Issue 200

There will be four parts to this piece. The first part will be a response to something I've recently discovered, the second part of this will be the latest installment of my list of favourite books, and, as a breather, I will include a review of Jack Chick's latest tract, and the next 25 in my list of life lessons

Part 1: William Lane Craig.
You may not know this guy's name, but apparently, he's considered a leading evangelical theologian. Granted, he's not responsible for any bestsellers on the order of Rick Warren's Purpose-driven life, people have recommended his writings to me in the hopes that I would believe in God again. From what I've heard, he's as well-respected as C.S. Lewis. I recently discovered that he wrote an Op-Ed piece on the morality of the accounts of genocide that are described in Exodus. He actually defended the genocide of neighboring tribes because, in his words, "the death of these children was actually their salvation." This is not a paraphrase. This was not taken out of some crucial context where Lane Craig almost immediately shoots down this strawman. If you copy those words into Google, and click "I'm feeling lucky," you will get the article in question, and there's a very good chance that you will be as shocked by this as I was. Even the Lutherans who made my formative years a living Hell at least had enough sense to know that there's something very wrong with that argument. And it gets better. In his view, it was okay to kill the Caananites because they were guilty of disobeying God's laws, and were basically bad people. When you kill innocent people (like babies or other children), they go to Heaven. From this, I must ask: when isn't it morally right to kill people? I must reiterate that William Lane Craig is not just some wild-eyed Fred Phelps wannabe who goes around the country spreading a gospel of hate, shouting down everyone he sees as being hell-bound reprobate just because they're not him or his extended family. This man is a well-read, well-published, sophisticated modern theologian that people accuse atheists of ignoring because it's more fun to pick on the whackos. Given the fact that he's fond of claiming that the existence of "objective moral values" proves the existence of God, I must ask where are the objective moral values in his own values system? He says that, if there is no God, everything is permitted, but with God, at least murder is permitted. I'd like to close this with a link to a song by John Lennon. It's not Imagine, but it's from the same album and it expresses my views of this man's moral system.

