What I Think About On 9/11

1. That I will always be pissed off that a bunch of psycho assholes allowed a sadistic perversion of a major religion to warp their minds. And then decided to kill over 3000 innocent people because of it.

2. That Bush and Cheney cynically exploited the tragedy to kick off eight years of gang-raping the American ideal.

3. That today there will be millions of teabaggers shedding crocodile tears over NYC. 364 days out of the year they deride NYC as a values-free pisshole. But today, all of a sudden, it's a place of tragedy and remembrance and a reason to get our violence on.

Fuck. You. Go crawl back to your Cheetos and Mountain Dew. 9/11 isn't some holy relic you get to drag out once a year as a justification for all the bullshit you spew the rest of the time.

4. That the worst exploiters of 9/11 aren't the teabaggers and the truthers (two side of the same vile coin when it comes to exploiting today). It's a tie between Bush/Cheney and Alan Jackson. I was shocked he didn't release a song after Katrina or Rita.

5. That today will never go away. That no matter how many years pass and no matter how old I get, I will always, ALWAYS, be able to picture what happened.

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Why Is This A Big Deal?

I wrote this a little more than a year ago. But with the idiocy of Creationism still infecting the body politic, I felt it needed a re-airing.

I was born, baptized and raised Episcopalian. I was confirmed at 13. I was an altar boy (a safe job since our priests can marry.) I went to Sunday School, joined the choir and the youth group. I was raised in a tolerant, yet religious, household. So I am beyond familiar with the story of the Creation.


But I swear to the Lord above, I am sick and tired of these Intelligent Design jackasses trying to pump their pseudo-science bullshit down everyone's throat. Now they're stunting the intellectual growth of a new generation.


Here's the thing; if you believe in God you tend to accept He is omnipotent and omniscient (and I use "He" here because it is just easier. Don't get angry with me). God is at all places at all times and in all things. God exists at the beginning and end of time and every moment that occurs therein. So why is it so hard for these ID morons to accept that unfettered evolution was God's mechanism of choice for the creation of life? Why can't they accept the reams of scientific proof that back the theory of evolution?


Primarily it is because we have two arms, two legs and they insist that God appears the same way. Even though his omnipotence and omniscience would argue that God can appear however the heck He wants to, creationists revel in the assumed uniqueness and primacy of Man. Which is ironic because that is what they accuse secularists of. Since we look as we look, so must God appear the same way. And God would never make his people come up from apes, right? Even though, going by the biblical story, it is never defined exactly how God created Man, just that He did.


Pushing Intellectual Design as a scientific theory is laughable at best and an affront to common sense and human decency at worst. Even as a religious Creation story it's pathetic, unable to commit completely to one idea or the other. If God really wanted to influence evolution, why would He tinker with a couple of cellular-level mechanisms instead of just, oh, making it the way He wanted? And if He did just make it all happen with a wave of His hand, then why all the overwhelming evidence that supports evolution? What purpose does that serve?


The truth is that belief in God and belief in evolution are not incompatible. One does not preclude the other, but a whole lot of people make that false choice for a variety of reasons. I believe in God and that we are His creation. But I also believe that we evolved without interference from Him. Just as we live our lives on this Earth without interference from Him. And had we evolved into, say, amphibians, I am sure this argument would be taking place amongst a planet of frog people arguing whether the three-chambered heart was a natural progression of evolution or divinely inspired. Because that's the kind of cantankerous humans we evolved into.


If you are a bible literalist...well, then you're never going to agree with this and so be it. But do the rest of us a favor and keep your stupidity to yourself.

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Ummm...Shouldn't We Be Doing This?

So, how many solar panels would it take to power the world? Enough to cover Spain.

Just 496,905 square kilometers. That's really nothing compared to the total world area: Less than the surface of Spain (504,030 square kilometers) covered with solar panels, distributed across deserts and areas with almost 24/7 sun, all year around.

Click on the link to see the map. It's not a "pie-in-the-sky" plan. Between deserts, rooftops, wide open spaces and the rest, the world could easily spare a little over 496K square km. to power the world with clean energy.

Of course, this would also require the governments and political parties of the world to come together and rationally plot this out. Considering the fact that the US can't do anything green without the Republicans shouting "WE WANT NUCLEAR POWER!!", the odds of global co-operation are probably rather slim.

You'd have to make exceptions for military equipment and heavy transport - that'll still require the kind of power only oil can deliver. And there is the still-unsolved problem of how to transmit all this power to where it needs to go. But shouldn't this be the kind of result we are aiming for? And even if it's a mix of solar, hydro, wind and geo-thermal...shouldn't we have as much of our power consumption as possible derive from renewable resources? Why is this so damned controversial?

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Baby, If You've Ever Wondered, Wondered Whatever Became Of Me...

Apparently the utter lack of original thought in Hollywood mainstream films has filtered down into porn films as well. But this is a bit of a stretch, isn't it?

Beloved U.S. TV sitcom WKRP IN CINCINNATI is the latest show set for the porn treatment.

X-rated film company New Sensations have turned the late 1970s hit, starring Loni Anderson and Herman Hesseman, into a steamy sex shocker.

It's called WKRP - A XXX Parody!, just in case you were looking for it on the back shelves somewhere.

One can only hope that a Welcome Back Kotter / Happy Days two-pak is on its way soon.

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Shorter Richard Cohen

Torture's Unanswerable Questions

Now he is in American custody. What will happen? How do we get him to reveal his group's plans and the names of his colleagues? It will be hard. It will, in fact, be harder than it used to be. He can no longer be waterboarded. He knows this. He cannot be deprived of more than a set amount of sleep. He cannot be beaten or thrown up against even a soft wall. He cannot be threatened with shooting or even frightened by the prospect of an electric drill. Nothing really can be threatened against his relatives -- that they will be killed or sexually abused

"If you can’t rape kids and crush their testicles, how can you keep America safe?"

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Disney Is Buying Marvel

And now we finally get the X-Men/Goofy crossover the whole world has been waiting for.

In all seriousness, this makes Disney a powerhouse in films targeted at the younger set (8-24). Between Pixar, Dreamworks and Marvel, a young lad could grow up and watch nothing but films owned by Disney.

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If This Doesn't Exist...It Needs To

Ladies and Gentlemen, wouldn't you like to discover a four-foot worm that spits acid and hurls lightning? Of course you would. And so two people are going to hunt for the Mongolian Death Worm

The worm has never been documented but some Mongolians are convinced it exists. They call it Allghoi Khorkhoi, or "intestine worm" because it resembles a cow's intestine and is about 1.5m long.

The worm apparently jumps out of the sand and kills people by spitting concentrated acid or shooting lightning from its rectum over long distances, NZPA reports. (Seriously.)

New Zealand TV entertainment journalist David Farrier, who is organising the expedition, and cameraman Christie Douglas, leave this week to spend two weeks in the Gobi, trying to verify the worm's existence and making a documentary about it.

The worm fires lightning out of it's ass! This worm has to exist because it is too damned awesome to just be a myth.

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