Issue 123

News: And Now... The Rest of the Story.
In 1952, Betty Falco was finishing up a divorce from her husband, and at the same time, she was having an affair with a man named Joe. Eventually she got pregnant with his love child. and yet her divorce wasn't final. Back in those days, women who got pregnant outside of wedlock were made outcasts and social pariahs, and one can only imagine what she must have felt as a not only a woman pregnant outside of wedlock, but a divorcee as well, which had the same social effects. When Joe found out about the pregnancy, he said that there was only one thing to do: get rid of it. This was twenty years before the decision of Roe vs. Wad, so abortion wasn't legal. There were only two things to do: Follow his instruction and get an abortion, thus breaking the law and possibly affecting her future fertility, or disobey him and have the baby. A few months later, she finally gave birth to her baby and named him Richard. He was immediately put up for adoption and a week later, was adopted by a couple; two hardware store owners named the Berkowitzes, and they gave him the name David, in homage to the great Israelite king. And the circumstances around these events led to David Berkowitz doing the one thing he would end up becoming famous for: The Son of Sam murders. And Now You Know... The Rest of the Story.
(The preceding piece is a lampoon of the style of Paul Harvey.)

Band Name of the day: Johnny At The Fair.

Film Idea of the Day: A juvenile delinquent is put in charge of a play in return for a suspended sentence for an ever-growing list of crimes.

Film Review of the Day: Even Cowgirls Get The Blues (The Book and the Movie). Recently I managed to both read the entire book and watch the movie. The plot starts out simply enough, as the story of a woman with large thumbs who becomes a hitchhiker, but it eventually gets more complicated, involving such diverse topics as politics, religion, sexuality, enviromentalism, and drug use. In the end, I must say that the film, as good as it is, does, in the end, fail to capture the book's eclectic glory, although, to be fair, it would certainly be hard to put this book into film form, although the film's creators do try hard and ultimately do the best they can. The novel itself must be, in my opinion, one of the best novels of the 1970s, and certianly one of the best comic novels of all time.

Quote of the Day: "All of us are freaks in one way or another. Try being born a male Russian Countess into a white, middle class, Baptist family in Mississippi, and you'll see what I mean."
___________________________________The Countess, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.

Link of the Day: Snopes: A site for all those urbam myths you've heard, and some about emails you may have recieved. I'm surprised I've gone this far without linking here.

Issue 109

News: Roe v. Wade XXXV.
Today marks the 35th anniversary of the famous court decision legalizing (or more accurately declared unconstitutional all laws regulating) abortion. As a student in a Catholic high school, I knew that people in there would have made a big brouhaha about the anniversary. One thing was that in the morning prayers (which I tend to not participate in), there was a call for an end to abortion by the overturning of Roe v. Wade. However, overturning Roe v. Wade would not even come close to ending abortion. First off, despite what some members of the religious right, neither the existence nor even the legality of abortion in America is not even close to contingent upon the upholding of the decision (since it was legal in some states even before it, and there were still over a million illegal incidents per year in the years prior). Even if it did mean that abortion would be made illegal country-wide, it would mean that the state would still have to require that the state be able to provide for the surplus of infants. Since most pro-lifers in congress are against anything that would actually help children from birth until military age, and the large numbers required to illegalize abortion would also be needed to pass any bill for anything which helped them. One other huger thing which would lower the number of abortions would be lessening unwanted pregnancies. These can be stopped by being abstinent. Of course, since choosing to be chaste until marriage is like choosing to not get hit by a car by staying at home, the number can best be lowered by using efficient forms of birth control regularly until they are ready to have children. Of course, this is likely to be opposed by the largest "Pro-life" organization: The Roman Catholic Church. Of course, virtually all major spokesmen for the church throughout history have been virgins, but still insist on making sexual decisions for over a billion people over the globe, lest said people be excommunicated or sent to hell for their deeds, as if a God, with more or less constant war in the Middle East, famine and genocide in Africa, and AIDS everywhere, actually cares about what happens between two consenting adults in a bedroom.

