Uggg... the things she comes up with...

So, I got one of those ridiculous email forwards from my mother this morning, about how people should speak English or GTFO of our country.  Also, only Jesus loves you, and you're wrong for not being a good Christian.  Here's the email, in it's entirety.  Apologies in advance for the distasteful pictures and oversized fonts, but I wanted to share the complete package with you folks.

Now this is customer service!




GOOD MORNING, WELCOME TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, a Christian nation, land of the free and home of the brave.

How may I help you?


Press '1' for English.
Press '2' to disconnect until you learn to speak English




And remember only two defining forces have ever offered to die for you, Jesus Christ

And the American Soldier.




One died for your soul,




The other for your freedom.




If you agree. Keep it going

2012 IS COMING

A Nation of Sheep Breeds a Government of Wolves!

I'M 100% for PASSING THIS ON!!!

Let’s Take a stand!!!

Borders: Closed...

Language: English only...

Culture: Constitution and the Bill of Rights!!!

Drug Free: Make a drug screen mandatory for anyone on welfare and/or food stamps!

NO freebies to Non-Citizens!

We the People are coming

Only 86% will send this on.

“Should be a 100%”. What will you do?

Now... being the liberal atheist intellectual that I am, I took offense to this on many, many levels.  I've written a response to my mother, and if this came from *ANYONE* else, I wouldn't have hesitated to blast them off the internet for forwarding me this piece of shit.  However, because it's my mother, I've chosen my words carefully and I've toned down the harshness of my response.  

Actually, there is no official language defined in the United States constitution, and this nation was founded on the belief that everyone should be free to worship who and what they want, without fear or persecution and without the government forcing a religion on the people.  As I recall, that was why the first pilgrims left England to begin with.  They did not want the government telling them what religion they had to practice.  I would also like to dispute the statement about how Jesus and our Soldiers are the only people who died for their people... almost every religion has martyr figures, and every nation has armies who fight for them.  We are not special in that regard.

The idea that a nation of sheep breeds a government of wolves is ridiculous.  It breeds a government of shepherds.  People who can't or wont take care of themselves need people to care for them.  So, we have our 'entitlement' programs, i.e. the social safety net.  Government sponsored healthcare is an extension of that.  It boggles my mind that the GOP have convinced the American people that having free health care is a bad thing.  When a flock of sheep has a sick sheep, does the shepherd sit back and wait for the sheep to take care of itself?  No, he goes and finds a vet.  Our government is just trying to do the same.  Let me continue this analogy and see where I can take it...  Shepherds provide food, protection, medical care, and land to their herds.  In return, they take the wool of those sheep, which they then sell to make money, which they use to provide those services to their flock, and so on.  The shepherd makes a profit and grows his wealth, and the sheep live happy contented lives.  The shepherd in this analogy is our government, his wealth is the economy, and the sheep are us, just so we are clear.  So, what would you call someone that leaves the sheep to fend for themselves when they are sick or old, or who strips away the protections that keeps the *real* wolves at bay?  What would you call a politician who is trying to strip those kinds of protections away from the American public?  Protections like the EPA, federal regulations that prohibit big oil companies from drilling unsafely for oil in the middle of fishing grounds, and the rules of Wall-street that keep our money safe and keep the credit card companies from charging 30% interest on their cards? Anyway, I getting off on a tangent here... back to the point...

Oh, before I go on, I would like to point out how utterly stupid it is to make the statement 'a nation of sheep breeds a government of wolves' in the same email where a picture of Jesus Christ Holding a Sheep is used to represent his compassion for all his people...  Whoever wrote this email should really put more thought into the imagery they want to evoke before hitting that Send button...  just saying.

I'm trying not to get to political or religious with my rant, so let me continue on with the 'points' raised in the original email...

Borders:  Closed.  Really?  This nation was founded on immigration, and some of the smartest folks I've worked with have been internationals.  95% of my master's class  students are all from India.  The real shame is that when they are done with school, most of them will go back to India because they aren't allowed to stay here.  So, we educate them, we subsidize them, we care for them, then kick them out when they finally get to the point that they can contribute to American society.  Brilliant!  Of course, the original statement is not aimed at grad students, it's aimed at the unwashed masses coming up from Mexico as undocumented workers.  I ask you, honestly... who's more to blame there?  The Mexican workers who are trying to escape the drug wars on the Mexico borders, or the Americans who are hiring them, under the table, paying them less than minimum wage and not paying any taxes on that work?  Do you think these immigrants would keep coming up here if they couldn't get work?

