Anomalous Data - Pop Culture

Oh no he didn't!

Teresa Lhotka — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 12:19:17 GMT

So I was over a Pharyngula reading a very entertaining piece that handed Deepak Chopra, the rap master of woo, his butt. (again)

I was reading the comments and enjoying the science-nerd pile-on when suddenly THIS lept out at me:

"Hmmm... Now I know where the really bad, sciency sounding dialog for the character Mohindar Suresh in Heroes comes from."

Dan misses some very important points in this comment:

1) Mohinder Suresh is smokin' hot (see exhibit "A"), and Deepak Chopra is NOT (see exhibit "B").

2) Mohinder Suresh is a fictional character in a story that specifically suspends the laws of science so that the world can work very differently than it actually does...and to that end there is a need to supply enough technobabble to drum you into a state we call "suspension of disbelief"...whereas Deepak Copra is a real person that is creating a story that specifically suspends the laws of science so that the world can work very differently than it actually does, and to that end there is a need to supply enough technobabble to drum you into a state we call "suspension of disbelief". This will cause you to pay lots of money for him to tell you his pretty pretty story about how you can live forever and be healthy the whole time.

3)Until recently, Mohinder Suresh was a character of unfailing moral fortitude selflessly working to redeem his father's life-work, discover the truth, and benefit all of humanity...and Deepak Chopra writes lots and lots of stuff about what he thinks science doesn't know, and provides PZ Myers with many, many opportunities to point out that just because Mr. Chopra doesn't know how something happens, that doesn't mean that SCIENCE doesn't know how it happens.

4) Mohinder Suresh's use of eyeliner is organic, subtle, and alluring. Deepak Chopra's use of eyeliner is heavy, harsh and scary.

5) So, in summation: LEAVE MOHINDER ALONE! Thank you, and I rest my case.

Exhibit "A":

(Image from here)

Exhibit "B":

(image from this site)

Clueless.

Teresa Lhotka — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 13:18:24 GMT

PZ Myers has a link to this article about Harry Potter and an accompanying rise in the popularity of "Witchcraft".

I read it, but its kind of long. There's a lot of hyperventilating about the popularity of fantasy in the current culture, some self-righteous pontificating....but the really significant quotes are as follows:

"In these standby novels, girls fret over friends, popularity, sports, parents, boyfriends, jobs and homework—or a neighborhood "mystery." But in this new darker world, girls don’t simply ask a friend’s advice, hang out at the soda shop or give the team their best effort. That would be too boring and too passive. Today’s girl takes charge, even in the heavenlies—these young priestesses cast spells. The paperbacks are laced with actual spells and rituals suited to many teen occasions. They are also packed with sexual innuendo and activity;"

uh huh...'cause hanging out at the soda shop had nothing to do with sexual innuendo and activity...and "boring and passive" girls never get into trouble. Seriously? You want your little girls to be boring, passive door-mats who know nothing about sex and hang out at the soda shop? (I think they actually hang out at coffee shops nowdays) Jesus people, you might as well tattoo targets on their vaginas.

"It’s a seductive method of manipulating human envy by ensnaring naïve youth: if you’re a misfit, it’s not because you are lacking something; it’s because you are "above" the rest in a unique way."

Yeah...the other kids didn't pick you up and stuff you in the trunk of your car because you're an asthmatic shrimp with a 135 IQ, and they're a bunch of muscle-head jocks whose daddies told them they had to live it up 'cause these are the best years of their lives when they get to rule the school and have no consequences for their actions, and they know they'll have to spend the rest of their lives answering to people who are smarter and more educated than them. They did it because YOU are lacking something.

But my favorite is this one:

"As adolescents peak in self–absorption, our panacea is to hand our offspring the sorcerer’s wand to wave away all troubles. They can use it to raise that already inflated self–esteem."

Obviously, this lady hasn't read the books she's condemning. At no point does Harry simply "wave his magic wand" and have his troubles disappear. Harry is initially protected by the loving efforts of his parents to shield him from danger, and prepare for his future. Later, he learns to draw on the wisdom and advice of his teachers, and ask for help when he gets in over his head. His loyalty to his friends and their resulting loyalty to him helps him through situations he could never have survived on his own.

In the end, he has to put his life on the line and risk everything...and it has nothing to do with his powerful magic. It has to do with giving back to all of the people who stood by him what was given to him. Giving love freely, and being willing to risk everything for the good.