Part 2: The  best books of (the many I read in the first half of) 2011.
I tried, a few weeks ago to try to see if I could get a shortlist of books I could use to create my annual list of "The best books (of the many I read in) 20XX." Including the audiobooks I've been listening to, I must have been reading no less than 100 books over the course of the year. But the shortlist had no less than 40 books as I was starting it. As of right now, there's 47 books on it, including the book I'm reading right now, World War Z. So, I decided to divide the list into two parts divided at a rather convenient point: July 1, 2011. Granted, the first part of the shortlist was still rather ungainly (28 books), but I've still been able to whittle that down to a managable number. So, without further ado, here are the top 11 books I've read in the first half of 2011.
11. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
While the book's pacing is quite glacial, especially in comparison to the many film versions that have been obstensively based on this book, what really struck me about the book was the fact that it had a very different tone from the movies. The fact was that the book really has a great sense of tragedy that seems to be missing from the film version. Viktor Frankenstein tampers in God's domain by reanimating dead tissue and escapes responsibility by fleeing from his creation, and his monster, named Adam being the well-read (seriously; he reads Plutarch, Milton, and Goethe) monstrosity that he is, cannot be expected to be able to fit in society. Given how well-known the character of Adam is, the sheer amount that got lost in the sands of time is simply staggering. Since I've frequently mentioned the films, I should probably recommend the original 1931 James Whale film for its fame, the 1957 Hammer film for its thrills, the 1974 Mel Brooks film for its humor, the 1994 Ken Branaugh film for its fidelity (and its unintentional humor), and the Andy Warhol version for its utter insanity.
10. Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith
I have not bothered to read Seth Grahame-Smith's other works in the Pride and Prejudice with Zombies series. As a man who has a lot of stuff he'd like to read, and as a man who thinks that Mark Twain's assessment of Jane Austen was too nice (her wit is nonexistent; all praise of her character-building ability are rendered pointless when one reads Dostoevsky, whose novels routinely contain almost the entire spectrum of thought and behaviour; and everything else about her works is insufferable to the point where playing Russian Roulette seems like a be a valid, sanity-preserving alternative whenever my mother drags me to an adaptation of her works), reading those books just hasn't been that high a priority. With this book, however, I knew I had to read it, especially after Linkara gave a shout-out to the book in one of his reviews. I've been interested in Lincoln most of my life, especially after all the times I went to Springfield with my family and toured Lincoln's world. What's really impressive is how, not only is the plot interesting, the supernatural events are linked to the events of the real world in such a way that it's almost likely that there was a big coverup to hide the fact that vampires walked the Earth, but the fact is that Seth Grahame-Smith gets so much of the history correct. Granted, he may get the dynamics of slavery a little over-simplified, but in this regard, he's almost as good at historical fiction as George MacDonald Fraser was.
9. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
When I was a member of Newspeak Dictionary, I had somehow managed to get through several years on a board devoted to politics and dystopian literature without having read Brave New World, and only having read 1984 once. For whatever reason, in February, I decided to give it a look. It was really much better than I thought it would be, and Aldous Huxley is brilliant in the way he not only builds this world where humans are born through cloning, humans are conditioned to be sex-crazed from preschool age on, and art is limited to interactive pornography, he is also brilliant in the way he is able to link those with contemporary culture. Of course, on occasion, the book shows its age: Huxley refers to the interactive skin flicks as "feelies", no doubt as an analogue to "talkies," a term that was still in parlance when the book was written, in 1931, and even the music that Huxley talks about seems to be an extension of the big band music that was popular when the book was being written. He does, however, manage to pull off the "false protagonist" device pretty effectively, even if it's not as clear as it could be when Bernard stops becoming the main character and John does.
8. Barney Ross by Douglas Century.
When the Borders stores were closing, I decided to pick this book up. I was impressed with it. I wouldn't think that I would be interested in this story of a real-life boxer, but there was really a lot to be interested in: this nice Jewish boy from Chicago starts a career as a boxer, retires after a particularly bad loss, joins the War effort, fights in Guadalcanal, gets addicted to morphine, recovers with the help of Hashem, and even tries to advocate a relatively sane drug policy. For what it's worth, his grave is in the Rosemont Park Cemetery. I'll be sure to find a good pebble for his grave before I visit.
7. Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams.
Unlike every other item on this list, I had to read this play for an Intro to Drama class in Oakton. I'm now in the process of writing a big essay about it in another class at Columbia. Despite the fact that I read it for class, I really loved it to the extent that I had to include it on my list. Why? Because this play is composed in such a way that it's almost perfect. Why? Just read it.
6. The Visit by Freidrich Durrenmatt
All right, I must admit that, after calling one play "almost perfect," it does seem odd putting another play immediately above it, but just hear me out. Another book I bought when the Borders stores were closing, this play is really just one that really appeals to my sensibilities even more than Tennessee Williams' does; the play is a meditation on the nature of capitalism: a small town is in the throes of poverty when a favourite daughter comes back and offers the town $1 billion on the condition that they kill a man who wronged her in her childhood. How long does it take before the town finally kills them? How much is it possible for us to laugh at the way the townspeople try to deal with the offer? Durrenmatt is one of my favourite authors for two reason: one is that he's that rarest of creatures, a postwar German novelist who doesn't talk about the Nazis, and the second is that he's basically German's Kurt Vonnegut.
5. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
It's very hard for me to explain just why I love this book. The fact is that it covers a lot of subjects, and does all of it in this very wry sensibility. All I can ask is why do I not read more Vonnegut?
4. Popular Crime by Bill James.
I first read about this book in an issue of Wired that was lying about my workplace. What really struck me was the fact that not only was this guy attempting a truly far-reaching history of man's fascination with crime, but the fact that he had decided to create a scale of evidences that could establish guilt. I have had no interest in his previous work, since I don't care about sports (at least I don't care about the ones that involve balls), but this book I just had to get. I wasn't disappointed. His book covers 200 years, and, although he does often gloss over serial killers, he's only got 400 pages to cover. One thing that really did disappoint me was that he didn't include a full version of his checklist of the evidence that he kept talking about and applying to criminals. Perhaps the reason this was done was because he was a little uneasy about the consequences that applying the list to the modern justice system would be. After all, he created a scale where 100 points was guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and that was sort of like the old, medieval system, where one or two well-chosen pieces of evidence was incontrovertible proof of guilt. However, according to Bill James, even the most glaring smoking gun, DNA Evidence was only worth 80 points on a possible 100.
3. J.D. Salinger by Kenneth Slawenski.
I heard about this book soon after it came out. My parents checked it out of the college library for me, and I only got around to reading it by the time we took the train ride to New York. It's rather fitting that I spend much of the time going to New York reading about one of my favourite New York authors. With regards to the biography itself, it really does put a lot of Salinger's writings into their proper context. He even manages to summarise stories that were either unpublished, or stories that Salinger never bothered to put into book form. And, furthermore, it even puts what I did know of Salinger's life into an even better context. His habit of seclusion really made a lot of sense when you realised how much his life was ruined by paparazzi trying to intrude on it, much to the point where he actually gave out a red herring on the jacket cover of Franny and Zooey. Slawenski even made clear just why Salinger stopped publishing; after his Glass family stories were met with a collective cry of "They changed it, so now it sucks," he just got tired of it all and stopped publishing.
2. Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
I read this in audiobook form (mainly as a result of some speculation that one section of Thirty H's was a shoutout to the book) during the big blizzard that happened in February. Even without Jules Feiffer's illustrations, I loved this book. On the one hand, it's a book that's rather heavy-handed with its "learning can be fun" message, but, unlike a lot of pieces that are this heavy-handed, Norton Juster really does make this book really fun to read; its characters are zany personifications of different concepts, and words and numbers are things you can eat. And now there's going to be a 50th Anniversary edition published in hardcover and that's definitely something I'd like for Christmas or my birthday.
1. Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

