Via the Mudville Gazette, via Michelle Malkin, here's a charming story of "pastor" Fred Phelps of "God hates fags" fame in action again, this time protesting at the funeral of a fallen US servicewoman:
Phelps protests funeral
It's difficult to put into words how much I despise stunts like this.
This is beyond the pale. As far as we know, the late Corporal French wasn't even gay. (Not that that would justify anything.) Rather, Phelps is claiming that US deaths in Iraq are God's judgment against his church being bombed six years ago.
::: long sigh :::
Cosmic narcissism and religion is a very bad mix.
'Nuf said.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Monday, June 13, 2005
My prediction
Michael Jackson will continue to play house with underage boys, if the adulation of the courthouse crowd is any indication of people's persistent stupidity when it comes to celebrities.
There will be another incident. This man is incapable of self-control. His head would explode if he did the very thing to protect himself from future allegations: Stay away from children.
And just for the record, my old cassette tape copy of Thriller went to File 13 some time ago.
There will be another incident. This man is incapable of self-control. His head would explode if he did the very thing to protect himself from future allegations: Stay away from children.
And just for the record, my old cassette tape copy of Thriller went to File 13 some time ago.
Jacko verdict
::::: eyes rolling :::::::
He's bad, I know it.
UPDATE: To the person holding the "repent" sign -- I agree with your sentiments, but please, put down the poster board. You make us (Xians) all look silly.
UPDATE II: Watching him walk out of the courtroom, I think Jackson is on Xanax and ludes.
UPDATE III: If the verdict had been guilty, just what would that woman have done with the doves???
Folks, I have to admit, this is our legal system working properly, so to speak. They had no direct evidence and the accusers seriously lacked credibility.
However, our society is NOT working properly when a man who sleeps with underage children is venerated by screaming throngs.
God help us.
He's bad, I know it.
UPDATE: To the person holding the "repent" sign -- I agree with your sentiments, but please, put down the poster board. You make us (Xians) all look silly.
UPDATE II: Watching him walk out of the courtroom, I think Jackson is on Xanax and ludes.
UPDATE III: If the verdict had been guilty, just what would that woman have done with the doves???
Folks, I have to admit, this is our legal system working properly, so to speak. They had no direct evidence and the accusers seriously lacked credibility.
However, our society is NOT working properly when a man who sleeps with underage children is venerated by screaming throngs.
God help us.
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
The inmates are running the asylum
All right, I'm getting cranky again.
Check out today's Nealz Nuze at Neal Boortz' site. (Today only -- I think the page refreshes daily.) Scroll down to "Border Insecurity." Deranged Canadian Gregory Despres was allowed into our fair land after customs agents relieved him of a homemade sword, a hatchet, a knife, brass knuckles and a chainsaw stained with blood.
Apparently his arsenal of weapons -- coupled with the fact that he's straight of central casting for a part in the next Friday the 13th film -- was not enough to get his sorry self sent back to Canada. (Which highlights the absolute inanity of customs enforcement. We spend millions keeping weed from entering the country, but a maniacal, chainsaw-toting Canadian? No problema!)
Well, wouldn't you know it. Mr. Despres wound up murdering an elderly couple. The husband's head was cut off and stuffed into a pillowcase. Is anyone surprised? Anyone? Anyone?
If this isn't proof positive that the people in charge of our border security are brain damaged, I don't know what is.
And one more thing: I am seriously beginning to think that Jennifer Wilbanks is on something.
Check out today's Nealz Nuze at Neal Boortz' site. (Today only -- I think the page refreshes daily.) Scroll down to "Border Insecurity." Deranged Canadian Gregory Despres was allowed into our fair land after customs agents relieved him of a homemade sword, a hatchet, a knife, brass knuckles and a chainsaw stained with blood.
Apparently his arsenal of weapons -- coupled with the fact that he's straight of central casting for a part in the next Friday the 13th film -- was not enough to get his sorry self sent back to Canada. (Which highlights the absolute inanity of customs enforcement. We spend millions keeping weed from entering the country, but a maniacal, chainsaw-toting Canadian? No problema!)