Magic has nothing to do with Harry's final triumph. It is achieved through love, trust, and courage. The whole point of the ending is that he doesn't even raise his wand in order to win.

Geeze lady.

And, of course, no hyperventilating, hysterical scrawling are complete without the faint-hearted whining about D&D:

"Too numerous to mention are sites specific to role–playing games like Dungeons and Dragons and toys, CDs, DVDs and video games with occult themes."

OH NOES! CHILDRENS CAN HAZ IMAGINASHUNS! IM IN UR COMPUTER BRINGIN TEH DEBIL!

But how oh how do we stop it?

"Today we are urging parents and educators to prayerfully consider a general boycott of Scholastic materials in homes and schools country–wide." Kathi, a former witch who is now a Christian, has strong opinions about the Potter books. "Anyone who allows their children to read these books and participate in related activities is allowing their children access to the occult."

Of course! Boycott the Scholastic-sponsored school bookfairs which is usually a primary vehicle for funding literacy programs in the school district! What we need is more illiteracy and less funding for the schools! Naturally. Genius.

Ill skip over the part where she bends herself into pretzel shape to involve Planned Parenthood, the feminists and homosexuals, and the ACLU in the plot to make your kids witches. It's entertaining, but too self-satirizing to need my attention.

"And if your teen isn’t an activist or practitioner in middle school or high school, college is a fertile field for the growth of witch sympathies. Your daughter or son who takes a religion or women’s studies class at a non–Christian college can expect to be exposed to the benefits of alternative religions, mostly occultic, in overcoming the "oppression" of the entrenched Christian mainstream. "

For reals? The University of Minnesota must be a Christian college then! Except for my comparative religions class (which spent more than half the time on Christianity, 'cause there’s so many flavors). Whatever. Has this woman even BEEN on a college campus except maybe as a crazy mall preacher?

"If you are "as gods," you can make your own rules. Forget parents! Forget teachers! We’ll just live for the moment, the latest sensation and party on down. So witchcraft is a perfect fit for a paganized, pleasure–centered, shallow America.

I swear, everytime I hear a Christian's description of what their life would be like without Christianity, I thank God that they have Christianity. People who have such a vivid imagination for depravity should certainly have a religion that makes them able to repress it,and keep it decently confined to airport men's rooms.

And I just have to say..."party on down?" For real? Linda, You. Are. ADORABLE!

Wrong. But funny in a wrong sort of way.

Teresa Lhotka — Wed, 28 May 2008 02:59:36 GMT

Discalimer: This entry will make no sense unless you are a fan of Torchwood, and up-to-date on the Dr. Who universe. The video will only be funny if you have a warped sense of humor...and even then, you will feel guilty for laughing. Sorry. I can't be alone in my Schadenfreude. The Scott Lively connection is just one of those random association firings that my brain subjects me too...but if you can't mock the Rev. Scott Lively, who CAN you mock?

OK, a while ago I heard about the Rev. Scott Lively, and his book The Pink Swastika and I thought "Who the hell would buy this? It's ridiculous. It's completely craven, ahistorical re-imagining at it's most cynically manipulative. I've seen sand-choked engines run more smoothly than this guy's logic."

But then I see this, and I realize the horrible truth!

NSFW !!!!!!!!!!!!!! (seriously, the ways in which this is not safe for work defy ~~numbering~~ ~~gravity~~ description)

Also, my understanding of the German langauge is even worse than I thought!

Can anything good come out of Bemidji?

Teresa Lhotka — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 15:49:40 GMT

Well, sometimes...

(Hat Tip : Dracut)

Comments:

1) If you could get a crowd that size together in one place in Bemidji, that's what they would look like.

2) If you could get Northwoods Norwegians to dance...that's what it would look like.

3) Rural Ojibwe, rural Norwegians and rural Swedes and rural Germans are not really that big with the running and screaming. They are most likely to give a put-upon-sounding "yup" or "oofda" that sounds sort of like a sigh...and then blow your head off.

4)If there were a place where werewolves ran around in bright sunlight, it would be Bemidji.

The Golden Compass

Teresa Lhotka — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 04:18:07 GMT

A charming little tale full of whimsey and adventure. Steamer-punk elements. A little disjointed in parts, and with a tepid ending that screamed sequal.

In other words, a good story burdoned by it's condition as a movie adaptation of a novel.

Cool effects. Some really good performances.

Skanky blond villian named "Coulter".

A certain scene I like to call "bowling for cossacks".