Band Name of the Day: Toes of Oblivion, a band name suggested by my dad when he read that I was written in this section of the last issue.

Film Idea of the Day: A man develops an inoperable brain tumor and ends up retreating into his high school years (specifically 1986-7), ending up with him completely retreating into his high school years after switching back and forth from the present day and 1987.

Film Review of the Day: Citizen Ruth. A poor, idiotic druggie (played by Laura Dern, presaging the rise and fall of Britney Spears 10 years later), who's had all of her previous kids taken from her finds that she is pregnant again after she breaks up with her boyfriend, and she finds herself in a major debate over the right to choose. Does she keep it? Does she get rid of it? Does Neither happen? Watch and see.

Quotes of the Day: "How come when it's us, it's an abortion, and when it's a chicken, it's an omelette? Are we so much better than chickens all of a sudden? When did this happen, that we passed chickens in goodness. Name 6 ways we're better than chickens. See, nobody can do it! You know why? ‘Cause chickens are decent people."
________________George Carlin.

Link of the Day: The Home of a list of the 1000 Greatest Films Ever.

Issue 79

News: Now I have a better story.
After scouring the Newspeak Dictionary forums for inspiration, I have finally discovered a new news story worth commenting on. In Ireland there is a seventeen-year-old girl (Four months into term, known only as "Miss D") who is pregnant with a child with Anencephaly, (which is basically a big word for "your baby will be born blind, deaf, and unconscious, and will not be able to live outside the womb"). As I am sure the readers may have been able to know by this point, Ireland is deeply Catholic and do not allow abortions unless the mother will otherwise die. Of course, one can assume that she can just travel somewhere else to have it taken care of, but, disturbingly, this is not the case. Before she had the chance to go to the UK to abort, the Health Service Executive issued a court order that actually banned her from leaving the country unless she poses a suicide risk, with the police force asked to enforce the order. She is currently fighting the court order so that she may be allowed to leave the country to terminate her pregnancy. I can understand the fact that a country is so wrapped up in religion that it feels the need to ban an abortion even when it is a foregone conclusion that the fetus cannot survive leaving the womb, even though I disagree intensely with their decision. However, I cannot understand forcing her to stay in the country so she can't take care of it elsewhere. Refusing a person the right to leave the country is something that is unacceptable because it shows too much control over an individual by the state. I actually posed this to my ethics teacher (a devout catholic who insists that abortion causes cancer) and he said this was justified because they were helping save a life even if it would only be for at the very most, for 5 months.

Band Name of the Day: The Fighting The.

Film Idea of the Day: Catch the Wind. A teenaged girl in a Lutheran High School experiences a crisis of faith after taking a class that promises to read the entire Bible over the school year. At the same time, she discovers her homosexuality through a friendship with another student who was almost seduced by a teacher with a fixation on high school aged girls.

Film Review of the Day: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. This film covers Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo covering a motorcycle race and doing insane amounts of drugs. This must be one of the best films I have seen in a while, certainly since I saw A Clockwork Orange over five months ago.

Quote of the Day: "My own feeling in the matter is due to my very firm conviction that to put such a motto on coins, or to use it in any kindred manner, not only does no good but does positive harm, and is in effect irreverence, which comes dangerously close to sacrilege"
_________Theodore Roosevelt.

Link of the Day: Normally, I don't watch The West Wing, but here, I'll make an exception.

New Tract: Fairy Tales. A young boy discovers that the fairy tales his parents brought him up (including God and Jesus) on were true and so he kills a few other young boys. Another inmate attempts to save him and he fails, thus damning him to hell when he is executed. This may be the most insane tract he has done in a while, maybe even since he did Lisa in 1984.

