practice, which the organization says is effectively banned in every other state. Animal rights advocates say it's cruel to the nearly defenseless bears and harms them psychologically.

Hunters say the exercise popular in the state's hilly northwestern corner helps them train their dogs on what to do when they come across a bear during a hunt.
...

The videos, which were recorded with hidden cameras by activists posing as spectators, show an adult black bear standing on all fours, its back to a 4-foot high wooden fence, tethered to the ground by several feet of chain. Crowds of a few dozen line the dirt pen around it.
...

Mr. Kelly said the bear is kept in a cage while dogs on 3-foot leashes bark at it, with judges rating the dogs on how well they pay attention to and become accustomed to being close to the much bigger animal.

That description isn't backed up by the Humane Society's videos, which clearly show the dogs and bear swatting each other. The dogs aren't on leashes, and one of them was injured after the bear slapped it, Mr. Markarian said.

I'd like to just say that this is more evidence proving my point that South Carolina is fucked (and, to be honest, it is)...

...but then I remember that it wasn't until 2007 that cockfighting was outlawed in New Mexico.

People suck.

Cordoba - Moving Forward

Once upon a time, there was a group of moderate Muslims who wanted to promote Muslim/American understanding. Among other things, they hoped to:

• Uphold respect for the diversity of expression and ideas between all people
• Encourage open discussion and dialogue on issues of relevance to New Yorkers, Americans and the international reality of our interconnected planet
• Commit to social justice, dignified human development and spiritual growth for all
• Pursue the development of American Muslim identities, engaging New York’s many and diverse Muslim communities and promoting empowerment and compassion for all

There were other things, but primarily, it was to improve relations between Muslims and non-Muslims, which have been sadly deteriorating of late.

Even the name they chose, Cordoba House, referred to a city in medieval Spain where Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived together centuries ago, despite centuries of religious intolerance.

And they planned to do all this in a pretty epic way. They planned to build a 13-story, $100 million dollar community center, with a swimming pool, gyms, a basketball court, a 500-seat auditorium, a theater, a library, reading room and art studios, a performing arts center, a restaurant and food court, even a cooking school. They were going to offer art exhibits, educational programs, cooking classes., and childcare. And they planned to set up a 9/11 memorial and contemplation space. All open to the public.

One of the tenets of the Muslim faith is that you pray five times a day. So they set up a mosque, big enough for 1000-2000 people, but "accessible to all members, visitors and our New York community."

And because so many Americans are small-minded and stupid, that was when the fecal matter hit the rotating blades.

There are a limited selection of reasons to oppose the building of Park51 (the most current name of Cordoba House, because of its address at 51 Park Place). Let's look at some of them.

It's an insult to the memory of the people who lost their lives on 9/11 to allow a mosque to be built on this sacred ground!
Since there are other mosques in lower Manhattan, this seems like a fairly silly argument. And if you dig into it, you discover that there are probably around 800,000 Muslims living in New York City. So as you push your way through the halal lunch wagons on your way to work, one out of every ten people you pass are likely to pull out the prayer mats five times a day.

And apparently, even though the Pentagon was hit that same day, it isn't "sacred ground." After all, there's a mosque inside there, just yards from the rebuilt crash site.

(Technically, the chapel in the Pentagon is only a mussallaah, because large portions of the Pentagon close down after duty hours, and one of the requirements to allow something to be called a mosque is for it to be used for prayer five times a day.)

By the way, "sacred ground?" (And yes, they do talk like that.) I have to say that I support any religion that has strippers on their sacred ground, but perhaps I'm being insensitive... Of course, on that note:

It's amazingly insensitive to the families of those who died on 9/11!
You know, it's a funny thing. When you actually ask the families of the people who died on September 11, 2001, the answers are a little different.

"What is happening to this country?" asks Robert McIlvaine, whose son and namesake was killed that day. "It is so sad that people would use a simple issue of religious tolerance to spew hate and anger and create fear."

McIlvaine, from Oreland, PA, was a fixture at hearings of the 9/11 Commission... "People who have absolutely no connection to 9/11 are using it for their own political agendas," he says. "Fear and hatred help those agendas."

Lorie Van Auken of East Brunswick, widowed by the attacks on the World Trade Center, says she feels chilled by (these) efforts... "It’s only because of religious tolerance in this country that my family is here," says Van Auken, one of the so-called "Jersey Widows" who led the fight to create the 9/11 Commission. "They escaped intolerance in Europe — now we see it here."
...

