"that's what happens when you're nnot nnice"

The title of this post is the contents of a text message sent to Christian at the end of ANTM last week from Bianca.

I'm not hating Tyra as much this week, because

1) Danielle is super awsome and though she did get a little bit of work done on her teeth, she still got that gap. The girl can't take a bad picture and they don't all have to look exactly the same.

2) Nnenna got kicked off. Uh, yeah, she is pretty, but she is about as dynamic as cardboard and sooooo damn boring. Now I think Furonda has some questionable looks, but the girl pulls out some good photos and is fun to watch. Watching Nnenna is just annoying. The boyfriend is an idiot and she is too big a chicken shit to dump the idiot and too snotty for anyone to care about. She is that dull, kind of smart but not THAT smart over-achiever from school who was nice enough to like and not want bad things to happen to but who you prayed would be skipped over and ignored everytime she tried out for anything. The one that would cry if she got a B on a paper. Good riddance. Now if they will just drop jade on her big fat head.

And once again, Joanie and Danielle come across as the most likable people ever and Danielle apparently totured Jade with dental equipment while she was getting her teeth whitened and Joanie is going to call her out next week. It is the showdown that I have been waiting for the whole season. Time for the preacher's daughter to make the stuck up bitch cry.

(note: I thought I had posted this a few days ago but apparently saved it as a draft, so if it is a little bit dated, whatev'.)

hangin' with my bro

My brother is back in town visiting for a little while. So after work last night, I met up with him and our friend Shep to go see some band which he wanted to see. Shep has found himself scouting bands for potetial musical performances at an up and coming performance space in Bushwick, so he wanted to check out Stars Like Fleas at the Glass House Gallery.

Ok, this fellow has led me to some of the best live performances I've ever seen (introduced me to Gogol Bordello) and some of the worst, and music in galleries is always a questionable proposition. Art bands are easily one of the most annoying things on the planet and the most annoying of annoying art bands' natural habitat is Williamsburg so I agreed to go along for the ride, though not so much in hope that the music would be good but that hanging out with my bro, Shep, and the chick who was with him would likely be fun despite the potential for the music to be horrendous.

Well, the gallery wasn't your typical white box gallery. Down at the end of S 1st by the river and in a sort of basement junkyard, the Glass House was at least interesting. Junk acumulated and paint splattered and stuck to the walls and ceilings and piled in columns. Over crowded fire-trap, but something different and they had beer, so what the hey?

Well, Stars Like Fleas would have to wait, because we managed to get there super early and three noise bands were playing first. It is difficult to think of anything worse that noise bands. My friend Lauren once famously pissed off another friend of ours by declaring at a party that there is nothing worse than christian rock. He protested, and she countered with the challenge, "Fine, name one thing. One thing worse than christian rock." I suggested that praise music is worse, but they kind of go hand in hand (sappy repetitious lyrics, bad instrumentation, over-wrought faux emotion, bad hair), so I'll leave the umbrella designation of christian rock as the absolute zero of musical suckage though certainly some christian rock (old Amy Grant anyone?)is enjoyable in a way that noise bands just aren't. Noise bands suck.

Sitting there watching the guy 'drum' who was wearing a way, way too ripped shirt that just looked retarded and over-done, I tried to redeem this experience in my mind and will myself to somehow believe that this was an act of rebellion. My brain scoffed at such attempts and pointed out that if this was anything this was the opposite of punk. In the greater scheme of acts of rebellion, plunking on a drum while your friend turns knobs and creates feed back, really loudly and with feeling, man, is about as fucking punk as trying to go through the express line at the grocery store with 13 items. Way to fight the system, dude! You are loud! In a basement filled with junk! On a school night!

If they had been 5th graders on drugs and their parents had been tied in the corner, struggling and yelling obscenities, then maybe it would have been hard. As it was, trustpuppies in grunge costumes with serious looks on their faces showing how loud and outside of the box they can be is significantly less hardcore than the aformentioned Amy Grant. Hell, they're less hardcore than stephen curtis chapman.

