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 192

News: This is probably old news, but...
Once again, I'm sorry I haven't been updating. I've been working on a short story, college applications, getting my service hours squared for my Criminology class, reacquainting myself with Arthur Miller, Samuel Beckett, and King Lear, and spending Easter at my grandparents' house (for the last time, since they're apparently selling it), so, between all of that, there hasn't been much time to write for the blog. That said, I have had a few ideas for blog entries, and here's one of them.
On March 20th, Not The Terry Jones, Fundamentalist nutjob who has been condemned from all sides for threatening to burn the Koran in September (for the record, I have mixed feelings about the act itself, ultimately resolving in a Voltairean "I disagree with what you say, but I agree with your right to say it," aided by the fact that, if a Koran is to be disposed of, technically, burning it is the recommended method), finally managed to do so. But he decided to first put the book on trial for six hours. What I'm wondering is: if he feels justified to do so for the Koran, what's to prevent someone from doing the same for The Bible? I can almost imagine it; Getting a man to prosecute the Bible (ideally a Gideon Bible, since they're pretty much free in any hotel room), and a priest to defend it in a court of law (I'd especially like to see it if we could get at least one of the lawyers to say something like "now, I'm just a simple country lawyer," like Jimmy Stewart), against charges of Crimes Against Humanity (what I have in mind would ultimately be something like Judgment at Nuremberg), and seeing how far it goes, especially if we can see it streaming online or after the fact on sites like Youtube. If the Bible is found guilty, it would be burnt while some fitting tunes (all of which should involve fire-related imagery), definitely beginning with Arthur Brown's Fire.

Film Review of the Week: Mildred Pierce (2011 version). For a while, the 1945 film version of James M. Cain's Mildred Pierce has been one of my favourite films noir. However, until recently, I hadn't read the original novel, and now that Todd Haynes adapted it into an HBO miniseries, I think that it's a worthy successor, so let me go over some of the most important elements:
*Mildred: Honestly, after looking into Joan Crawford's real-life motherhood, it's ultimately hard to take her seriously as a woman who would take a bullet for her daughters like she does in this film. However, in the film, it comes close to almost disintegrating any lingering doubts, but there's still the occasional thought in the back of my mind that wants to make a snarky reference to wire hangers. Kate Winslet, to the best of my knowledge, appears to have no such parenting problems, and it is much easier for me to take her seriously as a doormat of a mother. And, what's more, in the novel and the miniseries, her character arc becomes more dramatic: She goes from doting on Veda to saying (albeit at Bert's promting) "to hell with her."
*Veda: To be honest, it's very hard for me to say whether Evan Rachel Wood or Ann Blyth is a better actress in this role. They both seem to nail down the "Bratty-bordering-on-sociopathic Teenaged Daughter" role, and both look like they could very well be the daughter of the women playing their mothers, even if, in the case of Wood and Winslet, their ages are too close together for it to be realistic. However, to break the tie, I will note the climactic scene in the new version: When Mildred discovers that Veda is dating Monte, she strangles her, but she manages to get away. After this, Evan Rachel Wood curb-stomps willing suspension of disbelief by running around the house and then sputtering, repeating this for several minutes. Unless I can find some sort of evidence of this sort of thing being feasible after being strangled, I will use this as an example of how Ann Blyth's acting is better.
*Ray/Kay: I definitely have a favourite here: Jo Anne Marlowe's Kay is a much more interesting character than the Ray that Quinn McColgan played in the miniseries. The main reason for this is that I cannot help but find it satisfying that, in the 1945 film, the younger daughter, of all people, is something of a voice of reason for the family, and we see that a change occurs in the family dynamics when she dies, sometimes calling Veda out on her greed and ego. However, in the miniseries, she's just a little kid who just tries too hard to be cute, and when she dies, it feels more like the author is himself trying to get the audience to think that Ray was "too good for this sinful earth."
*Pacing/The Second Half: After reading the book, you really come to see how much the plot came to feel rushed in the film version; in fact, major plot points are completely glossed over in the film, like the fact that Veda is taking music lessons: these are mentioned enough times that they can be counted on one hand. In the miniseries and original novel, much of the novel's second half, and the last two episodes of the miniseries revolve around Veda's getting a career as a singer (a coloratura soprano, to be precise). Of course, the plot in the film still makes sense as a whole, and thus, it works, even though the miniseries allows the plot to breathe more.
*Mise-en-Scene: Michael Curtiz made it into a film noir. Todd Haynes filmed it to look like a lot like Douglas Sirk's "Women's pictures." They both worked extremely well for what they are. The choice between the two styles boils down to one's own personal preference, and mine leans strongly towards noir.

Issue 189

News: Two religious figures get their comeuppance and I want to see what happens next.
A few weeks ago, Anonymous, the socially conscious wing of 4chan, the same people to bring Christian Weston Chandler to the internet consciousness, apparently threatened to hack the many websites of the Westboro Baptist Church. Anonymous denied sending out the initial threat, but after they told Anonymous to "Bring it On," another hacker decided to take their sites down. Of course, this only lasted a short time. However, I saw something that happened later: during a chat between Anonymous and Shirley Phelps-Roper, who has become the de facto leader of the church since Fred got too old, Shirley proved to be so irritating and insulting that they actually decided to go ahead and hack the sites anyway. As of right now, The WBC's sites are offline. Now that Anonymous is apparently actually warring with them, I'd love to see what happens. It's not like the Phelpses have anywhere near the power of The Church of Scientology. And, on a related note, two Barvarian lawyers have apparently pressed charges of Crimes Against Humanity at the International Court of Justice against the Pope. The charges? Primarily the charges are in their apparent inability to keep their priests off the altar boys), and their longstanding opposition to condom use. If applied to the worldwide level, we have an organisation which has aided and abetted pedophilia on a worldwide scale (even if it did so on a level of naivete, assuming that moving priests would curb their desire to have sex with children) and has done more to increase the spread of AIDS than any other entity in the past thirty years. Even if this is a result of Naivete on the part of the Church, the fact that their ideas have done little to help with those problems, and their refusal to change makes them responsible for those problems. In this case, I would be curious to see the Pope being judged for this. Maybe the repercussions of this could be felt across the Abrahamic Religions: maybe many more conservative Christian denominations would (though likely not being judged) force themselves to re-examine their interpretation of scripture, or Islamic dictatorships (like Iran or Saudi Arabia) could actually be judged as well as the Pope. However, the charges have to be examined by the World Court's prosecutor, and that hasn't happened yet, and could very well never happen. And besides, Benedict could die before the trial starts (he is 83, after all.)

Review of the Day: Barney Ross. It's a book, unlike a lot of the things I've been reviewing in this blog, and a relatively short one at that. Simply put: it's the biography of a boxer, born in Chicago, grew up in the Jewish ghettoes of Maxwell Park, managed to become a big boxing hero (72 wins, 3 losses, 4 draws), eventually fought at Guadalcanal, developed a morphine addiction as a direct result of his Guadalcanal experiences, and kicked the habit. On the other hand, it's the story of a man who loses his faith in Hashem after witnessing his father's death, becomes a boxer in defiance of his faith, after the rise of Hitler, begins to play up his Jewishness, and eventually returns to the faith proper while trying to kick his Morphine habit. It's an amazingly powerful story, and it's moved me enough that, after the weather has stabilised, I'm considering visiting his grave in Rosemont. Hopefully, I'll find a good pebble for his grave in the interim.

Quote:
It was lucky for me. It wasn't lucky for the nine people that got killed and the 20 that were injured."
____________Barney Ross

Link of the Day: The video that has Anonymous hacking the WBC live.