"I am frightened by what the leaders of the opposition are doing and saying," says Diane Horning of Scotch Plains. Her son Matthew was killed that day. "I agree it’s insensitive of Muslims to want to build close to Ground Zero, but I grew up in a country where differences are tolerated. I’m not rallying for either side."

Sure, you'll find some that oppose it. Some people have a hard time moving on. But in the words of another family member:

Charles Wolf, who lost his wife, Katherine, at the trade center, says emotions among family members are especially raw right now. "This is anniversary season. It's really, really hard," the Manhattanite said. "Passions are up and this is bringing up a lot of hurt in people."

He says he worries that any decision to respond to public pressure and move the mosque would be used by extremists to paint Americans as intolerant... Now, with the mosque dispute, "here is where we're falling into the terrorists' trap... trying to tear each other apart. Good people fighting other good people - does that sound like evil at work?"

Which brings us to one of my favorite memes.

Muslims always build "victory mosques" on the sites of major victories!
Now, this is an interesting twisting of the facts. Yes, some Muslim rulers would build mosques, palaces and other architectural structures to commemorate a battle. On land they'd taken over. Since the al Qaeda has demonstrably not taken America over, this is what we call a "false comparison."

When an Islamic nation conquered a neighboring country, if it wasn't already Muslim, they needed to build mosques anyway, for their own worship and for the use of any of the local populace who might convert (this usually wasn't done by force - politically, it can be a pretty smart move on the convert's part).

It's a simple rule - where Islam spreads, mosques are built. In the same way, where Christianity spreads, churches are built. In the Middle East, reactions have been mixed - mostly negative (with one editorial calling it a "Zionist conspiracy"), but without any celebration.

The problem is that some microencephalics think that all Muslims are terrorists deep down. Well, there's a group of Christians who call themselves "the Army of God," who use terrorist tactics (you know, murder, kidnapping, explosives) on abortion providers. So, according to that same logic, because the Army of God exists, all Christians are terrorists, too, right?

This attitude tends to be proudly ignorant, shouting catch phrases like "sharia law" and "islamofascism" without even knowing the difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims. Pastor Terry Jones of the ironically-named Dove World Outreach Center is planning an "International Burn a Koran Day," but when asked what he knew of the Koran, told the reporter with a straight face "I have no experience with it whatsoever. I only know what the Bible says."

And the spread of this ignorance is now leading into what the military refers to as collateral damage: a drunken Omar Rivera staggering into a mosque, shouting that everyone was a terrorist, and urinating on the prayer rugs; the incompetent arsonist in Tennessee who couldn't do more than damage a few pieces of construction equipment at the planned site of a mosque; or Michael Enright, who asked his taxi driver if he was a Muslim, and when the driver said yes, tried to cut his throat.

And because the right-wing media, from Fox "News" to the lowliest blogger, is pushing the "Muslim = terrorist" meme, it's only going to get worse.

For some reason, there is a class of people who believe that the words of the Founding Fathers merit some greater respect than the simple act of thinking for yourself. Well, here's some of those words now.

In 1790, one year before the Bill of Rights was passed, Moses Seixas, a warden in the Touro Synagogue in Rhode Island, wrote to George Washington, worried about the reception of the Jews and the American viewpoint on religious liberty. Washington wrote him back.

All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent national gifts.

For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support... May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants.

Oil-eating microbe?

OK, so this beastie is kind of awesome. Scientists from Lawrence Berkley, led by Terry Hazen, have located an oil-eating microbe in the Gulf of Mexico. And not only does it break down the oil twice as fast as expected, but it does so without significantly depleting oxygen in the water.

These little beasties are nothing new, we've known about them for years. And people have been suggesting that they be used for a while now.

The argument is pretty obvious. "Yeah, they deplete the oxygen, but they cause less damage than the billions of gallons of toxic dispersants that BP is pumping into the water." (Since BP is going to be fined based on how much oil got pumped into the Gulf, it's in their best interest to hide the size of the leak, even if the dispersants make the spill more toxic.)

But this is about the only good news to come out of the Gulf in months.

