A Perfectly Cromulent Blog

Bi-Polar disorder

Knock it off, Disney.

Thanks to Winnie the Pooh sheets, Ariel underpants, and a near-constant media/retail assault that would've made Joseph Goebbels shake his head in admiration, you mercenary pricks already have your hooks set into most of our kids since birth (and maybe earlier, if the Princess Jasmine speculum is successfully patented). You've insinuated yourselves into our lives to such an extent I no longer offer even token resistance when She Who Shall Not Be Named brings me the Little Mermaid DVD case and the remote control.

Though I must say, her rendition of "Part of Your World" would make even the surliest among you crack a smile.

I'm willing to accept a certain amount of cultural omnipresence, as you can see, but what I'm not going to stand for is the annual push to make The Polar Express the next holiday movie classic.

[EDIT: I (think I) knew Warner Bros. actually made Polar Express, but the push I'm referring to is by ABC and the ABC Family channel, both of which are cramming PE down our throats, and both are owned by Uncle Walt.]

The 2004 adaptation of Chris Van Allsburg's book is, hands-down, one of the creepiest fucking things I've ever seen. Much hay was made about the groundbreaking technology used to capture the live actors' movements ("actors" meaning Tom Hanks and, like, three other guys), and the result is admittedly pretty eye-popping. Trouble is, the overall impression is that of a bunch of Real Dolls suddenly brought to herky-jerky life. There were also reportedly some screw-ups during the final stages of production, resulting in scenes where elves go sliding across the screen with apparently frozen extremities. Advanced technology or not, everything still looks desperately fake, and not in a good traditional animation way,

What's really funny is that the book takes about 15 minutes to read, but because filming a true adaptation wouldn't justify the outlay required for all this "revolutionary" motion capture technology Robert Zemeckis and company went on to bloat the film with instantly forgettable musical numbers and nonsensical action sequences. And what kid wants to endure an hour and forty minutes of this garbage just to see Hero Boy and Token Black Character Hero Girl finally reach the North Pole, a true Industrial Age wonderland where all the workers look the same and Aerosmith is the musical act of choice.

We already have enough Christmas-themed movies to play 24/7 the entire month of December, and that's not counting the holiday cluster bombs released every year (Fred Claus, Deck the Halls). There's always room for a worthy addition every five years or so, like Bad Santa, but I'm not prepared to push aside true classics like A Christmas Story and Die Hard just yet. Disney, you grossed $160 million with Polar Express during its release, I suggest you quit while you're ahead.

Ain't no party like an AIG party

'Cause an AIG party don't stop:

Even as the company was pleading the federal government for another $40 billion dollars in loans, AIG sent top executives to a secret gathering at a luxury resort in Phoenix last week.

Reporters for abc15.com (KNXV) caught the AIG executives on hidden cameras poolside and leaving the spa at the Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak Resort, despite apparent efforts by the company to disguise its involvement.

"AIG made significant efforts to disguise the conference, making sure there were no AIG logos or signs anywhere on the property," KNXV reported.

A hotel employee told KNXV reporter Josh Bernstein, "We can't even say the word [AIG]."

A company spokesperson, Nick Ashooh, confirmed AIG instructed the hotel to make sure there were no AIG signs or mention of the company by staff.

"We're trying to avoid confrontation, keep our profile low," said Ashooh. "Some of our employees have been harassed."

"What do they have to hide," asked Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-MD) who said he had been promised by AIG CEO Edward Liddy that the company would stop such "junkets."

"They came to us and said they were drowning and needed help. A person who is drowning doesn't jump up and start partying," said Congressman Cummings.

You were doing so well there, Elijah, and then you screwed up the metaphor. A better way to put it would have been, "A person who is drowing doesn't jump up and sodomize the person who threw them the life preserver with a five battery Maglite."

We saw the story on the news last night, and were barely finished rolling our eyes when ABC followed it up, unironically it would seem, with this piece:

Three years behind schedule and almost $360 million above budget, the Capitol Visitor Center prepares to open its doors to millions of tourists who now must endure long lines without food, restrooms or shelter to catch a glimpse of the halls of Congress.

The underground center, the largest single construction project in the Capitol's two-century history in terms of size and expense, is to open to the public on Dec. 2. The final cost of the project is put at $621 million, more than double the $265 million estimated cost had the center been completed on schedule in December, 2005.

And I'm driving an eight-year old car.

"Quimby: If you were running for mayor, he'd vote for you."

I see you there, stocking the bar and licking your chops in anticipation of tonight's VP debate/bloodbath. You've watched those YouTube snippets of Sarah Palin unable to answer Katie Couric's softball questions (and probably those Miss Alaska talent show clips as well) and are positively salivating at the way Joe Biden is going to "pwn" her ass.

Not a chance.

For starters, the McCain camp has been level-setting for weeks, "leaking" alleged rumblings about her lack of preparedness and predicting disaster Thursday night. Expectations are so low for Palin that as long as she doesn't show up drunk, it'll be declared a victory.

And the newly Palin-friendly debate format won't hurt her either:

The Obama and McCain campaigns have agreed to an unusual free-flowing format for the three televised presidential debates, which begin Friday, but the McCain camp fought for and won a much more structured approach for the questioning at the vice-presidential debate, advisers to both campaigns said Saturday.

At the insistence of the McCain campaign, the Oct. 2 debate between the Republican nominee for vice president, Gov. Sarah Palin, and her Democratic rival, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., will have shorter question-and-answer segments than those for the presidential nominees, the advisers said. There will also be much less opportunity for free-wheeling, direct exchanges between the running mates.

McCain advisers said they had been concerned that a loose format could leave Ms. Palin at a disadvantage and largely on the defensive.

But, but she's so experienced.

My prediction: Palin remembers her lines. Well enough, at least, that her supporters can claim it as proof that she's "ready to lead." The format will also reign in Biden's bloviating, and he'll mostly keep his tongue. He probably won't be able to resist a couple of body blows, which will likely prompt McCain to step in once again to defend his pit bull from the nasty Democrats.

Me? I'll be drinking myself blind. Which, come to think of it, is how I spend most election cycles.

In other words, Moe could've refused to re-insert the crayon into Homer's brain because he wasn't a snake-handler

"That's right, I'm an HHS Secretary."

The Bush administration proposed stronger job protections Thursday for doctors and other health care workers who refuse to participate in abortions because of religious or moral objections.

Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said health care professionals should not face retaliation from employers or from medical societies because they object to abortion.

"Freedom of conscience is not to be surrendered upon issuance of a medical degree," Leavitt said. "This nation was built on a foundation of free speech. The first principle of free speech is protected conscience."

The rule, which applies to institutions receiving government money, would require as many as 584,000 employers ranging from major hospitals to doctors' offices and nursing homes to certify in writing that they are complying with several federal laws that protect the conscience rights of health care workers. Violations could lead to a loss of government funding and legal action to recoup federal money already paid.

Can anyone pursuing a career as a doctor or pharmacist please do the rest of a favor? If you're going to be one of these people whose religious convictions are so strong that they will cause these horrible crises of conscience, please consider another line or work.

Like, say, professional chainsaw juggler.

The 36-page rule seeks to set up a system for enforcing conscience protections in three separate federal laws, the earliest of which dates to the 1970s. In some cases, the laws aim to protect both providers who refuse to take part in abortions and those who do.

The regulation is written to apply to a broad swath of the health care work force, not doctors alone. Accordingly, an employee whose task it is to clean the instruments used in a particular procedure would be covered. Also covered would be volunteers and trainees.

The underlying laws deal mainly with abortion and sterilization, but both the laws and the language of the rule seem to recognize that objections on conscience grounds could involve other types of services.

I used up my repository of oh-so-clever assholery in my other entry on this subject, so I'll just say I sincerely hope this blows up in these fuckers' faces. I hope a Muslim doctor at Bethesda refuses to treat Cheney's cirrhosis. I hope a Catholic pharmacist refuses to provide Viagra to any man married to a woman past child-rearing age. I hope a black surgeon refuses to perform life-saving surgery on Trent Lott.