Issue 175

News: How not to do a Jesus biopic: Another long-term essay.
A few weeks ago, I saw the movie, The Passion of the Christ. My mother heard about it, and she said that she never wanted to see it (and she's the most religious member of my immediate family, although for her, it means self-identifying as Lutheran, and occasionally going to Church on Christmas or Easter, depending on her health), especially since she heard that it was little more than a glorified snuff film. Well, I ended up renting it from the library, and, it turns out, she was right. The fact is that it was almost entirely devoted to the torture and execution of Jesus, with surprisingly little focus on any other aspect of his life. And, even though they went through the trouble of translating the script into the languages that would have actually been spoken at the time, they even manage to get that wrong, especially since the Roman soldiers were speaking in ECCLESIASTICAL LATIN. Honestly, if you're going to translate your dialogue into a foreign, dead, language, make sure it's the right one. I like a bit of the old ultraviolence now and again, but really, when the entire point of the movie is devoted to one man's execution, it is not good. Even Funny Games took time out of showing the two men torturing the Yuppie family to break the fourth wall and play Naked City music. To keep the contrast to other religious movies, The Passion of Joan of Arc devoted itself to the last few hours of the life of a saint, but C.T. Dreyer focused the movie not only on the suffering itself, but also at least gave Joan some character development. However, Mel Gibson gives his Jesus very little room for such character development, and gives us no real reason to care about his suffering except that we're supposed to care about Jesus being crucified. Indeed, I think there can be, and actually have been, some great interpretations of Jesus' life on film, like Pasolini's Gospel According to Matthew (although a lot of my admiration can be due to its eclectic sountrack), Nicholas Ray's King of Kings, or, in terms of sheer comprehensiveness, Zefferelli's Jesus of Nazareth. I'd even recommend Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ, even if its casting choices are suspect, to say the least, and it isn't even based on the Gospels. While we're on adaptations of the Bible done by unusual people, I recently read R. Crumb's adaptation of the Book of Genesis, and, as it turns out, the man who created Mr. Natural and wrote the source material for the first X-rated cartoon film actually does a pretty good job of adapting the first book of the Bible. He even manages to make the "begats" interesting by actually giving the people being "begotten" a face, and it's actually surprisingly reverent for R. Crumb, and quite possibly the most oddly reverent adaptation of the Bible since Aphrodite's Child's rock opera of Revelation: "666."

Relevant Quote: "The New Testament tells two stories for two different sorts of readers. One is the old story of the achievement of our salvation by the sacrifice and atonement of a divine personage who was barbarously slain and rose again on the third day: the story as it was accepted by the apostles. And in this story the political, economic, and moral views of the Christ have no importance: the atonement is everything; and we are saved by our faith in it, and not by works or opinions (other than that particular opinion) bearing on practical affairs.

The other is the story of a prophet who, after expressing several very interesting opinions as to practical conduct, both personal and political, which are now of pressing importance, and instructing his disciples to carry them out in their daily life, lost his head; believed himself to be a crude legendary form of god; and under that delusion courted and suffered a cruel execution in the belief that he would rise from the dead and come in glory to reign over a regenerated world. In this form, the political, economic and moral opinions of Jesus, as guides to conduct, are interesting and important: the rest is mere psychopathy and superstition."
_______________________George Bernard Shaw, Preface to Androcles and the Lion.

Tract Reviews: The Little Sneak: a kid hides his parents' life savings and a preacher coerces him to giving up the money's location. For his trouble he is killed.
Is Allah Like You: A muslim father reads the Quran and finds out how much of an A-hole Allah is, and converts to Christianity. Jack is completely oblivious that many of these criticisms he makes of Islam can be made of Christianity, and can even be given scriptural citations.

Issue 173

News: Why no 201?
For a few years now, I've been watching South Park and, increasingly so, online. I mention this because when I saw the episode "200," and I noticed all the setups for a lot of subplots to be resolved, just some of which were the true identity of Cartman's father (as it turned out, it was Scott Tenorman's dad, whom Cartman fed to him in Season 5), and the return of Mecha-Streisand and the Super Best Friends, including the unveiling of Muhammad. However, it is the last of these which led to the episode being censored. It has aired exactly once, and it has not been released to the official website, all due to threats from Muslims to Comedy Central and Matt and Trey over Muhammad's appearance in a bear suit (and it wasn't even Muhammad in that case, but Santa Claus). Needless to say, the episode was, in fact, awesome, except for one thing: the censorship. Granted, I should have expected that Muhammad would not be seen, and I admit that I even found it somewhat absurd that every single instance of the utterance of his name was bleeped, but the thing that truly made it frustrating was the fact that the speeches at the end were bleeped all the way through. Honestly! What else is there to say? If religious groups have any say in what should or should not be put in any entertainment that isn't their own, I think it is at that point that religious groups have too much power over the world.

Film Idea of the Day: Several teenagers are locked up in a juvenile hall for minuscule crimes. Think of it as Breakfast Club meets Grand Illusion.

Film Review of the Day: The Ruling Class. In essence, the son of a Lord, who thinks he is Jesus Christ, and has to get a more socially acceptable personality, so he goes to an institution, and eventually begins to think he is Jack the Ripper, which turns out to be the more socially acceptable personality. As odd as the plot seems, it is pretty funny, and one of Peter O'Toole's better films, and quite possibly an interesting homage to Dostoevsky's The Idiot.

Quote of the Day: Custer: "Gentlemen, you are the bravest squadron of men it has ever been this southerner's privilage to serve with. And you will need that bravery today, as your orders are to remove my pants and underpants. I will then attempt to force sex on an Indian girl under heavy enemy fire. Are there any questions?"

Custer's military advisor: "Yes, general. Several."

Link of the Day: Nothing this week.

