Thank you for not jamming scissors into my skull, Mommy!

Every time I think the limits of chutzpah have been reached, Murder Inc. manages to top it. This time, it's soliciting donations for Mother's Day. Yes, really.

The e-mail reads:

"Dear Friend, Join us! Make a Mother's Day gift. My daughter, Hannah, recently wrote this for a national magazine:

'I was raised by strong women. My mom, Cecile Richards, fights daily for women's reproductive rights and social justice as president of Planned Parenthood. It's a legacy she got from her mom (my late grandma), Ann Richards, the former governor of Texas. I've learned that the most rewarding battles in life are those waged for something you truly believe in.' ...

"... As Mother's Day approaches, I am grateful for the opportunity to make a difference and hope you'll join me. Happy Mother's Day."

Happy Mother's Day ... from the one you didn't dismember! With love from your worthless little clump of cells.

I'm so glad I didn't see this last weekend. H/T to Protein Wisdom.

Good boy!

Abortion whore gets a Scooby-snack from his masters.

Of course, he's been a satisfactory servant to the abortion industry all along, with stomach-turning fidelity:

This brings us to the next category of human being Obama says has no intrinsic right to life: Babies born “accidentally” while a doctor attempts to kill them by abortion.

This is a necessary consequence of Obama’s embrace of abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy. Most of us know parents who have cared for preemies — premature babies, born too soon. With the abortion industry’s wide-scale attempts to kill American premies and nearly due children, some will be born alive accidentally.

Whistleblower Jill Stanek, a Chicago nurse, described the practice of killing babies in what is now known as “live-birth abortion.” Illinois tried to stop the practice. But in 2002, as state legislator there, Obama voted against the Induced Infant Liability Act, which would have protected babies who were “accidentally” born alive during attempts to abort them.

“I could not bear the thought of this suffering child dying alone in a soiled utility room, so I cradled and rocked him for the 45 minutes that he lived,” Stanek told the U.S. Congress, describing one such case. “He was too weak to move very much, expending any energy he had trying to breathe. Toward the end he was so quiet that I couldn’t tell if he was still alive unless I held him up to the light to see if his heart was still beating through his chest wall.”

After Stanek’s testimony even N.Y. Democrat Jerrold Nadler, who says he is “as pro-choice as anybody on earth” supported and spoke in favor of the bill.

But for the abortion industry and Obama, opposing the right to life has meant uncompromising dedication to a counter-principle. For Obama, protecting the unstated principle “unwanted children do not have the right to life” is the only way abortion can remain legal.

I don't care how charismatic and charming the man is, Barack Obama isn't fit to be elected dogcatcher.

56 Questions meme

I've tried to stay clear of memes for a while, since no matter how many you answer, there are always more being sent your way. But since both Ken and Ricki succumbed to the temptation, I guess I might as well, too.

1.ONE OF YOUR SCARS, HOW DID YOU GET IT?I had a tumor removed from my right hand when I was a toddler. Even today, the only way I can remember right from left is that the right hand is the one with the line on it.

2. WHAT IS ON THE WALLS IN YOUR ROOM? A couple of posters that the kids gave me, a charcoal portrait of Jerry Garcia and a monster bookshelf. Other than that, the walls are pretty bare.

3. DO YOU KNOW WHAT TIME YOU WERE BORN? 12:29 p.m. Every year I try to call my mom at that time and apologize.

4. WHAT DO YOU WANT MORE THAN ANYTHING RIGHT NOW? To get out of debt.

5. WHAT DO YOU MISS? My grandmother, my dad, and Redhook Double Black Stout.

6. WHAT IS YOUR MOST PRIZED POSSESSION? Gosh, I don't know. I have a wooden fire truck my grandparents sent me from Italy when I was about three, and a copy of The Kingdom of the Winding Road that belonged to my grandmother when she was a little girl. I also have a rosary that Christina made for me while we still only knew each other online. Those are pretty prized.

7. HOW TALL ARE YOU? Six foot three.

8. DO YOU GET SCARED IN THE DAY? Of what? I'm usually too stressed to be genuinely afraid.

9. WHAT’S YOUR WORST FEAR? Losing a child. I can't even imagine what that would be like.

10. WHAT KIND OF HAIR COLOR DO YOU LIKE ON THE OPPOSITE SEX? The exact shade of brown that graces my Lovely and Brilliant Wife's head.

11. WHAT ABOUT EYE COLOR? See above.

12. COFFEE OR ENERGY DRINK? Coffee. The older I get, the less I consume, but that's a decrease from a habitual seven-shot latte.

13. FAVORITE PIZZA TOPPING? Shrimp. Do you know how few places will put shrimp on a pizza anymore? I remember when it was common.

14. IF YOU COULD EAT ANYTHING RIGHT NOW, WHAT WOULD IT BE? Steak and kidney pie at the Horse Brass pub in Portland.

15. FAVORITE COLOR OF ALL TIME? Green, I guess. Which makes it a little incongruous that I live in the desert.

16. HAVE YOU EVER EATEN A GOLDFISH? Nope. But then, I'm not trying to find the location of a safe-deposit box full of diamonds.

17. WHAT WAS THE FIRST MEANINGFUL GIFT YOU EVER RECEIVED? I can't recall the first, but my dad gave me a watch for my high-school graduation that my grandfather, his father-in-law, had given him. It had been bought new for Grandpa in 1939. I still wear it.

18. DO YOU HAVE A CRUSH? I've had a long-standing infatuation with Lauren Bacall. My wife is very understanding about that.

19. FAVORITE CLOTHING BRAND? I can't really afford to buy particular brands over others most of the time, but I do wear an Akubra hat, and when I'm forced to wear a tie, I wear a Garcia.

20. WHAT KIND OF CAR DO YOU WANT? An early 1960s Corvair, preferably a drop-top.

21. WOULD YOU FALL IN LOVE KNOWING THAT THE PERSON IS LEAVING? Been there, done that, bought the abandonment issues.

22. HAVE YOU BEEN OUT OF THE USA? To Vancouver, B.C., several times, and to Wales for a week many years ago.

23. YOUR WEAKNESSES? I'm very distractible. That tends to... hey! Is that a Tootsie Roll over there?

24. MET ANYONE FAMOUS? Not really. I met Peter Kreeft last year, but he's only well-known in certain circles.

25. FIRST JOB? Hauling firewood when I was about 11 or 12.

26. EVER DONE A PRANK CALL? Not since I was old enough to sound like an adult on the phone. There was a family named Vader in my hometown, which made them the perfect target. They must have gotten really sick of smart-ass kids asking to speak to Darth.

27. DO YOU THINK EVERYONE OUT THERE HAS A SOUL MATE? Heck if I know. I'm just happy with what I've got. And I got a lot of misery from looking for a soul mate in my younger days.

28. WHAT WERE YOU DOING BEFORE YOU FILLED THIS OUT? Talking with my boss about upcoming Internet work.

29. HAVE YOU EVER HAD SURGERY? Yes.

30. WHAT DO YOU GET COMPLIMENTED ABOUT MOST? Writing, I guess. Every time I have a column in the paper, people stop me in the store to tell me they liked it. can you tell it's a small town?

31. WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR YOUR BIRTHDAY? I'd kind of like one off those USB turntables, so I can put my vinyl collection on CD. But those are a little spendy for our budget.

32. HOW MANY KIDS DO YOU WANT? Every time I make a suggestion as to a limit, God laughs at me and hands me another.

33. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? One Joel Abshier, whom I barely remember. My parents still have some furniture he made.

34. WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST TURN OFF WITH THE OPPOSITE SEX? Women who object to traditional manners, like opening doors or standing when they enter the room.

35. WHAT IS ONE THING YOU MISS ABOUT GRADE SCHOOL? Being able to go anywhere in town without my mom worrying about something happening to me. Moses Lake isn't a very dangerous place, but it was a lot safer in Goldendale in the 70s.

36. WHAT KIND OF SHAMPOO DO YOU USE? I'm too nearsighted to read the bottle in the shower, so I use whatever looks like shampoo.

37. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? Define "handwriting." I'm not sure what I do on paper qualifies.