This is just the single best novel I've read all year. You're probably aware of the novel's plot, you probably know how much wit is packed into it. Just go out and get it. I've already got two copies; one in paperback with an introduction by Jeffrey Eugenides, and one in hardcover that I got in a Barnes and Noble Leatherbound Classics edition.

Part 3: The Awful Truth (Tract Review)
And, once again, Jack Chick puts out his conspiracy theory of everything, and it's funny as all hell. From unintentional shout-outs to Pinky and the Brain, a scoffing Dudley Moore, he quickly goes into blaming Catholicism for all the world's woes (seriously; he believes that Islam, Communism, and Naziism were created by the Catholic Church to enslave the world). Perhaps most insanely, the Catholic Church apparently ordered the death of JFK because he chose the Constitution over Canon Law. I should probably do my own dissection of this tract, but I've currently got too much work at Columbia to try it.

Part 4:

1. Myxomatosis is not funny, except when it is.
2. Bruno Mars' “The Lazy Song” does not contain Insane Clown Posse levels of sex and violence.
3. Queering doesn't make the world work.
4. Catholic Priesting doesn't make the world work.
5. “Queer” is not a verb.
6. If not for prison rape, some people would never get laid.
7. Rape is never funny, except when males are the target.
8. If you are only attracted to men when they're unwilling, that still makes you bisexual.
9. U2 is the most overrated band on Earth.
10. The Zombie Apocalypse is the most viable political system known to man.
11. The Zombie Apocalypse will only work if the dead first rise in Colma, CA.
12. Calling yourself a lesbian trapped in a man's body does not entitle you to any of the benefits afforded to either gays or transsexuals.
13. This still applies no matter how many times you will admit to seeing D.E.B.S., But I'm a Cheerleader, or Heavenly Creatures, or how many times you've read Annie on My Mind.
14. Deutsche Kultur ist durch Amerikaner sehr interessant und unterschätzt.
15. Sam Shepherd once killed a man with his butt cheek power.
16. Some people really are that stupid.
17. Speaking with all the gentility that can be expected of an OxBridge professor can still be construed as rabid radicalism if the other guy disagrees with you.
18. “Fagpoles” is not recognised as a word by any reputable source.
19. Nobody who is easily offended or in any way surprised by the presence of the word “nigger” has any right to be reading novels about The South.
20. Cali is not short for Caligula.
21. Getting strung out on Heroin, listening to Joy Division, and throwing machetes at nothing in particular is no way to spend a Tuesday.
22. Even if you regularly get intimate with strippers of the same sex, flirt with same-sex coworkers and offer to marry a particularly butch one when Illinois legalises gay marriage, you can still consider yourself completely heterosexual if you occasionally go out with a boy you never look in the eye and align yourself with Team Jacob.
23. Sex and Death are both two things which happen only once in a lifetime.
24. Nothing improves the quality of one's music like dying.
25. Don't trust the judgment of anyone who seriously believes that the addition of an infant to one's life will solve any of their problems, with the possible exception of fertility.