(It's only a matter of time before some creationist points at this microbe as evidence of "God's plan." Of course, that begs the question "If God's plan is so damned fancy, how come He made a part of His environment, called petroleum and made from those dinosaurs you claim don't exist, that poisons every other part of His environment?" This microbe seems more like an afterthought. Does God have afterthoughts? Shouldn't He have gotten it right the first time?)

Of course, we still don't know how poisonous the seafood in the Gulf is, the clean-up workers are still suffering from the effects of exposure to the dispersants (including exciting effects like rectal bleeding), and BP is still covering up the extent of the disaster.

And somebody just ask Australia what the effects of a new species introduced into an environment can be.

But at least there's something.

Scott Pilgrim vs. My Headache

Otaku (おたく / オタク?) (oh-tah-kooh): a Japanese term used to refer to people with obsessive interests, particularly anime, manga, or video games.

Let me just start out by saying that I've never been an anime (Japanese animation) or manga (Japanese comic books) otaku. However, with three barely-adult kids and a stepmother-in-law who worked in Japan for a while, I had a certain amount of exposure to the media.

To be honest, those weren't my only experiences with either art form. I watched Speed Racer and other cheap syndicated Japanese cartoons as a kid. But I wasn't just an innocent consumer: anime was just getting popular when my kids were starting out, and I felt they should be in front of the curve.

Admittedly, it turned out to be a geekier curve than I'd planned, but what did I know?

So Ghost in the Shell, Akira - I brought these to my children, not the other way around. (OK, admittedly, we shut off Akira a few minutes in, because it was a little heavy for the kids at that point.) We even have a VHS copy of one of the early, stunningly bad Fist of the North Star videos somewhere in the garage.

However, I've gotten most of my exposure to anime and manga (much like chicken pox) from my children. From the earliest experiences (yes, that would be Pokémon) to more "artistic" fare like Princess Mononoke, odd issues of various manga titles that came through the house, video games, whatever was around.

To be honest, I've always been a fan of video games (never obsessively, but a lot of hours of my life have been wasted holding a controller and staring at a screen).

Nintendo launched their Nintendo Entertainment System in America the same year that Luke and Nicole were born, and by the time they were old enough to play it, prices had dropped enough that I could use them as an excuse to get one. ("Besides, Nintendo had educational games, too!" Funny how few of those ended up in my house...)

But I'm a culture sponge. Aside from wanting to keep an eye on what my kids were getting into, I've always had an interest in whatever oddities turn potentially ordinary people into... well, otaku (although, in the interest of full disclosure, I didn't learn the word until a few years ago). Sometimes my interest is just to sample whatever this weirdness is. Sometimes, it's more of the "point and laugh" variety.

So when my daughter and the Trophy Wife informed me that we were all going to see Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, I approached the idea with a little trepidation. Judging by the trailers, it might be a light-hearted movie in a moderately unique style; but it might just as easily end up a confusing mess with enough bright lights and jump cuts to cause seizures in audience members. (Which, incidentally, is the best possible description of the opening credits...)

But the director, Edgar Wright, also gave us Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, so I was inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Now, my first surprise was the audience. Far from making up the bulk of the crowd, there were no 14-year-old girls in attendance at all - I guess they've all moved on to sparkly vampires and emo werewolves. Mostly, we were surrounded by mid-twenties guys.

(And, really, it didn't even qualify as a "crowd." But somehow, even with the relatively sparse attendence, we managed to end up with the voice model for Goofy sitting behind us, starting with a giggly "Yeah!" during the ads for Jackass 3-D, and ending with loud, echoing guffaws at every butt joke.)

This is an amazingly funny movie, with laugh-out-loud moments (as the guy behind me continued to prove). It also has great music and spectacularly stylized visuals - and by "stylized," I don't mean artistic or confusing, but "in the style of." In this case, in the style of manga (more than anime, really), and of video games from the Eighties and early Nineties.

The secondary actors (and the hair of the female lead) even manage to catch many of the over-the-top characterizations of manga. The opening studio logo looks (and sounds) like a Nintendo starting screen, and one of the last villains Scott fights even carries a sword with 8-bit graphics.

But that's one of the weaknesses of this movie, as well. It never really figures out who it's target audience might be. My best guess would be an otaku from the late Eighties. None of the video game references are current; they're all a decade or two behind. (Which may be just because the movie is Canadian, I suppose...)

There's a strange innocence to Scott Pilgrim; despite continual references to sex, there isn't any. People sleep together, but for the most part, that's all they do. (Which is kind of a shame - the lead actress is ridiculously hot, having starred previously in Sky High and Live Free or Die Hard.)