38. ANY BAD HABITS? Silly question. I have Tourette's; my life is filled with minor bad habits.

39. ARE YOU A JEALOUS PERSON? I wouldn't say so. Why? Who told you I was!

40. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON, WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? Probably. I'd get on my nerves eventually, though.

41. DO YOU AGREE WITH FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS? Hell, I don't even believe in girl/boyfriends with benefits. If there's anything I've learned from years of being a lousy Christian, it's that nookie without a ring always leads to misery in the long run.

42. HOW DO YOU RELEASE ANGER? Release? Who has time to release it? Someday it'll reach right up through my chest and strangle me.

43. WHAT’S YOUR MAIN GOAL IN LIFE? To raise good kids, make my wife deliriously happy, and eventually go to Heaven. Everything else is kind of peripheral.

44. WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE TOY AS A CHILD? It's a bit of a stretch, but my favorite thing was a fort my uncle built in the backyard for me and my sister. It was a two-story jobby, with a playhouse below for her and a crow's-nest/castle keep/darn near anything in the top for me. Bestest toy I ever had; I wish our yard had room for one like it.

45. HOW MANY NUMBERS ARE IN YOUR CELL PHONE? Three. It's a company phone for the moonlight job, and it has some other employees' numbers in it. I don't use cell phones by choice.

46. WERE YOU A FAN OF BARNEY AS A LITTLE KID? No, but some of my kids were. I hated having to watch him when my oldest was little, but then, he wasn't aimed at me anyway. I think he was great for the kids.

47. MASHED POTATOES OR MACARONI AND CHEESE?I guess I'm a smashed potatoes kind of guy.

48. DO YOU HAVE ALL YOUR FINGERS AND TOES? 
Yep.

49. DO YOU HAVE A COMPUTER IN YOUR ROOM? Christina and I each have one. And all the kids have their own in the family room, too, all networked. Any family with Number One Son in it is jolly well going to be wired.

50. PLANS FOR TONIGHT? Cook dinner and get the urchins off to bed. I was up at 2:30 this morning for the side job, and I could stand a little unconsciousness.

51. WHAT’S THE FASTEST YOU’VE EVER GONE IN A CAR? 120, in my buddy Dean's 70-sommething Nova when I was in high school. We were on the Biggs-Rufus Highway (you can see the area here), and we pegged the speedometer. There were three of us in the front seat (no seatbelts, natch) with me in the middle, and while we were flying down the road, the guy on the passenger side opened the door, stuck his foot out, and scraped the sole of his tenny-runner on the asphalt to see how hot it would get. And we were all sober, even. The stupidity of teenagers knows no bounds.

52. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO? 
 co-worker bitching about yet another employee of hers that quit. What she doesn't mention is that she put the poor girl in a position where she had no choice. I'd say three quarters of the turnover in this office is due to one person.

53. LAST THING YOU DRANK? Stale coffee from the office pot.

54. REPUBLICAN OR DEMOCRAT? Republican with strong libertarian leanings. In general, I figure the government probably isn't wiser than the individual, and if it is, it still has no business getting uppity with me. However, I'm also emphatically pro-life, which isn't usually a libertarian position. That issue, and free exercise of religion, are my strongest voting points.

55. DO YOU HAVE A LOW SELF ESTEEM OR A HIGH SELF ESTEEM? I dislike that terminology. Better to have a fairly accurate self-image than to worry about low or high. Besides, I'm really not good enough to deserve self-esteem anyway.

56. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING? I'd like to say I'm re-reading The Imitation of Christ, but I'm not getting far enough fast enough to be able to say that. When I get time to read, it's usually something I've read a dozen times already, just because I can put my brain in neutral. George MacDonald Fraser and Harry Turtledove are old standbys. I'll make it through Imitation eventually, though. I loved it the first time I read it, years ago.

Friday Flicks: Hitler – Dead or Alive

There was a little pre-discussion about bad movies over on the Friday [Fornicate]-Off Thread at It Comes in Pints? (language alert, obviously), so I thought I'd toss in a demonstration of true celluloid badness.

Yes, I know it was wartime. Yes, I know propaganda movies were an important part of the war effort. All I can say is that in order for guys like Ward Bond and Warren Hymer to be willing to appear in this stinkeroo, they must have really, really loved their country.

The plot is silly enough on the surface. An American businessman offers a million-dollar reward for the abduction of Hitler (hence the title). His offer is accepted by a group of low-key gangsters, who join the Canadian air force, hijack a plane, and parachute into Germany behind the lines. It gets progressively more ludicrous from there. I hesitate to give away any more plot, because you actually have to see it to believe it. It's not boring, at least. Nor, mercifully, is it overly long at an hour and ten minutes. But if you can get out of it without cramping up your cringe muscles, you've got a higher threshold than I do.

This is not a movie with camp value, like Plan 9 from Outer Space. It's unintentionally funny, like Plan 9, but it's so straight-faced that it's hard to make enough fun of. If it were a person, it would need to be institutionalized for its own good.



As always, if you watch even some of this, leave a comment. If I'm to watch this bilge, I hate to do it alone.

A note of additional weirdness: Apparently this turkey was inspired by an actual reward offer. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are turned into schlocky B-flicks.

My son, the stereotype

It seems all those assumptions about video game fanatics have a certain basis in truth.

This is what makes me proud of my country

Well, one of the things.

The governing military junta in Myanmar has agreed to allow a single U.S. cargo aircraft to bring in relief supplies for victims of a devastating cyclone, Bush administration officials said Friday.

White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said the United States welcomed the go-ahead to land a U.S. militaryC-130 in the country on Monday. He said he hopes this is the beginning of continued aid flowing into the country from the United States and other nations and international relief agencies.

Earlier Friday, Ky Luu, director of the U.S. office of foreign disaster assistance, had said that skilled aid workers were being forced to sit on the sidelines as victims of last week's cyclone die. His comments reflect the mounting frustration among the United States and other countries as they wait for permission from the military-led government to begin trying to help.


Said Johndroe: "We will continue to work with the government of Burma to allow other assistance. We hope that this is the beginning of a long line of assistance from the United States to Burma."

"We are very concerned about the people of Burma," he added.

Johndroe also said that while the U.S. still has limited leeway to help, "One flight is much better than no flights.

This is a country whose government hates us, and what are we doing? We're jolly well begging them to let us come and save their lives. We've got nothing to gain from this. There's no profit potential, no political capital to be won. We're simply humbling ourselves and asking to be allowed to give away some of what God's blessed us with. Why?

Because we're Americans, and this is what Americans do. Remember that the next time some loud-mouthed pissant starts ranting about all the evil we unleash in the world, or shouts "God damn America" from a pulpit. When people are hungry, or homeless, or in danger, Americans are the first ones to step up to the plate. We are, by and large, some of the most generous people on the planet. Even to countries that treat us like dung. Notice that when the story first broke and President Bush called for sending aid, he didn't use the press conference to badmouth the Myanmar junta. (And if ever a government had some badmouthing coming, this is it.) Say what you will about his policies, the president understands what it is to be American. How many of his detractors would have left politics out of the equation?

I'll salute the flag and sing the national anthem. I'll cheer when soldiers go by on parade. I support our military endeavors, whether or not I think a particular operation is a good idea. But the time I'm proudest of my country is when we're handing out food and saving lives.

God bless America. And then may He help us bless the rest of the world.

Steeplechase!*

A guest blogger at Internet Monk seems to have solved the denominational problem, albeit at the cost of a lot of gas and more stress than the Sabbath should warrant:

First, I will attend the early service at my local evangelical megachurch, New Life Excitement Amazing Church Franchise #165. About half an hour into worship (maybe 1/4 of a worship chorus), I will inevitably convert to Catholicism. I will hurry over to mass at Our Lady of Dubious Likenesses in Quesadillas, but find myself so irritated by the idea of the actual mass that I will indignantly march over to Biblical Family Principles Baptist Family Family Church. With any luck, they will be well into the sermon. Since this is an election year, I’ll only have to listen for a few minutes before the blatant politicization and unbearable law sends me over to St. Oprah’s Episcopal. I’ll enjoy the sonorous liturgy right up until the sermon, which will help me finally understand that there is no God and all religion is evil. I’ll head out to my car, where I’ll do devotions with Richard Dawkins. It usually takes around 17 or 18 pages before, out of spite, I go to a mosque, or more likely Extremely Greek Orthodox church, which is just down the road. I know I won’t be able to take communion, of course, but I’ll be able to get the priest’s blessing and tell everyone about my coming home story. The self-congratulation will be enough to propel me happily back to NLEAC #165 where I’ll be able to catch maybe the last 15 minutes of the closing song, having made peace with evangelicalism until next Sunday.