Anyway, we had fortunately missed the first band, got stuck watching the second one and decided to go drink at a bar through the third and come back for the main act. Charlie had snuck out early to smoke and God laughed and punished him, so we walked out to find him smoking a cigarette talking to a Hasidic teenager who had stopped to bum a cigarette and tell him how much more kosher meat costs and Hasidic clothes cost and how much money orthodox jews make and how he only listens to rap music (I am making none of this up). His favorite singer is Eminem and he also likes Little Kim, but he doesn't think 50 cent is talented.

After he tried to bum a cigarette off Shep and I asked him if he had been they guy that threw the firebomb into the cop car during the recent Hasidic riots in Brooklyn, we took off to the Southside Lounge to down a couple of beers and shots and discuss color parties past and plans for the upcoming green boogie down. Four words: Ralph Nader Love Pit.

Refueled and ready for more indoor-underground junkyard jams, we wandered back over just in time to squeeze in and catch Stars Like Fleas. Theirs was nothing like the preceeding 'band' that had driven us to drink. Completely unplugged, all manner of instrumentation including a giant harp, and beautiful vocals. I'd go see them again, though perhaps not if I had to sit though more noise bands to do it. I'll have to check out their cd and see how they come across recorded. I do have to admit to warranting a stern, reproachful look from Shep when I found it nearly impossible to suppress laughter when their arch seriousness met with my goofy mood and surrounded by all this junk and the pretentious, suddenly hushed crowd, they began by playing the rim of a metal bowl. Nothing against the lovely hums that can be nudged out of bowl and glass rims by those so inclined to do so, but with how the night had gone and after all the dumb noise we had been subjected to so far and the absolute sincerety with which it was done, I found it singularly hysterical and nearly spit beer out my nose trying to supress my laughter.

All in all a good night, which was rounded out by the requisite Thursday night stop off at Fun to chat with the lovely and talented Marky and knock a few more beers back and laugh as my "even more beautiful brother" (as Stephin Merritt refers to him) got hit on by friends of mine who I hadn't had a chance yet to introduce him to. Anyway, I have a weekend to start and more trouble to seek out, so I'll end all this for now.

pure gold

From an interview in Media Life Magazine with the president of a company which did a study on gay folks' media usage trends: "If we look at the TV shows, No. 1 is "Will & Grace" for males, then "Queer as Folk," "Queer Eye," "Desperate Housewives," "Six Feet Under," "The Sopranos," and this shocks me, it's "The Simpsons" and "Golden Girls" in syndication."

Shocked that gay men watch a whole lot of "The Simpsons" and "Golden Girls"? Does he know any gay people? Really though I guess this is actually where we may differ from the general populace most: everyone with cable occasionally watches "The Simpsons" and "Golden Girls" in syndication. There is a reason that they are on twelve times a day.

I am more suprised that "Will & Grace" and "Queer Eye" made the cut. Maybe this is because I am in New York and I might want to watch them more if I weren't, but I've never heard anyone say they have to get home in time to see either show and while I think most of my friends would be willing to sit through "Will & Grace" if we were watching tv and it was on, there would probably be a mutiny and physical removal of the remote from the hand that tried to make us watch "Queer Eye". Not that we have anything against the show, but really couldn't care less about it and "The Simpsons" or "Golden Girls" is on the other channel.

Homo say what?

Checking out Good As You led me to this lovely and astute article: smudailycampus.com - Gays, the new Jews?!?

As most things are which are written by college sophmores, it is an original, well-reasoned, and thoughtful piece. Yeah, that's hard to even type without giggling. It comes across like most other sophmore writing: smarmy and kind of dumb. And transparent.

Am I the only person that reads this and immediately thinks this guy is gay? Seriously, if he had just written "I'm a faggot" across his forehead he couldn't come across as any gayer. Why do I say such a thing? Closet 'mos bring up gay issues as a chance to get close to something which they otherwise feel unable to connect with. I grew up way down South and know what contortions one goes through in their mind to try and deal with what they have been raised and conditioned to believe is a detrimental deviance and have seen more than a few closet cases publically lash out at more open gay people as a way of distancing themselves from suspicion of their own sexual feelings.