Well, wouldn't you know it. Mr. Despres wound up murdering an elderly couple. The husband's head was cut off and stuffed into a pillowcase. Is anyone surprised? Anyone? Anyone?
If this isn't proof positive that the people in charge of our border security are brain damaged, I don't know what is.
And one more thing: I am seriously beginning to think that Jennifer Wilbanks is on something.
Almost famous?
Although I'd never want to be as famous as Michael Jackson, it's trés cool to get a little recognition for your work.
The GGB was mentioned in a roundup of "blonde bloggers" at Blogcritics.org. Specifically mentioned was my rant about the f-word documentary. (And the challenges of reading Neal Stephenson when you have ADD. Oy vey!)
Should I tell them that I'm actually closer to brunette now? Mmmm ... nah ...
The GGB was mentioned in a roundup of "blonde bloggers" at Blogcritics.org. Specifically mentioned was my rant about the f-word documentary. (And the challenges of reading Neal Stephenson when you have ADD. Oy vey!)
Should I tell them that I'm actually closer to brunette now? Mmmm ... nah ...
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
We make lousy gods
You have to feel a little sorry for the King of Pop.
Yeah, I think he's a creep, too. I don't believe for a second that all he did with his bedmates was have milk and cookies and read Dr. Seuss.
But Michael Jackson may, in part, be the victim of "godhood" imposed on him by unparalleled talent, outrageous luck and a mass media machine to make it all happen. When you have a multi-million-dollar bank account, a fairtytale home and the adulation of millions who worship at the Church of Michael, you can pretty much do what you want ... even if that includes hacking your face into a death mask.
Fabulous wealth + worldwide fame = self-destruction. Look at Elvis Presley. At least he stuck with chrome suits and Krispy Kreme as his vices. Nevertheless, he ended up dying on the toilet in his early 40s. Who thinks that Michael Jackson will make it to 60, either in or out of jail?
It's not good to be a god when you're just a human being. Virtually unlimited influence, power and wealth? Elvis couldn't handle it. Michael Jackson couldn't handle it. Who could?
Yeah, I think he's a creep, too. I don't believe for a second that all he did with his bedmates was have milk and cookies and read Dr. Seuss.
But Michael Jackson may, in part, be the victim of "godhood" imposed on him by unparalleled talent, outrageous luck and a mass media machine to make it all happen. When you have a multi-million-dollar bank account, a fairtytale home and the adulation of millions who worship at the Church of Michael, you can pretty much do what you want ... even if that includes hacking your face into a death mask.
Fabulous wealth + worldwide fame = self-destruction. Look at Elvis Presley. At least he stuck with chrome suits and Krispy Kreme as his vices. Nevertheless, he ended up dying on the toilet in his early 40s. Who thinks that Michael Jackson will make it to 60, either in or out of jail?
It's not good to be a god when you're just a human being. Virtually unlimited influence, power and wealth? Elvis couldn't handle it. Michael Jackson couldn't handle it. Who could?
Friday, May 27, 2005
GGB on hiatus
Unless I can get the home computer back online shortly, the GGB will be on hiatus until Monday the 6th.
Please send only worshipful and fawning comments while I'm offline.
Please send only worshipful and fawning comments while I'm offline.
Yeeeeoooowwwwww!!!!
I can hear the squeals from the arse-smacking that Victor Davis Hanson just delivered to the more-enlightened-than-thou.
Thursday, May 26, 2005
'The business end of a dream deferred'
What a great phrase from Darryl James. Read his experience about being single and over 30.
I hear ya, bro.
(Hat tip: La Shawn Barber)
I hear ya, bro.
(Hat tip: La Shawn Barber)
That effin' documentary
*** READER ADVISORY -- EXPLICIT LANGUAGE ***
In response to my post about a proposed documentary on the f-word, blogger Carol had this pithy comment:
I'm surprised that someone who is so interested in language, writing and behavior would be so skeptical about a documentary like this. While I agree the letter is a bit overblown, it actually sounds like an interesting idea. It's been awfully perplexing to me that at a time when the country is at war, there's still plenty of time for our leaders to help us get our national panties in a twitch over boobs and bad words. Given that, I think a documentary exploring rhetorical hysteria is a great idea.