The only flaw I can see is that I’ll never get to take communion, but if my wife and I order rolls and a glass of merlot at lunch, we can decide that’s what Jesus really had in mind and be emerging for a few minutes. Problem solved!

*With apologies to Steve Taylor.

I'm a little proud of myself

I'm not as out of practice as I thought. I only had to look up one word to get this. (In honesty, though, it was a pretty crucial one.) The Wittenburg Door's Latin Joke of the Day:

Cum Bob expiscit is reciperet fortunam ubi suum patrum aegrum interiit, decrevit invenire mulierem quam fructa sit copiam cum eo.

Ita, uno vespere iit ad tabernam caelibum ubi conspexit pulchrissimam feminam quam visus esset umquam. Nativa pulchritudo feminae exanimavit eum.

"Videor quasi sum modo vulgaris vir," Bob dixit ubi ambulavit ad eam, "sed in septum diebus modo, meus pater interibit, et hereditatem sestertiorum viciens accipiam."

Inculcata, femina ivit ad domum cum eo illo vespere, et, post triduum, noverca eius facta erat.

Feminae sunt tantae intelligentiores quam vires.

How and why I learned Latin to begin with is a story for another time. I had no idea then I'd ever be Catholic.

Daughters Two and Three are studying Latin in their homeschooling. Let's see if they can get this one.

The question of personhood

This gets a little grody, but it's 200-proof distilled truth.

Personhood is an excuse. If one wishes to work one's will upon the weak and helpless, one first removes their humanity in thought. Call the Jews sons of Pigs. Call the Negroes sub-human. Call the worthless old folk bread gobblers or vegetables. Called the unborn any name by what they are: human offspring. Babies.

Tell me honestly. If I said I had a mare who was carrying a foal in her womb, do you think anyone (anyone not deliberately arguing about abortion) could correct my language, and tell me my mare cannot be carrying a foal, because an embryo is not a member of the species 'horse'?

Does anyone talk that way? Does anyone say a horse is not a horse just because it is still in the womb?

Let us take this hypothetical one step further. Suppose I were an faithful Hindu, forbidden by my laws to eat beef. Could I eat the veal from an unborn calf on the grounds that he was not a cow, not a member of the species, cattle? Suppose I were an observant Jew, forbidden by my laws to eat pork. Could I eat the bacon from an unborn piglet on the grounds that he was not a swine, not a member of the species, pig?

Would anyone be persuaded by the beef-eating Hindu or the pork-eating Jew if their diet consisted only of animals taken half a second before birth from their mother's wombs?

Let us take the hypothetical one step further. Suppose I live in a country where unborn homo sapiens are not considered human. Suppose my laws forbid the eating of human flesh, on the ground that it is cannibalism. I go to an abortionist, find a baby who is only halfway out of the womb, coming out feet first. The abortionist drives a pair of scissors into the babies fragile skull, and suctions out this brains. I take the rest of the flesh home and cook it up for a meat sandwich. Michael Valentine Smith and Hannibal Lector come by and eat with me. A little tiny perfectly formed baby hand sticks out of one side of my sandwich as I wolf it down.

Is my action legally not an act of cannibalism, on the grounds that what I ate was not a human?

If anyone can think of a pro-abortion answer that holds water, I'd be interested in hearing it. I can't come up with one.

Akubra tip to Paragraph Farmer.

All you need is bodily fluids and an insane desire for attention

As usual, Iowahawk has the best take on the Yale abortion-art hooraw.

Lord, hear our prayer

Or for Protestant readers, can I get an "amen?"

Dear Jesus,

Please do not create any more stupid people. We are full up, here.

Love,

Nina

No contest whatsoever

In an immediate compromise of the post below, I have to pass this on. You've probably seen it already, but I can't stop chortling over it.

A comment from Denmark on the upcoming U.S. Presidential elections

'We in Denmark cannot figure out why you are even bothering to hold an election.

On one side, you have a b*tch who is a lawyer, married to a lawyer, and a lawyer who is married to a b*tch who is a lawyer.

On the other side, you have a true war hero married to a woman with a large chest who owns a beer distributorship.

Is there a contest here?'

I'll go along with it

Back in the 90s, when conservatives were finding conspiracy theories in every corner of the Clinton White House, and finding no charge so ludicrous that they wouldn't level it against him, I went unheard in saying that it would come back to bite us in the butt when a Republican was elected. I turned out to be right, as the frequent outbreaks of Bush Derangement Syndrome demonstrate. So I'm pleased to see this relayed by A Boy Named Sous:

The Conservative Non-Derangement Pact
If Obama is elected:
1. We won’t convert the conservative blogosphere into a shrill, psychotic echo chamber consisting primarily of profanity-laced invective.
2. If anyone kills themselves in the White House, we will assume it isn’t murder until proven otherwise.
3. We won’t be so strident in our hatred of Obama that we push moderates into his corner.
4. We won’t start up another raft of conspiracy theories involving the Illuminati.
5. We WILL fight our political battles red of tooth and claw, but smile while doing it.

I'll sign. One side has to be gentlemen, and it should be the side that can say the word without spitting.

Today she's on the plane.

Of the entire cast of the greatest movie ever made, there is now only one cast member still alive. Joy Page, who played the sweet young thing Annina Brandel, now travels in elephants.

Annina was the sweet young bride who is prepared to sacrifice her wifely virtue to the slimy Renneau for exit visas for her and her husband. Rick, we all know, intervenes and lets him win a bundle at roulette, so the girl can leave Casablanca without her husband ever knowing what she was ready to do for him. It's one of the best scenes in the film, a counterpoint to the cynicism and drama that surrounds Rick himself. It also shows that the idea of women in the 40s as decorative but passive is hooey. Annina is (as she puts it) older than her husband, even though she's presumably got fewer years. (In fact, the actor who played Jan was seven years older; he died in 1982.) It also gives Rick a chance to show that he's not as hard-bitten as he comes across. It's kind of a build-up to the drunk-and-weeeping scene, where we see his pain poured out into a glass. Women, it says, can indeed be good people; it's only Rick's bad luck that he was so badly burned. (Show em a divorced or otherwise dumped man who doesn't immediately identify with that scene, and I'll show you onne who was never really in love.)

Joy Page makes you want to smile sweetly the first time she comes on camera, looking up at the plane to Lisbon and saying, "Maybe tomorrow we'll be on that plane." There's an innocence about her that shines like an aura. In this crazy world, people like her are the ones that do matter a hill of beans. They're the reason a war should be fought.

So the last surviving cast member (that IMDb can verify) is the aptly-if-ungrammatically-named Madeleine LeBeau, who plays Yvonne the French trollop. If Annina was a wistful smile, Yvonne was a lecherous and slightly indulgent grin. Watching her at the bar with the Boche, and then with tears on her face singing La Marseillaise at the top of her lungs, shows the sort of balancing act people had to do in wartime.

Joy Page, interestingly enough, was one of only three American-born actors in the cast. Many of the others were actual refugees from either the war or Nazi-controlled countries. She was cast to begin with because she was Jack Warner's stepdaughter, but she was the perfect choice.

Good idea, bad application

This guy's promise to speak to any group sounds like an excellent one ... in theory. Alas, his mileage varied:

U.S. Congressional candidate Tony Zirkle is facing criticism from one of his primary opponents, and a host of people on the Internet, for speaking at an event over the weekend that celebrated Adolf Hitler's birthday...