Language:  English Only.  Already addressed this, but let me go on to say that people who can't think past our own borders are destined to live small, isolationist lives.  Just wait until China becomes the world's largest economy and tell me how you feel about this 1 language policy then...

Culture:  Constitution and Bill of Rights.  What the hell does this even mean?  Furthermore, how does trying to force religion on people jive with that "Freedom of Religion" thing protected in those 2 documents? 

Drug Free:  Make drug tests mandatory for welfare/food-stamps.  Totally agree with this one.  However, this will lead to hardships for the children of drug addicts who live on welfare and food stamps.  As such, if a person can't make enough money to support themselves and their family, but are still coming up positive on drug tests and so can't get welfare, I think the state should come in and rescue those children from that environment  On the other hand, I'm also in favor of legalizing marijuana.  Legalize it, tax the shit out of it, and you solve so many problems.  As long as it's still cheaper to buy it legal than it is to buy the illegal weed coming up from Mexico, it will be a huge revenue source for the country.

No Freebies to Non-Americans.  There are laws on the books now about this, most of which are being challenged in state and federal courts.  In fact, I just heard an article about this on NPR last night.  There are several religious organizations, right here in Alabama, who are fighting the new immigration law that the state passed last year.  This new law makes it a felony to aid or support any illegal immigrant.  So, if a church sees a starving Mexican family living under a bridge near their church, it is illegal for that church to give them food or shelter.  These churches are (rightly) fighting that in court, because they recognize how unchristianlike it is to deny help to people who need it.  Since this email brought him into it, I feel justified in asking the question... Would Jesus ask to see your papers before handing you a loaf of bread, or giving you shelter from the elements, or to cure their sicknesses?

I've long said that the immigration system here is broken, but not for the reasons the GOP espouse.  Instead of kicking the workers out, we should offer a quicker and easier path to legalization.  Bring these people into the system.  Get them to pay taxes.  Then go after the people who hire them *against the law* and bring them in line too.  I wrote a rather lengthy opinion piece on this last year, in fact... solving several of the immigration and welfare problems at the same time.  http://bit.ly/cAvpkO  Does that make me a socialist?  Maybe.  Maybe you should look up the definition of that word before you bandy it about like an insult.

As someone who takes her social security checks every month, and who hired undocumented workers regularly when we lived in California, I'm completely baffled how you can sign on to this kind of crap, mother. 

I'm afraid that my reply is still too harsh.  I also need a better conclusion to it.  Anyway, I'm just putting this out there so I can get a feel for how this reads, before I officially piss off my mother.  Again...

Crash

In the Wake of the Rally to Restore Sanity

Well, Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert pulled it off.  They held their Rally to Restore Sanity And/Or Fear on the Mall in Washington DC on October 30th, 2010.  I wasn’t able to attend it in person, but Comedy Central aired it (commercial free), live that morning.  I was entertained by the first 2.5 hours, and moved by the last 30 minutes of it.  That balance (in retrospect) seems about right, but watching the convention, I kept wanting Stewart to get to the damn point already.  Still, at the end of the day, I thought it was a great event and had a great message:  That the political extremists on both sides of the isle have hijacked this country, and we the sane need to take it back.  Our main stream media does little more but fuel the fire, just so they can stir the pot and make news out of it.  Our Media spends all it’s time focusing on the extreme, the sensational, and the most controversial stories they can find, often blowing them out of proportion, if not not lying about them altogether, and at the end of the day that is hurting America.

Here’s a prime example of this phenomenon, I just picked this up off of a friend’s Facebook Wall.  Apparently, the president is headed to India for a G20 conference.  An un-credited, anonymous source in INDIA has claimed that the president is going to be traveling with 3000 people, will rent out the entire Taj Mahal hotel, and will spend over $200 million dollars a day on the trip.  Factcheck.org did the math on this as part of their investigative work.  Apparently, it only costs $190 million dollars a day to run the war in Afghanistan, so the idea that a small state visit would exceed that cost is pretty far fetched.  The white house has categorically denied the claims, but they can’t put forth the real numbers for fear of letting the wrong people know important details about the president’s security detail while he’s overseas.  Most conventional wisdom points to an error in the translation, and that the Indian reporter meant 200 million rupees a day, which translates to about 5 million US Dollars a day.  That figure is much more in line with what a presidential trip should cost, based on figures from the Bush and Clinton administrations. 