Issue 172

News: My Five Least Favorite Books.
Here is the impetus for writing this book: recently, my worplace decided to pose us in the position of the Last Supper, and I decided to portray Judas (although it turned out to be more of a combination of Peter's position with Judas' elbow, oddly enough), and it came out that some members of the crew actually believed that the figure to Jesus' immediate right was Mary Magdalene, and I ended up blowing up at the person who talked about it. After that, I was browsing TVTropes and stumbled upon their page for the Turner Diaries. I knew then that the next blog entry I wrote had to be about the worst books of all time. So, here's my top five, and, astonishingly to some, Jane Austen's works are not on this list, because, while I do dislike them with a passion, their major flaw is that they are utterly dull to anybody with a Y chromosome, and not facepalmingly stupid.
5. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.
Well, the title bucks art historical convention and calls Leonardo simply "Da Vinci", even though it's not his actual surname. It's all downhill from there, with regards to historical accuracy. Just to take one example: The vessel for holding the wine is actually in the picture, but it's not the gilded and bejewled common cup of legend; they're all individual glasses that could have been used by anybody in that time period. Admittedly you can only see it if you're looking at an ultra-high-quality picture, but once you did, Teabing's claim that the Grail is in the picture in the form of Mary Magdalene (actually John the apostle, incidentally, and has been identified as such for many years before most of the other disciples in the picture). For a book that claims to be 99% accurate, I am not impressed.
4. Twilight by Stephanie Meyers.
I am almost certain that somewhere in the Middle East, there are some people who will use this book as an argument against giving women education. In essence, you have a woman who is driven to stalking the one person who doesn't love bomb her as soon as she moves to her new town. And it turns out that he's a vampire, which to Stephanie Meyer, seems to entail simply drinking goat's blood, being androgynous, and sparkling in the sunlight [Well, I'm okay with toying with the symptoms of vampirism, like with Cassidy in Preacher, but narrowing it down to those three?], and worst of all, the vampire has graduated from High School literally dozens of times. WHY IN PLUPERFECT HELL WOULD HE NOT JUST PASS FOR YOUNG ADULT FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE? HONESTLY!
3. Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard.
Well, in either book or movie forms, this has to be one of the worst tales in any medium, and there are enough plot holes in either form to fill the Royal Albert Hall. While general consensus is that the book is much better, I admit that I stray from the consensus here for several reasons.
A) John Travolta's Terl is way too entertaining.
B) In the books, the climax is literally 1/3 of the way through. The film's climax, as muddled as it is, is at least in its proper place near the end, probaBLY because it was supposed to be the first half of one long movie.
C) Blatant Ethnic Stereotyping. That is all.
D) Johnny is even more questionable. Johnny is considered a hero after vanquishing the evil Psychlos by destroying their planet, except that, in the book, they're only evil due to another race's mind control. Nobody rethinks Johnny's motives.
TIE:
1A) Left Behind. I've done enough on this subject. I don't need to run over why this is on my list.
1B) The Turner Diaries by William Luther Pierce.
Surprisingly, Pierce is probably the most competent writer on the list. However, what he does to merit the lowest position is to write what is probably the most evil novel I've ever read, especially since it's apparently supposed to double as a how-to guide for a White revolution. What truly astonishes me is that Pierce goes into how crime and punishment under the Order would work after they take Southern California, and it's astonishingly brutal: apparently the only punishment for any crime, whether commited by or against whites (for instance, owning a restaurant that serves all races) is summary execution. This is presented as unambiguously good, even though it's clear that they're clearly worse than The System could ever be. Somebody should probably write a book about how a real-world government would face such an insurrection.

Review of the Day: Since I recently finished reading the first four books of Hubert Selby Jr, one of my favorite writers, I decided to review his books.
Last Exit to Brooklyn. I read about the book in Junior year of high school, but couldn't make it past Tralala, but eventually I made it to the end last summer. It was actually pretty good. Admittedly, I'm not sure whether it should count as a novel or a collection of short stories, but, either way, it's one of Selby's best.
The Room. This is the book I finished reading recently. In fact, it is even more brutal than Last Exit was. In fact, Selby himself couldn't read it after writing it. If you thought a teenaged prostitute getting gang-raped by a dozen drunken sailors was brutal, you haven't seen anything yet.
The Demon. Well, this is his most subtle work of the four I read, less overtly terrifying and more subtle, explaining the motives behind Harry White's increasing evil in scenes less overt than his previous terms.
Requiem for a Dream. Well, Darren Aronofsky got the essence of the story, and a lot of the little things in the novel down to their essence in 100 minutes, but the novel is much less emotionally satisfying, and I think that, in this case, not giving the audience much closure is best, since it's probably best for the reader to imagine what is happening in the end.

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 162

News: It bears repeating.
Several issues ago, I remarked that a scene in Left Behind was one of the things which truly made it one of the most horrible works I've ever read (although an infamous Harry Potter fanfic seems to have replaced it at the top.) However, I think it bears repeating that the scene is one of the worst I've ever read in a book for several reasons, which I will detail here. The scene has reporter Buck Williams doing his job, a very rare occurrence, and interviewing the scientist (Chaim Rosenzweig, who, as we later learn, dabbles in everything from botany to nuclear physics, to Romanian government) whose fertilizer has turned Israel into an agricultural center on par with the Midwest. This has somehow not only led to peace in the Middle East, but has apparently led to at least some states being annexed by Israel. And it all goes downhill from there, because during the interview, a gaggle of Russian bomber planes carrying all of the country's nuclear weapons (enough firepower to end life on earth several times over) soars overhead. The authors never explain why this should occur, but it is implied that it is done out of spite. Sure, there may be no valentines between Russia and Israel, but somehow I doubt that even nuking Israel once is in the cards. For that matter, doesn't Israel have nuclear weapons of its own? And hell, even if Israel was defenseless and Russia's nukes didn't end life on Earth, using all those nuclear weapons on a coastal nation like Israel is bound to have a lot of adverse effects on the Mediterranean. Maybe the entire Mediterranean would be unfit to fish in, and that could cost a lot of livelihoods of a lot of Fishermen in Italy, Greece, or other Southern European countries, and maybe, since the UK and France have nuclear weapons, and in this case, Russia would have wasted all theirs, a nuclear war between the EU and Russia could happen. However, all this is averted when the hand of God appears and destroys the planes, leaving the Israelis unharmed, and some harmless powder rains from the sky (the Authors being oblivious that powder falling from the sky after a nuclear explosion is most likely Nuclear Fallout.) However, all of this could be forgiven if not for one thing: It doesn't change anybody's mind about God. Really. Here is one of the most unambiguously miraculous events possible, and according to the text, nobody seems to bat an eyelash, and churches don't seem to have grown.

Film Idea of the Day: Gaia's revenge. Possibly the most intentionally stupid film idea I've put on this blog. Simply put, "don't pollute, because if you do, the planet will ******* kill you."

Review of the Day: My Immortal. Holy Crap. The fact that this story even exists makes me weep for humanity. The utter disregard for the Harry Potter Canon (incidentally, the lead three characters from the books, Harry, Ron, and Hermione, are renamed Vampire, Diabolo, and B'Loody Mary Smith, and have apparently defected to Slytherin), its own self-contained continuity, and even spelling and grammar aside, this would still be the most idiotic thing I've ever read because the plot is 1/3 descriptions of the main narrator's wardrobe, 1/3 sex scenes that read like Beavis and Butthead wrote them (like "he put his thingy into my you-know-what"), and 1/3 Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way (our author surrogate, whose name is rarely spelled correctly, and who is not related to Gerard Way, although she wishes he was because he's hot) being "Goffik," attempting suicide, and attending the same My Chemical Romance concert several times.

Quote: "I laffed statistically."
___________An actual quote from My Immortal.

Link of the Day: If you really want to read My Immortal, here goes.

Issue 161

News: We're back, and with the stupidest plan in existence.
Well, I've been having a lot of problems lately that prevented me from updating, ranging from my laptop breaking down to my need to study for my final in Genetics and write two final papers totalling 12 pages in the space of about a week. But now that classes are over, and my laptop has been both repaired and replaced, I come bearing tidings of a new blog entry.
On Atop the Fourth Wall, one of the shows on That Guy With The Glasses, the host Linkara sometimes lists the stupidest plans that have ever been featured in comics on the show. Plans like making twin clones of Adolf Hitler, a plot to elect Nightcrawler as the pope with each twist in the plot being 31 different flavors of "This cannot work," and a plot to take over the Mafia by rigging high school track meets. However, on one of my forums (Not Newspeak Dictionary, because I got banned after one of the mods went beserk and I disagreed with him), somebody shared an email advertising what is probably the stupidest plan I've ever seen. Are you ready? Here goes. As it turns out, you're supposed to send a CHRISTMAS card (yes, apparently CHRISTMAS is supposed to be in allcaps) to the ACLU, which will apparently stop their operations dead in their tracks, and their plan to take away CHRISTMAS will be stopped. We will ignore the fact that odds are, the ACLU will not give a damn about whether anybody sends them Christmas cards, and get to their underlying belief in the War on Christmas. Let me be entirely blunt; The "War on Christmas" is entirely one-sided. Most secular Americans, myself included, do not care whether you greet us with "Happy Holidays" or "Merry Christmas," or even "Io Saturnalia!" It is the conservative Christians who are really waging a war on the phrase "Happy Holidays." They seem to think it's some sort of inclusive holiday greeting that acknowledges other religions (and yes, they think it's a bad thing) and taking the Christ out of Christmas (and, of course, Christmas is really just a continuation of the Roman celebration of Saturnalia, and many Yuletide traditions, from gift-giving to Santa's hat, are taken from it), but in reality, even if one doesn't count the holidays that other religions celebrate around this time, there's virtually no other time of year in which so many holidays are celebrated around the same time. Look at the current holiday season; it begins with Thanksgiving and ends around the New Year, and traditionally, it even extended as far as January 7 (Twelve Days of Christmas, anyone?).