The Crown Point Republican spoke in front of about 56 "white activists" at an event honoring the birth of Hitler. The German leader was responsible for the genocide of millions of Jews and others during World War II.

Zirkle said the group asked him to speak to discuss the effect of pornography and prostitution on young, white women and girls.

Zirkle is running against Republican Luke Puckett of Goshen and Joseph Roush of Plymouth in the May primary. He lost twice before in primaries to former U.S. Rep. Chris Chocola and has made doing away with pornography and prostitution his top campaign plank.

"I told (Channel 16, WNDU in South Bend) in the beginning that I'd speak to any group that wanted me to speak," Zirkle said Monday. He said he's also recently spoken on the subject to a pair of black journalists.

"I'm keeping my promise. I'll speak to any group. (The National Socialist Workers Party) was interested in the targeting of white people for prostitution."

He says he'll address the Black Panthers or the Jewish Zionists the same way, although something tells me they won't be inviting him to anytime soon. It's a good concept - treating all groups equally whether you agree with them or not. A good concept that just guaranteed that a retarded possum could beat him in the primary.

And they say Republicans aren't inclusive.

A tip of the Akubra to Kathy Shaidle.

Unspeakable bastards

There is no scaffold high enough to string up these vermin.

A company that offered rescue services to homeowners struggling with their mortgages will refund about $75,000 to 200 Washington consumers under a settlement announced Monday by the state Attorney General's Office.

Homeowners paid between $1,200 and $1,500 to Foreclosure Assistance LLC, of Clearwater, Fla., hoping the company could help save their homes from foreclosure. The state alleged that the company pocketed homeowners' money but did little or nothing to help them save their homes.

More than 70 percent of homeowners who signed up for the services ended up losing their homes, anyway, the state said.

"We believe Foreclosure Assistance Solutions used coercive tactics to pressure consumers into paying for a service they really couldn't afford and then doing little or nothing to actually help those consumers save their homes," Attorney General Rob McKenna said in a statement.

Having recently squeaked out of a foreclosure, I can easily picture the desperation with which these predators' victims seized on the bait, only to be cheated out of the very thing they were trying so frantically to hold on to. I'm ashamed to have the same number of chromosomes as anyone who would do a thing like that.

There are no words vile enough for such scum. May their mothers be lured into crack prostitution. May their children repudiate them and change their names. May their accountants and lawyers fleece them and leave them destitute. May their internal organs fail, one by one. And at the end, when they are hauled screaming into the eternal furnace that no doubt awaits them, may they do so in the dark, alone and unmourned. If anyone can think of heavier curses, I'd like to see those applied as well.

(Incidentally, did the Clearwater address ring any bells? Yup. Turns out they're Scientologists. Unsurprisingly, the layers of sleaze just keep piling up.)

The most patronizing thing I've read in a long time

File under "Just enough of me, way too much of you:"

Shorter Buzz Thomas: Religions that cling to outmoded "tenets" and won't get on board with the current trends should damn well be made to change their doctrines. Screw the immortal soul; this is important!

All the depth of a puddle in July.

How ironic

Weren't we warned we'd need this eventually if we kept doing that? I'm surprised nobody thought of this sooner.

Bye bye, Seattle!

Write if you get work! And don't let the door hit you in your sorry, drizzly, latte-stained ass!

Frustrated by the state and federal gridlock on solving Seattle's transportation problems, Mayor Greg Nickels suggested secession at a Thursday luncheon.

"Our region should declare its independence," Nickels said.

The Puget Sound regional economy makes up 67 percent of the state's economic activity, he said. "If we were a country, [our economy] would be just a little smaller than Thailand. We would be larger than Colombia, Venezuela. We are held back because our state and federal government still believe our economies are driven by wheat farms and timber logging."

Somewhere between Colombia and Thailand, huh? Seattle ought to feel right at home sandwiched in between countries that make their money from drug dealers and child prostitution. In case Nickels hasn't looked lately, wheat is a lot more essential than, say, more copies of Windows. Those laser discs don't digest very well. And who is it that sucked all the prosperity out of the logging counties? Hint: it wasn't the people who actually lived there. It was Seattle pseudo-intellectuals who never met a logger they didn't yearn to see unemployed.

I envision a state shaped like the one above, made up of those counties in Washington that grow food instead of luxuries, have air you can actually see through, and believe that generating electricity is a good thing. The Coasties are even welcome to keep the name Washington if they want; we'll pick another one. Then they can vote themselves in all the Kleptocratic administrations they want without having to cheat, and we'll have an actual franchise. We'll raise taters and wheat, and I hope the Coasties find their airplanes tasty.

Free the Brownside!

Rest in peace, Uncle Larry

I don't know how far you can judge a man by his obituary, but my uncle got a pretty impressive one in the local paper today. He died yesterday morning in his sleep, after a very short bout with a brain tumor. (CCFOAD, by the way, for those readers who also hang out at the Pint Place.) If you didn't know, you'd never have guessed that he was 80. When my folks moved to town about ten years ago, he was the one who kept lugging furniture long after his juniors had collapsed on the floor.

Larry is also a large part of the reason that this area isn't depressed like so many other rural counties in the west. When the air base closed in 1964, he was one of the guys who jumped on the chance to make an international airport out of it and attract industries that otherwise wouldn't have even thought about coming to Moses Lake. He supposedly retired 25 years ago, but that was just for show. I never saw a man as involved as Larry. Everything he turned his hand to seemed to prosper, to the benefit of everyone around him.

But all that is secondary. Larry was first and foremost one hell of a nice guy. He's my great-uncle; his sister was my grandmother. Thing is, there are no genes connecting us, because it's actually my stepfather's family. From them, though, I learned that "step" is a null concept in families. The moment my mom married his nephew, my sister and I were family. And that applied retroactively; we had always been family. My grandparents set that precedent at the wedding, and everybody else followed suit. We belonged, period. By extension, they kind of adopted my kids, some of whom are also "steps." There were no such technicalities in the Peterson/Fitzgerald family.

As you can see from the article, a lot of other people liked him, too. The funeral will be held at our church, which is just about the biggest in town, and I'll bet it's still overflowing. I sort of wonder what my aunt will do now that he's gone, as her health isn't very good. She's sharp as a tack - nothing wrong with her mind - but she doesn't get around as well as she used to. Still, there's no shortage of people who love her, me included. She'll be well cared for.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him.

Sorry, fella

I know it was unprofessional of those doctors, but I would have laughed, too. Maybe you should be more careful of the company you keep.

Memo to parents:

The kids belong to the state, not to you.

There are so many things about this whole case that stink like a waterfront brothel the day after payday that I don't even know where to begin. As much as I loathe the FLDS, I don't think a whole lot more of CPS. I'd rather see children looked after by religious psychos who love them than state professionals who simply want to file their cases.

I'd be very, very interested in knowing some of the financial details of this operation. If CPS is going to be getting money to deal with this huge kid seizure, I'd like to know how much and whether they knew about it before the alleged phone call came. My prediction is that the girl who made the initial call will never be found, any criminal charges that are filed will be sporadic and serendipitous, and the vast majority of the parents will never hear from their kids again. Because when you deal with CPS, you're guilty even if proven innocent, simply because you have kids that the agency can get grants for taking away.

This stuck out at me like a bee-stung nose:

ELDORADO, Texas (AP) — State officials Tuesday defended their decision to suddenly separate mothers from many of the children taken in a raid on a polygamist ranch in West Texas.
Texas Children's Protective Services spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner said the separation was made Monday after they decided that children are more truthful in interviews about possible abuse if their parents are not around.

Where have we heard that before?

The last of his kind

Ollie Johnston, the last of Disney's incredible team of "Nine Old Men," travels in elephants. There's a wonderful article here, from someone who knew him.

You know, my kids don't know what it's like to watch hand-drawn cartoons. The older ones were weaned on Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid, Disney's 90s renaissance, so they've seen a shadow of the artistry, at least. The younger ones don't remember at all a time when animation didn't come from computers.