Yes, I know there are plain ole straight assholes who write idiot things about gay people without harboring secret desires, but the chances of this being one of those cases is pretty slim. If dude isn't a closet homo, he is certainly writing like one. Not all of us forget the language of the closet.

The thing that kills me most about this post, is the somewhat naked attempt at sort of working out his own demons in such a public forum. All the stuff about gay sex and stuff being ok if people keep it to themselves and not liking flamboyant queens? Read this:

"Another piece of advice on seducing your audience into believing something: remember who it is. Try to relate to us, and be sly about it. Talk about things we care about and believe in. Use logical, coherent examples. Get creative in the way you approach the straight community and cater to us. Hell, you guys are selling your pitch to us. Be good salesmen. The flamboyant, in-your-face approach makes us gag, not your sexual preferences."

Uh...this is one of those retarded guys that uses the term "straight-acting" in all seriousness and thinks being butch makes him better and less 'gay' than the nelly queens. I'll give anyone a dollar who can get me a screen shot from or the url of his manhunt account. Actually, scratch that, he lives down south and is closeted so it is more likely that he is on gay.com, but either way...

Really dude, work out your issues any which a way you want to, but gay bashing is a lousy way to reach out to other gay folks. You aren't the first and won't be the last, but don't think you are fooling anyone. Dig deep and I'll bet you aren't even fooling yourself.

tyra banks is a total bitch.

If you talk to me much at all these days you are probably aware that the only tv I watch consistantly these days is America's Next Top Model. C- hosts a reality tv night for all us usual suspects and we order pizza, drink a little beer and watch tyra act super important and faux motherly towards her little fashion experiments. The guys I watch with are irreverent and fun and we have a blast and it really is one of the things I look most forward too every week.

But if it weren't for the other guys and the fun that watching is with all of them, I would be done with the show. I don't have a whole lot of spare time for tv, so what it takes for me to drop a show like an ugly baby is very little. I am a fairly petulant consumer and it is little things which send me over the edge and obliterate my product loyalty and me being a creature of habit, my product loyalty is pretty serious. I'll use the same damn brand over and over and over again til I have some stupid reason to change. Perhaps my most famous boycott was the David Letterman show, which I grew up watching, loved, and often watched with my dad. But once a long time ago, Dave bumped Jaques Cousteau from the line up so the goo goo dolls could jump in a giant bowl of eggnog. Jaques Cousteau is my hero and one of the most important people of the last century. The goo goo dolls such anyway and the egg nog gag was stupid beyond belief. Then Jaques Cousteau died the next year and I didn't watch Dave for about five years. At all. Ever. Would leave the room if it came on. We have since made up and Dave is great and the whole thing was my silly bitterness which doesn't in the least hurt him or the show, but as the consumer, my only power over the situation is my choice. I was angry, annoyed, and pissed and the only thing I could do about it was tune out, so I did.

What the hell does this have to do with tyra and why am I calling her a bitch and refusing to capitalize her name? I'm not quitting the show yet, because I like the act of watching it with the guys, but I am pissed off and tyra is a self-important bitch.

So if you follow the show at all, you know that Joanie had a big ole snaggle tooth and Danielle has a serious gap in between her two front teeth. These are also the two girls that have consistantly taken the best pictures and worked the best with the direction they are given. Nenna may be pretty, but some of her pictures are totally buck. In the clowning shoot, she looks like someone put a Little Richard mask on the Grace Jones statue at Madame Tussaud's and tipped it over. Anyway, back to Joanie and Danielle. Joanie's teeth needed some work seriously and tyra et al sent the girls to the dentist to get their grills shined and told the dentist to fix up Joanie and Danielle's teeth. So nice, what a nice gesture and way even the playing field for Joanie. Danielle is a different story. Her teeth aren't crooked; she just has a gap and we all happened to like her gap. We all screamed at the tv when it looked like they were going to close her gap, but Danielle, being the total rockstar she is, told the dentist she liked the gap and considered it sort of trade mark and was happy with how she looked. We cheered, but tyra had darker things in store for us.

