Issue 34

News: Historical Revisionism; Everybody's doing it! Even money-grubbing corporations!
Recently I saw an Episode of Drawn Together in which the character of Foxxy Love gets turned into a Racial Stereotype as a result of Radiation sickness. She is eventually taken away by a Political Correctness squad which takes away other stereotype cartoons and puts them away to be erased. At the End, One character equates these actions with Denying Slavery or The Holocaust (which a larger number of people actually do than one may think, even though it makes no sense to deny something which so many people experienced firsthand). After this I discovered that a Black-maid-style character had not only been removed from Fantasia, but basically Declared an "Un-Character" by Disney. A lot of films from the era also tend to be scrutinized by the public (like Birth of a Nation or Gone With the Wind or The Little Rascals) , although in most cases, the makers don't out and out deny their existence, just keep them relatively hidden. My point is that if one is offended at the way one was widely believed to be sixty plus years ago, then he should keep in mind that it is just history, nothing more. If one needs to truly be concerned about race relations today, one must try to worry about the way one race was thought of 60 years ago less than whether we can be able to coexist without race riots.

Band Name of the Day: Kirilov. It comes from the name of a character from Dostoevsky's "The Devils", picked because of the connection with Ginsberg, who was inspired to write "Howl" after meeting Carl Solomon, who introduced himself as Kirilov.

Film Idea of the Day: Million Dollar Bagel: Be True to Your Little House on the Prairie. This will be a film about Million Dollar Bagel (see Issue 31) running for president in the first ever US Presidential Recall, caused by the entire Cabinet falling under control of a madman.

Film Review of the Day: I usually write reviews of films I saw recently which I like, but this time, I will write a review of a film I saw recently which I hate: Only You. There will be spoilers.
The film begins as a younger version of Marisa Tomei's character being told twice, once by ouija board, and a fortune teller, that her husband will be named Damon Bradley. Years later, she is a schoolteacher engaged to a doctor. One early scene shows her demonstrating how Plato said that man was cut in two because the Gods felt threatened as if she just had an epiphany she couldn't wait to tell the world, as the class looks on in Ben-Stein's-class-in-Ferris-Bueller-like boredom as she releases them for spring break. Nine days before the wedding, she gets a call from a man calling himself Damon Bradley from an Airport going on a trip to Venice. She immediately leaves for Venice and abruptly calls off the wedding in lieu of Following him. She looks all over Italy until she ultimately finds him in another airport. In between she meets two guys who claim to have that name, one of which she likes, but calls off the relationship when she learns that his name is not Damon Bradley, and a childhood friend claiming that he rigged the Ouija board and paid the Fortune teller $2 to say Damon Bradley would marry her. Damon Bradley was real, but just a jerk the friend knew in Baseball.
About the film I must say that I found it hard to believe that it came from the same director as Agnes of God and Soldier's Story. Also, because of its feel and at one point ripping it off, accents of Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn and all, it seems like an Audrey Hepburn film lost for 30-something years. Lost for good reason.

Quote of the Day: Two speeches by Noam Chomsky about the rudimentaries of Freedom of Speech: http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/articles/8010-free-expression.html, http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/articles/8102-right-to-say.html

Link of the Day: Bob from Weebl and Bob's Blog.

Issue 33

News: You support Affirmative Action? I never Knew you were a racist.
When do you think that Affirmative Action was first thought up with? The mid 60s? WRONG!! The truth is that Affirmative Action has always been around in America, although most of it is referred to now as "Discrimination." For most of America's history, most businesses favored White Heterosexual able-bodied men. This is, of course, discrimination. Come the Civil Rights movement, Minorities saw this and were not pleased and thought they should "Switch places" when they get jobs so that they were more likely to get jobs. Quite frankly, this makes about as much sense as saying that slavery was wrong because only Africans were slaves and that if it were the White men who were enslaved, it would be alright. In reality slavery was wrong because it is wrong to make another work for no money whatsoever. Another reason I do not agree with Affirmative action is because there should only be one kind of Discrimination in job application, and that is whether the applicant actually is qualified to do the job required of him/her. There is no reason that a business should hire the next x number of minorities, regardless of whether they qualify for the jobs they are applying for, just because the government tells them so. A current event that is sweeping colleges across the country is Affirmative Action bake sales, which sell baked goods for rates which vary depending on the buyer's sex and race. And no discussion about affirmative action in schools would be complete without my own discussion of my brush with Affirmative action. Late in my Grade Schoo Years, my class was told to take a Mathematics test and that the top five scorers in my class would go to a Mathematics bowl. I scored a 30 out of a possible 40 points, the highest in my class. Did I go to the Mathematics Bowl? NO!! I was told that I was not going there so the teacher could let her daughter, who scored average, if not very low on the test, perform in my stead. This concludes this discussion.