The year I was born, Disney put out what would be its last successful animated feature until my first child was old enough to be watching them. The gap between the two marks another generational shift at Disney: The old artists giving way to the younger executives. More than seven decades after the first Disney feature was released, the art is still staggering in its simplicity, its detail, and its ability to turn distinctions between child and grown-up into irrelevancies for an hour and a half.

Your assignment: If you cried when Bambi lost his mother in the fire, say a prayer for Ollie's soul. If you still cry, go to the nearest church and light a candle for him. Be honest.

And then go home and show your kids what animation looked like when it was young.

Doesn't it figure?

Back in the dark days before Tim Eyman's car-tab initiative, the cost of registering a car was so prohibitive in Washington that anyone who lived close enough would license their cars in Oregon instead, even if it meant having family who lived in Oregon do it for you. In response, the Washington State Patrol took to sitting on the bridges leading from Vancouver into Portland, taking down license numbers of commuters with Oregon plates and checking them against utility bills and such. (I figure the excise tax must have been paying their salaries, since Lord knows it wasn't being used to maintain I-5 through that area.)

Ironic that The Woman who Would Be Governor should be doing her campaigning in an Oregon-registered vehicle. Maybe her followers could hide enough ballots in Salem to get her a mansion there, too.

Red in tooth and claw

The folks who are shocked that a polar bear would kill carp for fun are probably the same ones who think milk comes from the organic co-op and tofu grows on vines already wrapped in plastic. Some people, you just have to pat them on the head and smile.

Let me get this straight:

Weird religious group lies to authorities and helps groom young girls for sexual exploitation: Bad.

Government-funded agency lies to authorities and helps groom young girls for sexual exploitation: Good.

All clear?

Kosher shrimp?

Psych! (I'd love to know the story behind this one.)

Akubra tip to Damian.

Coming soon to a post office wall near you

Between work, second job and the stomach flu, I haven't had time or energy to post anything actually interesting, so I thought I'd put up a picture I found on my wife's camera. I'm pretty sure it was Number Three Daughter that snapped it. Here, for all the world to see, are our three youngest.

On the left, we have four-year-old Dai, the Visigoth. Those of you who follow my Lovely and Brilliant Wife's "Notes to Hypertot" will recognize him at once. He's the undisputed ringleader, the one that someday the others will be telling their therapists all about.

The one on the other end is Mona, the Ostrogoth. (Monkeytot, in Christina's parlance.) She's two, and has a long future ahead of her getting by on cuteness and charm. (Don't laugh; I know lots of adults who manage that.)

The little nipple-nibbler in the middle is Pete. (I ran out of Germanic tribes after Mona.) He's three months old today.

The picture is a little blurry, but this is as close as any of them get to sitting still. And I want to make absolutely clear that we do so clothe them. Unfortunately, short of stapling the clothing in place, we can't keep them that way.

So now you know what they look like.

Pastor Mike on sorrow, stupidity, and God's grace

Our friend Pastor Mike Barrett went on the 700 Club a while back to talk about some of the same things he discussed in his book, The Danger Habit. (Which, BTW, I highly recommend, especially for anyone with an adrenaline jones.)

(I couldn't get the video to embed, but you can see it here.)

One thing that struck me was when Mike was very honest about an incident in his life in which he was narrowly averted from something both sinful and stupid - and I mean on a hand-in-the-meat-grinder level. We've all been there, although as he does with everything else, Mike took it to an extreme. (Not that I've failed to be equally stupid and sinful on a frequent basis, mind you.) One of the silly memes that follows Christianity around is the idea that once you're "born again" or "saved," you automatically know better than to commit self-destructive (or other-destructive) sins. And only a hypocrite ever stumbles after that point.

So we're led to believe. But in real life, the Christian life is a slow, frustrating stagger toward the perfection that the Lord promises at the end of our lives.

God uses people who trip over their own feet, and He uses people who take chances that make my hair curl, and He even uses timid, unexciting people like me. He uses us as we are, because He made us as we are.

No Doubt!

A seriously cool article on my favorite apostle.

You know, I've wondered why we think of Thomas as "doubting," too. Yeah, I know he wanted proof of the Resurrection before he believed the rumors, but absent hindsight, wouldn't you? That misunderstanding aside, I tend to think of Thomas having stronger faith than any of the others.

Consider the two other spots in the Gospels where he has something to say. Right after he checks out Jesus' hands and side, he falls to his knees and says, "My Lord and my God." Not "Gosh, Master, what does this mean?" Not "Hey! You look almost like you could be God. Maybe you were the Messiah!"

No. It's "my Lord and my God." Period. For a supposed skeptic, Thomas absorbed the entire doctrine of the Incarnation, awfully quickly and without blinking. Once he knows the Jesus he's heard about is the same one he already knew, he's willing to believe anything that Jesus says. As Paul said later, "I know whom I have believed." That's faith in a Person, not merely in a set of doctrines.

The other one makes me embarrassed of my lack of faith. When Jesus is fixing to go to Bethany to see Lazarus and his sisters (and carry out a really spectacular miracle), the disciples try to talk Him out of it. All except Thomas. He shrugs and says, "Let us go also, that we may die with him."

Wow. He's certain the Jews are going to kill them, and he probably thinks Jesus is making a terrible mistake. But that's beside the point to Thomas. He's going to follow, even though he's pretty sure that it will all end badly. I think I would have at least looked for ways to stall Him a little.

That kind of puts the stories of Thomas' evangelism in India in perspective. Even if we slough off the more spectacular miracle stories as legend (and that's not always safe to do when you're talking about apostles), Thomas carried the Gospel farther and into more alien territory than any of the other disciples. In fact, just off the top of my head, I think he's the only one who carried the word outside the bounds of the Roman Empire. The church he founded in India is still there, despite being in decidedly Christian-unfriendly territory for two millennia.

Saturday Matinee: Pot o' Gold

Jimmy Stewart. Loads of swing music. What's not to love?


Don't miss the jailhouse number "When Johnny Toots his Horn." It's a riot. Believe it or not, that's actually Stewart singing. (You didn't know he could, did you?) Also keep an eye out for a very young Art Carney in his very first film role.

There's a good review of this film here, too.

Ah, spring!

For those who have never been to Moses Lake, we're in a sagebrush desert here. The elevation is fairly low, only about a thousand feet. And it's just short of April. This is when the fish should be biting, the trees should be flowering, and I should be looking longingly at the motorcycle dealership.

So what happens?

It's snowing. It's bloody snowing.

Somebody up there has an inscrutable sense of humor.

It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world

But Robert... for Wales?*

How did I miss this?

Hallelujah! Welcome to the world's second-oldest club, WG! And welcome to the wide world, Winston!

Surprise, surprise

Baghdad Jim McDermott's trips to Iraq in 2002 were paid for by Saddam Hussein.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Saddam Hussein's intelligence agency secretly financed a trip to Iraq for three U.S. lawmakers during the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

An indictment unsealed in Detroit accuses Muthanna Al-Hanooti, a member of a Michigan nonprofit group, of arranging for three members of Congress to travel to Iraq in October 2002 at the behest of Saddam's regime. Prosecutors say Iraqi intelligence officials paid for the trip through an intermediary.

At the time, the Bush administration was trying to persuade Congress to authorize military action against Iraq.

The lawmakers are not named in the indictment but the dates correspond to a trip by Democratic Reps. Jim McDermott of Washington, David Bonior of Michigan and Mike Thompson of California. None was charged and Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said investigators "have no information whatsoever" any of them knew the trip was underwritten by Saddam.

"Obviously we didn't know it at the time," McDermott spokesman Michael DeCesare said Wednesday. "The trip was to see the plight of the Iraqi children. That's the only reason we went."

For the children. Uh-huh. Right. Would those be the same children that Saddam had gassed, or tortured to death in front of their parents? I'm sure they're suitably grateful to Congressman McDirtbag for his efforts. Or would be, if they weren't... you know... dead!

You know what they say about an honest politician: Once he's bought, he stays bought. Ka-ching!

A Day at the Science Fair

Posted for the sole purpose of making Ricki laugh until she loses bladder control wince in righteous revulsion.


There's a whole lot more at Something Awful, but be warned that many of them aren't for the pure of mind.