Film Idea of the Day: The Reverend. A seminary dropout ends up becoming a mafia hitman.

Film Review of the Day: American Splendor. Well, I'm kind of interested in Indie comics and Robert Crumb in particular, so I decided to watch this movie, especially considering that Dr. Venture played Crumb, although I haven't actually read any of the actual American Splendor Comics. However, as it turned out, even though Crumb has about ten minutes of screen time, I was actually interested in the movie, particularly by the mix between animation, live-action, and documentary (Pekar, his wife, and his nerdy friend are played by both a fictional actor and the actual person.) And although Pekar's voice does get particularly grating, it does compel me to try to find, and hopefully read the actual comics.

Quote of the Day: "Ordinary life is pretty complex stuff. "
________Harvey Pekar

Link of the Day: That Guy With the Glasses Site.

Issue 159

News: Kirk Cameron/Ray Comfort's "Origin of Species."
In roughly a week, apparently on the 19th, Ray Comfort (a New Zealand evangelist so laughably absurd that it's hard for me to believe that he actually expects people to believe him), and Kirk Cameron (actor) are sponsoring a book handout of Darwin's "Origin of Species," in a special edition published by Ray Comfort's publishing company Living Waters. What makes this edition different from the many other editions published by Imprints like Signet, Dover, Penguin, Vintage Classics, and even Barnes and Noble Classics? Or the many etexts of the book? Well, it turns out that this is an abridged version (all other versions are unabridged), and in the place of the missing chapters, is a 50-page introduction by Ray Comfort. In the introduction, according to Kirk Cameron, is information on Darwin's dated views on women and race (please remember he was living in Victorian times, and not in the 2000s, and that even by those standards, his views were pretty advanced), the "undeniable link between Hitler and Darwin" (Jesus, where to begin: First of all, there is no evidence that Darwin had much of a significant direct influence on Hitler, second of all, even if there were, it should be clear to anybody who took the time to look into the theory that Hitler would have understood Darwin no better than he understood Nietzsche, Third: Are you really telling me that you can divorce the Antisemitism of Adolf Hitler from the Antisemitism of Christian Europe?, and Finally: None of this actually negates the truth value of the theory), and scientists who believed in God (it should be noted that of all the scientists Kirk Cameron mentioned in his video, only two were alive to read Darwin's book, and even those two likely had more nuanced views than Kirk implies, and even then all those scientists just had their names listed; no quote mining, just listing.) And, according to Kirk Cameron it presents a clear Gospel message; and they say that Intelligent Design isn't religious. And on Thursday, it will apparently be given to students in the top 50 colleges, and it seems likely that a lot of these copies will likely be discarded because "our future doctors, lawyers, and politicians" they hope to reach will likely realize that these editions (since they're abridged and the introduction is little more than drivel) are worthless. They seem to think that this will change the minds of people who have (apparently to them) never heard of intelligent design. Of course, the fact is that they have most likely heard of it, and if not from people like them, from shows like Family Guy or the Simpsons, which ridicule it. And apparently, Kirk Cameron appears to be hoping to see Darwin's works being banned. The fact is that book banning does not work that way. If a book is banned in a college, it really only means that their library has removed it from circulation. And, of course, there is no way that one of the libraries of a top college will accept it as a book in the first place, so there is no way it will be banned.

Band Name of the Day: The New Earth Army.

Film Idea of the Day: Already Written: a couple celebrating their 25th anniversary go to a diner and confront their inner demons.

Film Review of the Day: The Men Who Stare At Goats. This is one of the most quirky films of the year. It concerns a journalist who meets a soldier who claims to be telekinetic, and a soldier in a special Hippie division of the Army. He can allegedly kill a goat with a thought. Believe me, the movie finds a way for the premise to make sense. Incredibly, much of it is actually true. Go see it. I would think that the sheer oddness of the premise is enough to recommend it.

Quote of the Day: -Lieutenant Colonel Django used funds from the project's black budget to procure prostitutes...
-That's a lie!
-...and to get drugs for himself and his men.
-That... well, the hooker thing is definitely a lie.
_____________________________My favorite part of "The Men Who Stare At Goats"


Link: Here is the full text of Ray Comfort's version of Origin of Species (complete with introduction and missing chapters)

Issue 158

News/Link of the Day: The Republican Moral Event Horizon.
Recently, I just got into a site called TV Tropes. If you can imagine a reoccurring theme that you've seen across television, film, and literature, odds are, it's there. One of the tropes that's on the site is called the "Moral Event Horizon." It is the point at which a character truly ceases to be sympathetic, like Aarfy's rape-murder in Catch-22, the entire third Star Wars prequel film, and on South Park, Cartman has had one every season since the fifth. Earlier in the month, however, it appears that the Republican Party has finally passed this point, after 8 years of the most unpopular administration, and the most ineptly run campaign in years. The point came when Al Franken (now a senator), proposed an amendment to a defense bill that keeps any defense contractors from taking rape cases to court. Yes, there was actually a need to make this bill, but, incredibly, although it was passed, thirty senators (all being Republicans) not only voted against it, but vociferously argued against it. Incidentally, in case you didn't get it before, 75% of the Senate's Republicans voted against it. Seventy-five percent of Republicans chose to uphold capitalism at the expense of Rape victims. And this, from the party which claims to hold a moral high ground. I'm going to let this sink in.

Band Name of the Week: Khairei, Deerslayers!

Film idea of the Week: In the process of writing: A short play in which an opera singer confronts his fear of singing "LArgo al Factotum" in the most cataclysmic way possible.

Film Review of the Week: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. I recently decided to check this movie out on hulu, and I must admit that I particularly appreciated it, especially in the wake of recently watching all of Linkara's Atop the Fourth Wall videos on Thatguywiththeglasses.com. I especially liked the music, which was a particular change in pace from the comics presented in Linkara's videos.

Quote of the Day: "It is not the government's business to decide who the government does business with."
____________Jon Stewart.

Tract Review: It's Not Your Fault. "Thank you, unborn baby whale. You were as helpful as you were delicious." Now that I got that Drawn Together reference out of the way, on to the tract. Chick tackles the Rwandan genocide, PTSD, and institutional child sexual abuse in one tract. And apparently, accepting Jesus can rid somebody of PTSD. Jack's drawing has gone beyond simply cartoony to horrendous, and God actually has a face in some panels.

Issue 157

This is going to be another long-form edition of the blog.
The Top Eleven Worst Things about Left Behind.
Well, I've been reading a series of blog posts on the book "Left Behind." They are on slacktivist.typepad.com, but it should be noted that there is a much more servicable table of contents of the posts here. The series of blog posts chronicles Fred Clark and his attempts to go through the novels of the bestselling-series "Left Behind." It took him five years, but already, he's finished the first book. And even though the man himself is an Evangelical christian (I won't hold it against him), he disagrees with LaHaye and Jenkins on many points and goes so far to say that they are among the worst books of all time. In essence, like Plan 9, but without the entertainment value (like Orgy of the Dead.) Incidentally, he mentions in his last post on the first book that a comprehensive list of how many ways the book fails would be way too long. Here is my noble attempt at the most glaring flaws with the book, and some occasional contrasting with the works of others, particularly Trevanian and Herge (the only real adventure stories I read).

