Burn The Land And Boil The Sea

A might shiny write-up of the BDM:

I'd take it as a kindness if you could see your way to clicking on this here link now.

The Thursday Three

Three things on my mind today:

One.

Two.

Three.

Like the man said: Clickety-click, folks.

You want to take me where?

The ramblings of a lone madman:

Click here.

Conservative Christians: Still Kind of Stupid

Last year, conservative Christians flocked to the cineplex in throngs to watch The Passion of the Christ, making that film one of the highest grossers of the year. Despite the inevitable trouble that theater ushers had to deal with from watching these hordes of seemingly complacent people come stumbling out of the film weeping, wailing, wearing sack cloth, etc., the people watching the movie genuinely enjoyed it. Conservative activists and politicians, never ones to let an opportunity slip by in an election year (and they're all election years), praised the film for its message and tone and said that Hollywood should make more movies for the flyover states.

It's happening again this year, with March of the Penguins, the second-highest grossing documentary in history behind Fahrenheit 9/11 (come on, Christians, buy some more tickets and show that Michael Moore who's boss). Penguins is being lauded as revolutionary; such "film critics" (and I use that term so, so loosely) as Michael Medved have said that Penguins is "the motion picture this summer that most passionately affirms traditional norms like monogamy, sacrifice and child rearing." Medved adds, in regards to the audiences he believes have given the film its stellar boxoffice performance: "This is the first movie they've enjoyed since 'The Passion of the Christ.' This is 'The 'Passion of the Penguins.' "

Caught off-guard by the conservative frenzy building around a nature documentary, the film's American distributors have said that the movie is just a story about penguins, and no deeper meaning is intended or should be inferred. In a statement probably too practical to register with the religious community, Laura Kim, a vp of Warner Independent, said: "You know what? They're just birds."

Good luck, Laura. Try making your case to Ben Hunt, the Ohio minister who has organized field trips to see the film and who encourages parishioners to extrapolate moments from the film and apply them to their religious lives. Not one to let himself be upstaged by Medved's fairly clumsy "Passion" double-reference, Hunt has stated: "Some of the circumstances they experienced seemed to parallel those of Christians." Hunt's statement seems a little biased in that it only takes into account the lifestyles of Christians living at the South Pole who annually hike through 70 miles of snow and ice to copulate and reproduce in the middle of a giant glacier, and it's agreed that they're a generally unstable group. Hunt has even provided an online workshop form for people to take to the film and write down things God tells them as he speaks to them. For Hunt, religious zealotry makes it permissible to commit what I consider to be a greater sin: talking during the movie. Additionally, Hunt advises people who view the film to not discuss it with each other afterward, but to instead to go with the group to an "off-site location" to discuss what each person was "shown" as they watched the movie. A movie about penguins.

The joke, though, may be on the conservatives in the end. After raising their young for a few months, the adult birds in Penguins swim off into the sunset, and the narration tells us that they'll more than likely never see their young again. Is this the movie Medved wants people to use as a guide to child-rearing? Abandonment and complete severance of all ties with your kid when they turn 7?

It gets better, but not for the right-wingers. It turns out that, although penguins do often mate for life, male penguin couples have also been documented, placing a rock in their next instead of an egg. Last year, the Central Park Zoo replaced one gay couple's rock with an actual egg, which they raised as their own.

It remains to be seen whether the conservative interpretations of March of the Penguins will address the issue of dude-on-dude penguin action, although given their track record, conservatives could wind up stoning the gay penguins or just ignoring them all together.

Just minutes after Satan issued a press release saying he was feeling a little chilly, President Bush issued an apology and took full responsibility for the government's inept handling and slow response to the catastrophe in Ira-- sorry, the catastrophe in the Gulf States following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. "To the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility. I want to know what went right and what went wrong," Bush said the other day.

Stepping in for the president to fulfill the Republican party's requisite daily serving of double-speak and b.s., Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., spoke at the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee John Roberts by issuing a call for Americans to put away partisan politics. Coburn even got a little misty when he was talking, which people agreed didn't so much help his credibility as make him look a little bit like a tool. "When I ponder our country and its greatness, its weakness, its potential, my heart aches for less divisiveness, less polarization, less finger-pointing, less bitterness, less mindless partisanship," Coburn said.

Other Coburn chestnuts from past speaking appearances include:

"Lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they'll only let one girl go to the bathroom. Now think about it. Think about that issue. How is it that that's happened to us?"

And from the spring of 2004: "The gay community has infiltrated the very centers of power in every area across this country, and they wield extreme power. ... That agenda is the greatest threat to our freedom that we face today. Why do you think we see the rationalization for abortion and multiple sexual partners? That's a gay agenda." [Emphasis mine, crazy-ass statement his.]

When reached for comment, leaders of the gay community said their current agenda only has items along the lines of picking up the dry cleaning, maybe some chicken for dinner, but to check back later. Acting as the greatest threat to Americans' freedom, however, doesn't look likely to make the list. Upon hearing that apparently the gay community was now the No. 1 threat to Americans' safety, both Osama bin Laden and Kim Jong Il decided to call it quits.