However, Rush Limbaugh got a hold of this and blasted it all over the American radio.  Of course, all he focused on was the $200 million dollar a day figure.  Then Glen Beck added in that he would be taking 34 warships and an aircraft carrier (which, by the way, would be about 10% of the entire US Navy).  Neither man would list his source, or perform the most basic fact checking.  Instead, they are riling up the American people against the President’s flagrant waste of Tax Payer’s Dollars...  How is this helping America?  It’s not.  It’s helping Rush, and Beck, and their supporters.  When Fox News pulls the same stunts, they aren’t doing it to help the people, they are doing it to help their stock holders and their Republican Buddies.  When MSNBC (who is actively trying to emulate Fox News now, but for the Democrats instead) pull the same moves, it’s not to help the people but to help their ratings, their stock holders, and get a little more air time for the democrats.  I could rant about that move from MSNBC for awhile, but I wont… I’ll just chalk it up to fighting fire with fire, and move on.  At least MSNBC is fighting for the little guys, not the big and powerful… but that’s a rant for another time.  Even CNN, which does a reasonable job of being moderate and trying to represent both sides, resorts to sensationalist reporting to grab people’s attention.  Steven Colbert drew attention to this at the rally, when he awarded Anderson Cooper’s tight black tee-shirt one of his Fear awards.

In looking over all the major players in the Mainstream Media, a trend becomes painfully obvious, coming from all sides of the landscape.  The media has long since lost their ‘journalist integrity’…  they lost it the day that the networks decided that news shows needed to be profitable.  The day that the people in charge put profits over proper reporting, the media ceased being a reliable source of news and became no better than the politicians they are covering.  Think about it… Most people would agree that it’s wrong for a politician to take money from a lobbyist group and then legislate in favor of those lobbyists.  How is it any better for the media to take advertising money from the same corporations, and be expected to report fairly on news based around those corporations, especially when it involves corruption in Washington?  I lost the last of my illusions on that matter while watching the BP Oil Spill coverage on CNN.  Every night, Anderson Cooper would rail BP for their bullshit in the gulf, hitting them especially hard for the millions of dollars they spent on their PR campaign while refusing to pay the locals… but the very next day, those same BP commercials were being aired on CNN, DURING AC360.  I don’t fault Cooper for that, but if the network, CNN, is willing to take ad money from BP, how can we be expected to trust that they are going to give a fair report of BP’s actions?

The problem is worse that all that, though…  If ratings are king, and sensationalism gets ratings, how do you drum up your sensationalism?  Easy… you take a note from the grocery store tabloids and you lie through your teeth!  Either through active deception (i.e. saying something you know isn’t true), or regurgitating facts that no one on your staff has bothered to fact check, you can deceive your audience.  The India trip debacle has gotten so far out of hand that members of Congress are going on national news programs and calling the president out on this ‘wasteful spending’.  One senator was on AC360 last week to discuss how the Republicans are going to trim the budget in the House.  Instead of talking about that, she tried to change the topic from reducing Medicare costs to the India Trip, and Anderson had to lay the smack down on her for it.  Fox news is so good at lying on the air that they’ve gone to court over it.  The result of that lawsuit and similar suites like it is that Fox News can legally lie on the air, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

Of course, without the media, how are any of us going to know what the hell is going on?  And if the Media can say whatever the fuck they want and not be held accountable for it, they how can we believe what we hear?  It’s a never ending spiral of lies and blame and bullshit that does nothing but hurt this country and the people who live here.  It’s gotten to the point that I almost can’t bear to watch the news anymore, even on CNN.  I’m not alone, either… and I think it’s a big part of why Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert are the 2 most trusted sources of news on Television today.  As much as I like those 2 guys, this is not the way it should be!  What happened to the folks like Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, and Walter Cronkite?  What can we do to get our news media back to the way it was?