I really enjoyed the music from Scott Pilgrim, which is a good thing. One of the ongoing subplots is a "Battle of the Bands" that his group, "Sex Bob-omb," has entered. (And if you don't get the Mario reference there, I suspect that either there's no hope for you, or you're a healthy and well-adjusted personality. Your choice.)

Something this movie does (and many movies fail at) is linking each fictional band with an actual band, for a continuity of sound. Beck does all the songs for Scott Pilgrim's band (including the second-lamest "I wrote you a love song" scene ever filmed).

So, overall, I recommend this movie, as an enjoyable, surreal bit of fluff. I'm not sure whether seeing it more than once will do you any good, and it won't change your life. But for the 112 minutes you'll spend in the theater (plus previews and crap, of course), at least you'll enjoy yourself.

But what do I know? Somehow, I thought anime would turn out to be cooler than it was.

What the Hell is Wrong with the New Testament?

Sometimes, it seems like the writers of the Gospels had a planning meeting to get the basic framework of their story, but each one of them had their own ideas about the details. For example, only the Gospels of Matthew and Luke talk about Jesus being born.

In Luke, Mary learns that God knocked her up while she was asleep, and we have the whole familiar story, celebrated in song and Rankin-Bass animation, of Mary and Joseph going from Nazareth to Bethlehem because the Emperor ordered a census.

Not that it makes any sense to disrupt the economy of your entire country and make everybody go back to the place they were born, just to count them for the tax rolls. Oh, and incidentally, there actually was a census of the people of that region historically, when Publius Sulpicius Quirinius was appointed governor of Syria. A decade later, and under a different Emperor. You know, potato, pot-ah-to.

And the story plays out in the usual way, with the shepherds watching their flocks by night (in the middle of winter, when the sheep would be penned up for warmth); and the angels led everybody to Bethlehem, and the camels and donkeys sang harmony as the little drummer boy wakes up the baby Jesus, since nothing is more soothing to an infant than banging a drum. And everybody is happy and cheerful.

But in the Gospel of Matthew, Mary turns up pregnant before Joseph marries her. So an angel comes to Joseph (not Mary) to tell him to chill the fuck out and marry the bitch, and Jesus is born. But then the whole family flees to Egypt to escape the soldiers of King Herod, who start sticking swords through all the male children in Bethlehem. After Herod dies (which happened in 4 BC, by the way), the baby Jesus is brought back to Nazareth four years before his birth, to fulfill a prophesy suspiciously absent from the Old Testament.

So that makes a lot of sense.

But what about that whole death scene Jesus got to play out? That's pretty well accepted, right? Not so much: compare the stories in Matthew (27:46-50), Mark (15:21-41), Luke (23:38-46) and John (19:25-30). It seems like their descriptions don't really match, do they? If nothing else, shouldn't they have gotten His last words right? Seems like an important detail. Did He say the traditional "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Mark 15:34 and Matt 27:46), "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit" (Luke 23:46), or simply "It is finished" (John 19:30)?

Most people seem to feel that a man's last words are important.

Oh, and while three quarters of the Gospels mention some variation of the temple veil being torn in half, only Matthew (a big fan of special effects) seemed to remember an earthquake taking place when Jesus "gave up the ghost."

Having sold out the Savior (or assisted Him in fulfilling His destiny, depending on who you ask), Judas either threw his thirty pieces of silver down in the temple and hanged himself (Matt. 27:5), or kept the money, bought a field, tripped on a stump, and burst open like a well-fed tick (Acts 1:18).

(You know, there's a warning I don't recall having heard a mother give: "Johnny! Don't run around like that! You might fall down, burst asunder and all your bowels will gush out!")

And that resurrection bit? The whole tomb opening? Well, we do have a basic story that they agree on (the framework I mentioned earlier), where some women go to see the tomb, there's angels involved, the tomb is empty, the womenfolk (just being helpless females, after all) go to tell the big strong male disciples, Jesus comes to see them, and everybody's happy.

But then, none of our writers can even agree whether it was sunrise or still dark when the women approached. Nor can they figure out who the women were: although they all agree on Mary Magdalene, three of them include "Mary, mother of James;" Mark adds Salome (a woman disciple that the Catholic church doesn't like to talk about), and Luke decided that there weren't nearly enough women, and threw in "Joanna... and the others with them." (Luke loved a good party.)