Band Name of the Day: Avril Seppuku. The name comes from this game I play wherein I listen to Avril Lavigne's song "Sk8er Boi" for as long as I can take it. My personal record is halfway through the second verse.

Film IDea: A traveling production of Inherit the Wind, which I saw at the Field Museum earlier today, gets ready for a trip to the Bible Belt, where it is met with much opposition. Christopher Guest Mockumentary style.

Review of the Day: Diabolical Cucumbers: The story of how the Beatles defeat many famous boy bands. It is very funny, especially for a Beatle fan and a hater of a lot of today's music. It is at www.angelfire.com/nc2/random3/Diabolical_cucumbers/DC.html

Quote of the day: “HERE ON RUM ISLAND WE DO NOT BELIEVE IN RUM!”
--Pokey the Penguin, “Welcome to Rum Island”

"In Meat-Space, Everybody is your Friend!"
--Pokey the Penguin, "Pokey and Meatspace"

Link of the Day: The site of the Aforementioned Pokey the Penguin.

Issue 32

news: Once again My ego gets in the way.
Last Friday, my parents found an article about the TAFFY awards, a teen award for the best films of the previous year. None of my nominees (Which I will tell you later) won the award, but here's a quote from that issue of the Trib which particularly caught my eye- " Several entries caught our eye, including two votes for Sen. Joseph McCarthy as best villain (in "Good Night, and Good Luck.") and in the same category, a vote for (or against) "humanity" in "King Kong." " I will show you my nominees for the awards in bold, compared with the awards which won in plain text and The Academy's picks in italics.
Best Picture- crash; Crash, Good Night and Good Luck.
Best Actress- Reese Witherspoon- Walk the Line; Reese Witherspoon- Walk The Line; Patricia Clarkson- Good Night and Good Luck.
Best Actor- Jaoquin Phoenix- Walk the Line; Phillip Seymour Hoffman- Capote; David Strathairn- Good Night and Good Luck.
Best Special Effects- King Kong; King Kong; Good Night and Good Luck
Best Hero- Christian Bale- Batman in Batman Begins; David Strathairn- Edward R. Murrow in Good Night and Good Luck
Best Villain- Ralph Fiennes- Voldemort in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire; Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R, WI) as himself in Good Night and Good Luck.
Best Movie Moment- T Rex v. Kong in King Kong; Murrow v. McCarthy on See It Now in Good Night and Good Luck

My mother told me that I would probably be alone in my choices, and had it not been for the Trib's article, She would probably be right, to our knowledge. Later, at the actual awards, it was nominated for 6 oscars. It won none, and a lot of people thought that the Best Picture award really belonged to Brokeback Mountain, when we all know I believe that Good Night and Good Luck is the one who truly deserves it.

Band Name of the Day: The Mr. B. Elzebubs. A combination of Mr. B. Natural, a short about a woman who turns a boy on to the joy of music, specifically Conn instruments, and one of the names of Satan in the bible.

Film Idea of the Day: Hell On Ice: The Musical. This is meant to be a musical set in the underworld (probably the Greek) about how Bruno S (of Werner Herzog fame), Tom Waits, and Torgo combine forces with LEnny Bruce, Leonid Brezhnev, Leonard Bernstein, and Lester Bangs (who are forming a band) to stop Jimi Hendrix's evil twin.

Review of the Day: Moral Orel. It is the story of a young boy in a fundementalist christian environment who misenterprets the sayings of others to a ridiculous point. For instance: In one episode he is told that in Jesus' second coming, he won't be as nice, and he believes that his bratty little brother is the second coming of God. Another time, he believes that it is God's will that he use the necronomicon to reanimate the town's dead and when his father finds out, he is told that the rampaging zombies are not the ones causing the townspeople to be afraid, but their nudity. It is hilarious.

Quote of the Day: "Every time a bell rings an angel burns in hell!"
_______Some Protestors, Moral Orel: The Best Christmas ever.