Well, I think the first solution is to pass legislation that forces News organizations to fact check stories they put out there, and clearly labels opinions and unproven ‘facts’ as such.  This goes for everyone, from Fox to CNN to MSNBC, even NPR:  If you want to call yourself a NEWS show, you have to be reporting honestly.  Just forcing the media to tell the truth about situations will go a long way towards clearing the air.  I’m not saying that news shows can’t or shouldn’t have opinions, or pundits, or commentators, or analysts… those folks are there to help explain what's going on and what it means to the rest of us.  Fine, I can live with that.  But what I can’t stomach are ‘News’ shows that spend hours analyzing, debating, and propagating stories (like the India trip) that are complete falsehoods.

The other solution to the problem is to remove the motivation for news shows to pander to their supporters.  National News Organizations that are privately funded are ultimately motivated by their sponsors and their revenu money.  I don’t believe that a news show can be truly objective in that situation.  I would like to see publicly funded news organizations, prohibited from receiving private capital and forced to fact check the stories they report on.  Everything else has to be labeled as opinion pieces, and prohibited from being called ‘News Organizations’.  I know that idea will never fly, but it’s the only way I can think of to remove the driving force of the Media to put their ratings over their integrity. 

The reason it would never fly is that a publicly funded newscast would wind up being boring.  Beyond the obvious lack of the outlandish stories that are the mainstream media’s bread and butter, these networks would have to work with a limited budget.  Fox wouldn’t be able to hire analysts like Karl Rove and Sarah Palin, or hire talk show hosts like Glen Beck.  MSNBC would have similar issue (although, given his crusader like mentality, I think Keith Olberman would keep working).  CNN wouldn’t be able to keep buying those nifty (and completely useless) technological toys, like their 3D holograms and Wall-O-Bricks charts.  News would go back to the way it was in the 60’s, with a couple of anchors behind a desk, reporting on the stories, with the occasional editorial or opinion piece off to the side and on the scene reports for big events.  Personally, I would love it.  We would learn more and there would be a lot less anger and hatred between the right and left in the country.  Unfortunately, most American’s don’t give a fuck about learning more, they want to be entertained, they want to fight, and they need someone to blame for things they dislike.  So, we’ve allowed our news channels to become a source of entertainment, and let ourselves get into the mess we’re in now.

Obviously, I’m going to have to fix this, when the world is mine…
--Crash

How Twilight ends, in my World…

So, a friend on facebook put out a link recently where Anne Rice gave a verbal Bitchslap to Stephanie Myers, over how terribad Twilight is. That prompted a conversation about what would happen if Lestat and Edward went toe to toe in a no holds bar death match. Here's my original reply:

As for weapons: Silver rapiers. Fight should last about 3 seconds, in favor of LeStat. Then Blade rolls up and has a proper swashbuckling duel with Lestat, before eventually getting tired of the fight and pulling out his guns. Blade smokes Lestat then bitch slaps Bella on principle. Hollywood makes it into a summer blockbuster and makes millions, and everybody wins!

However, I think I can do a little better…

Edward, tired of being called a pussy and made fun of for being the prettiest sparkling vampire, finally decided to do something about it. He tracked down the Vampire Lestat, and arranged a meeting. Edward knew that the only way he would ever get any respect in this world was for him to beat down one of the big guns in the underworld. So, Edward planed on challenging Lestat to a duel for the affections of all the little vampire goth girls across the country…

Lestat met with Edward just before Dawn, and sure enough, Edward challenged the Vampire Lestat to a duel. Lestat, more for wanting something to do than anything else, accepted this duel gladly. As the vampire being challenged, Lestat had the honor of choosing the weapons of the duel, and true to his foppish roots, he immediately went for his trusty rapier. He provided a similar weapon to Edward, laughing to himself as he watched Edward try to figure out which was the pointy end. The duel ended almost before it began, as Lestat easily disarmed Edward, before dis-ARM-ing him…

Watching from the shadows, he saw his chance. As Lestat was busy laughing at Edward's best impersonation of the Monty Python Black Knight, Blade dropped out of the shadows, sword drawn, and intercepted Lestat's next strike. Blade was a little surprised at how skilled with the sword Lestat was, but this didn't overly concern him. That just made it interesting. The duel raged on for almost half an hour, with Lestat having managed to score more than a couple of glancing hits on Blade. Finally, tired of the game, Blade said 'Fuck this!  Hey asshole! Welcome to the 21st century!', pulling out his fully automatic hand cannon and filling Lestat full of silver hollow points.