Issue 164

News: Thoughts on smoking.
I'm not a smoker, and I'm not even pro-smoker, but I certainly consider myself anti-anti-smoking. I got inspired to write a piece on smoking after hearing a message about how Anti-smoking groups criticised Avatar for having Sigourney Weaver smoking; I shudder to think of the minds of somebody who walks out of Avatar and thinks "I can't believe that Ellen Ripley was smoking!" Simply put, I think a big reason I dislike the Anti-smoking movement is that their movement hinges upon two things: one) explaining to people something that I'm sure most of us have known well from the age of five: that smoking kills, and two) the assumption that everybody who hears the facts will give up. The fact is that, by this point, all the movement has done is separate the proverbial wheat from the chaff; keeping potential smokers who care for their healths from smoking, but leaving a strong subculture of people who smoke despite knowing full well that it will ultimately kill them. The way I see it, the smoking industry thrives today not by lobbyists who try to downplay the effects of smoking, or people who claim that smoking is cool, but by an impulse of slow and steady self-destruction that no amount of recapitulations of "Well you should care, but I don't care" or laws that restrict opportunities to smoke (restricting opportunities being a very poor way of stomping out a problem) will end. Really, I must admit that if a person has a desire to speed up the inevitable, I see no reason to stop him, and by the inevitable, I am not just referring to death, but also to cancer. I learned in my genetics class last semester that even if we could get rid of every other disease, cancer would still kill us. And incidentally, cancer isn't just a slow-killing disease caused by environmental factors; it is ultimately caused by faulty replication of DNA that makes cells diseased, immortal, and willing to infect any other . Even if we got rid of smoking entirely (and I'm not even talking about a Prohibition of cigarettes; I'm talking about a time when we cease to feel the need to smoke), cancer will still be inevitable. In short, I think that if we put everything into perspective, and keep at the forefront "memento mori," my perspective begins to make a lot of sense.

Film Idea of the day: A story I'm in the process of writing: a man walks down North Pier in Chicago, and is followed by another man and jumps into the water, drowning. The puesued is a former Nazi commandant and the pursuer is a camp survivor. This is told from several perspectives; a police report, two witnesses, and the two men involved.

Film Review of the Day: Sherlock Holmes. Well, this movie has certainly shown its work and is, for all its stylised nature, probably has the most accurate performances of Holmes and Watson, even keeping his actual straight pipe and losing the deerstalker. Admittedly, I was somewhat disappointed that they didn't keep his cocaine habit, but considering that he only uses it in two stories (out of 60), and his use of a tincture would be so alien to modern audiences that it wasn't that much of a big loss. And for that matter, I kind of winced at the portrayal of Irene Adler, considering that the movie turned her from the archetypal femme fatale to the resident analogue to Molotov Cocktease from the Venture Brothers, and while I tend to dislike sequel hooks in movies, especially when it leaves the movie as it is incomplete (like in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy film), I do think it is justified when there really is a sequel in the works, and as it turns out, there is.

Leon the Professional- I recently came across this film while doing research for my Hitman story, and surprisingly, there is little writing on the inner life of the hitman, and I can count the number of nonfiction books I could find centered around hitmen on one hand, but there are a lot of movies about hitmen, and probably, this is one of the best, except perhaps Pulp Fiction, but even Pulp Fiction had surprisingly little actual focus on the hitmen doing their jobs, but this one does. Perhaps this may be the film I draw on the most for that project.