Touché, Carol. Why not give it documentary treatment? Are bad words just that ... bad words?
Granted, the movie isn't finished, but I'd be willing to bet that when it is, the f-word will be infused with some sort of gravitas. It'll be a mantra of liberation and enlightenment. What was profane will be sacred.
Don't laugh. Stay with me a minute.
Do you remember what the f-word means? Sexual intercourse. At its best, something special. Something sacred as in shared between two and no one else.
But fucking? That's different. Anyone can fuck. Now we fuck around, we fuck off, we tell people to fuck themselves. "Fuck" represents the lowest common denominator of the human sexual act, which is why it is/was considered an obscenity.
Now, I am not necessarily opposed to the word when used as intended. I am opposed, however, to elevating it to sacred mantra.
Same thing has happened to other vulgarities. Do a Google on the word "cunt" and see what I mean. Thanks to Eve Ensler and the Vagina Brigade, I'm being told to embrace the word "cunt." No longer a derogatory term for a woman's sexual organs, it's supposed to represent the power of my feminine sexuality and liberate me from the rigid sexual morés of the past.
In other words, I am my cunt and my cunt is me. Mmmmm, yeeeaaahhhh. Right.
That's what I find boring -- the preoccupation with the crude and the attempt to elevate the common to the divine.
In response to my post about a proposed documentary on the f-word, blogger Carol had this pithy comment:
I'm surprised that someone who is so interested in language, writing and behavior would be so skeptical about a documentary like this. While I agree the letter is a bit overblown, it actually sounds like an interesting idea. It's been awfully perplexing to me that at a time when the country is at war, there's still plenty of time for our leaders to help us get our national panties in a twitch over boobs and bad words. Given that, I think a documentary exploring rhetorical hysteria is a great idea.
Touché, Carol. Why not give it documentary treatment? Are bad words just that ... bad words?
Granted, the movie isn't finished, but I'd be willing to bet that when it is, the f-word will be infused with some sort of gravitas. It'll be a mantra of liberation and enlightenment. What was profane will be sacred.
Don't laugh. Stay with me a minute.
Do you remember what the f-word means? Sexual intercourse. At its best, something special. Something sacred as in shared between two and no one else.
But fucking? That's different. Anyone can fuck. Now we fuck around, we fuck off, we tell people to fuck themselves. "Fuck" represents the lowest common denominator of the human sexual act, which is why it is/was considered an obscenity.
Now, I am not necessarily opposed to the word when used as intended. I am opposed, however, to elevating it to sacred mantra.
Same thing has happened to other vulgarities. Do a Google on the word "cunt" and see what I mean. Thanks to Eve Ensler and the Vagina Brigade, I'm being told to embrace the word "cunt." No longer a derogatory term for a woman's sexual organs, it's supposed to represent the power of my feminine sexuality and liberate me from the rigid sexual morés of the past.
In other words, I am my cunt and my cunt is me. Mmmmm, yeeeaaahhhh. Right.
That's what I find boring -- the preoccupation with the crude and the attempt to elevate the common to the divine.
Monday, May 23, 2005
I wanna be an ad exec
Hey! I've got a great new concept for the next big pharmaceutical advertising campaign:
Have attractive, healthy-looking, upper-middle-class people talk about what a load of crap their lives were before taking ritavectinagra. Show shots of them limping on the playground with their grandkids, barfing into a toilet, having entire limbs fall off, stuff like that. Cut to cool graphics of ritavectinagra entering the bloodstream and making limbs grow back. Cut to peppy music and shots of people hauling surf boards into tsunamis and biking up the side of Mt. Everest. Be sure to include speedy rundown of side effects, which include nausea, hair loss, pimples, ingrown toenails, hives, impotence, major organ failure and coma.
Oh ... what? It's been done already? Shoot.