Selene walked in just in time to see Lestat's end. She was distraught over her recent breakup with that two-timing half-vampire/half-werewolf Corvin. It was all for the best though, he always wound up smelling like wet dog…  She had hoped to blow off a little steam with Lestat (that little man-whore was always good for a roll in the hay) so the scene she walked in on was a bit of a surprise. As Blade began to move towards her, sword drawn, Selene politely asked him what he was doing. 'Killing vampires, obviously!', replied Blade. 'Oh', said Selene… 'Don't let me get in your way, I was just passing through'. She casually walked through an errant sunbeam of early dawn light peeking in from the nearby window, to prove to Blade that she was no ordinary Vampire. 'Fancy a cup of coffee when you're done?', she asked him.

Bella got there just after Blade and Selene left. She saw the carnage in the room before finally laying eyes on Edward's armless torso writhing around on the ground in the shadows at the far side of the room. Grief stricken and consumed by sadness, she ran over to Edward and began crying like a little bitch. She began fumbling with his limbs, trying uselessly to reattach them to Edward, who had managed to slump himself against the wall. As Bella broke down into another round of sobbing, Edward suddenly got a panic stricken look on his (paler than normal) sparkling face… Bella turned around and saw Blade and Selene standing in the doorway, laughing at them!

"What, you fuckers didn't think we forgot about you, did you?" Both Blade and Selene raised their respective handguns and proceeded to fill Edward and Bella with so much lead you could use them for a pencil! Laughing, they turned and left. "You know, I know some folks in Hollywood… I bet we could make a mint with this.  I wonder if Michael Bay is available…", Selene said as they walked off into the sunlight… 

And that… is how Twilight should have ended.

Dragon*Con 2010

So, I finally made it back to Dragon*Con this year!  This is a good thing, as I really needed a vacation.  Andy and MSG had a room for me, which I shared with my old friend Marie and one of Andy and MSG’s friends named Alan.  I’ve met Alan before and all was cool, so I knew the room situation would be to my liking.  We were on the second floor of the International tower of the Hyatt, and that was an incredible room.  As usual, I brought way more stuff than we needed, on the off chance that it would prove useful.  As it turns out, we ate about 2/3 of the food I brought, used some portion of all of the supplies I brought (even pulls some meds out of my first aid kit), and we never found ourselves *needing* something for our visit.  Even if I caught some flack for over packing, I think the benefits of that outweighed the ribbing.

The trip there was kind of a bitch… my phone was being a real pain the whole way, and that had my GPS and navigation info on it, so finding the hotel was kind of a pain in the ass.  Parking was $75 for the weekend, and I had to park a block and a half away from the hotel, which made getting my gear too and from the room difficult.  Then there was the 4 hour wait in the muggy Atlanta evening before I got my con badge.  After that wait, in which a very nice fellow con-goer took pity on me and bought me a bottle of water to stave off heat exhaustion, I made it back to the hotel where Marie and Alan helped me unload the car.  We called it a night and got ready for the con to start bright and early on Friday!

I made it to more panels than I expected too, including one on Eureka and one on Warehouse 13.  MB Weston’s panel on Zombies vs. Unicorns was a hilarious group debate, and Cherie Priest’s reading and discussion about her Clockwork Century books was lots of fun.  I was a bit disappointed to see the DC Universe Online panel canceled, but I got a Beta Key for the game anyway, and have already given it away to my buddy Bobby, who’s dying to play it.  I didn’t make it to the Eureka/Warehouse 13 crossover panel, but between the other 2 panels and what I saw on DCTV, I got enough of a fix of both shows to be happy.  I really like the actors behind both shows, and it was really nice to see them out of character and talking as real people.  Also, Erica Cera (Jo Lupo, from Eureka) was crazy Hot in person.

The real fun of Dragon Con is rolling around the crowds, admiring the costumes and meeting up with old friends or making new ones.  I new the costume watching was off to a good start when the first group of people I saw was a Deadpool Universe group!