Once they got there, most of the writers have the rock already rolled aside, although Matthew once again wanted some Michael Bay-like special effects, so he had the angel coming down to roll the rock away, and the guards pissing themselves. John has Mary seeing an empty tomb and scampering off to bring back one of the menfolk. Depending on who you ask, there were either one or two angels involved (sometimes simply described as "men") and Jesus either did or didn't meet the women as they went back down the mountain.

(Interestingly, none of the accounts mention finding anything that sounds like the Shroud of Turin, although John specifically mentions seeing burial cloths - several strips of linen and a cloth that had been wrapped around his head, lying in the tomb [John 20:6-7]. But that's entirely secondary. Let's move on.)

Then, depending on who you ask, Jesus alternately appeared to either a bunch of people at once, or just one or two at a time, over a period possibly as long as 40 days, and he possibly caused other miracles (including a huge catch of fish - John 21:5-11 - because nobody ever catches a lot of fish without a miracle).

But remember, this is all the inerrant word of God. Every bit is perfect and correct in every detail.

Right?

What the Hell is Wrong With Jesus?

There are Christians out there who like to look on the Old Testament as a parable, not the absolute, unalterable truth. And that's only reasonable - the Old Testament is, as I've mentioned before, a pretty savage book, filled with the bloody demands of a small-minded Bronze Age deity.

After all, according to Leviticus and Exodus, the death penalty isn't just required for murderers (Lev. 24:17-22) and kidnappers (Ex. 21:16), but for teenagers who fight with their parents (Ex. 21:17 and Lev. 20:9), and for guys who have sex with their mother-in-law (Lev. 20:14 - and the rough part is here, he gets burned to death, along with his mother-in-law, and his wife! - what? She knew about it? Now that's an open marriage...)

Meanwhile, you're allowed to have sex with another man’s slave, but you have to sacrifice a ram to do it (Lev 19:20-22). I can go on and on - and have, now that I think about it...

But, hey, Jesus came along and made everything all better, right? Well, not really. First of all, he didn't cancel out the laws of the Old Testament. Or, to put it in His words,

Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Matt. 5:17-18)

Of course, he quickly contradicted himself when he said that you didn't have to follow kosher dietary laws (Matt. 15:11) or stop working on the Sabbath (Most of Matthew 12, and part of Mark 2 - "The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath Mark 2:27"), so these two laws were apparently neither jots nor tittles.

(Does anybody know what a tittle is? I've got to jot down a note to remind me to find out... Oh, yeah, and incidentally, do you know why he had to explain, in Matthew 12, why the Sabbath ain't all that holy? He and his disciples had been caught stealing corn. Just thought I'd mention that.)

As usual, incidentally, all quotes, unless otherwise attributed, are from the King James Version, because I prefer the poetry of the language.

Of course, this isn't the only time he contradicted himself. Compare the two following quotes:

If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true. John 5:31

Jesus answered and said unto them, Though I bear record of myself, yet my record is true: for I know whence I came, and whither I go; but ye cannot tell whence I come, and whither I go. John 8:14

One of my favorite passages in the Bible, when I'm talking to those streetcorner preachers, is Matthew 6:5-6:

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret...

Of course, by cutting it off there, you miss the opening of verse 7, which says "But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do."

Contrast that with Matthew 26:44: "And he left them, and went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words." (I guess the heathen repeat themselves more than three times.)

Jesus was a big promoter of "family values," too, right?

If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. Luke 14:26)

Self-confidence is also at a premium in that quote.

For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.

Whatever happened to that whole "Honor thy father and mother" thing, anyway?

And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead.Matt. 8:21-22

In Matthew 12, while explaining why that whole "keep the Sabbath Day holy" was outdated, humble Jesus explained how He was more important than the temple, and a greater man than either Jonah or Solomon. You know, gentle, loving Jesus, the Prince of Peace.

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

The Catholics, at least, have figured out that Jesus was opposed to divorce.

And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away (divorces) his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away (divorced) doth commit adultery. (Matt. 19:9)

Of course, by stopping there, they miss the spectacular argument three verses later. Because, after all, not everybody can keep from getting married, right?