Like, OMG, my daddy would make a totally kewl president! Heehee!

This is the most disgustingly patronizing thing I've read in a long time, even for the WaPo. Can you imagine Chelsea Clinton or whatever Obama's kids are named being portrayed this blatantly as shallow little fritterheads? (Go to Bugmenot.com if you need a registration.)

Via Dan Collins at Protein Wisdom (HTBUH).

Snicker!

Let the record show that I don't hold Obama responsible for his pastor's desire to see me dead. (I do hold him responsible for the desire to see babies of any color dead.) I know and love people who would be a terrible embarrassment to me if I were ever in politics. I would like to think I wouldn't abandon them under the glare of the cameras.

Still... I couldn't keep a straight face at this. A/T to Kathy Shaidle. Chortle, chortle!

Christ is Risen!

'Nuff said.

Good Friday

And can it be that I should gain

An interest in the Saviour’s blood!

Died he for me who caused his pain!

For me who him to death pursued?

Amazing love! How can it be,

That thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

Amazing love! How can it be,

That thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

If I tried to add anything to Wesley's words or Dali's painting, I'd just ruin the point. Good Friday always renders me speechless.

My dad

I have to post this quickly, before my office computer heads off to the Evil Kingdom of Hagadonia for some badly-needed repairs. My dad died thirteen fourteen years ago today. (All these years I've thought it was March 21 until my ex e-mailed to remind me. Social Security confirms that it is indeed today.) That's his high-school picture at right.

I've written about my dad in other places, particularly here. (Warning to family: It's not a hagiography. Read it at your own risk.) Every year I fully intend to write about him at length on Father's Day, and every year I find I have so much to say I can't turn it into a blog post. I've been in contact with some guys who served at the same time and place as him in Vietnam, and while I haven't found anyone who actually remembers him personally, I've gotten so much help from some of the vets in trying to locate men from his unit that it's been a really humbling experience. That, too, is material for another post.

So I'm not going to write anything extensive this time. Just that I loved him, and I miss him, and I think he'd be pleased with the crop of ten grandkids he's accumulated so far. If you can measure a man by his descendants, or by the people who loved him, then my dad's a success.

(Thanks for the heads-up, Danette. And thanks to my Aunt Pam for correcting my arithmetic. It'll be another month before I get used to it being 2008.)

Pole Dancing Blonde

Something tells me this girl isn't working her way through medical school or anything.

Akubra tip to TheBronze.

Back to Edenfalls

I gotta ask... does anyone else follow the TV show The Riches? We started watching it when it premiered last year, and got hooked. And I do mean hooked. It's the first time (don't laugh)...

... that I got so involved in a TV show (I mean it!)...

...that I've actually caught myself praying for the characters before I remembered they were fictional.

(Stop that guffawing at once!)

I've always thought Minnie Driver was a hugely underrated talent, but this show proves it beyond a doubt. It's also kind of weird to see Eddie Izzard in pants, let alone with a mostly believable hillbilly accent. (It slips a little from time to time. Minnie Driver's is perfect, natch.) I've seen lots of American actors who couldn't have pulled off the roles just for the accent alone.

So is anyone else as enamored of this family of reprobates as I am?

Tomorrow is March 20

Don't forget to wear a sweater in honor of Mister Rogers.

I have a cardigan left over from my grandpa's closet (not the same grandpa I wrote about below) that just shouts "old man." I'll be wearing that.

Here's an idea, if anyone's up for it. Take a picture of yourself in your sweater and mail it to jbmartin -at- nwi -dot- net, and I'll put it up here. (Nina, I know you're skittish about pictures, so you can blur out your face or take a shot of the back of your head if you'd rather.)

God bless you, Mister Rogers. You made us all believe we were special, even if nobody else did. We haven't forgotten you.

Riding into the sunset

Warning: this post is personal and family-related. If it bores you, feel free to skip it. I'll probably post something more interesting when time allows.

I promised last week to write more about my grandfather, who was just officially diagnosed with dementia. It's not an easy thing to write. In one way, it's a relief to have an official name to give his condition. He's been having memory problems and such for a while now. On the other hand, it's also painful to admit that he's susceptible to the same sort of frailties as the rest of us. Grandpa has always seemed to me like he ought to be wearaing a red cape and a big red "G" on his chest. He may not be a hero in the dramatic sense, but there's never been anything he couldn't do.

I'm going to take a moment here and slip in a picture my aunt sent me last week:

This was taken in 1946, when Grandpa was probably in college in Walla Walla. That's him on the left, the smart-alecky-looking young guy in the wide tie. The little three-year-old boy is my dad, Calvin Martin III. (And looking a lot like my boys Long Drink and Visigoth, incidentally.) The old guy on the right is my great-grandfather, Cal Sr., who died a couple of years before I was born. I don't know a lot about him, but my dad once described him as "kind of a ne'er-do-well." He looks a lot like my earliest memories of Grandpa. (For comparison, take a look at my cousin Kenny, who's got three or four years on me. Does he look like these guys, or what?)

Okay, now everyone has a face to connect to the post. My grandfather grew up in Port Angeles, which is a logging town in the soggiest part of Washington. (You know how you can tell a family of old loggers? At my grandparents' golden wedding anniversary, I don't think there was a man of their generation there who had all his fingers.) He went to school at the Seventh-Day Adventist Academy in Auburn, where he married the prettiest girl in the place. (I know she was; he's told me so many times.) He couldn't get into the service after Pearl Harbor because of bad eyesight and a missing trigger finger, so he worked in the Kaiser shipyards in Seattle through the war. While he was there, he took a bad fall and was partially paralyzed. He couldn't take a bath or tie his shoes without his wife's help. Here's where things get interesting, at least for me. He was expecting to take their savings and buy a store somewhere, something he could do without full physical mobility. My grandma put her foot down and said, "No, you need to go to school." I could count on one hand the times Grandma has ever gotten stubborn that I know of, but that was the turning point.

In the 40s, it wasn't common for a guy with a family to work his way through, especially with all the young men coming back with GI bills in their pockets. He found that Walla Walla College was the only place that would let him do it, so he packed up his wife and two small children and headed there. He worked as a hotel desk clerk at night and took day classes, and graduated after two and a half years with a degree in mathematics and a four-point average. Ye gods and little fishes! Can you imagine the kind of skull sweat it takes to do that? (Oh, and he had to put in so much physical work during that time that he was pretty much back to full mobility by the end of it.)

See, that's what has always stuck out about my grandfather. Not only is he determined and bull-headed beyond belief, but he's hands-down the most intelligent person I have ever encountered in my life. Bar none. He went to work for the Corps of Engineers on McNary Dam, then moved on to John Day downriver. The family lived in Goldendale at that time so he could commute, which is how it came to pass that my dad married a local preacher's daughter and I ended up spending my childhood there.

When that dam was done, they went on to Livorno, Italy, Louisville, Kentucky, and finally Frankfurt, Germany, where he retired in 1978. Well, sort of retired. He kept being brought back for special projects, because he had made a name as a top-notch contract negotiator. His modus operandi, he told me once, was to memorize the thick sheaf of paperwork that made up the contract, then gain an edge by quoting it chapter and verse during the negotiations. See what I mean about his brain? It was incredible. He used to amuse himself by doing crosswords in his head (the tough ones, not the kind you see in little newspapers like ours), then filling the answers in afterward.

He and Grandma came back to Goldendale when he retired, primarily because my dad had left us by that time and my sister and I needed them more than the other grandkids. And boy, did I need him, especially. A little boy without a dad is growing up on one leg, as it were. Grandpa undertook to teach me to be a man. He wasn't always effective about it, both because he wasn't terribly patient and because I was more of a know-it-all than even most little boys. But he taught me good manners, and a work ethic, and that not knowing how to do something is no excuse for not figuring it out. And that a man's first duty is to take care of his family, a lesson that I certainly wouldn't have gleaned from my dad at that time. (That would change a few years later.) A lot of what I wrote here I learned directly from Grandpa.