Issue 66

News: The Beethoven Fallacy.
As long-time readers will probably guess, I am strongly Pro-Choice, and have dedicated the news stories in two issues of my blog (Specifically Issues nos. 21 [where I parodied an article on Jack Chick's website which is a variation on what I will talk about], and 31 [Where I ranted about a law in South Dakota which would have totally banned it, which has since been overturned.]) and have made several other references to it in other issues. Recently, I purchased Richard Dawkins' new book The God Delusion. In one section of the book, he writes about an urban legend circulating among pro-lifers since at least 1945 which goes along the lines of "If a woman with (Tuberculosis/syphilis) and her husband had (whichever one the woman didn't get assigned with) had (4-8) children already, and three of them were deaf, Two blind, and One Retarded, would you reccomend abortion? If you did, then you would have killed Beethoven." As Dawkins points out that this is very incorrect on many levels.
1. Beethoven's father had neither syphillis nor Tuberculosis, though he was an alcoholic, albeit competent enough to further Ludwig's musical development.
2. Beethoven's mother did end up with Tuberculosis only after he was born.
3. Beethoven was effectively the oldest child of his family, with the actual oldest dying in infancy , not blind/deaf/retarded.
4. Beethoven's parents only had 7 children, only three of which even survived infancy, and, to my knowledge, no real defects apart from Ludwig's deafness, which had nothing to do with the illnesses of his parents.
5. Even if a fetus could have the potential of somebody as creative as Beethoven was, there's also as much possibility of a person killing a fetus with the potential to become as evil as Hitler was.
6. Considering that, on average, only one in 1/2 Billion sperm even reach the uterus in the first place, and that afterwards, even if the egg is fertilized, the odds of the sperm-egg combination ending up being flushed out with the mother's period has been given as anywhere from 50-80%, worrying about the termination of a pregnancy seems trivial in comparison.

Band Name of the Day: Googly Gogol. A band name in the book and movie A Clockwork Orange.

Film Idea: No Film Ideas, but many film reviews in queue, so instead of a new film idea and a review of a film, I will post 2 film reviews per issue for as long as I have more than two film reviews to write, and even after that, I will only post new film ideas as they come to me.

Film Reviews of the Day: A Clockwork Orange. As deeply messed up as Kubrick's vision of Anthony Burgess' novel (Of the 50 or so he wrote, the only one for which he would be remembered), it seems to be the most perfect film I have ever seen, almost on par with The Catcher in the Rye. It is also fitting that given Alex's Obsession with "Lovely Lovely Ludwig Van" in the film, that my news article was about him.

Rocky Horror Picture Show. I haven't seen this film in a theatre, but I do own it on DVD, and to quote three characters from the film:
* It's A credit to Richard O'Brien's genius.
* A Triumph of his Will.
* It's Okay.

Quote of the Day: "Why is it that most of the people who are against abortion are people you wouldn't want to **** in the first place?"
_________George Carlin, Back in town.

Link of the Day: Scopitones: The French Granddaddy of today's Music videos. View them here.

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.

Issue 21

News: Satirising a Jack Chick Article at http://www.chick.com/bc/1999/abortion.asp

Would you say "Choose Life" in these 4 situations?
1. A 16-year old girl has an alchohol problem. She finds out she is pregnant with a child. She has no idea who the father is. Considering the idea that the booze will harm the baby, coupled with the fact that he has no father, what would you think?
2. A peasant woman who had 3 children die in infancy finds she is pregnant yet again. Considering that this son will most likely die also, what would you think?
3. A senior citizen with a heavy drinking problem has sex with his niece and is pregnant. All of their previous children did not reach adulthood. What would you think?
4. A woman is raped by a Satanic Presence and finds out she is pregnant. What would you think?

If you wanted mother #1 to keep her baby, You would have saved Charlie Manson, who killed 7 people in an attempt to start a race war which would never happen.
If you wanted mother #2 to keep her baby, You would have saved Josef Stalin, who killed even more people than Hitler.
If you Wanted mother #3 to keep her bay, You would have saved Adolf Hitler.
If you wanted mother #4 to keep her baby, you would have saved the title Character in the 1968 Roman Polanski film Rosemary's Baby. (Read: The Antichrist)

So if you are angry at people who believe in Abortion, just remember that these 4 people could have been aborted, but people like you had to stop them.