More than that, I want it to be January right now so these psychos will be out of office for good.

More like "Incontinental"...am I right?

Back from Virginia. Took some gnarly pictures that will end any lingering dispute about my post-graduate education. Unfortunately, they were on a digital disposable camera (which will encourage any lingering debate about my photography skills) so you'll have wait until I pick up the photos from Walgreen's.

The stay itself was just dandy. Close proximity to Chicago-style pizza, several bars, and a decent gym meant I returned home only slightly wider than when I left. Unfortunately the trip was bookended once again by shitty flights on Continental, the airline that is rapidly becoming the Dr. Zin to my Benton Quest.

In a nutshell, my flight from Intercontinental to Dulles on Saturday was delayed nearly three hours by rain. I know they "can't do anything about the weather," as they're so fond of reminding us, but maybe instead of dropping a few zillion dollars for a new terminal that's two miles walking distance from the parking garage, you could buy some planes that can take off in winds over 15 MPH. Just a thought.

Then I arrive in Dulles, only to find that my bag didn't. This would be more than a mild irritant if I wasn't one of those idiots who always fails to pack toiletries or extra clothes in their carry-on. I really had no one to blame but myself for that, so I resolved to stink it out until the next day, when my bag would be delivered to the hotel, and drove my swanky rent-a-PT Cruiser to Annapolis to hand out with the Seadogs family. Killing a bottle of Bushmills once there didn't hurt.

Fast forward to yesterday, where - upon arriving at Dulles - I'm informed the Houston flight has been delayed another two hours. And since I always assume I'm getting the high, hard one from Continental anytime I fly with them, my reaction to the desk agent telling me the news was merely a raised eyebrow* while muttering, "What a shock."

Since I had a few hours to kill, I wandered the B Terminal at IAD. Who knew our nation had it's own store? And so emphatic:

Fuck yeah.

Got in a little after 11 PM last night. Just in time to elbow The Wife in her sleep before she flew out this morning at 6:30 for Cleveland. Her flight left on time, but then, she's flying Southwest.

Oh, and Mom: I know you like those Eddie Bauer luggage tag/locks. Unfortunately, so does the TSA. This is the second one they've cut off a bag of ours.

* This is a lie; I can't actually raise only one eyebrow.

Funny, I don't remember a lot of parental guidance when visiting Grandmom

Excerpt from my e-mail invite to the advance screening of Star Wars: The Clone Wars:

YOU MUST PRESENT THIS E-MAIL AND PHOTO I.D. AT THE DOOR FOR ADMITTANCE
 
ADMIT TWO
RATED PG for "sci-fi action throughout, brief language, and 
momentary smoking"

The 'brief language' escapes me, but I'm sure it was Obi-Wan saying "Blast!" or some such. No, it's the "momentary smoking" we have to worry about. The Wife and I have discussed this, and we both agreed that the seeing our relatives smoke when we were kids was sort of the opposite of cool. Women shouldn't sound like Harvey Fierstein.

And in the movie, the only character who smokes is Jabba's creepy uncle. I can imagine the post-movie conversations:

"Mommy, why is smoke coming out of Ziro the Hutt's nose?"
"Because he's FLAMING."

Yes, Ziro is a big gay Hutt. Here's a pic:

"Hellooooo Sith lord."

My review will be up tomorrow, meanwhile I want it known that I'm the first person to use the expression "Padawana Montana."

Random airing of grievances

I know Festivus is still a ways off, so bear with me while I blow off some steam.

1. The Pointedly Oblivious: People in online forums responding to topics concerning celebrities/TV shows by saying "Who?" or "Never heard of him/her/it." Unless you just returned from a 12-year float down the Zambezi, you're lying. And if you're not lying, you have Google. I know we all wish we didn't know who Kim Kardashian was, but signing on merely to demonstrate how iconoclastic you are in your ignorance of pop culture only cements your douchebaggery.

2. "Mancation:" Why in the name of Lee Marvin is it suddenly suspect for dudes to hang out for a weekend? In fact, why are people so eager to dub the simple act of getting together for a few beers a "man date." Does my long-standing friendship with Seadogs count as a "bromance?"

We only kissed once.

3. Gambit: Seriously, he throws cards people. Add an old lady who knits radioactive tea cosies and an alien badminton player and you'd have the lamest superhero team since Power Pack.

I only bring #3 up because of the number of people shrieking in appreciation at his appearance in this footage from the new X-Men Origins: Wolverine trailer from ComicCon.

Blob was part of the Weapon X program?

EDIT: I knew they'd pull it. For the time being, it's available here.

"Hey, did you go to Hollywood Upstairs Medical School too?"

Funny story.

There's this family: mom, dad, daughter. Everything's hunky dory during the first couple years. Daughter looks normal until shortly before her second birthday, when she - for lack of a better word - "crashes:" loss of language, attention problems...the light in her eyes goes out.

So what do the parents do? Everything they can think of: tests (MRI, EEG, chromosome work-ups) and visits to the pediatric neurologist seem to confirm what everyone's been telling them: she's autistic. Going by the advice of the neurologist, the parents start her on applied behavior analysis and speech therapy. The prognosis is uncertain, but they're willing to do whatever it takes to help her.

And yet, all during this time the parents - specifically the mother - question the diagnosis. The daughter just doesn't look like the other kids at her school. Her comprehension comes in and out when it should be consistently absent. Same with language. They mention this to the second neurologist (long story), and he tells them no further tests are necessary. And why should they doubt him? He's one of the best in the world in his field.

The one person who doesn't brush them off is the daughter's pediatrician, who has consistently been the only person to give them honest/thoughtful feedback. She recommends yet another neurologist, who actually turns out to be in a different field, but through this doctor they get to the fourth neurologist, who schedules another EEG. The results come in, and they're similar to the results of the one the daughter had done two years earlier. Only this time, the "abnormalities" that the previous doctor found "benign" are anything but. The parents are told the daughter has a neurological disorder called Landau-Kleffner Syndrome, which affects the parts of the brain governing speech and comprehension. More importantly, many of its symptoms mimic autism.

This comes as a bit of a surprise to the parents, especially when they're told it can be treated with anticonvulsants. The doctor is unwilling to give a definite prognosis because, well, he's a doctor, but there are indications that some of the daughter's problems with attention and learning can be overcome. Even better, seizures generally stop around puberty. She'll still need speech therapy, and will require a ton of work to get her even close to her peers in terms of development, but there's a chance. And that's more than they thought she had six months ago.

Good news, right? Everyone the parents have told seem to think so. And so it is, but maybe the parents can be forgiven for wondering why it took two years and - literally - a hundred thousand dollars to come to a correct diagnosis? Why the leaders in pediatric neurology and childhood development at UTMB and Texas Children's were so eager to dump their daughter in the "autism" bucket and wash their hands of her? And what happens to kids whose parents expect the "experts" to always have their child's best interests in mind?

Never mind, I think I know the answer. Now that I think about it, this story isn't all that funny after all.

A clarification

I am here to stand by comments made on this blog last week stating that 99 perecent of talk radio hosts are self-loathing closet queens and that the entire talk radio industry is, in fact, a fraud and a racket resulting from a lack of firm parenting. Further, I vigorously maintain the position that the desire to host a radio program is a direct byproduct of not having a father around to keep them from wallowing in their own excrement while listening to repeated playback of Johnny Horton's Greatest Hits.

These comments were meant to "boldly awaken" listeners to the radio community's attempts to produce an atmosphere where messianic blowhards provide them with inaccurate information to keep them in a perpetual state of ignorance and xenophobic paranoia. Many radio listeners are also being victimized by their inability to discern bullshit from the truth, which may not exist in all radio programs. Let the truly discriminating turn their radios off and read a book, let the willfully ignorant get a swift kick in the ass.

Now, I'll concede that the "99 percent" statement may have been a "little high." That's because it was hyperbole, which as we all know is that thing you try to shield yourself behind when a wider audience becomes aware of your idiocy and calls you on it. Still, I'm glad to have prodded discussion on the subject, and I plan to give over my entire comments section today to further discussion on whether Michael Savage is a vile sack of shit because his daddy didn't show him enough love, or if he was simply born that way.