Quote of the Day: "The public health authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide."
_______________Kurt Vonnegut

Link of the Day: Bad Webcomics Wiki. I have just heard of this site reviewing some of the most brain-breakingly insane ideas for webcomics, from stories about wolves who molest children because of their brain tumors, to a very poorly researched Mafia story that rips off Twilight, to incoherently done PSA Comics about law (one sample panel is here. Try to figure out what they're doing.) to just plain inane Anti-semitic propaganda. Please prepare to be offended by the horrors within, both by the subject matter and the supreme awfulness of style.

Issue 138

News: Scientology: Another
I avoid celebrity gossip like the plague. I find no point in listening to or reading people gossiping about famous people and the things that photographers catch them doing, and for more on this view, watch the South Park episode "Britney's New Look." However, the recent death of John Travolta's son Jett has raised some particular interest in me. Apparently, Jett Travolta had a long history of seizures and eventually died of them. In many cases, medication would help them, but Scientology basically forbids its followers from taking medication when it treats any sort of mental illness, even if not taking it could mean their death. As it turns out, Scientology is probably one of the most messed up religions in America today, and this includes fundamentalist Christianity. If it actually held any real political power, or any power outside of Hollywood, I would have to say it is the most messed up. Basically, what you have is a church created by an unsuccessful Sci-Fi writer who decided that he could probably get more success as the founder of a religion. Why couldn't a better Sci-fi writer, like Robert Heinlein, have created his own religion? At least, if the viewpoints in Stranger in a Strange Land, and Job : A Comedy of Justice, are any indication, I would probably be more sympathetic (especially if we disregarded the militaristic propaganda that is Starship Troopers.) One last thing about Scientology that I'll tell you about that I find very fundamentally wrong is the Church's insistence on spoon-feeding the doctrine in small steps, and discouraging people from actually going over it themselves. Any organization which does not support independent research into it, I say is not worthy of trust, and certainly not the devotion that religion tends to demand.

Band Name of the Day: Eggo/Preggo. From Juno. Of course, the owners of the Eggo name might sue, but it's worth a try.

Film Idea of the Day: Ashley. The story is basically a very dark modern-day version of Cinderella. Some aspects I might share with you about how I will change it: It takes place in Wilmette, The protagonist's Fairy godmother is a large drug dealer with butterfly-style wings, and the ending, while good for her, does not end so happily ever after for her step-family.

Film Review of the Day: Valkyrie. In my last entry, I mentioned this film as a movie I wished I had seen in the last year. Fortunately, I saw the movie last week, and I am quite impressed. It was certainly quite an accurate depiction of the plot to kill Hitler, at least from what I've heard.

Quote of the Day: "You can serve Germany, or the Fuehrer. Not both!"
_______________Claus von Stauffenberg, Valkyrie.

Link of the Day: Just one of many websites devoted to criticism of Scientology.

Issue 132

News: Regarding OJ: The People Can Now Have it both ways!
As I'm sure we all remember, Footballer OJ Simpson was arrested 14 years ago on suspicion of murdering his wife and a house guest. Of course, after a year's worth of creating media circuses, and further dividing the races in America, with some claiming he was framed by a racist conspiracy (something I'm sure has happened in the recent past to many, but not to O.J.), and some just deciding he was guilty. But an eighth of a century later, he stole some memorabilia from a Vegas sports museum, but recently, he was finally found guilty. He may not have admitted to having done most of the things he was charged for, but the stealing of memorabilia that he has admitted to would probably give him enough prison time to get him in jail for a long enough time that it is reasonable that he will spend the rest of his life in jail, and the other crimes he's been found guilty for make this scenario more or less certain. And now, it looks like people who think he didn't kill those people can think he didn't, and those who think he did can finally see him end up in jail for the rest of his natural life.

Band Name of the Day: Crazy pSychos of America. Why not?

Film Idea of the Day: A set of novellas, all unified by the fact that a main character is a princess in situations that couldn't be farther than
*A novella which is best described as Roman Holiday meets Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, with a princess visiting Chicago runs off with a journalist, and they both fall in love, tour Chicago, and do massive amounts of drugs.
*A film director is doing a film based on the story of a girl who discovers she is really the next in line to a monarchy, and slowly goes mad while making it, turning it into something more bizarre than anybody could have imagined.