WHAT IS DOWN THAT HATCH?

find out
i must find out
i must

"Contemplate what the floods of New Orleans have washed up into our own American living rooms: a gasping President Bush who cannot explain how, four years and tens of billions of dollars after 9/11, his Homeland Security apparatus couldn’t manage its first real challenge; a top federal-disaster official whose previous post was director of an elite horse-breeding association and who has been revealed to have no skills other than acute political sycophancy; an American infrastructure hollowed out and impotent from decades of bipartisan erosion and underfunding; several hundred thousand previously invisible, mostly black, very poor people of the sort we have become accustomed to not thinking about very much; and to top it off, a presidential Mother Bush who has done the best Marie Antoinette impression since the sacking of Versailles (saying of the homeless refugees in the Astrodome that they “were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them”)."

The rest is here.

Possible But Unlikely Series Additions And Follow-Ups To Bobby Flay's Boy Meets Grill And Boy Gets Grill

Boy Plays It Cool and Waits Like a Week and a Half to Call Grill

Boy Takes Grill to Olive Garden

Boy Gets Grill Several Times

Boy Stops Calling Grill

Boy Runs Into Grill in the Mall, at Pier 1, and They Have What Must Be an Awkward Conversation

Grill Asks Boy What the Hell

Boy Tells Grill an Awesome Lie

Boy Gets Grill One More Time

Boy and Grill Stop Pretending and Give Up

Buy a t-shirt. Only $22. Good cause.

Pat Robertson: Prayer Assassin*

John Roberts, nominee for associate justice to the U.S. Supreme Court, is now being considered for the role of chief justice following news of the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who died Saturday at age 80 after a long battle with cancer. Roberts was originally nominated to the court when Justice Sandra Day O'Connor retired in July.

The opening on the court, and Roberts' subsequent nomination, were cause for celebration for right-wing televangelist and possible coke fiend Pat Robertson, whose rants against everything from liberals to common sense often land the preacher in hot water with the American media (recent examples include Pat's exhortation of political assassination on the airwaves of his program, The 700 Club).

But given Robertson's obvious lack of caring when it comes to murdering those with whom he disagrees, the question must be asked: Did Pat have something to do with Rehnquist's death? The chief justice was hardly in good shape, but Robertson's eagerness to capitalize on Supreme Court openings raises certain suspicions.

In 2003, Robertson asked viewers to take a break from going to Wal-Mart or sexually assaulting each other to join him in a 21-day "prayer offensive" -- because prayer is all about attacking people -- three Supreme Court justices with whom Robertson had grown displeased. In addition to this, Robertson said it might be a good idea to "shake things up" by tossing a "small nuke" into the State Department.

The nomination of Roberts led Robertson to announce on The 700 Club that God had answered his prayer and provided and opening on the court, and now viewers should continue to pray that another opening be made available soon. Was Robertson targeting Rehnquist with his prayer offensives, hoping that his vitriolic, misguided attempts to persuade the Almighty to take out an old man with cancer might allow the country to turn away from the moral decay toward which we have so eagerly run and begin the long, painful trek back toward ethical rectitude?

My guess is, probably so. After all, after the United States was attacked on Sept 11, 2001, Robertson stated that the events happened because have been "consumed by the pursuit of ... health, wealth, material pleasures and sexuality." He added that "this is God's power and he sent this thing to warn us. ... We needed a shock."

I don't know what conclusions to draw from this, if any. But I know that since I disagree with Pat Robertson, I hope he doesn't find out my name, or worse, pray for me. I've got a long life to live.

[*All quotes in this column are, sadly, true.]

Here you go: the latest.

I know, it is a small story, and I’m sure it has more to do with chance than genes. But the older I get, the more I realize that, as we return to films that moved us once, so we see different films. It must be the poetry or the neediness in burning imaginations. So I miss the age of dissolves, for I still believe that in the merger and shift of electrons, there is magic.

The rest is here.

Women I Have Known In One Way Or Another, As Represented By Albums I Currently Own Or Have Owned At One Point

Rainy Day Music, The Jayhawks
Engaging from note one, it's an experience that reminds you of roots you didn't know you had. Builds and builds to an epic storytelling scope that redefines your expectations. But despite its new-classic status, the last track is just an acoustic reprise of the first one, and familiarity breeds contempt. Ultimately, the repetition signals the beginning of the end.

Before These Crowded Streets, Dave Matthews Band
Not just a step forward, but a full-on sonic expansion from previous outings. Darker, sadder, more complex and more rewarding with each successive listen. Unfortunately, it's inextricably linked to being 17, and those kind of mistakes are big ones.

Safe Away, Denison Witmer
Cut my heart out and feed it to me, why don't you. Unrepentant tease.

I'm Good Now, Bob Schneider
An earnest roots-rock outing, with touches from the sentimental to the sublime. A great album, even if you did get introduced to it by your friend with better (read: hipper) taste, and as much as you come to love the album, and you do, you can't shake the image of your friend every time you play it. Soon enough, this starts to sour the experience of listening to the CD, and before you know it, you look at it in your CD album and just keep turning pages. Maybe next time, you say, but you know it's a lie.

I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning, Bright Eyes
This is maybe the best album you've ever heard, and you thank God for making you smart enough to buy it. It's honest, and open, and quick, and intelligent, and the lyrics make sense and never seem to feel like they're forcing the poetry or anything, they're just plain good. You start to love the album, and listening to it makes you feel connected to something larger than yourself. Unfortunately, being only an album, it can only play the same thing over and over again, and you start to realize how weird it is to measure personal growth by listening to something that never changes. You part ways with the album, promising to listen to it again soon, maybe grab some sushi next Friday, but really, who are we kidding.