Long story short, Danielle was super through out the whole show (just like she has been the whole season) and the judges are idiots. Jade was kept and Brooke was sent home, an inexplicable choice but only minorly annoying next to what kind of pompous asses the judges were about Danielle's gap. It would have been one thing if ms. banks wanted to ask Danielle why she didn't get her teeth 'fixed' and tell her that the gap might cost her jobs and prevent her from being a cover girl. Maybe it would. We've all seen Lauren Hutton's big ole gap on a hundred magazine's and commercials and Madonna seems to be doing just fine, but maybe tyra was sincerely concerned for Danielle entering this cut throat business and wanted to offer motherly advice. She sure as hell didn't act like it. She was a stuck up, imperious asshole who lashed out at one of her minions for daring to question her omniscience. Since she hadn't taken tyra's advice, ty and miss jay got all catty and tried to belittle her and attack HER. Not in a caring way, just as a bitch slap to put the girl back in her place. Yeah, I know this is a competition and they are the judges and all, and as jade told us early on, this is not America's Top Best Friend, but you can't spend all the time tyra does trying to sell herself as this caring mentor and teacher/guide for these girls and then act like trash towards the nicest, most confident one who is taking the best pictures when she doesn't act all servile and simpering and grateful that you want to take away something that makes her stand out. At least on Project Runway, Heidi Klum doesn't make a big show of being this super leader, sage guide, bff and then act all bitch. She starts with the cold bitch act and let's moments of niceness shine in as the show goes on, but tyra's fake-ass sympathy and caring comes across as insanely annoying and fake and the control-freak, ego-trip bitch comes shining through.

and makes me want to change the channel.

It was easier to watch last season because we could follow it up with Martha Stewart's Apprentice. Watching ANTM, you often find yourself wanting to throw things at the tv when they say who they are kicking off. It just often doesn't make sense and you get the feeling that they are not really judging the girls on their potential as models until the very end and it is more about ratings and the misguided belief that if you keep on the person that everyone hates, we will keep watching just to see them kicked off (let's call that the Wendy Pepper Effect). It really just makes me want to change the channel, and absent the social element of watching these shows, I would have dropped ANTM a long time ago because of this frustration and wouldn't be too faithful to Project Runway, but when Martha was judging, the decisions always made sense. You could really tell that she seemed to be following closely what was going on and not just what happened in the board room. Every decision she made was exactly the one that made sense and she didn't really mince words about saying why and didn't hesitate to drop two people if they both were lame. It really felt like you were watching what she told you she was showing you and people succeeded or failed on the criteria that she set forth from the beginning. tyra changes that shit up every week and says things to bolster her inexplicable decisions. Her faux sisterly nice comes across as passive aggressive bitchiness, where Martha's not always soft bluntness came across as reassuring.

I'm not giving up on ANTM yet, but tyra can kiss my ass and stop being a bitch or this may be my last season.

Can we just be done with this crap already?

I'm saying a little prayer that Jade finally gets kicked off of America's Next Top Model tonight. It is about damn time. Also here's to hoping Joanie's teeth turn out ok and Nenna dumps her bitch-ass chump of a boyfriend.

soon...

I've been deliquent about posting lately.

and I am not going to start again now, but I will soon. I've been wanting to get around to post more movie reviews (starting with _the dying gaul_), America's Next Top Model analyses, and more pissed off political rants.

I will try this spring to occasionally not be a grumpy curmudgeon when I write, but we'll just see how that goes.

Say it ain't so!!!

Damn dude. It is one of those places that you kind of feel is trapped in time and won't go anywhere so you put off going there for a while and keep meaning to and don't and then it gets turned into a Ramada hotel.

Fuck Ramada.

But I'll check out the new place and see what it is like, though I am skeptical about any venue having the same worn-in, eastern European ex-pat feel that the Bulgarian Bar had.

Quit coddling the little whiners you idiots or they never stop whining!!!

so I followed the link to the original article that was the subject of my previous post:

TheStar.com - How to spot a baby conservative

Uh, great and all until you get to the inevitable spot where the author tries to write in a salve to the titty-baby conservative set:

"For conservatives whose feelings are still hurt, there is a more flattering way for them to look at the results. Even if they really did tend to be insecure complainers as kids, they might simply have recognized that the world is a scary, unfair place.