Context

"Your balls itch?"

Bonus points to anyone who can tell me what '80s movie that pharmacist-delivered line is from.

Anyway, I guess it's a good thing these assholes weren't around when my friend Louden got crabs our junior year:

When DMC Pharmacy opens this summer on Route 50 in Chantilly, the shelves will be stocked with allergy remedies, pain relievers, antiseptic ointments and almost everything else sold in any drugstore. But anyone who wants condoms, birth control pills or the Plan B emergency contraceptive will be turned away.

That's because the drugstore, located in a typical shopping plaza featuring a Ruby Tuesday, a Papa John's and a Kmart, will be a "pro-life pharmacy" -- meaning, among other things, that it will eschew all contraceptives.

The pharmacy is one of a small but growing number of drugstores around the country that have become the latest front in a conflict pitting patients' rights against those of health-care workers who assert a "right of conscience" to refuse to provide care or products that they find objectionable.

It's a long article, filled with the usual bilge about how these noble beacons of moral supereminence are simply following the hallowed American tradition of "following their conscience." I'd encourage you to read the whole thing, but I'm just going to quote a few choice (har) bits:

The pharmacies are emerging at a time when a variety of health-care workers are refusing to perform medical procedures they find objectionable. Fertility doctors have refused to inseminate gay women. Ambulance drivers have refused to transport patients for abortions. Anesthesiologists have refused to assist in sterilizations.

Then fire them. I'm sure it varies, but aren't health care workers in a state-regulated system required to provide treatment when the prescription/diagnosis is legitimate? Take any of these homunculoids who refuse to provide the services they've been licensed for and shitcan them so they'll be free to preach their 17th century gibberish in whatever ratholes these people inhabit.

"This allows a pharmacist who does not wish to be involved in stopping a human life in any way to practice in a way that feels comfortable," said Karen Brauer, president of Pharmacists for Life International, which promotes a pharmacist's right to refuse to fill such prescriptions. The group's Web site lists seven pharmacies around the country that have signed a pledge to follow "pro-life" guidelines, but Brauer said there are many others.

I'm not linking the web site, but here's a list of the pharmacies:

- David's Pharmacy, Cartaya, David and Carmen RPhs - 2302 W Martin Luther King Blvd, Tampa, FL
- Andrew Eells, BSP, Greta Pharmacy, 1475 W Okeechobee Rd, Ste 5, Hialeah, FL
- Richmond Apothecary, Rokosz, David RPh 1626 East Main Street - Richmond, IN
- DuPlantis, Lloyd J, PD , Lloyd's Remedies, PO Box 1780, 3696 W Main St, Gray, LA
- Koelzer, Michael G, RPh Kay Pharmacy and Home Medical Equipment, 2178 Plainfield Rd NE, Grand Rapids, MI
- Superior Pharmacy, Lane L Hawley, RPh 348 N Central Ave, Superior, NE

Alternatives are probably easy to find in places like Tampa, Hialeah, and Grand Rapids. But tough shit for the woman who needs Plan B in Gray, LA (50 miles from New Orleans) or Superior, NE (75 miles from Lincoln). Or the out-of-towner who loses their birth control pills in Richmond, IN. And I guess it never occurs to these people that The Pill and other contraceptives are often prescribed for uses other than legitimizing those pagan orgies Bauer and her ilk see lurking behind every script for Ortho-Novum.

"We try to practice pharmacy in a way that we feel is best to help our community and promote healthy lifestyles," said Lloyd Duplantis, who owns Lloyd's Remedies in Gray, La., and is a deacon in his Catholic church. "After researching the science behind steroidal contraceptives, I decided they could hurt the woman and possibly hurt her unborn child. I decided to opt out."

Some critics question how such pharmacies justify carrying drugs, such as Viagra, for male reproductive issues, but not those for women.

Yeah.

This is the standard fallback, that these maladroits somehow care about women's issues in a way that those who dedicate their entire lives and careers to women's health somehow don't understand. It's beyond disingenuous: it's bullshit. Any pharmacist that refuses to fill legitimate prescriptions or stock contraceptives yet have no problem doling out boner pills has shown their true self: not a concerned practitioner bravely standing up for his individual rights, but rather a delusional misogynist whose attitude towards health care has more in common with Theodoric of York than any human being educated in the last 50 years.

"Go ahead...throw your vote away!"

I admit, I've always thought it'd be neat - in a creepy kind of way - if things like the Loch Ness monster or werewolves or the Wellborn Goat Man actually existed. My inner skeptic prevents from really believing, in the Mulderian sense, but I still keep an eye open for news stories about such phenomena, just in case.

And then there are those phantasmagorical creatures I never thought I'd encounter:

A hard core of Hillary Clinton's supporters are threatening to resist Barack Obama's nomination right up to the party's convention in August, leaving the Democrats dangerously divided ahead of next November's elections. Some may even abstain or vote for Republican John McCain in protest against Obama's candidacy.

The long Democratic contest exposed sharp divisions in support between Obama and Clinton. In contest after contest, Clinton beat Obama among middle-aged and older white women, white working class men, Latinos, and Jewish voters.

Mass defections to McCain are unlikely, said Thomas Mann, a politics expert at the Brookings Institution. "The vast, vast majority will just automatically come over," he said. "What we are talking about is only the hard core - 20% or below of her supporters will be angry enough to vote for McCain or not at all."

I've been hearing this stuff for a couple of weeks, but always put it down to a few loud cranks with a sore loser complex getting excessive airtime on Fox News. That was until I heard one of them at dinner last night. She was an older woman, eating with her husband and another couple. Everybody talks pretty loud in Tony's, and we were sitting right next to them so I heard most of their conversation regarding the election primaries and Obama's impending nomination. That was when the woman said, plain as day, that she - a lifelong Democrat - would sooner vote for McCain than Obama.

We all say things when we're pissed off that we regret later, so I'm hoping that was the case with this person. And yet I almost couldn't resist the urge to grab her by the padded shoulders and shake her while politely asking:

Are you out of your fucking mind?! John Paul Stevens is almost 90 years old! Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 75! McCain has marched in lockstep with Bush for almost eight years and will continue embracing religious intolerance and rolling back civil liberties in the name of "security," and you're going to vote for him because your candidate never apologized for helping send us to Iraq? I hope you choke on that flauta!

But then, it was just me and my daughter, so I contented myself with flicking borracho beans in her hair and blaming She Who Shall Not Be Named.

I tend to think Clinton's hardcore faithful are just blowing off steam and will come back on board by November. At least I hope so, because you can bet your ass McCain will be dangling Obama's "inexperience" and "naivete" like bass lures over them for the next five months.

For Your Review - May 30-June 1, 2008

My review of Sex and the City (**) is up at Film Threat. Anyone who has even a passing acquaintance with my particular tastes can probably guess my reaction, but I tried to give it a fair shake.

And honestly, I try to give them all of fair shake. Directed by Brett Ratner? Okay. Starring Scarlett Johannson? Sure. Written by Uwe Boll? Well, actually, I haven't seen one of his movies since a bootleg of BloodRayne, but I'd take the hit.

Not everybody agrees, of course. There's been a message board on the FT site for several years now, It's largely silent (when we're lucky), which may ultimately be a better fate than ending up like the Ain't It Cool News talkbacks, or the Rotten Tomatoes forums, or the fucking IMDB boards, which make AICN look like the Algonquin Round Table.

But recently Film Threat implemented a user comment feature, and my reaction to that was the same as when the Houston Chronicle or any other publication has done the same: awesome! After all, merely giving out the author's contact information and dedicating server space to message forums just doesn't allow enough "interactivity" for readers who can't wait to call Mayor Bill White a douchebag (on the Chron page) or call me a homophobic asshole (on my SatC review).

I welcome this new culture of feedback with open arms. In fact, I think the current situation doesn't go far enough. I say give readers edit access to the articles and reviews themselves, that way they can put their opinions right there in the article in question. No longer will they be forced to go through the extreme inconvenience of completing two fields in order to register for a comment account, because how fair is that when you want to register your immediate outrage over the fact that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull "took a shit on your childhood?"

