Some people come home from college and get to sleep in on break. No, for lunch we went to Denny’s. Then we went to see my grandma at the hospital and off to Hooters for Thanksgiving Diner. Today I got to shovel shit uphills, both ways, in the driving snow with sleet, freezing rain, and hail. There was lightning in the skies, it was thirty below and you couldn’t see more than a foot in front of you. Your options were to be inside with the shit or outside where you couldn’t see shit.
And only some of that is made up, and it wasn’t the shoveling shit part.
So apparently I’m important enough now for people to send me free shit in the mail. The Clarion Fund sent me Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West. Now I’m not against getting free stuff in the mail, especially something like a documentary that has some use. So if you’d like to send me something in the mail that doesn’t involve my penis being larger and like me to talk about it, feel free to contact me. I likes me some documentaries. However, I have a feeling that this one may be some nice right-wing propaganda. Just looking at the packaging makes me a bit queasy about it. The little blurb points out that the documentary pulls a Godwin’s Law and there’s the standard Edmund Burke quote about doing nothing. Though, the real kicker is that the critic reviews quote Micheal Medved, conservative tool, and some guy from the Hudson Institute.
However, I’ll be fair to the movie and watch it before I slap it with the shitty propaganda label. But the fact that it’s being distributed by the Clarion Fund, founded by members of a pro-Israel group and that they posted a pro-McCain article before the election, doesn’t help the case. Quite frankly, I’m expecting a nice right-wing piece attempted to incite Americans to a more militant attitude towards a non-Christian culture.
However, I will make another post where I’ll blog my thoughts through the documentary and my after thoughts. Should be interesting.
So it’s Christmas time again and the war on Christmas has begun once again. This shit needs to stop. The War on Christmas is to Christian Fundamentalists as Christmas is to capitalists. The whole notion that there is any war going on is absurd -especially by the secular left. I’ll break this down.
The secular left particularly doesn’t care all that much about Christmas. It isn’t that big of a deal and we get some nice days off. We also get presents. The only real issue is the separation of church and state. It’s not like it’s a horrible idea, keeping irrationality out of law making and not supporting it with public funds. Besides, beyond a few trees and a nativity scene or two the Christians hardly make a fuss.
On the other hand, the Christian groups sure do seem to care about whether or not a capitalist enterprise says “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays.” Granted, they should care about the capitalist takeover of Christmas. They should just be encouraging them to say “Happy Holidays” and leave Christmas out of it. Nothing says birth of your lord and savior like a marketing campaign designed to get you to buy as much shit as possible. And now that the Christmas season starts before Halloween I’m pretty sure “holidays” is the correct term. There’s something like ten easily nameable holidays between the major religions and state holidays. Plus, trust me, if corporate thought they could make more money if they added a Kwanzaa section to their store they’d do it. That’s what these campaigns of theirs are all about, making as much money as they possibly can. They couldn’t give one shit less about Jesus or what Christmas is supposed to mean to Christians. They want you to spend your money at their store. To that end, whether they say “happy holiday,” “merry Christmas,” or “Get your shit and get out” doesn’t affect where I buy material goods at. I go to the store that has the material item I wish to obtain for the cheapest price possible.
Quite frankly, even I as a member of the secular left am disturbed by the capitalist infusion of Christmas. The marketing has gotten ridiculous and sickening. The saying needs to be changed. “Peace, Goodwill to Men, and limited time half off sale.” If they truly wanted to fight the War on Christmas they’d stop demanding nativity scenes be put up with secular symbols in front of City Hall and start putting it in front of the church. They’d complain about the secularization of one of their most important holidays. They’d stop demanding the Christ be put into marketing campaigns and start demanding it be put into your holiday plans.
Of course, winning this war is actually bad for them. The war is one of their biggest publicity campaigns. It’s one of the few times a year people actually pay attention to them and put their representatives on the news. It’s also a nice fundraiser where they get to sell other crazy whack-jobs who think what some underpaid retail clerk says is important. Just take a gander at the Liberty Counsel’s page. It’s kind of, here’s the stores that hate Christmas now buy our shit. Perhaps we should report their attack on the values of Christmas to the Catholic League’s Christmas Watch E-Mail hotline. In fact, you should probably send ever minor infraction you can find to them. You know, help them out and let them know when some overworked, pissed off, underpaid retail clerk doesn’t smile at you.
“If you just landed here from Mars, and you looked at that map, you would swear the Republicans won this thing in a landslide, if you didn’t know where the population centers are.”
Or take the ten seconds to ask somebody about the election process.
Indeed, the Martians would see lots of red, and if they were not a very advanced civilization, they might assume McCain had won.
So basically, if they were idiots.
Then again, if only Mars has cities they’d know that cities tend to be more crowded than other parts of a country. Limbaugh allowed that a lot of people live in big cities and that many of them are Democrats. “Liberals are the ones who organize, you know, communes and cliques and cities,” he said. “We’re not that way.”
So basically what we have here is that those Real Americans in Rural America don’t organize anything or contribute to industry. They’re a bunch of no-nothings clinging to the idea that we’re an agrarian society. I’m not exactly what Limbaugh’s point is. Apparently he’s trying to justify how McCain wins an election if the votes are based on percentage of land owned. That only violates just about every part of the Constitution in terms of suffrage. Then the last bit I’m not really sure of either. Apparently cities are bad, even though they contain a lot of what has made America the super-power we are (or were) today.
“As a Christian, a Catholic priest, I stand in opposition to any and all hateful speech used by anyone, especially when they do so in the name of Jesus. I do not believe that one can claim to be a disciple of Jesus and at the same time deride, mock, insult, or threaten violence against another person. Mr. Donohue clearly makes hateful remarks as well as violent comments towards Mr. Cavallaro and as such he insults God, his fellow Catholics and humanity for that point… One cannot proclaim the love of Jesus while cursing one’s neighbor…To continually use hateful, crude, violent language is indicative of what dwells within one’s heart. Mr. Donohue speaks only for himself and not the Catholic church.”
—Father Jeff Gatlain (John Amato, “A Catholic priest stands tall against Bill Donohue,” Crooks and Liars.com, April 5, 2007).
Apparently the Mormons have started posthumously baptizing Jews killed into the Holocaust into Mormons. So those in the gay community got a really great idea of doing the same with Mormons. So to all the closeted Mormon homosexuals, just give up now. You’re going to be gay when you die, so it’s a no win situation for you.
In a not so surprising move, the Russians are sending more warships to Africa to fight the ever increasing number of pirates gathering there. While the official story may be that they’re going to try to stop pirates from boarding ships and taken them hostage this is hardly the case. It is more evident that what the Russians really fear is that the increased number of pirates will actually bring the temperatures so low in the Somalia area that the waters in the gulf will start to freeze making all ship travel impossible.
As a note to the pirates, you’re about to get outclassed here. As much as I believe in your pirateness you may have offended His Noodliness. You haven’t been dressing in traditional pirate garb. This is an easy fix. You’ve got the money from the hostage ransom anyways. Next, and more importantly, better ships. Might I suggest the USS Constellation?
