Embrace the Dull

I second

From Wonkette (and w/r/t Teh Huckabee)

“[Huckabee says] Traditional concept of sexual behavior” is breeding, period. The danger with sex today, people, is that homosexuality is one of many “publicly endorsed and institutionally supported aberrations.” Other publicly endorsed aberrations, according to Huckles, include sadomasochism, pedophilia and necrophilia.

Ok, seriously, what the fuck is wrong with these Christian conservative types? Does anyone else, anywhere, spend this much time thinking about other people having sex that isn’t doing so in order to masturbate, plan their next porno, or write for Fleshbot? Let alone, does anyone spend this much time equating the guy-on-guy anal action with fucking dead people, little kids or animals? Like, how does that even occur to you? Candidates are being assassinated in Pakistan and people are dying in Kenya over rigged elections and thousands of Americans and Iraqis are dead in Iraq because of a war we started for (apparently) no good reason and their feeble little minds are totally filled with thoughts of how God doesn’t want people to to engage in ass fucking because you can’t have babies? Jeebus Motherfucking Christ, I’m ready to start drinking now. Bring on the New Motherfucking Year."

Minwax! Pledge! Fuck yooouu! [punch, kick]

Priests brawl at Bethlehem birthplace of Jesus

BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AFP) — Seven people were injured on Thursday when Greek Orthodox and Armenian priests came to blows in a dispute over how to clean the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.

When Jesus visited America

I find all this religious pussy-footing to be very, um, pussy-footed. Why can't someone ask Mike Huckabee what part of the fossil record he disputes and what exactly is the scientific basis for his refutation of geologic convention?

Huckabee seems like a nice guy, but when he hides behind the Christian bullshit answer like this:

"My point is, I don't know. I wasn't there. But I believe whether God did it in six days or whether he did it in six days that represented periods of time, he did it. And that's what's important.

"But you know, if anybody wants to believe they're the descendants of a primate, they're welcome to do it."

The response there should be something to the effect of, "No. No, you slack-jawed hillbilly, we do know. You can outlaw dancing in your home and demonize the vagina and you can cast-out demons in your dusty evangelical tents and you can apply Judeo-Christian principles to benign situations like, 'should I leave a note on this Impala I bumped into in the Shakey's parking lot?'

But here, in presidential debates, where grown-ups get to talk, we do know how old the earth is. And we know that evolution is a statement of fact. And your supernatural beliefs, while quaint, seem to be clouding your judgment"

Also, why can't we ask Mitt Romney why so few people share his belief that Jesus visited America?

All these naval-gazing questions like "what metaphors found in Deuteronomy are currently applicable?" or "What kind of lethal injection would Jesus sanction?" are for the fucking tourists.

I say we line up the Republicans and, one by one, ask them why they hate science.

Ricky Gervais explains Genesis (the book, not the band)

Hand of God credited with saving the life of boy who nearly died at the Hand of God

MICHIGAN A mattress and a miracle are being credited for sparing the life of a 14-month-old boy sucked out of his home — crib and all — and thrown 40 or 50 feet by a powerful tornado that struck a sleeping Michigan family on Friday.

By the time Joe Soyring and a neighbor found little Blake whimpering beneath his mattress, Soyring already had come across the mangled remnants of his son's crib and knew that his Millington, Mich., home was destroyed.

“Luckily the mattress was still over him. That's probably what saved him,” Soyring said during an appearance Monday on TODAY.

So a miracle (file under: Act of God, Good) saved the life of a boy who was nearly killed after a tornado (file under: Act of God, Bad) pulled him from his bed and flung him forty-five feet out of the house.

Now God obviously reconsidered killing the boy after He had decided to smite him with a tornado, and for that He should be commended. But can we really get all gaga over this miracle that was really nothing more than damage control to begin with?

If anything should get "miracle" credit it should be a Sealy Posturepedic that broke the kid's fall, no?

Stop hating each other... OK, then at least stop killing each other ... OK, then at least stop killing us. ... No? Crap.

The Guardian - Rescuers were today digging through the muddy ruins of clay houses in north-west Iraq where suicide bombers last night detonated fuel tankers rigged with explosives, killing at least 200 members of a minority sect.

The incident near the Syrian border was one of the deadliest since the US-led invasion of the country in 2003.

The villages are about 75 miles west of the city of Mosul, a stronghold of Sunni Islamic militants. The attacks targeted people from the Yezidi religious minority, whom Sunni extremists regard as infidels 

This would be like the Methodists detonating a propane truck in the Congregationalist part of town.