People feel strongly about their mass-produced corporate entertainment. I'm just trying to help.

"Science has faltered once again in the face of overwhelming religious evidence."

I love organized religion.

We lived in Salt Lake City, UT for six years when I was a kid. The Mormons who surrounded us were always very helpful in pointing out why my Roman Catholic soul was boned - in between intermittent ass-whippings. After we moved to Texas, I kept my burgeoning atheism (mostly) under wraps and learned to (mostly) keep my mouth shut for the rest of my public school tenure, only occasionally surfacing to further solidify my status as "undesirable" among the toothsome ladies of Young Life.

The act that did the most damage was, ironically, an act of pure nerdery and not outright blasphemy: at a 9th grade party, I ejected Duran Duran's Seven and the Ragged Tiger in favor of Rush: 2112. Caren, our mortified hostess, was certain that Geddy Lee was shrieking, "We are the priests/of the devil."* My protestations fell on deaf ears, and my reputation as a neo-heretic was cemented.

So you can imagine how thrilling the last eight years have been for me, with evolution under increasing fire in our schools, the rise in popularity of VeggieTales, and the new prospect of being blinded with creation "science:"

Are you searching for cutting-edge scientific justification for a Biblical account of Earth's origins?

Then search no longer: the first issue of the Answers Research Journal, the "professional, peer-reviewed technical journal for the publication of interdisciplinary scientific and other relevant research from the perspective of the recent Creation and the global Flood within a biblical framework," is now online!

In this case, I suspect "peer-reviewed" means some of the '9-11 Truth' folks came over to check their work.

Edited by Australian geologist Andrew Snelling and published by the founder of the Creation Museum, Answers is free, fully downloadable and reviewed by a "large network of well-qualified creationist researchers, scientists, and theologians who are the best thinkers in their fields of creationist research," assuring that it meets "the highest scientific and theological standard."

Is this what speaking in tongues sounds like? Because none of those terms make any sense. "Creationist research?" "Australian geologist?" Please.

Snelling has actually hit upon a reliable strategy: he simply cites other scientific articles that back up the non-bullshit components of his article, then refers back to his own work when he gets to the whole "divine nuclear decay" concept. Similar shenangians helped me get 'A's on most of my college research papers, but then, I wasn't trying to convince the world at large that Nag and Nagaina were actually sympathetic liminal characters in "Rikki Tikki Tavi: Kipling's Paean to Imperial Racism."

And they have excerpts, including:

Proceedings of the Microbe Forum, June 2007

The task of understanding and observing the microbial world is daunting when we consider that we have only documented around 5,000 bacterial species. In addition there is much yet to be learned about algae, fungi, macro-parasites, and the enigmatic "chimeric" lichens. Could there be other creatures composed entirely of microbes of which we are unaware? In addition, how do we classify microbes taxonomically from a creation perspective? Do they fit into conventional or baraminic taxonomical convention? How do we view them biblically? What day were they created?

Uh, 5,000?

I'd like to see a graphical representation of this. If traditional Linnaean diagrams represent a tree, I'm guessing the creation-based model is essentially "God" -----------> "everything." This probably makes studying for AP biology exams in Kansas a little easier.

* Of course, everyone who's anyone knows the line is actually, "We are the priests/of the Temple of Syrinx."

I guess Hard Candy wasn't on their list

Sweet, sweet schadenfreude:

"Clean" Movie Maven Arrested For Teen Sex

(CBS) A Utah retailer of family-friendly tapes and DVDs - Hollywood films with the "dirty parts" cut out of them - has been arrested for trading sex with two 14-year-old girls.

Orem police say Flix Club owner Daniel Dean Thompson, 31, and Issac Lifferth, 24, were booked into the Utah County jail on charges of sexual abuse and unlawful sexual activity with a 14-year-old.

CBS Station KUTV in Salt Lake City reports that the shocking discovery came when a mother found a $20 bill in her daughter's room last week and questioned her about where the money came from.

The girl confessed that she and a friend had been paid for sexual favors by an older male.

Lifferth was additionally charged with patronizing a prostitute and was also in possession of a prescription drug medication without a prescription.

Thompson's Flix Club was one of several Utah-based video outlets that traded in edited versions of R- and PG-13-rated films, catering to clientele who wanted to watch hit movies without nudity, sex, language or graphic violence.

Thomson and Lifferth were obviously in the same "Throw 'Em Off the Trail" class as Larry Craig.

In defense of Mr. Rogers

I was prepared to be appalled by tonight's 60 Minutes story about "The Millennials," that magical generation born between 1980 and 1995 who are going to throw such a monkey wrench into America's corporate culture we'll all be scrambling to provide in-cubicle Xbox 360s to keep them happy. These technologically savvy kids, after all, are the products of an America that gives trophies for participation and tells every child out there that they're winners, even when they haven't really won anything.

Bitch, bitch, bitch. I admit, there are drawbacks to being sandwiched between what I've been repeatedly told are the two most narcissistic generations in history, but I prefer to delude myself into thinking my sterling employment record will measure up favorably against that of some emo-haircut sporting, iPhone-jockeying, Heelys-wearing jagoff.

Anyway, The Wife and I are goofing on the whiny kids talking about how they're going to shake up America, when Morley Safer brings in Wall Street Journal columnist Jeff Zaslow, who went on to rehash his six-month old column laying the blame for this generation's narcissism at the feet of Mr. Rogers:

Fred Rogers, the late TV icon, told several generations of children that they were "special" just for being whoever they were. He meant well, and he was a sterling role model in many ways. But what often got lost in his self-esteem-building patter was the idea that being special comes from working hard and having high expectations for yourself.

Now Mr. Rogers, like Dr. Spock before him, has been targeted for re-evaluation. And he's not the only one. As educators and researchers struggle to define the new parameters of parenting, circa 2007, some are revisiting the language of child ego-boosting. What are the downsides of telling kids they're special? Is it a mistake to have children call us by our first names? When we focus all conversations on our children's lives, are we denying them the insights found when adults talk about adult things?

Some are calling for a recalibration of the mind-sets and catch-phrases that have taken hold in recent decades. Among the expressions now being challenged:

"You're special." On the Yahoo Answers Web site, a discussion thread about Mr. Rogers begins with this posting: "Mr. Rogers spent years telling little creeps that he liked them just the way they were. He should have been telling them there was a lot of room for improvement. ... Nice as he was, and as good as his intentions may have been, he did a disservice."

Zaslow and his cronies are - not to put too fine a point on it - fucking idiots. Fred Rogers no more spent years telling "little creeps that he liked them just the way they were" than he did exhorting them to mass suicide. No, Mr. Rogers made a living by telling kids who didn't hear it anywhere else that they meant something. That's all. Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood first aired in 1968, well before the embarkation point of the entitlement generation, and his mission was never to empower the unworthy, but to make everyone, no matter who they were, feel good about themselves for 30 minutes a day. What a crime.

I'm as guilty as anybody of making fun of the guy when I was younger, but then, I wasn't one of those kids who actually needed something in their life called a "Neighborhood of Make-Believe."

Signs of narcissism among college students have been rising for 25 years, according to a recent study led by a San Diego State University psychologist. Obviously, Mr. Rogers alone can't be blamed for this. But as Prof. Chance sees it, "he's representative of a culture of excessive doting."

Prof. Chance teaches many Asian-born students, and says they accept whatever grade they're given; they see B's and C's as an indication that they must work harder, and that their elders assessed them accurately. They didn't grow up with Mr. Rogers or anyone else telling them they were born special.

Come on. I don't know any kid born post-1980 who paid attention to Fred Rogers. Hell, my sister was born in the 70s and she never watched an episode (she was a big Dukes of Hazzard fan, however). He's an easy target for piling on because 1) he's dead, and 2) even if he was alive, he wasn't the kind of guy who'd get involved in a public media imbroglio. All Rogers is to these old assholes is the latest in a series of scapegoats for the newest generation they're unable to understand. Are "the Millennials" annoying twats? Sure, but as with anything else, the parents are perfectly content to assign blame anywhere but themselves. Is your 20-something child a self-entitled douchebag who's never punched a clock in his life yet expects $60K starting salary and his own office straight out of college? Must be Mr. Rogers' fault.