A side note: One of my favorite Grandpa stories to tell is of when I was about ten, and I had once again mouthed off intolerably to my mother. Grandpa got wind of it, and invited me out to their house, where he had just put in a lawn. He pointed to a big pile of broken concrete sitting in the backyard, and told me to move it all to a new pile at the other end of the yard. So I did, sweating and struggling in zero-degree temperatures to lug these big hunks of cement without a wheelbarrow or anything sissyish like that. When the backbreaking job was done, I came into the house expecting to find a hot cup of something and a few words of praise. Instead, Grandpa looked out the window and said, "I changed my mind. I like it better where it was." So out I went again, with numb fingers and running nose, to haul them back to where I had found them. I spoke to my mother rather more graciously for a while after that.

Eventually my mom remarried and we moved to Seattle, a time I still think of as purgatory-in-advance. I spent as much time as I could in Goldendale, staying with my grandparents at Christmas and in the summer. Meanwhile, my dad got his life more or less in order, and we became pretty close. Grandma and Grandpa were present for my first wedding, and supportive while I worked my own way through college. In fact, as I went into my last year, I got a birthday card from them that said, "We're proud of you." That was the first time in my life my grandpa had ever expressed outright approval of me.

See, Grandpa wasn't a talker, at least not about personal things. Oh, he had opinions out the ying-yang, but when it came to interpersonal stuff, he was kind of vinegary and detached. He loved his children and his grandchildren, but seldom if ever told them so to their faces. I remember hearing my whole childhood about one particular pair of my cousins: what nice kids they were, how well they were doing in school, their successes and stories. I was really jealous: why did Grandma and Grandpa like them so much better than us? It wasn't until I was older that I found out from those cousins that they had been hearing the same stuff about us all along.

So it turned out that I wasn't such a disappointment to him after all. Over the years I've gotten pretty good at speaking his language. Whenever I've been serious about a woman, I've introduced her to Grandpa, saying "This is what I'll be like in fifty years. Can you handle that?" (Some could, some couldn't.) I also got a good look into his interior when my dad died. He was the oldest son, and kind of the golden boy of the family, despite some of the self-destructive stunts he pulled in his younger days, because he was so charming you just couldn't be mad at him. When he was fifty, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and died three months later. It was hard on the whole family, but Grandpa took it worse than anyone else. All of a sudden, the man who did crosswords in his head, who could straight-arm a sledgehammer in each hand in his seventies, who knew everything and always came out a winner... was old and weak. He could do anything in the world, but he couldn't keep his oldest son from dying of cancer. I'll bet it's the first thing he'd failed at in his whole life.

He changed a lot after that. I still visited them in Goldendale when I could, although a situation with my ex made it awkward. (Let's not go there.) This year they finally moved out of Goldendale after thirty years, to be closer to my aunts in Seattle. Over the years, he's been slowing down, forgetting things, repeating himself, more than before. And now, at the age of 88, it's official that the one thing that made Grandpa what he is, is failing him.

I don't think I've hugged my grandfather since I was little. I've never told him in so many words that I loved him. To be honest, I think he'd have felt really weird about either one from a grown man, or even a boy over the age of about five. But to anyone who reads this, let there be no doubt that I love my grandfather, and I'm proud as hell to be a lot like him and raise kids who are, too. And I'm going to miss him as he rides off into that sunset.

The world has one less genius in it

Arthur C. Clarke, writer, scientist and conceiver of the geosynchronous communications satellite, travels in elephants at the age of 90. He is very nearly the last of the first generation of science fiction writers, to be named in the same breath with Heinlein, Asimov, and De Camp. Offhand, I can't think of any of his contemporaries left except for Frederik Pohl and William Tenn.

To get an idea of Clarke's style, check out this online copy of The Star. The story apparently cheesed off some Christian readers, but I think it asks some profound questions about why God does what He does. And that's the question at the root of both Christianity and science fiction. I see no blasphemy in asking the questions, only in mocking the answers for the sake of mockery.

Incidentally, I just learned that Clarke and C. S. Lewis had carried on a correspondence, and that Clarke thought very highly of Lewis' Space Trilogy. The lettters have apparently been published; I'll have to get my hands on them now. That should be a fascinating dialogue between two brilliant minds.

I feel sick

This story from the Greatest Newspaper in the Northwest™ was bad enough to read, but today I overheard an element to the story that the story doesn't mention. (Which means the information is hearsay, so don't write to the paper or anything. I don't want to get dooced.)

The witnesses who called the police were female employees and patrons at a beauty salon. But nearby, there's another business (no details needed) with a male workforce who apparently stood and watched and did nothing.

Let me say that again: They stood there and watched a guy beat his girlfriend to death. Not one of them lifted a hand to stop him.

Oh. My. Sweet. Lord.

What in the name of the great gaudy golden gonads of Goliath is wrong with these pseudo-men?

I'm ashamed.

Revised Update: Yep, the guys at the other business have said they witnessed the scene. And other "men" saw when it started. And nobody stepped in. What a pack of eunuchs.

The Grand Dungeon Master has passed

Gary Gygax, the man who gave millions of teenage boys something to do besides swap dirty magazines, now travels in elephants.

I played D&D back in the early 80s, when it was still fairly new and not very structured. My folks took away my books and destroyed them when the rumors of satanic stuff started going around. (Ironically, I never started messing around with the actual occult until after I was forced to give up the innocuous fantasy gaming.) But there was this preacher who came across as oh-so-knowledgeable about the dire threat to the faith of the youth, and my parents decided to err on the side of caution.

In another irony, the same preacher who convinced my parents that Dungeons and Dragons was a greased firepole to hell now has a new book out lumping Catholics in with Scientologists, Moonies and (of course) satanists. What I've read by this guy absolutely drips ignorance. I'm sure he doesn't remember me (I questioned him at one of his diatribes once), but if he knew I'd ended up Catholic, he'd probably take it as vindication. Clod.

If I had a bag of Doritos and a two-liter of Coke, I'd hoist them in Gary's memory.

Just because I'm feeling immature

From the diseased mind of John Callahan. This guy could rule the world as a sick, evil genius, if it weren't for that whole "can't use his arms and legs" thing.

Children are so cute

It's because they're so innocent that they make the perfect tool for a political agenda. They're much more malleable and easy to twist into emotional knots than adults are. They can be used for any purpose, sort of like psychosexual stem cells.

Isn't that what they're there for?

H/T to my Lovely and Brilliant Wife.

Friday Flick: Lady Behave

When it comes to the old films, I tend to gravitate toward the romantic comedies. I'm not sure why; maybe it's just that I have a soft spot for budding love. Or maybe it's the short attention span that makes me reluctant to dive too hard into something heavy. Either way, I'm a romantic at heart, and this sort of fluff suits me.

The moral of this movie could be "Don't drink and marry." We begin by witnessing a superannuated teenager (actually somewhere in her early 20s) waltzing home following a night of drunken revelry, and she manages to slur out that she's married a man she just met. To make things worse, she already has a husband she hasn't gotten around to divorcing yet. With the responsible self-sacrifice of an older sibling, her sister undertakes to keep her out of prison by impersonating the fritterheaded baggage and taking up residence as the stranger's wife. To her surprise (but not ours, natch), the new husband turns out to be a fairly nice chap. He's been kind of distant from his two kids (yes, kids!) since his wife died, but there's nothing wrong with him that a good bucket of cold water to the brain stem wouldn't cure. Alas, he also is well-to-do, so his kids naturally figure their new mama is a gold-digger, and set out to get rid of her.

The cast in this one is pretty good, considering that none of them were particularly big names. Sally Eilers is pretty good as the competent-but-overwhelmed "wife," and Neil Hamilton (remember him as Commissioner Gordon?) is the oblivious lug that falls in love with the woman he thinks he married but didn't. The kids are show-stealers to the max: George Ernest as the sort of surly little pissant every parent dreads crossing, and Marcia Mae Jones (who just passed away last fall) as the less histile but equally protective little girl. Jones is so sweet here you'll want to hug her and never let go. Oh, and Joseph Schildkraut is gloriously sleazy as the soon-to-be-ex-husband of the younger sister. (You may remember him as the despicable shop salesman in The Shop Around the Corner or much later as Anne Frank's father.) His accent lends itself perfectly to the creepy role, but I can't understand why they gave him such an un-foreign-sounding name as "Michael Andrews." That's a minor blip, though, in an otherwise believably horrid character.