Thos of you who know me, know that I’m a huge Deadpool fan, so this sort of set the stage for me and the crowd over the weekend.  I took about 160 pictures total, and Andy, Marie, and Alan all took as many more themselves.  I need to get their collections…. Alan got a good shot of the entire Ironettes group, with Rhodie and Tony Stark.  I also somehow missed the bad ass War Machine costume rolling around the con.  However, of all the pictures I took at the con, this one is my favorite, showcasing some of the top badguys from the recent Batman Arkam Asylum game:

Predictably, I was blown away by that Harley Quinn costume.  I’ve always been a big fan of Harley, but the new outfit from the Arkam game was too hot for words, and the level of detail this chick went too on that costume really did it justice.  She even had the warden’s name badge on, with the character portrait from the video game.  Two Face and the Joker’s costumes both looked custom made, and the trio put on a fantastic show, just sharing drinks on the patio out behind the Hyatt.

While I was there, I managed to catch the Voltaire concert and his Q&A panel, both of which were a blast.  One of the big pieces of news at his Q&A panel was that he’s got 2 new CD’s out this year… one was a kid’s album (mostly a compellation), and the other was a Country CD.  The country CD took everyone in the room by surprise, and even got some Boo’s at the Q&A, to which Voltaire responded ‘THANK YOU!  That is exactly the right response, because I hate country music!’  He wrote this in the style of Johnny Cash, and it’s making fun of country music and country music ideals.  I’ve heard a few tracks off the CD, and love it.  I bought a copy of it and had Voltaire autograph it for Melissa, who will get it in the mail as soon as I’m done ripping the tracks ;)  I bought myself the live CD and his CD from last year, which I never got.  After his show, I even got V to pose for a ‘snarky’ picture, just for Melissa.

All in all, I had a blast!  I got to meet some interesting people, I got to hang out with old friends, and I got to really enjoy myself for the weekend.  It was totally worth it, and I'm already looking forward to next year.  For reference, here’s the cost of the vacation:

Food and Supplies bought before the Con:  $200
Room for the Weekend (split 3 ways):  $300  (or $900/3)
Parking for the Weekend:  $75
Money Spent at the Dealers Rooms:  $150
Misc food/gas/snacks/etc:  $75

Total Cost:  $800

Not bad for a 4 day vacation.  I’m going to shoot for the internationally tower in the Hyatt again, that was a stellar room, and if I can get it low again, it’s much easier than waiting on an elevator.  2nd floor was super awesome, even if we could hear the crowds out front of the hotel late at night.  Not a big deal, since we were all so exhausted at the end of the day that we slept through them anyway ;)

Crash

What’s on TV…

So, traditionally, I don’t watch a lot of TV, especially when I was still playing World of Warcraft like a crack fiend.  Now that I’ve broken free of that, and really don’t play games all that much anymore, I have to find new and creative ways of wasting time.  And by creative, I mean finding TV shows that don’t totally suck.  I’m very glad I have a really nice DVR system now… it makes watching the very limited and random selection of TV shows I can tolerate a hell of a lot easier.  So, what am I watching these days?

1.  The Daily Show, with Jon Stewart (and the Colbert Report, by proxy)

Really, kind of a no brainer there… I really think that the news I get from Stewart is as reliable as what I get from Anderson Cooper, and it’s a hell of a lot more balanced than anything I could hope to see on Fox.  Which I don’t watch.  Ever.  The stupid fuckers… (pssst!  I really dislike those guys!)  As for Colbert, I like his show, even though he’s being deliberately disingenuous.  He puts enough sarcasm in his delivery though, that it’s easy to get the point he’s trying to make.

2.  NCIS

What can I say… I’m madly in love with Abby, their happy-goth forensic scientist.  Also, the entire cast just works really well together.  I really got into the show when I started watching reruns on USA last year, and I went back and watched every episode.  It’s a good show!  They’ve got their gothed out science geek (double whammy for me, right?), their slightly chubby computer geek (who had a relationship with said gothed out science geek early on), their wise cracking detective, bad ass Israeli special forces assassin, and the silent but deadly (seriously, he was a sniper… and he’s taken out a couple people in the show that way) head agent.  The team interaction is great, the stories are well written, and the humor is right up my ally.  I can’t wait to get into the next season.