The only surprising part of the 60 Minutes story was that career whiner Andy Rooney didn't show up to complain as well.

"Why don't you all just f-f-fade away?"

ABC News has a story on their evening broadcast tonight about how the first of the Baby Boomers (Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, born 12:00:01 AM on 1/1/46) has applied for Social Security benefits. There were the usual comparisons between the post-war generation's saving habits versus those of their parents (the Boomers are better at it, probably because nobody who lived through WWII expected humanity to avoid annihilating itself) and the ominous theorizing about the deleterious effects of 76 million people draining the nation's SS trust fund. Casey-Kirschling herself was interviewed - in front of her new boat - and attempted to adopt a somber tone when discussing her children's futures, just before she sailed out to international waters to enjoy some choice Peruvian blow.

I can't speak for anyone else of my generation, but my retirement saving strategy was implemented with the assumption that Social Security wouldn't be around when I finally called it quits (at age 87, by current economic indicators). Obviously, certain other family considerations have caused us to recalculate some things, but so far we're looking okay.

But ABC misses the point (or - more likely - selectively ignores it). The primary negative ramification of our rapidly aging population isn't the future depletion of our nation's retirement coffers, but the present-day horror of TV advertising. Thanks to this, I now know how to medicate myself against physiological horrors both real (hypertension) and imagined (restless leg syndrome). The phenomenon is so pervasive I now have to pause my DVR for 10 minutes at the beginning of Adult Swim (on the Cartoon Network, of all places) so as to avoid the Cyclopean horror of "Bob" from those Enzyte commercials.

And then there's this:

Jesus christ on a pogo stick. The sight of doughy 50-somethings "jamming" at some mythical roadhouse miraculously bereft of blue collar alcoholics and speed-addled bikers before roaring off to give their undoubtedly weary wives a right good rogering is one of the worst things I've ever seen, and I review Brett Ratner movies.

Part of me finds it endlessly amusing that the generation that once rallied to "Hope I die before I get old" is now desperately trying to stave off its advancing decrepitude. And I say this as someone whose own age cohort will someday have to answer for Vanilla Ice and the Star Wars prequels. But the other part desperately wants to watch Sunday NFL games and the MLB playoffs without being constantly reminded of the grim specter of death.

Or impotence. Whatever.

"I just want to watch Honk If You're Horny in peace!"

Part of the problem in suffering from long-term memory issues while writing a blog for (*sigh*) almost four years is that I sometimes...okay, most of the time...get myself all motivated to write about something, only to realize I've written about it already. On several occasions.

Case in point, there was yet another toddler at yet another horror movie (The Reaping) last night. The mother-of-the-year candidate this time chose to lurk around the corner in that little hallway leading to the exit so she could continue watching while her child assumedly couldn't see the disturbing images of chldren strung up in a tomb or Idris Elba stooping to play the loyal black sidekick after a great run as Stringer Bell in The Wire. Problem was, the kid continued doing things kid's tend to do, like cry, babble, cry, and screech at nothing in particular. And everyone in the theater could hear him.

I've already beaten this subject to death. Twice. So I decided I'm going to join the fun. Wednesday night is the Grindhouse screening here. The Wife has a meeting, so she won't be able to pick She Who Shall Not Be Named up until right before the movie starts. In the meantime, I'm going to bring my daughter into the theater, possibly wrapped in an oversized Reservoir Dogs t-shirt. I'll loudly proclaim to anyone listening that she loves Takashi Miike and how much she's looking forward to Eli Roth's "Thanksgiving" trailer.

Of course, nobody will care. More to the point, no one will say anything, so used are they to assholes bringing their spawn to inappropriate movies. In the face of this depressing realization and apropos of nothing, here's a flowchart from Mrs. Basshole, inspired by that stupid German "Hammerzeit" image I posted and forgotten lo these many months:

What a fabulous decade it was.

She's a lady

First, a little history:

Far be it from me to criticize a band for sucking - as Fall Out Boy clearly does - or to lament the "good old days" when there was at least a miniscule gap between the time a band became popular and when it started whoring out its music to all takers. The truth is, the above Vcast ad makes me laugh, solely because Film Threat's Mark Bell and I got so much hilarity out of it at SXSW.

Every time the phone rang, it was "my lady." Every emphatic conversational point was punctuated by a swirling index finger thrust. Every remotely rocking song got. Us. "Pumped!" A sentiment we made sure to express with big, vaguely psychotic, shit-eating grins on our faces.

Mark now tells me there's a new commercial that (I think) features a gay guy in a dog park, but I can't bring myself to watch it. I shared something memorable with that tousel-haired meathead. It just wouldn't feel right.

"I've heard how this ends, it turns out the secret code was the same nursery rhyme he told his daughter!"

Saw Zodiac last night. Good movie, though at 2 hours 45 minutes I'm a bit Ruffaloed out.

Anthony Edwards has a fairly large role as Inspector Toschi's partner, Bill Armstrong. This may or may not be Edwards' first big role since ER, and frankly I'm too lazy to look it up. I feel pretty safe in saying that was probably the last major part most moviegoers are familiar with.

Now then, whenever I finally get around to writing my epic masterwork about why going to the movies these days is roughly as pleasurable as having a Russian strongman massage your taint with a giant emery board, I'll have a section on audience members talking. And I will maintain at that time that the absolute worst people to see movies with are old people.

You see, young folks can generally be intimidated, and those with crying kids or talking on phones are on the outs with the majority of the population anyway, but old people...old people simply don't give a shit.

The group of four sitting behind me last night were certainly thrilled to recognize so many stars on the big screen tonight. "He's from ER," they helpfully informed me. One lady did me the favor of reminding me where I'd seen the main suspect earlier in the film. And, of course, one of the men wondered aloud (and I do mean loud) if that was the same person who played Spider-Man in the role of San Francisco Chronicle cartoonist Robert Graysmith.

I am a man of restraint, eroding though it may be, so at no point did I leap to my feet, point at the offenders like Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and scream, "Yes! Anthony Edwards played Dr. Mark Green on ER. No, Jake Gyllenhaal did not play Spider-Man, that was the other guy. But here's the thing: these are all ACTORS. They play different roles in different movies because that's their JOB. It would be like me walking behind you at Luby's and yelling, 'There! That's the old bat who cut me off on Richmond the other day! Doesn't she look different with a wig?'"

But no, it wouldn't matter. They'd just sit there, chatting about that nice young man who was in Wonder Boys while enjoying the Social Security payments I'll never get to see. Meanwhile, the police would be laying into me with truncheons outside.

You can see I've thought this through.

Do you spell "quack" with two 'A's?

All I want for Christmas is a little schadenfreude:

Hoosier Edward Bruce Tinsley, creator of the conservative comic strip Mallard Fillmore, was arrested in Columbus Dec. 4 and charged with operating a vehicle under the influence -- his second alcohol-related arrest in less that four months, according to the Bartholomew County Sheriff's Department.

Tinsley, 48, who lives in Columbus, had a blood-alcohol level of 0.14 -- almost twice the level at which an Indiana driver is considered intoxicated. He posted $755 bond.

On Aug. 26, Tinsley was arrested for public intoxication, according to the sheriff's department.

Mallard Fillmore, about a conservative duck, appears in almost 400 newspapers nationwide, including The Indianapolis Star.

And from the "About the Comic" section on the King Features homepage:

Tinsley created Mallard for what he saw as the conservative underdog. The strip is for "the average person out there: the forgotten American taxpayer who's sick of the liberal media and cultural establishments that act like he or she doesn't exist," he says.

Evidently Tinsley's alcohol problems stemmed from the Herculean amounts he needed to imbibe in order to silence the endless keening of his monstrous victimhood complex.

And it makes today's strip seem like something of a bad choice.