Link of the Day: A site about placing things on cats.

Issue 31

News: South Dakota to Challenge Roe v. Wade?
When I was first compiling information to use for my blog, I was probably thinking of writing a piece on affirmative action or the censoring of our history, but this Saturday, I saw the headline Staring me in the face: S. Dakota abortion OK’d. I read on and learned that South Dakota has banned abortion for any and all reasons except to ensure that the mother lives. As you probably know by now, I am pro-abortion because I believe that it is the mother’s choice for the fetus (note how I avoid the term “baby”, because it is not an existing life, but a potential life) to live or die, after all, it is not an independent entity until it is born. With the ban in mind, the South Dakotan legislature is planning an attack on Roe v. Wade, which, despite what a lot of people think, will not ban abortion completely, but leave the power to the states, some of which will most likely wind up banning it as soon as they can. With that in mind, even if abortion won’t end up, in the long run, helping countless millions through stem cell research, it does not change the fact that in my mind, saying that a fetus/embryo is an unborn child makes as much sense as calling a living person an undead corpse and taking him/her for burial or vivisection. With the use of creationism being taught in public schools in Kansas and now abortion will be illegal by July 1 in South Dakota, I ask those people behind these campaigns “What’s next? Forcing the entire people of your state to convert to fundamentalist Christianity and spawn a society like my graphic novel idea Anthem 2256 (see issue 28)?” I hope not.

Band Name of the Day: This name has a persona all its own and I am reserving it for me. It is
Million Dollar Bagel. His back story is that he was born in Greece two and a half millennia ago, where he sang cover versions of songs which would be famous two and a half millennia ago in classical Egyptian. During one performance, he was arrested for the unforgivable sin of drinking white wine instead of red while eating himself. He was sent to an asylum where he discovered the secret to eternal life after pushing Fermat’s lost theorem up a stoat, and survived a five-year coma and over the course of 2500 years, he serves in the Civil War, is a history professor as a college, and manages to come back to his old profession singing the same songs after they became hits for other artists. His wardrobe will only be described as “An Eyesore” and his speaking voice sounds like a bad imitation of Green Acres’ Mr. Haney, and he peppers his songs with odd narratives which have little or nothing to do with the song about to be performed, which is sung in a rich baritone, in a striking contrast to his speaking voice, with acoustic guitar accompaniment.

Film Idea of the day: This issue’s idea would be best done as a comic, or some other kind of serial. This is a story of an atheistic journalist at a college forced to room with a fundamentalist Christian. This could be seen as a college reworking of All in the Family with the women removed from the roster of main characters.

Movie Review of the Day: This review is of a Play. The play is Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth, and it is about a family living in a combination of modern-day New Jersey, The Ice age, and some of ancient Greece, the Antrobuses. This play shows them overcoming hardships such as a flood, the Ice Age, and War. This play was recommended to me after the head of the theatre department at my school read my play Wőt??!!?&,:;%${} and in turn, I recommend it to others for its offbeat quality and its constant breaking of the fourth wall.

Quote of the Day: Reporter: Mr. Bush, if I understand your position correctly, you believe that abortion is murder…
Bush: Except in special cases, yes.
Reporter: You also endorse the death penalty for murderers…
Bush: Sure, but…
Reporter: Does this mean you favor executing the millions of women who choose to have abortions?
Bush: No, no, I now see that these women are victims who need help and love.
Reporter: The criminal as victim? Sir, isn’t that being squishy-soft on crime?
Bush: Uh… Okay, then, we’ll hold their doctors accountable!
Reporter: Then you favor executing thousands of doctors?
Bush: Look, we’ll execute somebody, Okay? I’m still sorting out the details!
Reporter: How about the doctors’ lawyers?
_______Garry Trudeau, Doonesbury, exact date unknown, but it was during the 1988 election.

Link of the Day: A site which has rebuttals against four of the things PeTA is out to stop: Beef, Milk, Hunting, and Pets. It also contains links to other sites speaking out against Animal Rights movements in general worth looking at.

Tract review: 4 Angels?
A new version of the Four Brothers tract I mentioned as one of the few tracts I haven't read, Jack's new tract shows the story of four brothers at a revival who are saved. One brother becomes a phony christian, another gave up religion for his job, another brother becomes a televangelist Tilton-style, and the last one runs a mission and is earnest about his faith. He is the only one saved in the end.