3.  Eureka

I just got into this show this season, after hearing that Wil Wheaton was guest staring in a zombie-themed episode.  That’s pretty much the trifecta of awesomeness right there… Mad Scientists, Zombies, and Wesley Crusher.  What did you expect me to do?  Anyway, watching that episode and the crossover episode with Claudia from Warehouse 13, I decided to watch the entire series.  I burned through the first three seasons in less than a week, and was thoroughly hooked.  The concept is awesome:  Take the idea of a ‘Spark’ from Girl Genius (i.e. a genius mad scientist who can invent all kinds of pseudo-science gadgets).  Now put about 3000 of those folks in a town in Oregon, and put them all to work for a company called Global Dynamics.  Hilarity ensues.  They’re doing something weird in season 4 though, involving time travel and ret-conning big chunks of the city history.  It doesn’t look like they plan on fixing the time stream, either.  Not sure how I feel about this, but I’ll keep watching it.

4.  Warehouse 13

In a similar vein to Eureka, this one is about a couple of secret service agents who got recruited to work for a secret government program that confiscates and quarantines ‘Artifacts’.  Where Eureka has a modern-science feel to it, this one most definitely has a steampunk aesthetic.  The ‘artifacts’ are devices or nick knacks held by famous people in history that have attained some sort of mysterious power or ability.  Things like Lewis Carrol’s mirror, that traps the soul of anyone who looks into the mirror for to long, and replaces that soul with Alice (who, by the way, is completely homicidally insane).  It’s a neat premise, and the cast has good chemistry with each other, so it’s fun to watch. 

5.  Haven

This one is brand new on SyFy.  It’s about a small town in Main, right on the coast, where a bunch of spooky shit starts happening.  My first thought…  C’thulu!  However, it looks like this was based on a book by Steven King about a missing persons cold case.  Not sure where the tie in to all the spooky shit comes in (i.e. the last episode had a girl who could draw someone’s picture, then anything that happened to the picture happened to the person.  Yes, someone had their face erased!).  I’m still holding out for a C’thulu tie in, but it may be a season or two before they get that far.

6.  Futurama

New season!  Need I say more?  NO!

 

So yeah… finally, TV worth watching, at least by my understandably abnormal standards.  Just in time for the new semester of school to start.  Nothing like having a distraction when I should be studying :P

Crash

What the hell is wrong with these assholes?

Ok… I know I’ve already written about the Prop 8 ruling… but lets face it, this is going to be in the news for awhile, and like anything else in the news, it’s going to get attention from both sides of the issue.  Today’s example in extreme asshattery comes from one David Frum, a republican author who wants conservatism to ‘win’ again (whatever the fuck that means), and is a regular columnist for CNN.  He’s written an editorial called ‘Bristol Palin and the Future of Marriage’.  In this article, Frum makes the case that the recent re-breakup between Bristol and Levi is more important than the ruling on Prop 8 last week, that re-legalized same sex marriages in California.  Frum went on to say things like ‘Same Sex marriage has lead people to believe that having children out of wedlock is normal’, and that children born outside of wedlock are less likely to finish school, more likely to experience poverty, and more likely to go to prison.  He attempts to make the case that allowing same sex marriages is tantamount to dooming children across the land to lives of uneducated poverty and prison. 

After reading this article, I would very much like to find David Frum, and kick him in the head.

So, let me start my rebuttal with the obvious glaring hole in Frum’s argument.  No where in his editorial, or in court last week, was anyone anywhere able to prove that same sex marriage leads to  less hetero-sexual marriages.  Furthermore, no one has been able to prove that same sex marriages promote promiscuity between unmarried couples.  (Hollywood does a FAAAAAR better job of doing that for us, but that’s another rant).  Since Frum’s entire argument relies on the notion that same sex marriages lead to more children out of wedlock, we could stop right here and be confident we’ve made our case.  However, I would like to point out the other, far more obvious fact about same sex couples (both in and out of marriage)… THEY DON’T HAVE CHILDREN ACCIDENTALLY!  I’ve never heard of a pair of lesbians having pre-martial sex and ‘accidentally’ getting knocked up!  It just doesn’t happen!  And if it did?  Guess what!  THEY AREN’T FUCKING LESBIANS!  We learned that shit in biology 101!  How the FUCK can you make the case that same sex marriages promote unwed pregnancies?  It’s fucking ridiculous, and Frum should be a ashamed of himself for committing such a stupid thought to words, much less publishing them in a national forum!