Film Idea: A chronicle of an increasingly eccentric New Mexico family from the Day of the Trinity Test to the present day.

Film Review: Agnes of God. Jane Fonda plays a Psychiatrist who stumbles onto a nunnery where one nun, played by Meg Tilly, seemingly has a Virgin Birth and is found with a dead infant in her room. Norman Jewison spins a Compelling tale set in the confines of a nunnery.

Quote of the Day: "Candy doesn't have to have a point. That's why it's candy."
_________________Charlie Bucket.

Link of the Day: www.Stuntaz.com
The site of a fake gang.

Tract Review:
Party Girl- Satan Sabotages New Orleans Mardi Gras. One Girl is saved by her grandmother.

Passover Plot- The story of Exodus. With (some) Colour!

Payback- #14 in the Bible Series, this tract is about Cancer, Ahab, and Jezebel.

Peace Maker- This tract is about a policeman named Carter, who spends his time not spent punishing people for victimless Crimes comverting others to Christianity.

The Pilgrimages- Like the Previous Flight 144 tract, but only with Muslims.

Plagues- As in the Passover Plot, but without Colour.

Poor Little Witch- A teenage girl converts to Witchcraft and then to Fundementalist Christianity.

the Poor Pope?- Shows how the Pope is richer than Jesus was. Of course, this is just because the Pope actually had more than 12 followers in his lifetime.

The Present- A king tells his son to go out and invite people into his castle. The son is killed. This paves the way for a metaphor about Jesus.

The Promise- #4 in the Bible Series, Bob Williams Talks about Abraham while a Suicide Bombing goes by.

Ranson- A woman is kidnapped and preaches to her kidnappers.

Real Heat- #15 in the bible Series, Bob talks to a survivor of a fire and preaches about Catholicism, Shadrach Mescheach, and Abendago.

Reverend Wonderful- A well-admired pastor is killed in a plane crash and finds out he was not saved.

Room 310- One dying man coverts another dying man to Christianity successfully.

Royal Affair- As a senator's marraige falls apart, his attourney talks about David and Bathsheba.

The Sacrifice- The Story of Abraham's Children.

Satan's Master- Like Dark Dungeons, but Without D and D.

The Scam- #9 in the Bible Series, A couple is conned and Bob talks to them about how Gideon conned Joshua.

Scream!- #21 in the Bible Series, not to be confused with the 1996 Film or its 2+ sequels. Yet another Fire Survivor talks with Bob and is converted.

The Scoundrel- The rivalry of Esau and Jacob.

The Secret- A drunken wife-beater is converted to Christ IN JAIL.

The Secret of Prayer- Chick Talks about men and Prayer.

Sin Busters- Two students talk about the ten Commandments.

Sin City- #3 in the Bible Series, not to be confused with the recent Robert Rodriguez film of the same name, this tract is like Doom Town, but with Bob Williams.

The Sissy- 2 Truck drivers learn that God is not a sissy. The Weirdcrap site has 2 parodies.

The Sky Lighter- A kid is raised by Muslims for a holy war nobody really is fignting in.

The Slugger- A baseball star gets cancer and is saved just in time for death so he can leave his inheritance to his gardner.

Somebody Goofed- Widely considered to be a classic, this tract has a man converting a kid to Atheism just in time for both to Die.

Somebody loves me- Another Classic, a boy is beaten and left for dead, but lives long enough to see the message "JEsus Loves you. "

Something in Common- Chick talks about how much we as people have in common.

Soul Story- Chick dabbles in Blaxploitation?

Squatters- According to him, ISlam and the vatican are in league to destroy Israel.

The storyteller- An Islam boy is saved, and he tries to save another Islamic Boy.

Superman?- Chick's Story of Sampson.

The Superstar- Like The Slugger, but with Soccer.