The right to arm bears

Yet another reason to hate Nashville. Not only does the music suck, but the musicians themselves are morons:

Troy Gentry, who pleaded guilty this week in Minnesota to a misdemeanor charge of falsely registering a captive bear as being killed in the wild, said the ordeal has been "a humbling experience."

"I relied on the experts around me for guidance, and I regret that today. Not so much because I was fined and punished, but because it appears that I don't have respect for the law," Gentry, of the hit country singing duo Montgomery Gentry, said Monday in a statement.

"This has been a humbling experience for me, and one which I deeply regret."

Lest anyone thinks these so-called "experts" were ambiguous about exactly what was going on, there's this tidbit from a previous story:

Gentry told the court he bought the bear from Greenly with the understanding they would videotape a hunt inside the bear's enclosure, which was surrounded by an electric fence.

"Lee and I made a deal about harvesting this bear," Gentry testified. They also agreed to report it was killed in the wild 6 miles east of Sandstone instead of on Greenly's property south of the town.

Full disclosure: I've been hunting once. Infrequent commenter MacInFla brought me along several years ago, and I equate the entire experience to taking a 10-hour hike with a rifle slung over my shoulder. Had I seen a deer, I doubt I could've brought myself to shoot (at) it. Nor did I bother with the plentiful goats in the area.

Whatever your feelings about hiding in the trees and shooting an animal with a high-powered rifle that propels a bullet at 3,000 fps, at least most hunters don't go down to the zoo and plug the Malayan sun bear, which is about the degree of difficulty Gentry was working with. He also agreed to lie about the location of the kill, which seems less like "expert guidance" and more like "giving misleading information to the cops."

Under the plea announced Monday, the 39-year-old singer agreed to pay a $15,000 fine, give up hunting, fishing and trapping in Minnesota for five years, and forfeit both the bear's hide and the bow he used to shoot the animal in 2004. The bear, named "Cubby," was killed in a 3-acre private enclosure.

My bad, Gentry was hunting with a bow and arrow, which is how Ted Nugent and the Native Americans did it, after all. Though I doubt a couple of guys with Remington 673s were backing up the Chippewa. They also probably had better names for their bears.

Three acres surrounded by an electric fence. Ah, the cagey resourcefulness of the wily hunter.

"If you don't watch the violence, you'll never get desensitized to it."

I don't rant too much about movie remakes here. Well...anymore. Mostly because I consider it about as effective as voting Democrat on a Diebold machine. Your favorite movie, unless it happens to be one of the cherished few American classics (Citizen Kane, Raging Bull, Bambi vs. Godzilla ) is probably going to get remade by Frank Darabont at some point in the very near future and there isn't a goddamned thing you can do about it except cry like a little girl on your weblog.

So here I am. First, from an e-mail I received last week:

From filmmaker Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes production company (“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” [2003], “The Amityville Horror” [2005]) comes a remake of the 1986 terror classic. Dave Meyers is directing the new film, which tracks the terrifying cross-country trajectory of Grace (Sophia Bush) and Jim (Zachary Knighton), two traveling college students who are tormented by the mysterious hitchhiker John Ryder, a.k.a. The Hitcher (Sean Bean).

Color me surprised. Seriously, after Armageddon and Pearl Harbor, I didn't think it was possible to hate Michael Bay any more than I already do. Certainly I'm not the only one looking forward to panoramic slow motions shots and PG-13 style violence from Cecil B. DeMousse's production company.

Remakes only have merit when the original could somehow be improved upon by modern technology or a new perspective. The Hitcher update offers none of these; it apes the plot of the original, and - while I like Sean Bean quite a lot (even in the Sharpe's Rifles series) - he's no Rutger fucking Hauer.

I mean, come on:

"Find a Whataburger or I cut her throat!"

No one will ever mistake the original Hitcher for high art. There are too many plot contrivances, Ryder is almost Voorheesian in his immortality, and the whole thing is too fantastic to take seriously. In spite of all that, it was a great atmospheric thriller featuring a much more complex hero-villain relationship than most films of its ilk.

And Jennifer Jason Leigh plays a pivotal role. You could almost say she's the lynchpin of the film.

For our next exhibit, we have even better news:

OK, the true-blue horror geeks can generally deal with it when you remake something like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, because everyone knows that flick, but when it comes to titles like, say, Near Dark -- we tend to get pretty protective. (It's sorta like you and that one band you loved -- years before everyone else loved 'em.) Word out of all the different horror sites (well, the three I trust, anyway) is that not only will there be a new rendition of Kathryn Bigelow & Eric Red's brilliant cult classic Near Dark, but a screenwriter has already been hired for the gig.

The good news is that Matt Venne, the guy who just turned in his screenplay for White Noise 2, seems to have his head screwed on where Near Dark Redux is concerned. As quoted at Fango, Venne says "there are images in the original film and in Eric Red and Kathryn Bigelow’s screenplay that are absolutely beautiful. Completely dreamy and captivating. Pure poetry. It’s an incredible project, and I’m honored to be writing it."

So the good news is, the screenwriter recognizes the special nature of the original film. The bad news is, his vast writing resume includes the fucking White Noise sequel and an episode of Showtime's lousy Masters of Horror series.

Oh, and this is going to be another of Bay's Platinum Dunes productions, in case you weren't aware.

Near Dark, for those who haven't had the pleasure, is a blisteringly cool Southern-fried vampire noir from 1987 that was written by Eric (The Hitcher) Red and directed by Kathryn (Point Break) Bigelow. Although the flick features strong performances from Adrian Pasdar as one unlucky lad and Tim Thomerson as his devoted pop, the three blood-soaked standouts had just gotten done working together in Aliens. As a devilishly evil trio of bloodsuckers, Lance Henriksen, Jenette Goldstein, and Bill Paxton are just perfect together.

That's right: Eric Red is getting the double shaft. Don't feel too badly for him though, from the look of things, Bay's going to be giving audiences the Ted Haggard treatment many times over for years to come.

Henriksen is on record as saying he'd be up for the remake, now rumored to be a prequel, which makes no sense if he's supposed to play a younger version of his characters in a movie that won't come out until over 20 years after the original. Lance was in the When A Stranger Calls remake, however, so his enthusiasm is hardly encouraging.

"What is it, Asshole Day?"

So The Wife mentioned an article she'd read yesterday about TV-watching as a possible cause of autism. Disorders on the so-called autistic spectrum are pretty varied, both in severity and in characteristics, so I sort of take any sweeping causation argument with a large block of salt, especially one I haven't bothered to read.

Then, while checking Eric Berger's SciGuy weblog, I see he's also talking about it. Then I read the line that suddenly brought everything into focus:

Gregg Easterbrook of Slate has a rather inflammatory piece on whether TV viewing by young children could cause autism later in life.

Gregg fucking Easterbrook. The same guy who told women that men force them to have sex because their masculinity demands it and who equated Hollywood's love of violence with the filthy Jew's love of filthy lucre is still getting paid to report on things about which he knows fuck all:

Today, Cornell University researchers are reporting what appears to be a statistically significant relationship between autism rates and television watching by children under the age of 3. The researchers studied autism incidence in California, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington state. They found that as cable television became common in California and Pennsylvania beginning around 1980, childhood autism rose more in the counties that had cable than in the counties that did not. They further found that in all the Western states, the more time toddlers spent in front of the television, the more likely they were to exhibit symptoms of autism disorders.
[...]
The Cornell study is by Waldman, a professor in the school's Johnson Graduate School of Management, Sean Nicholson, an associate professor in the school's department of policy analysis, and research assistant Nodir Adilov.

Wow, a study appearing on the school's business school website should certainly be given as much credence as an article appearing in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, shouldn't it? I eagerly await the Johnson Graduate School of Management's guidelines on avoiding heart disease and maintaining proper dental hygiene.

But the fact that rising household access to cable television seems to associate with rising autism does not reveal anything about how viewing hours might link to the disorder. The Cornell team searched for some independent measure of increased television viewing. In recent years, leading behavioral economists such as Caroline Hoxby and Steven Levitt* have used weather or geography to test assumptions about behavior. Bureau of Labor Statistics studies have found that when it rains or snows, television viewing by young children rises. So Waldman studied precipitation records for California, Oregon, and Washington state, which, because of climate and geography, experience big swings in precipitation levels both year-by-year and county-by-county. He found what appears to be a dramatic relationship between television viewing and autism onset. In counties or years when rain and snow were unusually high, and hence it is assumed children spent a lot of time watching television, autism rates shot up; in places or years of low precipitation, autism rates were low.