Of course, Frum’s own data works against him.  Allow me to present exhibit A:

Notice that Alaska is not among the handful of states that allow same sex marriages.  (It does allow marriage to first cousins though, which might explain Bristol’s mom… but I digress…)  However, Frum’s ‘data’ shows that nearly 30% of white women in 2007 who gave birth, did so out of wedlock.  Is he implying that 30% of the white people in the USA live in that 5% of the country, and that those 30% of white children born were born in areas that allow same sex marriage?  He is certainly implying that same sex marriage is the only factor that leads kids to think marriage isn’t necessary.  So, given her mother’s very public stance on the issues and her geographic location, the notion that Bristol’s exposure to same sex marriage made her think that it was cool to get knocked up at 16 before getting married, during her mother’s failed attempt at running for VP is really not holding much water.  I may be going out on a limb here, but I think it’s safe to say that some other factor lead her to believe it was cool to get knocked up early and unwed.  Hrmmm… what could it be, what could it be?  Could it be…. SATAN?!?!  Nope… it’s probably just some pussy in glitter:

But anyway, enough about Bristol.  I’m writing this post to rip on Frum here, for being an asshat and continuing to push the notion that same sex marriage is hurting our children.  Frum isn’t the only one doing this either.  Most analysts agree that the PR blitz in ‘08 about Prop 8 was largely successful because they played on a parents fear that allowing same sex marriages would somehow make their kids gay.  Now they are changing their tune slightly, and saying that it wont make them gay, it will just make them disrespect the institution or marriage, presumably because it’s not an exclusive thing anymore, and just old anyone can get married now!  It’s the same bullshit move with a fresh coat of paint tacked onto it.  It isn’t any more true now than it was in ‘08, and I’m sick and tired of seeing these assholes hide their intolerance and bigotry behind the shield of ‘SAVE THE CHILDREN!’.  This bullshit is doing more harm than good and it needs to stop!

If 2 people are lucky enough to find happiness together, let them be happy!  This doesn’t hurt anyone!  A Man and a Woman, a White and Black, and Jew and a Christian, who cares, and why are any of these couples fundamentally different or entitled to any different treatment?  Marriage is about love and happiness, plain and simple.  Denying marriage to same sex couples is teaching your kids that it’s ok to oppress people because they are different from you.  If you think that’s a good idea, than a few unwed teens having babies is the least of your problems!

I could rant on this for hours, but I have work to do…
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Oh, the conversations I have with my mother…

So, I went home for lunch today, to find my mother (who’s in town visiting this week+), watching some space exploration show on the Science Channel.  The talking head on the TV made a comment about how we could potentially have a man on Mars by the end of President Obama’s second term.  Now… my mother is not a fan of the president.  At all.  She’s convinced that Obama isn’t a citizen, is a Muslim terrorist, and is selling out our country to the Chinese.  I’m not really sure when she became a rabid right wing nut job, but there it is, clear as day.  So, when mom heard that statement about Obama and space travel, her first reaction was ‘NO WE CAN’T!  OBAMA TOOK AWAY ALL THE MONEY FROM THE SPACE PROGRAM!  RAWRRRR!’  Of course, being the more rational of the two, I felt obligated to correct her…

I reminded her that Obama didn’t just call up the heads of NASA and have them all summarily shot in their faces.  Instead, he’s repurposed NASA towards more pressing terrestrial scientific endeavors, and turned over the task of manned space exploration to the private sector.  When asked who she would rather see running the show on space flight:  the Government or the Private sector, mom was forced to concede that we’re better off in the private sector’s hands.  The government bureaucracy is so inflated right now that between budget arguments, congressional committees, and ceaseless politicking, nothing serious would ever get done again.  However, in the past 6 months since the private sector has been let loose on the issues, we’ve already seen our first 100% private run and funded orbital object launch.  (Way to go, Space X!)

That’s the thing about my mother… she loves to argue politics, but she’s so mired in the conspiracy theories, hate and fear mongering, and eternal pessimism of the right wing that she can’t make a single argument that stands up to fact checking or the slightest amount of reason.  I make a habit of shooting down anything like that I hear her say, especially when I’m home for the holidays.  It would be hilarious, if she and my grandmother didn’t get into screaming matches over these very same things when I’m not around…

Anyway, little conversations like this make my day, especially when they result in mom having to admit that something the President did is working out positively.  I wish it was that easy to convince the rest of the folks around here of all that… but at least it’s something ;)

 

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