11. The ideology.
Simply put, one big problem with the book, possibly the cause of one of many of its flaws, is the ideology that is horned into the book. Simply put, it seems like the whole point of the book and its series is to gloat over an event that hasn't happened yet and most likely will never happen, and how it makes them superior to non-christians. And believe me, many other asinine aspects of fundamentalist theology are there, particularly a subtext that any peace-maker is in league with the antichrist, that any believers in any other religion are not only wrong (one I could let slide), but also insincere (since, apparently, everybody believes in their conception of God), and the infamous line "if any of it [is] true, then all of it [was] true."
10. Too few locations.
I love a good chamber piece of a story that can be set in only a few locations. Of course, an airport novel like this tends to jump from exotic location to exotic location. Before i get to how this relates to LB, it should be noted that in Shibumi, we visit places like New York, The Basque region, Japan, and England, and that Herge put Tintin on five continents and the Moon. What locations are shown in Left Behind? Ninety percent of the book takes place either near Chicago or Manhattan. The other ten percent are devoted to news reports from Jerusalem, and two excursions to Atlanta and London, both of which prove entirely pointless.
9. Phones.
What is with LaHaye and Jenkins' obsession with phone calls? They seem to take up a significant portion of the plot.
8. Airline Travel should not be this easy.
Throughout the book, characters travel on planes with no apparent fear on the part of anybody (from passengers to the airline companies) of a reprisal of the rapture. In fact, both of the pointless excursions I mentioned in the book are done by plane. Of course, anybody should know that even after 9/11, airplane travel (among many other things) would never be so easy, especially two weeks after the event (early on in the review, Fred stopped calling the event which sets all this into action "The Rapture", and simply called it "The Event", to mirror how the unsaved people that seem to have been left behind would have percieved it.)
7. Electromagnetism.
Throughout the book, there only seem to be two explanations for the Event. One of which, is, of course, the rapture theory. The other theory, introduced halfway into the book by Nicolae Carpathia (more on him later) and his botanist sidekick Chaim Rosenzweig, is that electromagnetism took children, because "children have less electromagnetism than adults." No, electromagnetism doesn't work that way. Yes, these are the only theories presented as probable by anybody in the entire book. Fred decides early on that, because of their incuriousness about this most jaw-dropping of events, most of the people in the book have already read the book jacket and realized that it's God's work.
6. The death of Stonagal.
Jonathan Stonagal is a businessman who was the mentor and puppetmaster to Nicolae Carpathia, and, for a brief time in the book, is considered to be a likely suspect for the Antichrist. However, in the last chapter of the book, he is shot. [Yes, i know, there are spoilers, but it's not like anybody would want to read this book anyway.] The events surrounding his assassination, however are done so horribly wrong that they just need to be seen to be believed. Better yet, read posts 176-180 of Slacktivist's deconstruction.
5. Implied goodness.
Our two protagonists, Buck Williams and Rayford Steele, have one thing in common at the outset. This is, that they are written to be sympathetic only by the writers telling us that they are sympathetic. Buck Williams is actually called "The Greatest Investigative Reporter of All Time," even though there are only a few snippets of his writing included, none of them even decent, and he never turns in a story to his superiors. He spends the first two weeks after the Event writing a story about it for next week's issue. He never gets it down. Rayford's problem is that he is considered a good man who loved his wife and kids by the narrator, but his actions seem to fly in the face of this. For instance, his wife Irene and son Raymie/Rayford Jr. (really) are taken in the Rapture. Never does he show any real grief at this. Of course, we will see how deep the rabbit hole goes when we get to #1. In other works, like Shibumi, we don't find Trevanian saying repeatedly that Nicholai Hel is a badass of the highest order. It is something that anybody who is reading the book should figure out. As it turns out, Rayford and Buck are supposed to be author surrogates for Tim Lahaye, and Jerry Jenkins. If this is true, and the authors are both leaders of the evangelical movement, then it appears that millions are hanging on the words of people with some severe personality disorders. Mystifyingly, it seems to never have occurred to the authors to portray them as anything but the unambiguous good guys.
4. The Love lives of our leads.
Throughout the book, it is revealed that Rayford has been lusting after his coworker Hattie, who was much younger, but never really went all the way with her. I'm sure that this is supposed to come off as a sort of perverse "courtly love", but it really ends up just coming off as simply perverse, especially considering that he ends up telling her that he only was in this pseudo-relationship for the sex that they never had. Buck also has a strange relationship with Chloe. I say strange because it's unusually chaste. Yes, Buck is an unsaved Ivy League Yuppie, and Chloe seems to have rejected religion for the time being, but it never seems to occur to neither of them to be physically attracted to one another. It almost seems like a scene from a Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland musical without the music. This is made even stranger in the film, which features Buck falling for Hattie. This is, of course, because Kirk refuses to do a kissing scene with anybody else but his wife, who plays Hattie.
3. Nicolae Carpathia.
Where to begin? Did you ever see the UN scenes in Superman IV and think that there was no worse scene imaginable that could possibly involve the UN? You were wrong. Nicolae makes his first prominent appearance as the newly-elected president of Romania, and tries to woo the UN (looking to be Secretary-general, even though no SG has ever been a head of state, much less a sitting head of state, especially not a just-recently elected head of state, and certainly not one elected so soon after a cataclysmic event) by giving a speech which consists of the names and installation dates of every secretary-general, a recitation of the names of all member-states, and a listing of all of UN's agencies and their headquartered cities. He does this in nine languages. It appears that the Antichrist is supposed to be an ultra-charismatic figure. I suppose that there's a lot of possible models: cult leaders (indeed, the tape of Jim Jones' last sermon is still circulating across the net), actors, and even their own ilk. However, So far, he comes across as being profound by the world of the book, while to any reader with sense can see that he seems more like some sort of autistic savant. Later, he gives his agenda, and it drives people wild with excitement: 90% of all nukes are to be destroyed and the remaining 10% are to be given to him personally (yes, a Romanian Raymond Babbit succeeds where so many have failed, and even Superman had the sense to ask for all of them), one world currency (which makes no sense considering that Stonagal in particular makes a lot of money from currency exchange), one world language (yes, this is even though he loves to show off his polylinguality), one world religion, and a new UN Headquarters and palace for himself in "New Babylon."
2. Israel's Nuclear War.
At one point early on in the novel, the following chain of events is told in flashback: Israel develops a miraculous fertilizer which basically turns the barren wasteland of Israel into Iowa. By this point, Israel has not only made peace with its neighbors, but absorbed several of them with little complaint inside or out. Then, however, Russia sends out all of its bombers and WMDs (apparently, Russia's security council seems to have learned diplomacy from Ali G) to wipe Israel off the map (for decades, evangelicals have claimed that Russia is likely to attack Israel in the near future. They have never given any real reason why this would happen besides "it is written." Yes, Russia did support the PLO, but that doesn't mean that something of this scale is likely when they failed to bother to do a full-scale nuclear strike against us in the cold war.) However, it turns out that nobody gets hurt by the bombs because God protected them. I really wish I was making this up.
1. Nobody Cares.
In the Rapture, not only are all true Christians taken by God, but all children who haven't hit puberty yet. It appears that, while it appears that the christians are their focus, they seem to have completely ignored the fact that the sudden disappearance of all children would be enough to plunge the world into a cataclysm of grief. I mean, 3000 people died on September 11, but it still had the world paralyzed with fear for a while. Meanwhile, 1/3 of the world's population is vaporized instantly, and it's the demographic that the world seems to care the most about: children. The sight of grief should be ubiquitous in the pages of the book, but they're not. Even one of the protagonists fails to show any grief for the loss of his wife and son.