So...rain causes autism? No wait...humidity causes autism. Hold on, I've got it...Doppler radar causes autism. Quick, somebody find a university web page that upholds my assumptions.

Everyone complains about television in a general way. But if it turns out television has specific harmful medical effects—in addition to these new findings about autism, some studies have linked television viewing by children younger than 3 to the onset of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder—parents may urgently need to know to keep toddlers away from the TV. Television networks and manufacturers of televisions may need to reassess how their products are marketed to the young. Legal liability may come into play. And we live in a society in which bright images on screens are becoming ever more ubiquitous: television, video games, DVD video players, computers, cell phones. If screen images cause harm to brain development in the young, the proliferation of these TV-like devices may bode ill for the future. The aggressive marketing of Teletubbies, Baby Einstein videos, and similar products intended to encourage television watching by toddlers may turn out to have been a nightmarish mistake.

I don't think anyone would argue that TV is somehow beneficial to children, but printing up this kind of scare tactic bullshit - bullshit that has no basis in any kind of scientific or medical research, I might add - is typical of Easterhack's irresponsible need to drum up controversy without bothering to devote a scrap of critical thought to his endeavors. ESPN fired him for his Jew comments, and yet people continue to give this douchetastic jagoff money to crap out the occasional column, blog, or rambling football piece stuffed with clumsy puns and creepy cheerleader fetishism.

How the hell do I get that gig?

Bigmouth strikes again

Hey Morrissey, shut the fuck up:

Singer Morrissey has waded into the controversy over the new Oxford animal research laboratory by warning those working on the site �we�ll get you�.

The singer used a concert at the city�s New Theatre on Thursday night to hit out at the �20 million biomedical research laboratory site currently under construction in South Parks Road.

He branded Oxford �the shame of England� for allowing the laboratory and told fans: �If you agree with vivisection, go and be vivisected upon yourself.�

The vegetarian former Smiths frontman and animal-rights activist, who is currently promoting a new album Ringleader Of The Tormentors, has long courted controversy.

In an interview with fanzine True to You earlier this year, he said he supported �the efforts of the Animal Rights Militia in England� and understood �why fur-farmers and so-called laboratory scientists are repaid with violence - it is because they deal in violence themselves and it�s the only language they understand�.

Please tell me you've never been vaccinated, my mopey Mancunian friend. In fact, you should probably eschew all medications, including aspirin and antibiotic salves, since maximum dosages for those were determined - that's right - by animal testing. Not only that, but just about every piece of medical equipment and procedure out there is in existence thanks to it as well. The comfort of your entire petulant existence is provided to you by the very experimentation you deride.

Animal-rights activists are, he said �usually very intelligent people who are forced to act because the law is shameful or amoral�.

Congratulation, posturing like that puts you on the same moral plane as the Army of God and Eric Rudolph. Stick with the topics you're most familiar with, Stephen, like Oscar Wilde, pomade, and men's fashion, and leave science to the scientists. A simple "thank you" for not having to die of smallpox wouldn't hurt, either.

And Johnny Marr was the heart and soul of the Smiths.

What would Jesus protest?

I've been puzzled by some of the most recent religious protests in a number of predominantly Christian countries, so maybe someone more tuned in to their spiritual side could tell me, given the following options, which do you think would have the King of Kings/Number One Son/El Christo up in arms the most?

1. Fictional movies like The Da Vinci Code and The Last Temptation of Christ - one of which has the temerity to suggest that Jesus got married and had children, the other only showing it in a dream sequence.

2. Madonna's latest tour, in which she warbles a 20-year old song while suspended from a cross.*

3. The removal of a feeding tube from a woman whose brain was all but non-functioning, the act of which neverthless managed to mobilize both state and federal governments with a speed not seen since some washed up singer flashed a boob during the Super Bowl.

4. The development of a vaccine which could prevent the development of 70% of HPV-related cervical cancers. The kicker: it may be more effective when administered to girls at puberty.

5. The Catholic Church's sustained pattern of obfuscation and buying off the victims of decades of systematic child abuse committed by members of the clergy.

Now guess which one(s) have garnered the most passionate response from church and "family" groups? I'll give you a hint: it's not #5.

*I'm 100% in agreement with Scott; if she really wanted to be edgy and provocative, she'd hang herself from a Muslim crescent.

Burning down the (White) House

I'm assuming most of you have seen Stephen Colbert's fantastic speech at the White House Correspondents Dinner last weekend. If not, you can check it out here. Go on, I'll wait:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Full link here, I think.

I can't decide if the AP intended this as an intentional whack job when they invited him to speak, or if everyone was just unbelievably clueless. Regardless, Colbert managed - in 20 short minutes - to shred not only the President, but the lickspittles in the media who've allowed his crimes to go unchallenged for six years.

The 15 of you who read this blog (18 when the Chron links to it) have grown used to the occasional barb flung Bush's way, and there are plenty of other bloggers out there with a much greater readership doing a much better job. But Colbert managed to singlehandedly tear down much of the sycophantic and misleading bullshit surrounding the current Administration on a national stage, and he did it with the President sitting not 15 feet away. The man has, as Bullet Tooth Tony might say, "big brave balls."

Predictably, the apologists have come out in force to describe how Colbert "bombed." Right. The reporters, military officials, and government lackeys in the audience weren't laughing because he had them dead to rights. If someone on stage was calling me out as a toadying coward (the WH press corps) or a spineless yes-man (the military), I probably wouldn't be laughing either.

Unless I was Antonin Scalia, apparently. That boy ain't right.

"...a worthless shred of human debris"

Rush never inhaled:

Firebrand radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh was charged Friday with fraudulently concealing information to obtain prescription drugs, but prosecutors will drop the charge after 18 months if Limbaugh remains in treatment for drug addiction, his lawyer said.

Limbaugh also agreed to pay the state of Florida $30,000 to help cover the cost of the investigation into the conservative radio personality's alleged "doctor shopping," a felony in Florida.
[...]
The single charge will stand until Limbaugh has finished 18 months of drug treatment. Then, under the agreement with the Palm Beach County state attorney, the charge will be dropped, [Limbaugh attorney Roy] Black said.

"As a primary condition of the dismissal, Mr. Limbaugh must continue to seek treatment from the doctor he has seen for the past two-and-one-half years," Black said. "This is the same doctor under whose care Mr. Limbaugh has remained free of his addiction without relapse."

During the investigation, authorities seized prescription records from several drugstores from which Limbaugh obtained 2,000 pills over six months, prosecutors said.

Last year, Black said Limbaugh was prescribed eight hydrocodone pills a day for seven months, "which is not excessive and is in fact a lawful dose."

Hydrocodone is a potent painkiller that can become addictive.

Mmmm...sweet, sweet hydrocodone.

Sorry, where were we? Here's some things Rush previously had to say about the scourge of drugs in society:

"And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. And the laws are good because we know what happens to people in societies and neighborhoods which become consumed by them. And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up."

"Too many whites are getting away with drug use...Too many whites are getting away with drug sales...The answer is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river, too."

Limbaugh had no problem with the ACLU, whom he'd previously vilified, coming to his defense either.

I haven't listened to Limbaugh since I moved to D.C. in 1995 and had nothing but an AM radio to entertain me on my two-day drive in the U-Haul. I was soon faced with a choice: drive off I-30 into a river near Fulton, AR, or turn the radio off. I opted for the latter, and am generally happy I did so.

With stories like these, I generally err on the side of hoping the person in question gets the help he needs. Not so much here. Limbaugh has waged a 20-year campaign of disinformation in this country with little or no check on his lies. His influence may be lessened, but his legacy is set, and would best be capped off by forced retirement from the airwaves, a brief stint in the "Wayland Flowers and Madame seat" on Hollywood Squares, and an anonymous, bitter death.