(From Wiki) The Yazidis, whose numbers worldwide place them at around 500,000, are adherents to a pre-Islamic Middle Eastern religion with ancient origins - The Yazidi actually belong to the smallest of the three branches of Yazdânism, The other branches of Yazdânism (Alevism and Yarsanisim) differ from Yazidism by recognizing the Shiite practice of tagiyya (dissimulation).

In the Yazidi worldview, God created the world, which is now in the care of a of seven Holy Beings (the Heptad), often known as Angels or heft sirr (the Seven Mysteries). Pre-eminent among these is Melek Taus (Tawûsê Melek in Kurdish), the Peacock Angel, who (and this is the big bummer for the Yazidis) many Muslims consider the devil.

Aw, man!

This recent attack on the Yazidis is likely a reaction to video images of twenty Yazidi men from Bashika, stoning a seventeen-year-old girl to death. Her crime? She was in love with a non Yazidi (Muslim) boy, and had been seen with him. The murder was recorded on numerous cell phones by the men who publicly killed her; the videos posted to various internet sites.

Ah yes, the old obscure-group-of-Muslims-publicly-execute-a-child-and-are-

summarily-slaughtered-because-of-said-public-execution-routine.

What. The. Fuck.

Forgive me for being glib, but seriously, what the fuck?

I posted the Yazidi factual-thumbnail to underline the point [that thousands of other people, much smarter than me, have made] that there is nothing we can do militarily to resolve this conflict.

N.O.T.H.I.N.G.

Much is written of the genocide that will engulf the, uh, Gulf, upon our departure from Iraq. Well, the breakdown of Sunni to Shia in Iraq is 60/40 - if both sides of dispute demand the other's execution, is it really genocide?

This isn't Darfur or Dachau or Nanking, it's mutual slaughter.

Further (and this with respect to the linked story at the top of the post) if a sect of Muslims (the Yazidis) whose number is 500,000 worldwide is antagonizing larger, more-armed faction of Islam (the Sunnis) to the tune of publically executing their children, can I be forgiven for not crying myself to sleep over their demise?

Update

Upon reading that post I realize that it sounds awfully cold. While I stand by the spirit of what I said, I do not, obviously, advocate the destruction of the innocents who were surely killed in the attack last night.

My point is that none of the warring sides; not the Sunni, not the Shia, not AQ, not even the tiny group of Yazidis; are making any grand ovations for peace.

Memo To: Republicans

From: Republican National Headquarters

Subject: Blowing dudes

Please stop. Thanks.

(see: Ted Haggard, Bob Allen and now Young Republican National Federation Chair, Glenn Murphy.)

-- End transmission --

I think the conventional wisdom is as follows: 

1) You can be a leader in a party that advocates a narrow, exclusive view of morality that demonizes people who don't share your beliefs regarding the supposed wickedness of homosexuality.

2) And you can blow dudes.

but, and this is critical,

3) You can not be a leader in a party that advocates a narrow, exclusive view of morality that demonizes people who don't share your beliefs regarding the wickedness of homosexuality and blow dudes.

Bring hither the third party

Adam Nagourney and Mark Santora report:

After months of conflicting signals on abortion, Rudolph W. Giuliani is planning to offer a forthright affirmation of his support for abortion rights in public forums, television appearances and interviews in the coming days, despite the potential for bad consequences among some conservative voters already wary of his views, aides said yesterday.

[...]

[The Guiliani Team is] eyeing a path to the nomination that would try to de-emphasize the early states in which abortion opponents wield a great deal of influence. Instead they would focus on the so-called mega-primary of Feb. 5, in which voters in states like California, New York and New Jersey are likely to be more receptive to Mr. Giuliani’s social views than voters in Iowa and South Carolina.

NYT

This is intriguing for a number of reason, the two that come to mind are

1) The obvious hope of Left Wing Nutjobs™ like me is that Rudy's strategy secures him the nomination and forces the Christian Coalition (CC) to either not vote or run a pro-life candidate (and those would be The CC's only options in the event that the Republican nominee is pro-choice)
Admittedly this scenario is unlikely, I don't think Rudy has a prayer - therefore a more likely result is

2) Rudy captures a large portion of Republican voters in states with actual black people and Hispanic people and gay people and Americans that exist beyond the 28% who would support Bush even if he committed a transgression as arrogant and bone-headed as declaring victory in a war 4 years (and counting) prior to its actual conclusion. Rudy could easily take California, and New York is all but assured, and what then? Instead of having nominees chosen exclusively by states with populations smaller than Manhattan (Iowa, New Hampshire, etc), the Republicans begin having nominees that reflect the social conventions of a larger, quieter group of their constituents (a silent majority, if you will) rather that a vocal group of Christian busy-bodies.