"Their grown-up conclusion that the safest thing is to stick to tradition could well be the right one. As for their "rigidity," maybe that's just moral certainty.

"The grown-up liberal men, on the other hand, with their introspection and recognition of complexity in the world, could be seen as self-indulgent and ineffectual."

The damn whiners are always getting the attention and learn this from all the lazy parents who just feed their whiney-ness from and early age and the teachers who work to not rock the boat with the bratty kids and the petulant parents. You could tell when a teacher had a fucking backbone and told the whining kids to shut up and deal or suffer the consequences. Same thing with parents.

Can we get a few reporters and politicians with spines who don't always try to triangulate to not offend these emotional retards who act like assholes and make the rest of our lives miserable? If a politician is saying stupid things, call them on it. If a person is saying ridiculous things, call them on it, and don't put in a cushion to protect their delicate ego. If you are dealing with your petulant roommate, maybe then you should soft-step and not be too heavy handed with any criticism, but politicians should be adult enough to take strong criticism or they should be run straight the hell out of public life. Conservative, liberal, democrat, republican, whatever. Whiney-ass-titty-babies should not be the folks steering the national dialogue.

Duh!

This is beyond not suprising:

Suburban Guerrilla: You Mean They Really Are Whiny Ass Titty Babies?

Little shits grow up to be big assholes (perhaps that is an unfortunate choice of explitives for this particular description... or maybe it is apt).

I should have rented _Mysterious Skin_

I've been fighting a little bit of a cold, and out with friends last night, everyone kept telling me I sounded like Kathleen Turner, so I decided to lay low today and just rent a couple of movies and lay around the house. I almost got _Mysterious Skin_ or _Bad Education_, but I wasn't sure if anyone else would be home and I kind of wanted to watch something fun and silly. I am a sucker for special effects and goofy sci-fi stuff and don't mind the occasional kid movie, so when I saw Zathura sitting on the shelf, i decided to give it a try.

Kids play old game, wind up in outer space, have to win the game to save themselves and get back to their family. Evil, human-eating, alien lizard-people, deranged robot. Awesome!

Uh, until you watch the movie. The special effects were great. The aesthetics, with the retro feel of the game/astronaut/spaceships/robot, were perfect. The acting was decent too and the story flowed reasonably well. So what was the trouble? From the first scene, you find yourself hard-pressed to not want every character you encounter to die. The children in the movie are horrible little shits who deserve to be eaten by alien lizard-people. Really, truly retched little beasts of humans whose incesant whining and selfishness makes you want to see them sent to boot camp. The dad seems to be well-meaning, but you definitely get the feeling from it that his doting attempts at being the perfect parent has created these little monsters who resent one another and try at every turn to monopolize his time and force a declaration that each is the favorite child and that the other is less important. It was like watching a retelling of cinderella with only the evil stepmom and stepsisters, a familial group of selfish trolls who would make sense as part of a story were they being contrasted against kindly, likable others.

Here, however, they aren't the disagreeable foils to good, hardworking, appreciative characters; they are the center of the story. That these characters were well-recieved (as is evident in the rottentomatoes.com review of Zathura) says frightening things about us. I really have a hard time believing anyone could watch that and not want to snatch those kids up and give them an ear full. And take the dad and sign him up for a parenting class too. Where is Super-Nanny when you need her? Really, donate every last one of their under appreciated toys to charity, sign them up for some team sports and after school activities (boyscouts, gymnastics, piano lessons, whatever) and give them a chore list so they could earn an allowance to buy for themselves every future toy or gadget they wants.

The most troubling part isn't just that the charaters were awful and retched and children that you would be horrified to ever be around, but that they were believable and familiar. Those spoiled little retards are popping up everywhere these days. If you saw that movie and thought the kids were likable and that that is 'just the way kids are' and you are considering raising children, please do us all a favor and consider NOT raising kids. And if you watched it and thought the kids in the movie reminded you of your children, let me be the first to tell you that your kids are not going to find a campy mechanical space game that will uproot your home, send it flying through space, and teach them valuable life lessons and make yours a functional family. You need to get advice on raising kids from the cranky old people in your neighborhood and quit being a push-over with the little horrors you have created.