Well, I only scraped the surface of how much this book fails. Read Slacktivist's posts.

Issue 147

News: Proposition 8 Passes.
Just a few days ago, California's courts passed a controversial measure to put into the constitution a message which banned same-sex marriage. Of course, there are a few states where this is legal, but I have to ask: Why shouldn't gay people have the right to marry each other? Would having 2 men or 2 women marrying each other be more of an insult to a "sacred institution" such as marriage than the existence of Las Vegas-style quickie marriages and divorces that made Britney Spears' first marriage particularly notable? Or that somebody like myself can actually be licensed to perform marriages in this state? How will gay marriage affect your life in such a negative way that you feel that you have a duty to oppose it? Is the issue of whether homosexuals really should have the same exact rights as heterosexuals really such a big issue that you need to legislate your prejudices for all? If gay rights is really the proverbial "hill to die on" for the Christian right, I hope that they have written their last words already. At the very least, I would be very reasonable to assume that their grandchildren would end up looking upon their grandparents' generation who fought against gay rights, and would dismiss them in very much the same way that today's generation dismisses those who fought against Civil Rights. All I can say is that, despite this setback, it is likely only a matter of time until same-sex marriage becomes legal nation-wide, in the same way that gay sex itself became legalised nationwide in 2003.

Band Name of the Day: The Legion of Excited Prostitutes. From Cryptonomicon.

Film IDea of the Day: Young Americans. I can imagine this as a series similar to Little Britain, except with a larger cast, and many even more strange characters who aren't just exported from the british version of the show, including a rock star whose drug use has rendered him incoherent when he's not singing, a noir novelist whose plots frequently get totally derailed, a Gulf war vet who seems to pop up everywhere, and two teenaged boys, one of whom is uptight, and the other is hell-bent on having sex with any female regardless of age, body temperature, or species.

Review of the Day: Draughtsman's Contract. All that needs to be said is that, it seems not so much like a movie that takes place in the 1600s, as a film that would have been made if people in 1600s Britain could make movies (much less in full color and sound.) The only real thing that detracts from the illusion is the score, with its anachronistic saxophone section, as good as it is, of course.

Quote of the Day: "His name was Finnish, but he was British as only a non British Anglophile could be."
______Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon. This book, so far, seems to be as filled with lots of funny lines like this, as it does with really cryptic information you'll be hard-pressed to understand unless you've gotten far enough in life to become a qualified computer programmer.

Link of the Day: The personal site of yet another freethinker, less funny and more scholarly than Jim Huger.

Issue 146

News: Dinosaur Tissue does not mean a young earth.
Well, so I haven't been making good on my promise to post more regularly. Some of the things that have been occupying me are the addition of several new projects coming my way in school, including my final essays in English and my Honors Seminar, and hopefully I should get them finished. Another thing that has been sidetracking me is a debate that has been going on in one of my forums (not Newspeak), where I have been debating two creationists who claim that recent discoveries of dinosaur tissue prove that dinosaurs co-existed with man, and that, therefore, the earth is young. Here is my summary of the problems with this reasoning, as given by talk.origins: For instance, the age of fossils is not given by how well-preserved they are, but by radiometric dating (which of course, is rejected by creationists), and it is the radiometric dating that confirmed the age of the bones, among many other methods. Indeed, if the fossils are as young as the creationists assume they are, why would this be news which they can use to trumpet their worldview? If they were, wouldn't we be be able to recover DNA from dinosaurs by now? Besides, we weren't even able to recover DNA from them. Indeed, for that matter, even if it could prove that Dinosaurs co-existed with man, and there is no evidence whatsoever for that conclusion, that would not have proven that the earth is young. The theory of evolution does not demand that organisms change over millions of years, and in an unchanging environment, they wouldn't. Hopefully, after classes are done next week, or probably after my Chemistry interim class, updates may become more frequent.

Band Name of the Day: DinoBlood from the title of the thread.

Film Idea of the Day: None.

Film Review of the Day: The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover. This movie, while certainly disgusting at many moments, enough so to making me proud to be prefer casual dining restaurants to the sort of opulent restaurants seen in the film, certainly treats its subject matter in such an amazing manner (especially in its cinematography and music) that I must say that I believe that everybody over 18 should see it at least once, with the key words being "Over 18" [non-negotiable, as the movie is currently rated NC-17, but I must admit that it is hardly as pornographic as the connotation of the rating implies], and, to a lesser extent "once" [I'm sure that for most viewers, once is more than enough.] The way that I'm interpreting this movie is not in the light of Thatcherism, although my general ignorance of Thatcher's government is probably to blame, but in a more generally cynical manner; Albert Spica, who seems to thrive on being anywhere from violent (ubiquitous throughout the film) or otherwise irritating to others (particularly when haranguing Michael for reading in the restaurant), is seen as a contrast with Michael, who seems to have very little interest in being around other people, outside of his lover Georgina and is likely the most sympathetic of the leads. Georgina and Richard are ultimately corrupted by their associations with Albert.

Quote of the Day: "And here's Marta, our subway sweetheart. Taking the A-Train to fashion. With her mustard socks and her ketchup sash. She is a real hot dog."
________Mr. T

Link of the Day: I am beginning to get interested in Baudelaire.

Issue 142

News: The Problem of Hell.
One of the biggest problems that led me to leave Christianity is the big contradiction between the idea of the all-good and loving God and the idea that he sends people to eternal punishment in Hell. The biggest problem lies in the fact that the whole point behind hell is eternal and infinite punishment of people. However, people can only commit a finite amount of sin. Even the evils of the Holocaust and other significant genocides were finite, and were supposed to be finite, however large they were. James Joyce explained exactly the implications of infinite punishment in the sermon Father Arnall gives in Section 2 of Chapter 3 of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man where he states that if one counts the grains of a seashore and counts each as a million years, not even an instant of that eternity would have passed (the protagonist Stephen Dedalus ends up leaving the church later). And this gets even more disturbing when, as a Protestant, it was explained to me that ultimately it wasn't even a matter of Good and Evil that led to God deciding who went to where, but ultimately, whether one believed in Jesus the right way. The only way this could possibly be right would be if all those who believed lived Good lives, and if all those who lived good lives ended up believing by their deaths. Of course, taking two case studies shows exactly how wrong this is: Bertrand Russell, an agnostic/atheist who was campaigning for peace and against racism since before Martin Luther King was born, or at least, was a small child; and John List (a Missourah Synod Lutheran, like I was) who killed his family and originally claimed that he did so because he wanted them to send them to heaven. You should see the problem. One particular reply to this problem by a Catholic apologist interested me, as the argument itself, as, before it went into a spiel about how great it is to have a personal God who is willing to mete out infinite punishment for finite sin, the reply boiled down to simply (to quote Woody Harrelson in Natural Born Killers) "Who's innocent? Are You innocent?" OF course, the Catholic view of hell has evolved since the days of Fr. Arnall. At the Catholic High school I went to, it was stated that it was believed that Hell was just a place which was ultimately just grim and joyless, and I actually once decided to ask one teacher, "so, basically, it's just like life on Earth?" And, shockingly enough, he actually noted that C.S. Lewis states as such in one of his books. The implication seemed to be that life sucked so much that God couldn't think of any worse punishment than living through it over again. That ultimately life is a negative experience can be understood in a Buddhist context, as they don't have any all-powerful and all-good beings who should be able to stop it completely. However, in a religion which prides itself on having an all-powerful and all-good being in charge, the existence of evil and certainly Hell would be inexcusable. Then one thing led to another, particularly in the department of critical thinking, and I left the church.