No matter what, the next 2 years years will be defining ones for the Republican party.

In lighter news, I received the following text this morning:

"Marty took a dooker in the litterbox this morning!"

And then:

"I heard a ruckus and then saw a guilty looking marty, a pissed off katie and zippy and a tell-tale Cleveland Steamer in the cat box"

For the uninitiated, that means that Marty, (Abby's puppy, Abby is Liz's sister), took a dooker (a dump) in Katie and Zippy's litter box (Katie, Zippy and Abby are pictured).

It's unpleasently muggy here in Manhattan, today.

This is a, uh, terrible name for a website

http://www.therapistfinder.com. I think bizarro Sean Connery came up with it.

This one isn't any better...

...or this one...

Well, this weather is total bullshit. I came home to have something to eat and, after making a pot of coffee, spilled grounds all over the floor.

The events that followed can be best expressed with this haiku:

I vaccuumed up the coffee
Jake got scared (inset)
Meow meow meow me

.
.

Then Liz came down to my office and picked me up and we had dinner - here's a picture of us in the elevator.

Here's something [else] that troubles me about the whole 72 virgins thing

The other day my friend JP told me about a comic he had seen - the comedian had a joke to the effect of "I'm not sure I'd want 72 virgins, I mean, I don't want a bunch of skanks, but also not the kind of girl that gets upset by a little cum in her hair."

Yes, that's graphic, but he makes a good point - bear with me.

It led me to ponder why they were virgins in the first place - are they like, angel virgins? Or zombie virgins? Or just girls that died virgins? and if the third, were they icy girls? Or boring? Did they talk too damn much? Are they really homely?  Do you suppose your garden-variety suicide bomber enters into this sort of internal dialog prior to killing a bunch of people or does he suppose that The Prophet (PBUH)  is sitting on a bumper crop of un-fucked Penelope Cruz's just waiting to ride his politically-disenfranchised junk?

Further to this, Is negotiation an option?

"Look" they might argue, "keep the half-gross of barkers, give me Natalie Wood and Sharon Tate. Virgins? No, but it's my damn paradise and I was the one that blew up the damn bus."

I think I would open with that and haggle down to, say, Anne Bancroft, Barbra Stanwyck and Pauline Kael (for conversation).

And the end of the day, I really don't know.

ANYway, all that led me to the real question which is: What's the deal with female suicide bombers?

As discussed, few men want to slog through a big pile of virgins, so can you imagine a woman with 72 virgins? 72 awkward 15 year-old dorks serving as divine reward for taking out a mezzanine in Tel Aviv?

I'm still waiting to nail my first 15 year-old boy, so I can't draw from personal history. I would conjecture, though, that it's a pretty lousy experience. It's a lousy experience for another 15 year-old - imagine what it's like to be a woman of the world, say, 31-years old. She's been with a few guys, traveled a bit, looking for something to do on a Friday, the girls are all with their fellas and she can't bear the thought of goat again -  so she decides to detonate herself in a Jerusalem cafe.

Suddenly, zap, she enters the sweet hereafter, enjoying milk and honey in a martyr's paradise, on her left is the Prophet (PBUH), on her right, Abraham...Allah gazing down proudly. Then....

Randy Lifshitz (age 17) from Decatur approaches her in a tuxedo -  his cummerbund matches the dress she discovers she's wearing and then ... (bassline intro) ... clumsy sex in the backseat of Dr. Lifshitz's Le Baron.

Allah Akbar, I guess.

Irony Akbar!

Inset is a photo from a rally in Lebanon. The usual grandstanding took place; Down with the Jews; Down with America; God is great, no not that God, this one. Etc. Islam has never been a culture long in the irony department, but this picture, you would think, would set off flares in even the most humorless Mullah.

Here we have a group of smocked Muslims, decrying America, the west, Bush, me, Jake, Liz, etc. who are wearing, compliments of benevolent Hezbollah, red baseball caps. Baseball caps. Perhaps the most stereotypically American accessory imaginable. I guess Hooters tank-tops would be worse. But that would show too much skin and then the rally would have devolved into a stoning of all skin-revealing chicks in attendance.