Have attractive, healthy-looking, upper-middle-class people talk about what a load of crap their lives were before taking ritavectinagra. Show shots of them limping on the playground with their grandkids, barfing into a toilet, having entire limbs fall off, stuff like that. Cut to cool graphics of ritavectinagra entering the bloodstream and making limbs grow back. Cut to peppy music and shots of people hauling surf boards into tsunamis and biking up the side of Mt. Everest. Be sure to include speedy rundown of side effects, which include nausea, hair loss, pimples, ingrown toenails, hives, impotence, major organ failure and coma.
Oh ... what? It's been done already? Shoot.
GGB summer reading list
I seem to be doing my best writing in e-mails to friends. Here's a recent excerpt:
"Loved Snow Crash. [A former boyfriend whose name shall be withheld] actually gave me Cryptonomicon as a gift Christmas before last. (I think it was a guilt offering.)
"Right now I'm trying (again!) to read Diamond Age. Neal Stephenson's prose is very dense, and I've discovered it doesn't make a really good poolside read, which is what I need now because my circuits are so fried, so this weekend I picked up a copy of Mary Higgins Clark's latest."
I think Neal Stephenson is sci fi's answer to Tom Clancy. At least I have a clue what he means when he writes about "buckminsterfullertubes." :D But sometimes all that detail clogs up the pipes of this ADD-addled brain.
"Loved Snow Crash. [A former boyfriend whose name shall be withheld] actually gave me Cryptonomicon as a gift Christmas before last. (I think it was a guilt offering.)
"Right now I'm trying (again!) to read Diamond Age. Neal Stephenson's prose is very dense, and I've discovered it doesn't make a really good poolside read, which is what I need now because my circuits are so fried, so this weekend I picked up a copy of Mary Higgins Clark's latest."
I think Neal Stephenson is sci fi's answer to Tom Clancy. At least I have a clue what he means when he writes about "buckminsterfullertubes." :D But sometimes all that detail clogs up the pipes of this ADD-addled brain.
Friday, May 20, 2005
Frankly, my dear, I don't give a ...
Blogger Michelle Malkin recently received an invitation from Napoleon Dynamite casting director Jory Weitz to appear in a documentary about the f-word. (She declined.) Read all about it here.
Just how bored are we as a culture that we think an obscenity deserves documentary treatment? Good grief, you'd think Weitz was talking about global warming or beating baby seals the way he described the earth-shattering implications of the f-word in his letter to Malkin:
Boiler plate - this film will examine the long history of the word, trace its use through time and present all sides of the current and ongoing debate over its use.
OK, I know ... they'll delve into issues such as First Amendment rights, censorship, etc. Yeah, whatever. They also plan to bring in "important personalities" such as Sam Donaldson, Miss Manners and Alanis Morrisette, who I'm sure will be happy to tell us how she liberated female anger when she inserted the f-word in her hit song "You Oughtta Know." I wonder if they'll also interview Beavis and Butthead. ("Huh ... huhuhuhuh ... he said the f-word.")
Let's be honest. Hollywood of late has been delighting in the f-word like a potty-training two-year-old showing us his poo. Or, perhaps I should say like a 13-year-old boy who thinks he's the first one to discover profanity and is gleefully horrifying his parents.
I find it ridiculously boring. Chalk it up to well-fed Westerners to become enraptured with trivia.
Just how bored are we as a culture that we think an obscenity deserves documentary treatment? Good grief, you'd think Weitz was talking about global warming or beating baby seals the way he described the earth-shattering implications of the f-word in his letter to Malkin:
Boiler plate - this film will examine the long history of the word, trace its use through time and present all sides of the current and ongoing debate over its use.
OK, I know ... they'll delve into issues such as First Amendment rights, censorship, etc. Yeah, whatever. They also plan to bring in "important personalities" such as Sam Donaldson, Miss Manners and Alanis Morrisette, who I'm sure will be happy to tell us how she liberated female anger when she inserted the f-word in her hit song "You Oughtta Know." I wonder if they'll also interview Beavis and Butthead. ("Huh ... huhuhuhuh ... he said the f-word.")