All-in-all, it was a nice little family outing.

Awaiting final verdict until after the sequal.

How do we react to suffering?

Teresa Lhotka — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 02:32:20 GMT

You can react like Neil Peart, and feel your pain, go through your trials, and write beautiful poetry to music that frankly, honestly, and forthrightly states the case of the human condition as we know it, and then get on about the business of making the most of it.

You can act like Neil at 4Simpsons and be all put-upon that people ask questions about the problem of suffering, and shrug it off like a rhetorical cheap trick...smugly deciding if their MOTIVE is worthy of your effort to trot out your hollow platitudes. You wouldn't want to waste your time relating your unconvincing arguments on people who are difficult to convince, after all. I mean, JESUS may have sown his seeds on hard and fertile ground alike...but YOU...well, you've got IMPORTANT stuff to do.

Or you can do like this guy, and whine and pout about how everyone is out to get you...and even when it turns out that the person who caused the suffering is ONE OF YOU, turn it into an excuse to indulge in your little persecution fetisch.

Guess it runs in the family.

Teresa Lhotka — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 06:27:13 GMT

Adventure Boy came home a couple of weeks ago, and informed us that he was going to try out for a role in the school play. I thought that auditioning would be a great experience, so we sat down and surfed the Internet for a good, dramatic monologue for him to use. I printed it out, and he took it with him, along with a ton of study materials and homework, on his trip to Spain with Rocky.

(Yeah, haven't told you all about that yet, have I? Adventure Boy and Rocky went to Barcelona for 9 days over Thanksgiving vacation).

Anyway, I told AB that it was great that he was going to audition, but since there are a few thousand kids in his High School, and since he is a Freshman, and since he hasn't had any experience with acting except for one drama workshop last summer, he shouldn't expect to get a role... but should try his best to get the most out of the experience of trying.

Needless to say, he returned that evening and informed me that he had a call back the next day. They would be performing "Rebel without a Cause". So I helped him research the plot and the characters on the Internet, and the next day he went off armed with a fair understanding of the sort of stuff he'd be asked to read.

He got a part.

Not only that, but it is a pretty good part. A small but important role.

He's the female love-interest's abusive father.

Needless to say, he's a little creeped out by the role.

Anyway, I guess it goes without saying that you all will be informed of the date and time of the performances so that you can attend if you wish.

An Evening of Yultide cheer and culture.

Teresa Lhotka — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 14:14:12 GMT

For those of you who do not believe that our great Republic benefits from the constant infusion of culture, language, and perspective of our alien residents, I offer a challenge to your closed-minded ways.

On December 8th, 2007; At 7:30 PM; for the mere pittance of $20 USD (effective price dropping daily) you can witness the charming and immortal tale; "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens.

But this isn't just ANY rendering in ordinary English. No it is not!

Come to the University of MN Saint Paul campus

Student Center Theater

2017 Buford Avenue

St. Paul, MN 55108

There, you will witness the moralizing, liberal, whiney, orphan-hugger words of Charles Dickens transformed!

Commedia Beauregard will give that pallid old Englishman an infusion of Klingon-American honor, courage, and (I assume) bloodlust!

That's right "A Klingon Christmas Carol".

See it Dec. 8th at 7:30 PM Tickets at: www.ticketworks.com or (615)209-6689

Oh, did I mention that this is a fund-raiser? Proceeds from this performance will assist in funding future productions, commissioning new translations of foreign-language plays, and helping to further the understanding of the world's cultures, and (I assume) other world's cultures.

Don't miss it!

Oh, and...Q'aplah!

Oprah's thyroid

Teresa Lhotka — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 14:36:35 GMT

So now Oprah has been diagnosed with Hypothyroidism.

Here’s the Wikipedia page for hypothyroidism.

I feel bad for her, I really do. I know what this condition does to a person, and I know how it feels to have it go undiagnosed. Depression, fatigue, a sense of impending mental break-down or dissipation. I remember with horror the inability to focus thoughts, inability to discipline oneself.

I understand how much willpower it takes to drag your body out of bed and meet the demands of the day, force yourself against the screaming drag of your own body to force yourself to exercise…only to gain weight.

No amount of make-up can hide the bad skin, no amount of careful self-maintenance can get rid of the blue bags under the eyes, the dullness of the hair.

“You look tired” gets to be like a mantra chanted by everyone you meet. Sometimes with sympathy or concern, more often with a bit of the gloat behind it. What they really mean is “You’ve really let yourself go”.