For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it. (Matt. 19:12)

Admittedly, you might say he was just listing some special cases. Or you could say that you have metaphorically become a eunuch if you don't have sex with women. (Hmmm... gay marriage...) On the other hand, a lot of (former, I suppose) men, from Christian scholar Origen in the Third Century B.C., to Boston Corbett in 1858, the Heaven's Gate cult in the Nineties, to Luis Alfonzo Sanchez Ortiz just last year, have all castrated themselves because of that verse. So, you know... bad advice, maybe?

But in the end, it's OK. Because the books of the New Testament can't even agree on the beginning or the the end of Jesus' life. And we'll consider that tomorrow.

Let's Get It On

I was driving up to the house, cranking an old classic by Marvin Gaye and singing along. (Which, by the way, is how you can tell that I was alone in the car.) A tender, sensitive ballad that was one of the biggest hits for the Prince of Soul, reaching #1 on both the Soul and Pop charts. It was the title track for the album of the same name, Let's Get It On, which also spawned the equally romantic "You Sure Love to Ball" (which, for some reason, doesn't get the same airplay as "Let's Get It On").

Now, don't misunderstand, I love this song. But every time I hear it, I'm struck by the depth of the shallowness of this song. It stands as a true monument to superficiality. (It also probably got him laid a lot.) Now, admittedly, this was in the midst of the Free Love revival that had started in the 60s, so maybe he can be forgiven. But he didn't want your forgiveness - it was going to be another decade before he'd ask for "Sexual Healing" (and two years after that, his father, the minister, shot and killed him the day before his 45th birthday - a wound that no amount of sexual healing was going to fix).

"Let's Get It On" had originally been written as a religious song, and morphed through a protest version before becoming the classic it is today. Please note the 70s porn guitar on the opening notes, as provided by the Funk Brothers.



You don't get better than that. And the lyrics stand out as absolute classics, don't they?

I've been really tryin', baby,
Tryin' to hold back this feelin' for so long

In retrospect, the decision to skip the Sta-Hard® cream was a mistake.

And if you feel like I feel, baby,
Then come on, oh, come on

But you might want to get there a little faster, baby. No Sta-Hard®, remember?

Whoo, let's get it on

See? There it is. Those four little words that every girl wants to hear. Just thrown out there, to show what a sensitive, caring guy he is. And repeated a few times, just in case you didn't get the message. And just to keep us on our toes, he likes to change it up every once in a while, with perhaps a "Let's love, baby."

Whoo-ooh-ooh

He moans a lot as he sings this. Understandable, I guess. But then comes the most fascinating line of the song.

We're all sensitive people

Note the careful adjective choice there. Not "we're both sensitive people," but "we're all..." As in "Hey, you're my first choice. But if you don't want to do anything, no problem. There's plenty of other women. Check out that girl next to you. The one screaming and jumping up and down... with those big... oh, yeah, she'll be happy to take your place. I'm Marvin Gaye, bitch! There's always another choice!"

With so much to give,
Understand me, sugar,
Since we got to be,
Let's live.

Go ahead. Graph that sentence for me. I dare you.

I love you

I don't know. Somehow, that doesn't seem to be very sincere.

There's nothin' wrong
With me lovin' you

Well, as long as you're both using protection, maybe.

Baby, no, no,
And givin' yourself to me can never be wrong,
If the love is true

I think what he means is, "I love you, right now. Tomorrow, I'm gone. I'll leave some cash for the taxi, but checkout time is 11:00, so you can only sleep in a little."

Don't you know,
How sweet and wonderful life can be?

This is called a non sequiter.

I'm askin' you, baby,
To get it on with me

Really? You aren't just pimping for your guitarist?

I ain't gonna worry, I ain't gonna push

"See, I threw out my back up on stage doing those pelvic thrusts, so I'm gonna have to let you do the work."

Won't push you, baby.
So come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, baby,
Stop beatin' 'round the bush.

That's the kind of subtle double entendre you can get away with when you're Marvin Gaye.

He then repeats "Let's get it on" about eight hundred times,interspersed with "oohs" and "oh yeahs," and the occasional somewhat random verse.

You know what I'm talkin' 'bout,
Come on, baby, hey, hey,
Let your love come out

Am I the only person who got a mental image from a slasher movie right there?

I know you know
What I've been dreamin' of,
Don't you, baby?

And it involves another woman, three midgets, and about fifteen pounds of blueberries.

My whole body is in love.