Film Review of the Day: Preacher. I recently discovered this comic book series, and it is actually quite interesting. A preacher is possessed by the progeny of an angel and a demon, and then is driven, along with his reconciled ex-girlfriend and an Irish vampire, to literally find God, and try to demand an explanation for what has happened. This series has many similar themes to the His Dark Materials trilogy, and probably would have ended up with a more popular adaptation than Golden Compass seems to have been so far.

Quote of the Day: "Every Virtue has its contemptible literature"
_______________Celine.

Link of the Day: A website about Skepticism.

Issue 124

News: George Carlin, RIP.
As the title implied, George Carlin, famed comedian died two days ago of a heart attack. I must say that I've been more or less a lifelong fan of his work, from knowing him only as Mr. Conductor to only recently watching his last HBO Special, which included, in what TVTropes calls A Funny Aneurysm Moment, a point where he did a routine about the unusual things people say in certain situation, which has become a staple of his specials. This time, however, the routine was about what happened after people died (in a more "Friends immmediately before, during, and after a funeral", as opposed to "Meeting St. Peter at the Pearly Gates", neither of which he believed in). With this in mind, when I learned that he finally died, which would have happened eventually, I was, in the end, not too surprised, but I must share two coincidences that happened after this. The First, was printed in the Tribune yesterday: In a political cartoon, George was telling Americans "seven words no Americans want to hear": "You. Are. Using. Too. Damn. Much. Oil." The second coincidence: on CNN, they ran an obituary of George Carlin, showcasing his comedy with an excerpt from his 1992 special Jammin in New York where he was making fun of a CNN reporter talking about a "rain event" in Louisiana, and in what may or may not be a coincidence, the next thing that the CNN reporters talked about after showing that clip, was a "rain event" somewhere else, possibly as a segue to that report, but possibly unrelated, despite the obvious coincidence.

Band Name of the Day: You know what, The Rain Event sounds like a pretty good idea.

Film Idea of the Day: Untitled so far. It will be a story very loosely based on the story of Aimee Semple McPherson, but transplanted to the present (with names clearly changed), and made into a Jukebox Musical with songs by many different artists (including, so far, Nine Inch Nails' "Closer" and Devo's "Jocko Homo", lampooning in both the song and film creationism, the pseudoscience that will not die) covered, with the film effectively being written around McPherson's life story, and the songs.

Film Review of the Day: Dressed to Kill. This movie is probably one of the best movies I've seen in a long time, and most likely one of DePalma's best films, period. I can very much see shades of Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs in Bobbi, the transsexual serial killer, and even though I'm sure that the display of transsexuality is quite inaccurate, I can truly say that the movie's final twist was shocking, especially with what it revealed about Michael Caine's psychiatrist character, although it may be revealing too much.

Quote of the Day: "If a man smiles all the time, he's probably selling something that doesn't work."
_____________George Carlin

Link of the Day: This is the skit about death George Carlin performed in his last special that I was talking about.

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 107

This issue is the darkest one yet, it's practically to the rest of the Blog what Life is Worth Losing was to the rest of George Carlin's corpus. You have been warned.

News: The Death Penalty Revisited vs. The Ian Brady Bunch
In case you don't know, Ian Brady was a serial killer who killed at least five children in Britain in the early 60s. If you didn't know, now you do. The reason I bring him up is because he is now suing the state to allow him to be sent to a prison where he will be allowed to starve himself to death. Brady and his partner Myra Hindley both narrowly escaped the death penalty due to its abolition a month before sentencing. For the last 8 years at least, he has been suicidal due to the fact that he will never be released and knows he no longer serves any purpose in life, and as a child-killer knows that at least some people want him dead. I personally have a nuanced view towards the death penalty, since there remains the possibility that a person is being killed for a crime he (or possibly she) did not commit. However, there are still many prisoners like Brady, who eagerly await the hand of the Reaper coming upon them and do not want to wait for a natural death. With Brady's story in mind, I wonder about a system of compromise between the Pro- and Anti- death Penalty sides. In the system, prisoners (for practical reasons, limited only to those who are either in life sentences with no parole in sight, or in unrealistically long sentences, like a 50-year old man in a 120-year sentence, up for parole in 70) who wish to die will be authorized by prison staff to be euthanized on a strictly voluntary basis (differing it from the involuntary nature of the Death Penalty) either directly or indirectly. They would not strictly be killed for their crimes, but because of their lack of both desire and reason to continue living. Admittedly, this would necessitate some serious review of the morality of euthanasia, but then again, the question would have to boil down to: You have a man who has no will to live and no discernible reason that others would truly want him alive. Which is more cruel: To let him die or to let him live?