Let's be honest. Hollywood of late has been delighting in the f-word like a potty-training two-year-old showing us his poo. Or, perhaps I should say like a 13-year-old boy who thinks he's the first one to discover profanity and is gleefully horrifying his parents.
I find it ridiculously boring. Chalk it up to well-fed Westerners to become enraptured with trivia.
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Runaway bride story boon for sloganeers
The Jennifer Wilbanks fiasco has spawned its own cottage industry. Go to www.cafepress.com and do a search on "runaway bride." I though this messenger bag was particularly choice.
My prediction is that to "pull a Wilbanks" will ignobly enter the American lexicon just as "Lewinsky" has become a euphemism for, well, you know.
My prediction is that to "pull a Wilbanks" will ignobly enter the American lexicon just as "Lewinsky" has become a euphemism for, well, you know.
Monday, May 09, 2005
Dangit! Why didn't I think of that?
http://news.yahoo.com/photos/ss/events/ts/042805missingbridega
Let's see if he actually gets payment. (I thought it was a pretty darn good likeness.)
UPDATE: Whoops. Time to get the butter.
Let's see if he actually gets payment. (I thought it was a pretty darn good likeness.)
UPDATE: Whoops. Time to get the butter.
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Some reflections on the American Idol controversy
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz .......................
Monday, May 02, 2005
Please send Jennifer Wilbanks to her room
Note to the news media: Please do not grant Jennifer Wilbanks any more ink or air time. I’m already sick of seeing her face, and she doesn’t deserve it.
If the situation had been reversed, there would be no calls for "understanding" or "compassion" for the runaway groom. He’d be drawn and quartered by now.
Jennifer Wilbanks wimped out. Pure and simple. I’m glad she’s alive, and maybe she needs medication, but she also needs to grow up.
UPDATE:
Note to the WWJD crowd harping about "compassion": I am not condemning Jennifer Wilbanks to anything; I am not making pronouncements on the state of her eternal soul or whether Jesus forgives. (He does.)
I'm only saying that she is not a victim in the true sense of the word and it's ludicrous to characterize her as one. The press should focus its attention elswhere and not give her the satisfaction of notoriety, if that is indeed what she's looking for.
She obviously needs help but she also needs to be held accountable for putting her loved ones through untold anguish, deceiving the public and lying to law enforcement.
I'd be more likely to give her a pass if she were 14, but she's 32. Grownups do not fake their own abductions to get out of unpleasant and stressful situations. The cut hair they found indicates that she wanted people to think she was the victim of a crime, not that she merely skipped town and didn't tell anyone (which is not a crime).
Folks, with all the publicity surrounding the Laci Petersons and Chandra Levys of the world, I'm surprised this didn't happen sooner. We can't set a bad precedent and let her completely off the hook.
If the situation had been reversed, there would be no calls for "understanding" or "compassion" for the runaway groom. He’d be drawn and quartered by now.
Jennifer Wilbanks wimped out. Pure and simple. I’m glad she’s alive, and maybe she needs medication, but she also needs to grow up.
UPDATE:
Note to the WWJD crowd harping about "compassion": I am not condemning Jennifer Wilbanks to anything; I am not making pronouncements on the state of her eternal soul or whether Jesus forgives. (He does.)
I'm only saying that she is not a victim in the true sense of the word and it's ludicrous to characterize her as one. The press should focus its attention elswhere and not give her the satisfaction of notoriety, if that is indeed what she's looking for.
She obviously needs help but she also needs to be held accountable for putting her loved ones through untold anguish, deceiving the public and lying to law enforcement.
I'd be more likely to give her a pass if she were 14, but she's 32. Grownups do not fake their own abductions to get out of unpleasant and stressful situations. The cut hair they found indicates that she wanted people to think she was the victim of a crime, not that she merely skipped town and didn't tell anyone (which is not a crime).
Folks, with all the publicity surrounding the Laci Petersons and Chandra Levys of the world, I'm surprised this didn't happen sooner. We can't set a bad precedent and let her completely off the hook.
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