Band Name of the Day: Nothing this week.

Film Idea of the Day: Hrafnkel's saga. If I can somehow adapt this to be redone in modern-day America, I think it could be very well done. There's a link to this saga below in several languages (English is, fortunately one of them). A Freya-worshipping warrior ends up losing everything, including his faith, but ends up as a better person, especially after rebuilding his power base and achieving revenge.

Film Review of the Day: 27 Dresses. Once again, I break from reviewing a film I watched recently which I liked to reviewing one which I hate. When watching the trailers before the DVD for Juno, I saw one for this movie, and I thought, by the awkward dialogue, that this could possibly be a cheesy movie that I could laugh at solely for being a crappy movie (like Teen Witch or Princess Diaries or Bratz). However, I recently decided to watch it, and I found I could not even really find it good in a cheesy sense. From dialogue like that would make even Ed Wood cringe, like "Love is patient, love is kind, love is slowly going out of your mind", or "I feel like I just found out my favorite love song was written about a sandwich," to unrealistic plot developments like the protagonist humiliating her sister and making up in less than five minutes' (screen) time, a Gone With the Wind themed wedding, and getting married with 27 bridesmaids, I could only find one line which could pass for funny in this "comedy" (it is quoted below). Please avoid this movie at all costs, especially if you're sober.

Quote of the Day: "She Likes Caulk."
______________James Marsden.

Link of the Day: I have recently gotten interested in Norse Sagas. I'm not quite sure how.

Issue 141

News: Review: This Godless Communism: Chapter 2.
When going through Chick Dissection, I went over the comments and discovered this comic about Communism (and the history thereof) from an old comic that was called This Godless Communism (as opposed to some other Godless Communism?). I'm not too into the history of the USSR that dominates Chapters 3-9, or the red scare-era propaganda dominating 1 and 10. However, I feel confident about my ability to dissect Chapter 2, focusing on the life of Marx. I must note that the writer doesn't get off to a good start with the sections on his early life. For instance, while he did end up changing colleges early on in his college career, he was not expelled from the first college, and probably not for the "strange ideas" that his father mentions. Later, the comic seems to put the blame on his thought (specifically religion) on his teacher G.W.F. Hegel. Specifically, the author blames Hegel for Marx's method on his abandonment of religion. Of course, his father himself was from a family rabbi who had converted from Judaism to Lutheranism, but never really took either religion seriously, leaning more towards deism. Also, Hegel, from what I could gleam from his writings, didn't seem too much like a materialist to me, and even had a large following among what we would now call "christian fundamentalists" in Germany, and the comic also fails to mention that his infatuation with Hegelianism ended fairly quickly. Surprisingly enough, after his spiritual "unawakening," he goes into a rant which is the closest thing that happens in the entire story to an explanation of what communism even is, and mentions that nobody has ever explained how eventually, under Marxist communism, the government would eventually cease to exist. Of course, perhaps it could be that when everybody is eventually happy under Marxism, there will be no need for a government because there would eventually be nothing for a government to do. Of course, it soon reverts to only talking about religious implications of Communism when they would have been talking about other aspects in real life. Finally, they talk about how he spent his final years working on "das kapital" failing to mention that he had been working on it on and off since he got the advance in 1844, and, from what I had heard, from my philosophy teacher, it was roughly 1/20th of what it was orignially planned to be by the time of his death. Well,even for a few-page-long religious tract in comic book form, it is still sort of accurate, even if it removes a lot of the things from his life which would eventually have it make any sort of sense in any sort of form, but for 1960, what do you expect?

Band Name of the Day: Well, even in the several weeks it has been since I posted, the best I can do is "THe Young Hegelians." This definitely seems like the sort of name that only works if you're a bunch of university philosophy professors uniting for a one-off gig for the university.

Film Idea of the Day: None.

Film Review of the Day: The Departed. It is quite easily one of the best movies about a non-Italian Mafia (although to be fair, it is probably one of the only movies about a non-Italian mafia I have ever seen). Even there, it is still a good movie, certainly quite deserving of all the honors and awards it had thrust upon it.

Quote of the Day: "We know God exists. We have too many proofs." (ed: and virtually all of them have been shown to be flawed in some way.)
_______________ Anonymous non-Hegelian in the comic.

Link of the Day: This Godless Communism. Read it for yourself.

Issue 139

News/Review: Expelled: There's a reason it is.
In the last entry, I mentioned that I had wanted to see Expelled, mainly to write a column here to see how much bull it was, but my usual channels failed me. Finally, I looked on YouTube, and it was there, and so, I finally saw it. I was right, and even though I finally watched it, it was very much what I had expected it to be: a movie about Ben Stein griping about how Intelligent Design is "persecuted." What I didn't expect was that he would actually fail to try and give any real argument about why it should be considered at all more valid. The closest thing he comes to creating an argument was when he claims that the odds of the first life forming are somewhere in the area of 1 in 10^72, (of course, the "scientist" quoted does only say the word trillion six times). However, even if the odds of this happening were so small, this does not necessarily mean that this is impossible. I will show you exactly how this argument is flawed. Imagine a raffle at a high school with 1000 students in the raffle, and one student wins. Another student protests that the odds of the winner winning are 1000:1, and that the winner must have cheated, failing to account for the fact that the odds of anybody else winning are about the same. The only other argument that Stein attempts to make, that evolutionary ideas were a major influence on Hitler, is very flawed, because even if science hadn't long since repudiated eugenical ideas such as Hitler's, even if there was any evidence that Hitler was more influenced by evolution than his interpretation of religion, as much as it perverted the message of (or at least the message we attribute to) Jesus, even if not for the fact that a lot of ideologies actually used and abused Darwinian ideas, even if there weren't genocides long before Darwin's theories came onto the scene (many of which were doubtlessly inspired by religion), even if not for the fact that even if he was influenced, the idea that he would have to do anything would show a gross misinterpretation of Darwin on his part, and even if there weren't more "even ifs" I could write, this argument doesn't hold water because the argument holds no real value on its scientific truth. In the end, it should be noted that THERE IS A GOOD REASON PEOPLE DON'T TEACH INTELLIGENT DESIGN IN SCHOOLS, and it's for the same exact reason we don't teach psychologists to study the irregularities in people's skulls, or that very small solutions that often for all intents and purposes add up to little more than overpriced water is good pharmacology, it's because it's been thoroughly debunked. There's my review.

Band Name of the Day: The Casino of Life. From the Expelled movie, where they decide to put the odds at the first life forming.

Film Idea: Not an idea per se, but a list of some of the parallels that brought me to see how similar the movies Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Roman Holiday really were.
*Surprisingly, they are both 118 minutes long. This is, of course, a coincidence.
*In both films, the male lead is a journalist who is covering a story with an associate (in RH, a photographer, and in FLILV, his attourney.)
*These reporters end up traveling the city with their companions.
*Both of these reporters end up failing to publish the stories they were sent to write.
*Both of them end up spending much of the time pursuing their desires, in Peck's case, Audrey Hepburn, and in Thompson's case, "Every drug known to Civilized Man since 1544 AD."