Which means we can look forward to a post-rehab book and attendant publicity tour in about a year.

"The Church Police!"

Big surprise, the Catholic group Opus Dei is displeased with their portrayal in a certain hit novel:

The conservative religious group Opus Dei has asked for a disclaimer on the upcoming film based on the best-selling novel "The Da Vinci Code."

Opus Dei, portrayed as a murderous, power-hungry sect in the novel by Dan Brown, wrote in an April 6 letter to Sony Corp. that a disclaimer would show respect to Jesus and to the Catholic Church.

"Any such decision by Sony would be a gesture of respect toward the figure of Jesus, to the history of the Church and to the religious beliefs of viewers," Opus Dei wrote in the letter, which was posted on its Italian Web site.

Maybe it's just me, but I find it exceedingly hilarious/pathetic that the Church is more concerned about the portrayal - in a work of fiction - of a Catholic organization as a bunch of ruthless murderers than they are in addressing or correcting the very real evils perpetrated by members of its clergy for the last fifty years.

In reality, they should be thanking Dan Brown, because depicting Opus Dei members as badass albino ninjas is sure to have thousands of 13-year old boys clamoring for membership. Maybe that was the intent all along.

Ollie Ollie insight free

Normally I leave the point-counterpoint with the likes of Ann Coulter and Jonah Goldberg to those with the steely resolve required to actually read their bilge all the way through. However, this one, written by none other than Oliver North, caught my eye:

Yesterday, November 10, was the 230th anniversary of the founding of the United States Marine Corps. Today, November 11, is Veterans� Day. Lance Cpl. Aaron Mankin, USMC, observed both celebrations from Brooke Army Medical Center here in San Antonio. He�s been here for months�recovering from burns and wounds he received earlier this year near Al Qaim, Iraq. I was there, covering his unit for FOX News when the Assault Amphibious Vehicle he was in was blown apart by an improvised explosive device. This week, I was privileged to spend part of this year�s Marine Corps anniversary with him here in San Antonio. It would have been nice to have introduced him to some of the fools in Hollywood.

It�s pretty clear that those making movies in Tinsel Town don�t know any real men like Aaron Mankin. They apparently prefer cowardice over courage; witless whiners to real patriots; gutless wimps and hollow phonies to men who know the meaning of self-sacrifice and integrity. That�s the only conclusion one can draw after seeing Hollywood�s latest anti-military travesty: Jarhead.

Three and a half stars on Film Threat! Goddamned pinkos.

The newly released film is loosely based on an anti-Marine screed crafted by Anthony Swofford, who purports to be a �veteran� of Desert Shield and Desert Storm in 1990-91. Mr. Swofford maintains it is an accurate depiction of his military experience, from boot camp�where he claims to have been abused and belittled by a maniacal drill instructor�to his mutinous �tour of duty� in Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War.

"Purports?" That would seem to be an easy thing to check out. And I thought we were all on board with the abusive DI as being essential to all post-Vietnam military comedy.

"A witty, profane, down-in-the-sand account of the war many only know from CNN, this former sniper's debut is a worthy addition to the battlefield memoir genre," says a book review by Publisher's Weekly. But this is no �Battle Cry��by Leon Uris�a real battle memoir by a real Marine. The plug for CNN could easily have read, "ABC," "CBS" or "NBC" � for all the so-called mainstream media have covered war and warriors with equal disdain. And just in case the reader is dense enough to misunderstand what the work is really about, the reviewer helpfully notes that Mr. Swofford "questions whether the men are as prepared as their commanders, the American public and the men themselves think they are."

One might conclude from the book and movie reviews that this is simply another antiwar epic. But this isn�t Red Badge of Courage or All Quiet on the Western Front�two great books and films that accurately depict the horror and carnage of war. Nor does Jarhead contain any of the cutting, satirical humor of M.A.S.H. or Catch-22�both of which portray war�s futility.

Uh, Jarhead isn't supposed to be satire. And Swofford comes at war from a completely different angle than Remarque in All Quiet on the Western Front. Swofford has issues with the bureaucracy that keeps a soldier from being outfitted with the correct equipment and receiving conflicting orders, while Remarque concludes that all such endeavors are ultimately futile. Both agree, however, that even the soldiers who survive combat are essentially screwed.

It�s not that Hollywood has always failed those who fight our wars. During and after World War II, every studio produced films that encouraged a war weary nation�and showed American soldiers, sailors, airmen, Guardsmen and Marines as committed, courageous and compassionate. But that was the "good war"�and as the fictional Saving Private Ryan proved�both in critical acclaim and at the box office�decades after it ended, Hollywood remains comfortable making movies about the great crusade against fascism.

Every studio was also receiving government money to produce pro-war propaganda. We'd have to wait until after the "good old days" of the late '40s and '50s to see realistic accounts of the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo, or the internment of Japanese-Americans. And we're still waiting for an accurate film representation of the Roosevelt Administration blocking European Jews from entering this country during the Holocaust.

But clearly, "winning" a war isn�t a prerequisite for a positive portrayal on the silver screen. Though the Korean War ended in stalemate�the first war we didn�t "win"�film-makers were still able to show the Americans who fought there in a positive way. The Bridges of Toko-Ri�based on Michener�s novel�has a tragic ending like the war in which it was set�but it is still a saga of bravery and self-sacrifice.

This really appears to be North's whole beef with Jarhead: nobody dies. Bravery - such as when Swofford and his squad advance into enemy territory - is pointless if it turns out they weren't facing any actual enemy. The fact that these guys didn't know that is lost on our humble narrator.

Even the much-maligned Vietnam War has a small handful of films accurately depicting the valor and perseverance of those who served there. We Were Soldiers Once, based on the account of Gen. Harold Moore and reporter Joe Galloway, of the events of November 14-16, 1965, when 450 U.S. soldiers were airlifted into Ia Drang Valley and immediately surrounded by elements of the North Vietnamese Army's 66th Regiment is an example.

Wow. One film apparently equals "a handful." Add The Green Berets and you've got a bushel. Then again, you have to ignore Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, Platoon, The Deer Hunter, Coming Home, Born on the Fourth of July, Hamburger Hill, and one of my favorites, 84 Charlie MoPic.

Other "losing campaigns" have been chronicled by cameras without denigrating those who served. The magnificent film, Blackhawk Down�depicting the true-life story of Rangers and Army Delta Force operators who were sent on a disastrous raid into the heart of Mogadishu, Somalia, to capture warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid, is a case in point.

Black Hawk Down was this generation's Heartbreak Ridge: a gung ho representation of a conflict that, in the larger scheme of things, meant almost nothing. Black Hawk Down is to 9-11 what the latter was to the 250 Marines getting blown up in Beirut: a way to make us feel better about our growing impotence in an increasingly unstable and insurgentcworld.

Given these profitable precedents, why do the power brokers and financial geniuses in Hollywood choose to make a movie such as Jarhead and release it coincident with a Marine Corps birthday and Veterans� Day? The film has absolutely not one character or scene containing any redeeming virtue or value. It is an excessively vulgar movie without a moral or a point. With our nation at war�this film is not just antiwar�or rotten to the Corps�though it is certainly that. Jarhead is anti-everything that is good and decent.

For starters, I imagine the "financial geniuses" didn't really care about it being Veterans' Day. They're in this to make money, not worry about trampling your delicate sensibilities. Then again, Jarhead was released a week beforehand, so maybe Ollie's a little off.

As for "no redeeming virtue or value," those are pretty big words coming from the guy who let David Keith play him on TV.

During a week when Americans honor the Corps and thank their veterans, Jarhead cheapens and distorts the heroism, warrior spirit, superior intellect and selflessness of America's fighting forces. Those who participated in making this nihilist flop deserve nothing but scorn in return.

That being the case, what's the appropriate reaction to a guy who sold arms to terrorists in order to use the profits to flout the U.S. Constitution and sell arms to the Contras? How about a guy who was found guilty of perjury and shredding documents to cover his ass? Is "scorn" enough? How about "pointing and laughing at the traitor who writes for the same web site as Ann Coulter?"