Band Name of the Day: Godless Piece of Fluff: "Baa Baa Black Sheep, Have You Any Wool?/No sir, no sir, I'm a Godless Piece of Fluff."_Colbert.

Film Reviews of the Day: Two films will be reviewed, one of which is a movie already out, and one which is available on youtube.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. This movie is a film adaptation of one of the goriest musicals ever written, so yes, there will be much singing, and there will be much gore, although much of it looks clearly fake, most notably in the final scene (but I won't give it away until you watch it or read about it on Wikipedia).

Apaches. This is technically an educational film from Britain (in their terms a "Public Information Film" or PIF). The title comes from the game of Cowboys and Indians that is played for most of the film, although one sequence has them playing Starksy and Hutch. In essence, the film is about how a group of six kids manage to cause their own demises on a farm one-by-one by various means (from relatively mundane things as accidentally poisoning oneself to falling into a huge pit apparently full of animal waste). This is one of the more notorious PIFs due to its content. One wonders what was worse: The fact that they decided to film this kind of thing at all or the fact that kids as young as six were shown this film in schools.

Quote of the Day: "Some inmates say that violence is the worst thing we gotta face. For me, the worst thing is the great yawn. How do you fill day after day? We got these routines that are supposed to give our lives order and meaning. But I'm here to testify that I'm less afraid of getting shanked in my back than the routine. Cause the routine, man, the routine'll kill you."
_____Augustus Hill.

Quote of the Day: Apaches, for your viewing pleasure, if you dare. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
And here's a recut version for those not ready to see the real thing.

Issue 99

News: Free the Three!
I recentrly watched a movie about how three teenagers got implicated in a murder case. As it turns out, in 1993, there were three boys murdered in West Memphis, AK. Three boys were arrested in connection with these murders. The only pieces of evidence for their guilt: They dressed in black, listened to Metallica, dabbled in Wicca on occasion, and one of the teens was named Damien (born before The Omen unpopularized the name Damien). There was no DNA evidence supporting their guilt, and there was no evidence that any of them would have even done something to that extent. Even after defending those habits which got him implicated, and refusing to back down from the Satanic Panic at work, the three got convicted. The Satanic Panic itself should be an indicator of their innocence. There have been many incidents of Satanic Panic (mostly centred around Reagan-era preschools) in the world since the Inquisition ended in around 1834 (it had tapered off before that, but then was the official end), and virtually all of them have simply been proven to be blatantly false accuastions over the years. In the meantime, their guilt has been contested over the years (even by the victims' families, but not by the police force), and there is going to be a new trial soon in light of new DNA evidence showing that there is virtually no DNA of the "killers" on the murder weapons. Until the time cones when they reach a "not guilty" status, I must say "Free the Three!"

Band NAme of the Day: Gothic Cartoon of Evil. From a CAP report on the movie Natural Born Killers as evidence of "wanton violence" in the movie.

Film Idea of the Day: Murder Will Out. In Georgian England, two young girls discover that while the people of their village are dropping like flies, a sociopathic farmer and War of 1812 veteran may be behind the murders. After he is finally caught and sent to Bedlam, they seek to off him themselves. They fail.

Film Review of the Day: Paradise Lost. This was the film I had watched. This may be just as good a crime documentary as The Thin Blue Line was. Sure, it shows no revealing "This crime must not go unpunished, so let's punish these people we found" (not the actual words used in the film) statements like TBL did, but it shows how obvious the innocence of the West Memphis 3 was.