Really, Marvin? You know, sometimes a metaphor just doesn't work. Think about it for a second. "My whole body is in love"? Really? I think the only part "in love" is sticking straight out right now.

He repeats himself a little bit here (come to think of it, he repeats himself a lot in the course of this song), before he gets to a new line.

Beggin' you, baby, I want to get it on

Marvin Gaye has to beg? I'm not seein' it. (Remember, we're all sensitive people...).

And he works his way down to some more random repetition, with an extra line or two thrown in between.

If the spirit moves you, let me groove you good

No, that's not dated at all.

He also informs you that "I've been sanctified." I'm not sure what that means, but it makes the church service a lot more interesting.

Now, this video was a live version, so he works the audience for a little at the end. It's amazing that he can utter the words "Sugar, you promised me, you said, 'Marvin, baby, this evening,' you said we could get it on," and follow it up with "I've been waiting so long," and not sound like he was whining, isn't it?

And yes, he invariably performed in a coat and vest, just so he could strip them off at the end of this song. I don't think he ever actually got the pants off, but he usually threatened it.

(How many times can he repeat variations on "let's turn the lights down low" before he ends up completely in the dark?)

Marvin Pentz Gay, Jr. (April 2, 1939 – April 1, 1984) - master of the delicate, caring love ballad.

Unrelated Arguments and Murderous Queers

In the aftermath of the ruling by Judge Vaughn Walker that California's Proposition 8 was unconstitutional, there's a lot of confusion on the right side of the blogworld about how to react.

After all, their pet legislation, making same-sex marriage illegal, has just been thoroughly and completely hammered down by a simple, intelligent argument. "A private moral view that same-sex couples are inferior to opposite sex couples is not a proper basis for legislation."

That's not all of it, of course - there's another 134 pages of rational, measured discussion on the unconstitutionality of this bill. And they don't know what to say in response.

But while I was wandering around rightwing blogs and checking out the incoherent shrieking, I noticed something that I'd managed to miss before.

Part of the strategy to deny gay rights is to demonize homosexuals. The argument is both simple, and simplistic: "homosexuality is unnatural" (or "against God's plan"), "and therefore, all homosexuals are evil and perverse; we're better than they are."

And one way to demonize homosexuality is to conflate all perversions as the same thing: bestiality, sadomasochism, and in this case, pedophilia. As a wise man once said,

One of the weirdest quirks of the gay-haters is the fact that they can't seem to stop themselves from conflating consenting sexual practices between two adults, with forced intercourse with a non-consenting partner: bestiality (where Rick Santorum famously prefers german shepherds, John Cornyn apparently gets all hot and sweaty thinking about box turtles), pedophilia, necrophilia.

Your average right-wing hater refuses to see a difference (probably because they tend to have suffered brain damage due to the genetic incompatibility of closely-related parents).

"See? Homosexuality is a sex crime! And all sex crimes are the same!" It's an interesting theory: are all crimes the same? Is every pickpocket just as capable of murder? Then why aren't there more serial killers?

Unfortunately for that argument, several years ago in Laramie, Wyoming, a young man named Matthew Shepard was tortured and murdered for the "crime" of being gay. And sadly, this action doesn't fit into the world-view that the average homophobe wants to build up.

A couple of straight men were willing to torture and kill a gay man, because he was gay and they felt entitled; they were allowed to do this, because he was, after all, an inferior, even subhuman. And suddenly, "we" aren't any better than "they" are.

You can almost understand the reaction of the right wing. When you threaten someone's world-view, they feel that their core beliefs are being attacked. Sometimes, this leads to denial, like in the case of Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC), who tried to claim that it was all a hoax, and that Shepard was killed accidentally as part of a robbery, not because he was gay:

"The bill was named for him, the hate-crimes bill was named for him, but it's really a hoax that continues to be used as an excuse for passing these bills."

However, there's another mythology on the Right, which is built around the concept of straight people "getting targeted" because they're heterosexual. Apparently, this will make everything all better - if straight people are mistreated by gays, then, by the laws of the schoolyard, we can mistreat them right back.

The first example they like to bring up, often giving it a pithy title like "a Tale of Two Shepherds" is a guy named Jason Shephard of Pennsylvania. And he's not the only one: they've got a whole list of names, like Amanda Collette, a 15 year old from Miami; Jesse Dirkhising from Arkansas; and Mary Stachowicz from Chicago.

