Issue 170

News: To Beat Up A Child.
Recently, I came upon the news that a couple had beaten their seven-year-old daughter to death for mispronouncing a word. Incidentally, the daughter was adopted and from Libya. As it turns out, they were influenced by a book called To Train Up a Child, written by two evangelical Christians which claims to use "simple, Biblical principles" for child-rearing, and by "simple, Biblical principles," I mean whipping the devil out of your kids. Needless to say, they have no credentials in either theology or child development, and are well known to Child Protective Services. If children act in ways that you'd expect for their age, then the parents have failed. If they don't want to fail, they should do everything in their power to break their will. If a baby crawls out of his father's lap, according to the book, they should spank him for about 45 minutes. Yes, I kid you not. In essence, they compare childrearing to two things: Breaking a horse (even though I'm not entirely sure that horses are even treated like this when broken anymore), and warfare. At this point I have to say this: Look, if you hate kids, I understand. I admit that I tend to dislike being around children, especially loud-mouth children. But if you do, then simply spend as little time around them as possible. Don't have them yourself and don't tell others how to raise them.

Film Review and Idea of the Day: M. I recently looked into this classic of Wiemar cinema and I have to say that it was really impressive, especially in the climactic trial scene, Especially with the fact that criminals are the ones judging Peter Lorre (partly out of disgust for his actions, and partially for hurting their business by increasing police presence on the street), and that, as a result, the self-confessed child-killer actually becomes the most sympathetic character in the whole movie. In fact, in the days where Nancy Grace demands blood for every missing white girl that comes to her attention, this movie is probably more relevant than ever. Maybe, if the message would reach more people, there should even be a remake. Probably with Jackie Earle Haley in Peter Lorre's Role.

Quote of the Day: "I will tell you a pleasant tale which has in it a touch of pathos. A man got religion, and asked the priest what he must do to be worthy of his new estate. The priest said, "Imitate our Father in Heaven, learn to be like him." The man studied his Bible diligently and thoroughly and understandingly, and then with prayers for heavenly guidance instituted his imitations. He tricked his wife into falling downstairs, and she broke her back and became a paralytic for life; he betrayed his brother into the hands of a sharper, who robbed him of his all and landed him in the almshouse; he inoculated one son with hookworms, another with the sleeping sickness, another with gonorrhea; he furnished one daughter with scarlet fever and ushered her into her teens deaf, dumb, and blind for life; and after helping a rascal seduce the remaining one, he closed his doors against her and she died in a brothel cursing him. Then he reported to the priest, who said that that was no way to imitate his Father in Heaven. The convert asked wherein he had failed, but the priest changed the subject and inquired what kind of weather he was having, up his way. "
______________MArk Twain.

Link of the Day: An ally of That Guy With The Glasses. He even Has his own review of Death Bed.

Issue 169

News/ Review: Billy the White Nationalist.
I have recently been a big reader of a website called the Bad Webcomics Wiki (I have linked to it a few Issues ago). It, as the title implies, is a catalog of reviews of some of the worst webcomics in existence. Ranging from genuinely awful works (like Shredded Moose), to works that are not so much awful as polarizing (like Megatokyo [a successful, if sentimental, webcomic] or Concession, that webcomic about the mouse who is made to think that he is molesting children due to a brain tumor, which I think is okay if you're in the market for something as insane as, say, All-Star Batman and Robin), and a few works which barely qualify as webcomics (from a series of photos of a guy with a chalkboard, to the collected works of Jack Chick.) What is generally considered to be the single worst webcomic around the web is a series called Billy The Heretic. What would you guess it's about from that title? A boy criticizing the Christian society around him, like Moral Orel, except more overt? Well, no. The blurb for it states that it is about the author's life as a Christian boy raised by Jewish parents. So you'd think that a comic like that would be shamelessly sentimental, and that's the reason it's so reviled, right? No. It is, in fact, blatant Anti-Semitic propoganda. I mean, sure, there's one or two strips in its archive (Surprisingly, the comic seems to have been around from time immemorial, but with less than 50 strips total) that will appeal to people who don't sleep with a copy of Mein Kampf under their pillows, but the vast majority of the strips seem like the kind of thing that Eric Cartman would have written. In fact, in the second strip, he calls his sister Mona (the only character besides Billy to have a name), a "rat with glasses." Yeah, that's right. He's recycling the characterization by the Nazis of the Jews as vermin. In fact, the entire point of the comic can be summarized as "Jews are evil", with a few strips of quibbling about points of the Holocaust as a substitutes for jokes (Yes, we know that Auschwitz is in Poland. It's still accurate to refer to it as "German" because it was operated by the Nazi government at a time when the state of Poland didn't even exist.) The characters are flat, and don't even have names, except for the sister, the art is atrocious, But the real kicker is his FAQ page, in which Billy states that he is sympathetic to the white nationalist movement. Now, let me explain why the idea of White Nationalism is idiotic; We shall set aside, for the moment, that the term is, simply put, an attempt by Racists to look more respectable, and like "Intelligent Design", it fools nobody. The fact is, that, simply put, White people do not constitute one nation; they occupy several nations that have a long history of quarreling with each other, and have several different languages, and even a few separate alphabets. If a people cannot at least share a common alphabet, they cease to be considered an ethnicity. For the record, It is worth noting that there was some debate as to which ethnicities counted as white a little over a century ago. In fact, the Irish and Italians were often counted as "not white" at the turn of the previous century. In short, as attempted PR makeovers go, it is as obvious as they come.

Band Name of the Day: n/a.

Film Idea of the Day: A woman finds that she is beginning to develop some sort of Precognition towards the life of her increasingly effeminate son. In the end, after some DNA tests, it turns out that the mother and child are actually one and the same. This is apparently possible due to time travel and fully-effective sex changes.

Quote of the Day: Well; this.

Link of the Day: More on action Park