Anyway, if you are in the movie store and considering renting _Zathura_, don't. Get something with charaters you could care more about and who have more functional family relationships, like maybe any John Waters film.

wah wah wah...

"It is obvious now that the private Clay is very different from the manufactured packaged public Clay that was marketed to us."

Yup, he is the only star whose private persona deviates from their public persona. If we can't trust our pop stars, who can we trust?

But really, ladies, if you want him, you can keep him.

small man syndrome

I really don't understand why bill o'reilly is on the air. TV, radio, whatever, why do they broadcast him out in public? I know, people watch him and some folks love him, but in order to continue to believe in the best in people, I have to assume that most people watching are responding to the same instinct that makes it hard to turn away from a train wreck. Yes, you could argue that a tendency to stare at train wrecks isn't exactly the best in people, but it is better than the alternative and I do think it is better if people stare at such tragedies and bear witness to them than to pretend they didn't happen. Though perhaps the trainwreck analogy is innappropriate: if he weren't on the air, the tragedy that is his person wouldn't involve so many victims. It would just a be a domestic violence situation and the people close to him could deal with it and maybe call the authorities as needed (as it apparently has been needed in his office in the past). It wouldn't so much be everyone's business that he is an angry creep with an embarrassing and agressive defensiveness who lashes out at people and can't take criticism, but he is on the air.

Really, no point left in arguing with the man. He is just kind of pathetic. Does he have family or friends who can tell him how retarded he looks? We have all met that short guy with the over-compensating Napoleon complex who acts so tough and picks on people and get so wounded and aggressive if criticised. bill acts like that, but I believe he is supposed to be quite a tall man.

I guess there is more than one way to be short.

Maybe that is why he uses a loofah in creative ways.

In highschool, there had been a guy who lived on our hall who was likable enough when he was in a good mood, but who was super bitchy most of the time. Just a crank who would lash out and gripe and get super critical and defensive with everyone else who lived around him. My roommate was talking to his girlfriend about this constant annoyance, baffled at why he would stay wound so tight and she just laughed. One of her best friends had dated him, and she informed us that the girls seemed to think that his temper tantrums were linked to physical... shortcomings. Not bottom side of average, not kind of small, but bottom of the scale little. Less than three inches erect.

I'm not saying that bill o'reilly has a short penis. I have no idea and don't really care to. I just know that he acts like he does.

Gay Patriot � The Violent Anti-Christian Leftists In America and Abroad

I've left the gay republicans alone for a while, but every now and then I decide to go slumming through some of their posts and generally end up irritated and dumbfounded. When I need to be distracted from being irritated with idiots who I otherwise love (ie a roommate who wasn't returning phonecalls and an uncle who is borderline retarded and has taken an unseeming interest in my soul and how my gay ass will burn in hell for being a homo and a liberal), I can always count on folks like gaypatriot to have an endless supply of dreck for me to focus my fury on instead.

today, he did not disappoint. In this post, he plays the always fun fake victim game:

"Is there a connection between the 2004 political speech crimes against Republicans, the rise of anti-Semitism in France and Europe, the riots by radical and moderate Muslims alike over cartoons, the Secular Left’s “War on Christmas”, and the recent spate of anti-Christian violent acts in the United States that I note below?"

As evidence, he links to articles about the churches being burnt in AL and man who opened fire in a church in Detroit. I'll just bypass the irony of the fact that it is the redneck redstate republican contingency who are most famous for church burnings and the idiocy necessary to jump to the conclusion that if they are motivated by racism, then they must have been done by lefties who hate Jesus. And I'll ignore the fact that a church being the backdrop of a domestic conflict does not make the violence an act against Christians in general. Let's get on to his conclusion based on this evidence:

"I submit there is. Despite their hysterical rantings about the massive reduction in civil rights under BushAshcroftGonzales, the facts are that the violent acts against free speech and freedom of religion in America are directed against and not by American conservatives and people of faith (mainly Christians and Jews)."