Going to the doctor to find out what’s wrong, you’re told the only prescription you need is more self-discipline and will-power.

Even the Oprah show, which made its name singing the praise of persevering in the face of insurmountable problems manages to slap you in the face, when Dr. Phil says “You’re not fat because of your thyroid. That’s just an excuse.”

I actually went to the website and left a comment. I said it was irresponsible for Dr. Phil to say something like that. I went back later to see if there had been any response to my comment, and I couldn’t find it anywhere. I assumed it had been deleted.

I had gone for years with an undiagnosed thyroid problem because of just such a response from a Doctor, who refused to administer a simple blood test, despite the fact that I have a family history of low thyroid, and all the symptoms. And I DO mean all of them. The CNP who eventually ran the test said that I was in s life-threatening situation, and not just because of the suicidal thoughts.

But this doctor just gave me the smug look, and the condescending encouragement to do more push-ups…push up from the table. He actually SAID that.

Normally, I would have stormed out of his office and went to find a doctor who would run the test. Unfortunately, depression and fatigue caused me to simply shut down in shame and never mention it again…until my friend Sue kicked my ass and told me that she didn’t know what was wrong with me, but I’d better figure it out soon, because she didn’t like who I had become, and she wanted her friend back.

I’m sorry for Oprah that she has to go through this. But I’m glad that finally, she might address this really important subject, and empower women with knowledge and encouragement to speak up for themselves and demand to be tested if they suspect they have a thyroid problem.

Thyroid disorders require constant maintenance. I recently went in for my annual test, and found that I might have to have my dosage upped again. Not a big surprise. I’ve gained weight, and I’m tired and cranky when normally I would be chipper and happy. I’ve been unable to focus at my usual level in normal times, and become downright useless in times of stress. Things that were once easy, have become difficult. I’m confused, forgetful, and sad.

But I’m going to get a second test done, and it’s likely that a simple dosage adjustment will fix the problem. It’s such a simple solution. All you need is the knowledge of what your condition is, and the support of knowledgeable people to help you treat it appropriately.

Portrait of Geddy Lee by 14-year-old Adventure Boy

Teresa Lhotka — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 01:25:38 GMT

Adventure Boy must have enjoyed the Rush concert very much. Here is his sketch of Geddy Lee that he did today...from memory.

In a conversation I overheard him having with Grasshopper, he said "I didn't watch the monitors, because you're at a live concert...why would you watch a screen?"

Pretty awesome, huh?

[update: My Sunday Devotionals sometimes involve Rush - check out these lyrics by Neal Peart]

"The Way The Wind Blows"

Now it's come to this
It's like we're back in the Dark Ages
From the Middle East to the Middle West
It's a world of superstition

Now it's come to this
Wide-eyed armies of the faithful
From the Middle East to the Middle West
Pray, and pass the ammunition

So many people think that way
You gotta watch what you say
To them and them, and others too
Who don't seem to see things the way you do

We can only grow the way the wind blows
on a bare and weathered shore
We can only bow to the here and now
In our elemental war

We can only go the way the wind blows
We can only bow to the here and now
Or be broken down blow by blow

Now it's come to this
Hollow speeches of mass deception
From the Middle East to the Middle West
Like crusaders in a holy alliance

Now it's come to this
Like we're back in the dark ages
From the Middle East to the Middle West
It's a plague that resists our science

It seems to leave them partly blind
And they leave no child behind
While evil spirits haunt their sleep
While shepherds bless and count their sheep

Like the solitary pine
On a bare wind blasted shore
We can only grow the way the wind blows

Looking for New Music?

Teresa Lhotka — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:56:19 GMT

Looking for new music nobody else you know has heard? Looking for music you can't get in a store? Looking for music unsullied by corporate focus-grouping?

Looking for music from a couple of mid-western family men?

Looking for music that is free AND good?

Look no further. The Sidetracked project is available.

Also, as far as I know, this is whats available from Jagged Spiral, who are also new, unavailable in stores, unsullied by focus groups, free, good and mid-western, and one of them has a family as far as I know...

...but they are a little evil. PLEASE read the disclaimer before you play the music out loud. The world doesn't need anymore dead chinchillas than strictly necessary.

Days from Evil

Rush!

Teresa Lhotka — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 19:41:05 GMT

Ahhhh....RUSH!

Rocky, Adventure Boy, Tara and Rick were there with us!!!