Quote of the Day: "What Gods Don't You Believe in?"
_______________Ben Stein, Expelled. I hope that he was kidding when he asked this to Richard Dawkins, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't.

Link of the Day: Two entries ago, I forgot to link to this comic.

Tract Review: Papa. After watching the Pope's funeral, a man talks with his neighbor, who informs him about how Catholicism is somehow a continuation of the ancient Roman religion.

Issue 135

News: Ray Comfort has no idea about atheism.
I first discovered Ray Comfort through his claim that the Banana is evidence of God's design, failing to notice that it was more likely "designed" by New Guineans over generations. Later, I stumbled upon a blog he uses to try to convert atheists. Here is a list of 10 things he thinks atheists do, with annotations by me (in italics).

1. Whenever you are presented with credible evidence for God's existence, call it a "straw man argument," or "circular reasoning." This, of course, depends on the proposition that there really is credible evidence for his existence. If something is quoted from somewhere, label it "quote mining." It's only Quote mining if you take a small quote out of context, like claiming that Darwin thought that the evolution of the eye seemed improbable without noting that he went into a three-page spiel about how it could be done.

2. When a Christian says that creation proves that there is a Creator, dismiss such common sense by saying "That's just the old watchmaker argument." The Design argument only implies a powerful creator, not with all of the qualities we assign God. Indeed, why can natural processes count as a Creator?

3. When you hear that you have everything to gain and nothing to lose by obeying the Gospel, say "That's just the old 'Pascal wager.'" Pascal's Wager is quite possibly the most debunkable argument for God's existence. For instance, suppose you get another God than YHVH in the afterlife and he's just as jealous?

4. You can also deal with the "whoever looks on a woman to lust for her, has committed adultery with her already in his heart," by saying that there is no evidence that Jesus existed. The existence of Jesus and questions of the morality of his teachings are two totally different issues.

5. Believe that the Bible is full of mistakes, and actually says things like the world is flat. Do not read it for yourself. That is a big mistake. Many Atheists have read the Bible cover to cover, and some (such as Julia Sweeney) have lost their faith as a direct result of reading it.

6. Say that you were once a genuine Christian, and that you found it to be false. Additionally, if a Christian points out that this is impossible (simply due to the very definition of Christianity as one who knows the Lord), just reply "That's the 'no true Scotsman fallacy.'" According to What dictionary does the definition of Christian mean "somebody who knows the lord?"

7. Believe that nothing is 100% certain, except the theory of Darwinian evolution. Indeed, few things are 100% certain to most educated people (except math). A lot are 99.99999999999% certain, and Evolution is most likely one of them.

8. Deal with the threat of eternal punishment by saying that you don't believe in the existence of Hell. The mere denial of something does not make it false. It is the absurdity of the fact that a just God would give infinite punishment for finite sin. Even the Holocaust was supposed to end.

9. Blame Christianity for the atrocities of the Roman Catholic church. Christianity is a mixed bag, with people whose aims range from world peace to perpetual war claiming inspiration from the Bible. The sheer malleability of the Word seems to be another thing that takes away from the crebility of Christianity.

10. Finally, keep in fellowship with other like-minded atheists who believe as you believe, and encourage each other in your beliefs. This tends to be true. Of course, a lot of atheists have theist friends who are willing to agree to disagree. Indeed, I tend to be willing to do that as long as they don't push Jesus on people like they're dealing Jesus heroin to unsuspecting youth, or if they can admit that they can't prove it, like Kierkegaard.

Band Name of the Day: The J-Men. From an interesting mash-up of many old movies that I've seen recently, J-Men Forever (perhaps a review will come in a later issue).

Film Idea of the Day: Don Giovanni. I've come up with the idea, from Ken Branaugh's doing a similar film, to create a modernized and translated version of Mozart 's Don Giovanni, whose dark comedy tends to fit in better with my style than The Magic Flute's Enlightenment Optimism. Translation is certainly a must, and Perhaps I could turn the recitatives into standard dialogue, among other things, most likely including a modernization of the plot, maybe with Leporello reading the catalogue of his master's conquests not from a scroll, but from a PDA.

Film Review of the Day: S.F.W. I recently discovered this film in a DVD bargain bin, and found that it was certainly quite interesting and not at all deserving of the obscurity it's gotten. It's about how Steven Dorff managed to get kidnapped by terrorists and held in a quick stop, only to shoot his way out, and become a celebrity, only to get shot himself by an honors student screaming "Everything Matters!" who would eventually usurp his stardom. Perhaps the aforementioned climax was what turned off a lot of critics upon its release, but as a satire of the media, it certainly works.

Quote of the Day: "I heard, I heard what you were saying. You, you know nothing of my work. How you ever got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing."
____________________Marshall McLuhan, Annie Hall.

Link of the Day: Some funny and concise articles and stories explaining atheism. Anything with a paper icon next to is highly recommended by me.

Issue 133

News: Actually, you can pray in schools.
I recently saw a video on Youtube where William Murray, son of Madalyn Murray O'Hair, debated with a member of American Atheists, about school prayer. Of course, after the opposing side stated that school might not be the right time and place for prayer, Murray decided to use this remark and use his use of "situational ethics" to compare his opponent to Hitler. I also found a website which shows a lot of statistics which purport to show how much America is going to Hell in a handbasket for abandoning school prayer (even though coorelation is not necessarily causation, as I'm sure that statistics of more stridently secular countries would show). Fundamentalist bull-headedness aside, I must note that, believe it or not, PRAYER IS LEGAL IN SCHOOLS! It's just not legal for the faculty to lead the prayers (because they are here to teach children what is and not just what many people in America believe to be true), and is highly frowned upon for the students who pray to be too disruptive to what everybody's actually here for (i.e. babbling like an imbecile and handling snakes, or on the less stereotypical level, praying by singing hymns loudly for long periods of time like Nusrat.) Anyway, I fail to find any legitimate grievance in the Fundamentalists' argument. As Dennis Miller said in one of his rants, if a parent feels that prayer is an important character-builder, then they should pray with their kids themselves and stop fobbing off their responsibilities as a parent on the public school system. And even looking at it from a religious perspective, you need look no further than the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus advises against praying in public at all (Mt. 6:5-6). So, from any perspective, the arguments for school prayer have no real validity whatsoever.

Band Name of the Day: None.

Film Idea of the Day: A man attacks a woman while singing a Rossini aria and her husband and young son are forced to watch, and afterwards, the son grows into an opera singer and takes a master class with another singer. When she coerces him into singing that same aria, he proceeds to act out the same actions that happened to his mother on his teacher. Violence begets Violence. I'm currently writing this as a monodrama.

Review of the Day: Scarface. I had seen the 1932 version before, but yesterday was the first time I saw the 1983 version. I must say that it is now coming close to becoming one of my favorite movies, and there is no doubt that at least some of it is due to the similarities between this and my favorite movie, A Clockwork Orange, and one need only listen to the similarities between the synthesized Purcell music that opens ACO and "Tony's Theme" from this movie to prove my point. Perhaps after a few more viewings, it may make my top spot go from a tie between ACO and Taxi Driver, to a three-way between them.

Quote of the Day: "All I have in this world is my balls and my word, and I don't break 'em for no one."
__________Tony Montana

Link of the Day: The semi-official site of a TV show I've been a big fan of for more or less my entire life.

Note: Please don't be surprised if I go for a long period of time without updating my blog. Well, at least I seem to be updating more frequently than Strong Bad seems to have been.