Lady Behave may be fluffy, but it's not hokey. With relatively few changes, you could recycle the plot into a remake today. My teenagers have little patience with any film older than themselves, and even they liked it. The situations may be dependent on the time period, but the humor isn't.

Remember, kids, if you're going out drinking, leave the marriage license at home!

And a more fun cartoon

This one comes from my Excellent and Virtuous Daughter:


Serves him right for taking the Hanover side in the '45. I'm proud to say my own Boyds backed Bonnie Prince Charlie all the way to Culloden. (Come to think of it, those could be Boyd tartans they're wearing. If you don't look too closely.)

Shut up, traitor!

From Old World Swine comes this Cartoon o' the Week.



Women's word is sacred, up to a point. But when they start spouting that anti-choice stuff, well, they're just sister-hating tools of the patriarchy and must be dealt with accordingly.

Planned Parenthood: Working for a whiter America

Yeah, okay, it was a set-up. And the death merchant dedicated employee on the other end of the phone probably figured she'd just play along to get the donation sealed up. But even unwittingly, she showed PP's true colors. Or rather, color. White, preferably wealthy, and able to donate.

In the same vein, Pastor Paul sends this cheery example of abortion-as-eugenics. Amazingly, the doctors in this case seem more interested in covering their collective hiney than in the ethical implications. The only question for them is whether they should have known that the baby wasn't (necessarily) going to be an "undesirable." Had the baby been flawed, they would have not only been perfectly justified in murdering it, but the parents would have been selfish troglodytes for wanting to save him. That he turned out healthy is merely an embarrassment to them.

Dr. Mengele doesn't die; he's just reincarnated.

Update Sorry. I forgot to embed the original video. My memory must be slipping. Wonder if that makes me unfit to live, by PP's lights.

The Gospel of Barack Obama

... according to Mark Shea.

1:1 As it is written in the AP Manual, "Behold, I send my press corps before thy face, who shall prepare thy way." And so it came to pass that pundits went forth into all that country, preaching a vote of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And lo, these pundits spake by the Spirit of the Age, going into all their towns and cities and declaring:

Check thou it out here.

Count me in

I haven't seen this yet, because I'm in the middle of a crowded newsroom, but I will when I get home.



I think a day to honor Mister Rogers, even an unofficial one, is a fantastic idea. He was a Lamed-Vavnik if there ever was one. Won't you please, won't you please, won't you wear a sweater?

I'm getting a bad feeling about this

Now, I agree that Uncle Warren is a nasty piece of work, and I wouldn't be sorry to see him locked away somewhere far away from the rest of us. But this isn't how it should be done.

Polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs has been handed over to Arizona authorities to face charges related to performing more child-bride marriages.

Jeffs was being transported to the Mohave County Jail in Kingman, Ariz...

Jeffs, 52, was serving two 5-to-life sentences in prison following his conviction last year on two counts of rape as an accomplice, a first-degree felony. He performed a marriage between a 14-year-old girl and her 19-year-old cousin.

In Arizona, Jeffs is facing criminal charges including sexual misconduct with a minor, conspiracy to commit sexual misconduct with a minor and incest as an accomplice. Jeffs' criminal defense attorney in Arizona has sought to get the case there transferred to another jurisdiction, fearful that the pre-trial publicity would harm Jeffs' right to a fair trial.

In addition to the Arizona charges, Utah's Attorney General has been conducting investigations into Jeffs and the Fundamentalist LDS Church. A federal grand jury in Salt Lake City has also indicted him on charges of unlawful flight to avoid prosection, stemming from Jeffs' time on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list.

The first time Jeffs was brought to trial, I mentioned I had misgivings. This current trial doesn't do much to ease them.

We don't have a lot of details about the charges in this trial, but if there were minors (below the age of consent, that is) involved and incest, then maybe there's some reason to prosecute. But in the last case, he was on trial simply for his religious leadership. His crime was counseling (and yes, pressuring) members of his congregation to follow the tenets of their religion. He didn't urge them to commit any crime; merely to do something that they were later sorry for.

By that logic, how long will it be before other clergymen are held to the same standard? The health-and-wealth preachers who encourage giving more than you can afford? Are they to be held responsible for bankruptcies? Yeah, nobody's going to cry about them, are they?

How about the Fundamentalist preacher who counsels a homosexual to either change or remain celibate? Do we hold him liable for the guy's emotional problems? Some gay people have killed themselves in that situation. Is the preacher his murderer?

How about the Catholic priest who stands behind the church's ban on abortion? If a woman in his parish dies in childbirth, do we put the priest on trial?

Stretching it farther, how about a Mormon bishop who urges observation of the Word of Wisdom? If a Mormon trucker falls asleep at the wheel, is the bishop to blame for the resulting collision?

Okay, so we're getting progressively more strained interpretations of the precedent. But can you absolutely guarantee where the cycle will stop? Me neither.

In all the cases above the clergymen were merely reiterating the tenets of the faith they profess, to members of the same faith. Tenets, remember, that were in place before the individual situations arose. In the same way, Jeffs counseled two members of his flock to follow the established customs of better than a century in their religion. He didn't invent those customs. He didn't hold a gun to anybody's head and force them to marry. All he did was to tell them they were in danger of hell if they disobeyed God. He advocated to them those standards of right and wrong which their religion maintained. Which is the duty of any clergyman.

No matter how much I may loathe him or his religion, he was performing his priestly duties. When that in and of itself becomes grounds for prosecution, then nobody's religious freedom is secure.

No longer visiting this planet

Larry Norman has gone home.

Larry is often called the "father of Christian Rock," having written songs like I Wish We'd All Been Ready and Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music, but there was more to it than that. By the time I came of age, Christian rock was well established, and there was even a thriving punk/wave scene going. (Self-important teenagers that we were, we fancied ourselves an "underground.")

But so much of that music, particularly the mainstream CCM) was loaded with easy answers and simplistic reductions. All of life's problems could be solved by just getting on your knees and reciting a "sinner's prayer." In their zeal to sell salvation, the musicians had reduced the complexity of the human condition into a sitcom-sized problem, and the saving grace of Christ into a spiritual band-aid.

Larry didn't try to pretend it was that simple. His songs were filled with confusion, fear and – peeking through from the background – hope. The world was a screwed-up place, man is a screwed-up creature. Jesus may be the answer, but He's the sort of answer that begets a hundred more questions. His decidedly weird takes on the prodigal son and apocalyptic visions leave the listener simultaneously saying "What the hell?" and "Aha!"

Larry also wasn't afraid of tackling social issues, without toeing the political line as Christians are expected to do in public today. Can you imagine any of today's CCM artists writing a song like The Great American Novel or I am the Six-o'Clock News (listen to it here)? Not if they wanted a shot at next year's Dove awards, they wouldn't. And Larry paid the price for that. Lots of Christian bookstores wouldn't carry him even today.

At the same time, he wasn't hesitant to serve up the sacred cows of popular culture, medium rare with potatoes. His song Reader's Digest, delivered in a fast-paced near-rap (in 1973!), is just loaded with satirical gems.

The Rolling Stones are millionaires, the flower children pallbearers
TheBeatles said All you need is love, and then they broke up.
Jimi took an overdose, Janis followed so close
The whole music scene and all the bands are pretty comatose.
This time last year, people didn't wanna hear.
They looked at Jesus from afar
This year he's a superstar.
spoken: Dear John, who's more popular now? I've been listening to some of Paul's new records. Sometimes I think he really is dead.

If you think Larry Norman had a profound impact on me, I won't argue with you. I never met him, nor even saw him perform, but in his songs he spoke for me more times than not. And in the banter on one of his live recordings, he gave the most succinct explanation of saving grace I've ever heard: "You go to heaven because you asked to. You go to hell because you didn't want to go to heaven." I'll never forget that.

Now he's healthy. His questions have all been answered. He doesn't hurt anymore, in body or spirit. Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him.