Um, uh no, the facts aren't that. It is hysterical for folks to get upset about the executive branch breaking the law, doing it secretly, and trying to cover it up when exposed despite the fact that they could have gotten warrents under the current law, even after the fact if they had just tried? But taking to unrelated regional stories of conflict involving churches as the locations of the crimes and spinning them into evidence of oppression and violence against WASPs is just good common sense?

A big fat 'whatev dude' is about all you can say. Though, actually I have more thoughts about this "wah, wah, wah, my pussy hurts" crap that retards on the right are always going on about so I'll pick this up again later.

proud citizen of bush's nation of retards

Really, why is this man allowed to talk in public? does he have loved ones? If you care about this person, don't let him speak to groups or people. I hope this is parody, but strangely don't think it is:

"Goldberg: 'Some say that Native Americans were great environmentalists don't know history. Some think that Indians were like a Disney movie, with Indians talking to bunnies. The great plains used to be a giant forest. The Indians burnt it to the ground to hunt buffalo."

The Great Plains used to be a giant forest that the Indians burnt down to hunt buffalo? Have you ever seen a more damning indictment of the American educational system? Dude, I don't even think anyone can argue with you and try and set you straight; we all just need to slowly back away and leave you alone in your weird world.

This is what you voted for...

A kid walks into a gaybar and attacks people with a hatchet and a gun.

This is what the gay marriage amendment push was about. This is what the republican national convention was about. This is what "love won out" is about.

You scream from the rafters that gay people are destroying the country and communities and should matter less under the law, and soon enough folks are getting whacked in the head with a hatchet. True, usually the violence is less odd, less reported, but all the same...

"God is the lover of the zoo."

Over New Year's while talking to me, my mother was relating that my cousin who is a Baptist minister had met Bobby Welch, the president of the southern baptist convention. Mom went on to relate that my uncle had coached him, I believe in college (in what sport, I don't know) and that he always been really nice and friendly to my mom and cousin (who were about 4 at the time) and they had their first childhood crushes on him. He always talked to them when he came by the house and (I think) was a lifeguard and would sometimes take the to the pool. Kind of a sweet story, and he sounds like he is and was a really nice guy.

This is part of what makes so much of the politics of the last couple of years so painful: I know that individually the people pushing the worst policies are also really nice people individually. Not all of them are the awful people you would expect when you look just at what they support. The freepers are the vocal few, trapped alone in their miserable lives whining on the internet, but most of the folks who voted for torturing people, war for revenge and profit, cutting social programs for the poor, harming the environment, demonizing gay people, and adjusting the tax code to benifit the the wealthiest among us are suprisingly decent people when you actually meet them one on one (and make no mistake that any vote for bush this last go round can only be viewed as a vote for such; four years into it you can no longer feign ignorance). I have no doubt that were I to meet Mr. Welch, we would probably get along so long as we didn't discuss politics or religion.

But I'm probably not going to meet him individually, despite some sort of family connections. I am going to meet his effects on the direction of the baptist church. The extreme politicization of the southern baptist convention is how I have to judge him and those he represents.

Anyway, I haven't really dug too deeply into learning more about him specifically and don't care too right now. He was nice to my mom as a child and I'll stick with that for the moment (though I am not departing with my belief that the modern southern baptist convention represents the worst of modern America).

I finally googled his name though and got this link:

Go Bobby Welch!

It is an amazingly obnoxious (and long) piece of writing to read, but the final paragraph begins with this line which begged to be shared:

"God is the lover of the zoo."

If you want context, go for it, the link is there, but it really ruins it. I do recommend the whole last paragraph, but just the line itself borders so beautifully on the absurd and is likable all by itself. Without that awful article of condescending vapid ra-ra-go-team fight-fight-fight-win-win-win crap, you can give it its own context, find a way to let it make sense. Associated with the greater horror that it is part of, you can't like it so much.

Like Bobby Welch.

Sort of... but no.