Quote of the Day: " Well I object to all this sex on the television. I mean I keep falling off."
_______An old lady.

Link of the Day: The official website for the WM3's second trial.

Issue 52

News: The Death Penalty
Recently, ex-governor George Ryan was on trial and just last week was sentenced to several years in prison for commuting the death sentences of many admitted killers merely to make him look better to the Democrats. With this piece of news in mind, as well as my recent purchase of 12 Angry Men at my local Costco, I feel I should share my thoughts on the death penalty. I must say that I am not completely against the death penalty, and that it should be reserved for only very few of the people who are currently on Death Row. In my opinion, it should be reserved for those who actualy admitted to their murder, and for whom there is no evidence whatsoever for the killers' innocence. I am fairly certain that many of the murders currently on Death Rows across the nation may, in fact, be innocent, because it has happened before, and I am certain that this will happen again. Some people have, in fact been imprisoned on death row, with no evidence against them, and I will give two examples of people who have been proven to have been wrongly imprisoned for around twelve years: First is Randall Dale Adams, whose case was the basis for Errol Morris' film The Thin Blue Line. In 1975, he was a silent drifter who met up with a young teenaged boy with a huge criminal record. They smoked pot and at this time, A police officer was killed by one of the two. Naturally, the boy went into town later and bragged about the incident to his friends. Unfortunately, the person they arrested was Adams. The prosecution sealed his fate with a speech which said that since the victim was a police officer and "The thin blue line separating society from Anarchy", that his death must be avenged by the death of this guy they decided was the killer. Fortunately, Morris' film revived interest in the case, and Adams was retried and declared innocent. The second person is one I cannot remember the name of off the top of my head, but I remember his story on Penn And Teller wherein he mentioned he was also accused of murder, but had an incredibly ironclad alibi: He was in prison for a robbery the night of the shooting. Fortunately, the legal system rectified this mistake and he is now free and speaking out against the death penalty. Back on the subject of Gov. Ryan's conviction, one of my mothers' friends had a relative who was a witness to a murder which was committed by one of the people Ryan commuted to life. While we're on the subject for suitable punishments, if the murderer's just plain insane, send him to a mental institution for life, or at least until his mind is sound enough for real jail, and at thar point, he should be subject to the same as his punishments would have been if he was indeed sane. Also, Seniors (65+) should be exempt from the death penalty altogether, and for a very good reason: The Reaper will most likely come naturally before the State even has a chance to bring it, in a country where it is not uncommon for people on Death Row to wait for more than 20 years for the State to kill them. Otherwise, life in jail with little or no possibility of parole, except for pardons is fine by me.

Band Name of the Day: The Tourettes-Vangelists. This name is based on a nickname the Book "A Sinner's Guide to the Evangelical Right" has assigned to Jerry Falwell.

Film Idea of the Day: The Christ-Killers or Anti-Semites and the Evangelicals who love them, a darkly satirical story of a journalist who covers the story of Anti-Semitism in Military academies, which is being defended by not one, but two, powerful ultra-conservative religious figures just down the street. Based on the true story of inappropriate prosceletyzing of Jewish Cadets in the United States Air Force Academy, supported by Rev. Ted Haggard of the New Life Church (who speaks with the President once a week) and James Dobson (founder of Focus on the Family) which has unfolded just last year in the city of Colorado Springs.

Film Review of the day: America America. An Armenian boy named Stavros, living in the years leading up to the Genocide, chronicles his planning of his future journey to America, thus earning his nickname America America. It has what must be the best cinematography I've seen in a while in a black and White film, and an interesting plot which is pretty good, despite its length of 3 hours.

Quote of the Day: "After Church tonight, you will go home and you will eat chicken, not human, because of the spread of Christianity... Go to a country where there hasn't been the spread of Christianity and they're having human for dinner."
______Mark Driscoll. (Cuckoo, cuckoo)

Link of the Day: My Name is Derekaxe and I'm an Alcoholic. NOT!!!!, but enjoy these old AA comic strips just as campy and unbelievable as Chick tracts.