("And you've never heard about them, have you? The Mainstream Media completely ignored these cases, because it doesn't fit their gay agenda!")

But here's the strange part: when they bring up these victims, they tend to be a little scanty on the details. There's a reason for that, of course; once you look into the cases, these are obviously false comparisons.

See, Jason Shepherd and Jesse Dirkhising were both drugged, raped and then killed (Jesse was tortured prior, whereas Jason's corpse was abused after death) by sexual predators. Who happened to be male.

(Jesse, incidentally, was also 13 years old at the time. Again, we have the Right Wing perfectly happy to conflate pedophilia and homosexuality.)

Sure, you can say Jesse and Jason were killed for being straight. Of course, by that logic, every woman who has spurned a rapist's advances and ended up killed, must have been murdered for being gay. After all, if she didn't immediately have sex with a random stranger, it must be because she didn't like men!

Even if Shephard and Dirkhising had been gay, but had simply found their assailants unattractive, it would have led to the same result. They were faced with sexual predators, not gay men unable to control their lust.

Sometimes, one thing doesn't lead to another; a logical leap can often go right off a cliff.

Amanda Collette was apparently shot by a jealous teenaged girl. This case might almost make their homophobic point, if teenagers were rational. But at the mercy of their hormones, all teenagers are high-strung, excitable and stupid. Or, as psychologists put it:

Experts say teenage girls crave approval, that they want to be special, that their feelings are often too intense for them to handle. They don't feel in control of anything, and they yearn for power over their lives.

"So," said Dr. Mitch Spero, a Plantation psychologist who specializes in teens, "when they finally feel like they belong to someone, or that someone belongs to them, it comes down to ownership."
_____

For girls, murder is personal.

"Girls are much more likely to kill over relationships: their parents, siblings, boyfriends," said University of South Florida criminology professor Kathleen Heide.

Girls don't tend to go on murder sprees, and it's not the most common crime. But, again, have all the teenaged boys killed by heartbroken teenaged girls been killed for being gay?

Which brings us to the closest thing you have to a correlation with the Matthew Shepard case: the Mary Stachowicz murder in Chicago, which was committed by a young gay man named Nicholas Gutierrez.

Mary Stachowicz was a devout Catholic who worked as a Polish translator in a Chicago funeral home. Gutierrez was a former abused youth, who'd just been fired and was being evicted from his apartment: it's possible that he was under a little stress at the time.

Stachowicz tried to persuade him to give up the "gay lifestyle," and he testified that she asked him "why do you sleep with boys?" In his words:

"She had this sneer, which reminded me of my mother when she used to beat me...I saw nothing but red..."

And he killed her, hid the body, and tried to cover up his part in her murder.

(Incidentally, did you notice her phrasing? "Why do you sleep with boys?" Not "other men," but boys. Funny how often these arguments fall into a pattern...)

Stachowicz was killed because Gutierrez felt she was sneering at him. And whether or not she was sneering, she was trying to get him to stop being gay. (Remember what happens when you threaten somebody's world-view?)

Technically, you could just as easily say that Stachowicz was killed for being a busybody. Or for making fun of somebody. Or for being a Catholic who thought her beliefs overrode other people's right to privacy. Or for talking to a troubled youth who'd just been fired, was being evicted, and was on the edge of violence anyway.

There's the problem. People who want to say these victims were killed for being straight are conflating unrelated cases, merely because they found a homosexual (or purported homosexual) killing a heterosexual.

Matthew Shepard was killed because he was gay, and his assailants thought that made him fair game. The motives are entirely different.

I don't like the idea of "hate crimes," if it matters. We shouldn't try to read people's minds. But following the logic of "they were killed for being heterosexual," what should we do about ordinary, heterosexual rape? Outlaw straight sex?

Happy to be a zombie follower in service to a Higher Cause

OK, so there's this guy named Robert Lanza, MD. He got a little cranky because some people pointed out that he's a weird guy with odd ideas about the afterlife and, well, the afterlife. Oh, and life in general. And Lanza has demanded that ScienceBlogs (still reeling from their recent Pepsi difficulties) have to take down some posts that point out why he's an idiot.

Well, the more times these posts are linked, the more Google will return them on a search for "Robert Lanza" (especially if it includes words like "crackpot," or Huffington Post, or "New Age moron." Or idiocy, woo, stupidity, pinhead, "bad science" or fuckhead).

Or at least, that's the theory.

So here you go.