I like Larry Johnson's writing in general. He offers great insight usually, but I have to take serious issue with how he simplifies why it was stupid for Condi to not have seen the Hamas victory coming. Yes, it was stupid and probably no one outside of the administration didn't at least know they were going to do well in that election. In a post at NO QUARTER he references an excerpt of his previous writing on the subject including this statement:

"We are unwilling to come to grips with a very simple truth -- the majority of people in the Middle East prefer an Islamic rather than a secular government. Economic development does not ensure a steady march towards a secular, diverse society. Heavens (irony intended) just look at us. Despite our economic prowess and alleged sophistication, religious fundamentalists in our own country have succeeded in bringing great pressure to bear on our government and our media."

No, a majority of the people in the Middle East do not prefer an Islamic government to a secular diverse government. A majority of people in the Middle East aren't seeing their needs met and the Islamic surge is fed off of a resentment of the West's role in that lack. Hamas won because it is concerned with the day to day needs of the population of Palestine. This is not to say that Hamas goes about acheiving this the right way or that Hamas gaining more power bodes well for the region, but if you want to take the teeth out of Hamas and resistance groups there are only two ways too it and neither has a damn thing to do with religion. The religion part is just a cultural rallying point, reinforcing a sense of belonging and moral imperitive to a cause. To slow down terrorist groups you have to either kill them all ('them' being the members of not just the organization itself, but the entire group, ethnic/regional/political/whatever that they are revolting in the name of), or you have to incorporate the population back into the community. In Israel, the Palestinians have been marginalized and divided and had much of their means of economic stability destroyed. Until those issues are handled, the resistance will only get increasingly heated.

This isn't because Palestinians want an Islamic government. It is because they see Hamas as fighting against and enemy who is standing in the way of their security. Give a Middle Eastern nation security and stability for a few years and see if the populace keeps voting in an Islamic majority.

And the same with this country. Yes, economic development does insure a march towards a more secular diverse society, but only in so much as all members of society are incorporated and involved in that society and that the economic development doesn't allow one group to accumulate most of the profit. No, Christians in this country are by no means the ones with the economic short end of the stick, but they sell their message as a reaction to being victimized.

They are not selling Jesus's message, but rather using the Bible as a cultural touch stone for rallying against the forces which they peceive as threatening them. Notice that the religious right attracts the most racist, bigoted folks you will ever meet. Not only the overt ones, but the message of protecting the world from this secular onslaught is also not so subtly as they would like to believe communicating a wish for a time when being white was more overtly advantageous. We aren't stupid; we know what is meant when they talk about the good old days and it has nothing to do with morality. It is about the world being organized in a way that white people and particularly a certain segment of the white population was on top and assured of staying on top.

The religious right makes a great noise about the country turning from its values, but this is what they mean. It is just a thinly veiled attempt at resurrecting social controls that keep people 'in their place'.

I am not so cynical to believe that all religious sentiment amongst people is so calculated and callous. Certainly there are true believers and those whose moral compass is aligned by their faith, be it Christian, Muslim, or other and certainly churches and mosques play central roles in many communities and that the idea of getting a feeling on belonging and purpose isn't only a negative thing or necessarily in opposition to a functional, diverse, accepting culture. But for these things to remain positive, people's basic needs must be met and they must feel secure and safe or their religious sentiment can easily be harnessed into knee-jerk political opposition, which in more extreme cases can lead to terrorism.

Overheard commentary about Middle Eastern political commentary

If you are in my bedroom adding water to your aquarium and you overhear someone angrily pacing and talking on the phone utter the words "mother-fucking twat monkeys," you may be fairly certain that Mason has just finished reading the New York Times' editorial commentary about Middle Eastern political goings on and is now discussing it with some poor soul. Today it was their asinine and patronizing comments about Hamas's recent political success in Palestine and what it says about the prospects for democracy in the Middle East.

Shorter James Glanz:Should we really have allowed the brown people to vote?

john tierney still a dumbass

as I have pointed out before,john tierney is a dumbass, which of course makes him an appropriate replacement for william safire. And he is back decrying the horrors of the drug war, how it has torn minority communities apart with harsh sentencing of nonviolent offenders and...no, he's upset because a white doctor got busted for trading oxycotin prescriptions for sex. What noble cause he has taken up, an obvious miscarriage of justice.

Bustardblog has already smacked the dork for it, so I'll just keep my trap shut.