High points of the concert (in no particular order):

"Witchunt" with the guys on a stage lit up like a firey furnace.

Some completely new and un-Neil...or should I say "super-Neil"? sounds coming from that magnificent new drum kit during the "All Neil Show" portion of the show. Always in motion, is the Neil.

YYZ! (always)

ONE LITTLE VICTORY! (always)

THEY PLAYED "BANGKOK"!!! (And they NEVER play Bangkok).

Geddey Lee in a kilt. (NEVER thought I'd hear myself say that.)

Alex and Neil waking up with each other (Also, not something I'd hear myself say)

GeddyCartman.

The LIGHTS! the ACTION! The LAZERS! The VIDEO IMAGERY The ROTISSERIE CHICKENS!!! (but how did they clean their clothes between shows now?)

*sigh* Happy Trees has Rush fix now.

Jason Bock seems happy too.

More on EXPELLED!

Teresa Lhotka — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 20:50:13 GMT

PZ Myers is going to be in Expelled!

Turns out, they interviewed him fo rthe movie.

The whole sordid story is HERE.

Lookin' less like a spoof all the time.

[Update: Neil at 4Simpsons is giddy about Expelled. I thought about pointing out that the makers of the movie felt they had to lie and misrepresent themselves to get people to participate in the interviews...but it wouldn't do any good.]

Et Tu Foo Fighters?

Teresa Lhotka — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 06:08:22 GMT

The Foo Fighters are HIV/AIDS denialists.

Mother of God! Will the hurting never stop?

I suppose next I'm going to learn that the band Rush is anti-vaccination, the Dixie Chicks believe in Morgellon's Syndrome, or Queensreich are Holocaust deniers or something.

No, no. that would be too terrible. I couldn't bear it.

(Hat Tip: Denialism. com)

Pssst...pass it on.

Teresa Lhotka — Wed, 02 May 2007 14:26:06 GMT

Rush's new album, Snakes and Arrows is AWESOME!

The concert is coming up! I can't wait! Saveau and TempleViper are joining us. Woo! and might I add...Hoo!

I'd also like to thank Jenny for her effort in making sure we didn't miss the concert. We already knew about it, but suppose we hadn't? Catastrophe!

It's nice to know Jenny is looking out for us.

Oh yeah, another CD Change-out now in changer position one: Rush's "Snakes and Arrows" in - Godsmack's "Godsmack" out!

Jon Stewart: Is there NOTHING he can't do?

Teresa Lhotka — Tue, 01 May 2007 22:12:06 GMT

The Mandarin Chinese word for “I” is “Waa” with a falling/rising tone. Grasshopper and I had trouble remembering the tonal component, (as Americans often do).

Until I remembered Jon Stewert, and his trademark response to some woefully stupid or incomprehensible action/statement/position by a politician or media talking-head:

“Whhaaaaaaa?”

Forgetting the tone of that word is no longer a problem.

Jon Stewart. Cute, funny, impeccably well-dressed, and the best darn mnemonic device out there for the Mandarin personal pronoun.

There should be some sort of award.

3 Doors Down is not far enough away

Teresa Lhotka — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 03:17:06 GMT

argh. shortbread cookies, with a chocolate layer on top. I am powerless before them.

They are my Jadarite.

(Hat Tip: A Blog Around the Clock)

Rush Limbaugh on religion.

Teresa Lhotka — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 15:23:14 GMT

"No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no! You don't understand. You can't possibly because you're irreligious."

Um. Interesting. Yet most of the irreligious people I know were RAISED religious. They learned religion at the knees of their parents. In fact, we can understand religious thought very well.

Our rejection comes not from MISUNDERSTANDING...but from understanding it TOO WELL, and going in search of something that makes more sense.

One thing Rush can explain to me, though, is how the shooter deciding that he wants to "die like Christ" could possibly be the result of too little religion.

The boy was crazy. Adding more religion would have just made him express his craziness more religiously. Just as he would have expressed his craziness in secular terms if he had been immersed in secularism.

Secularism didn't make him kill. Religion didn't make him kill.

We all want answers, we all want solutions, we all want this to be a perfect world (from a human perspective). It's not. Blaming secularism might make you feel better Rush, but it does nothing to address the problem.

CD change-out

Teresa Lhotka — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 21:17:44 GMT

I have a six CD changer in my car. Yet, it seems like for the last few weeks, every single person who gets in the car, no matter what is playing, says "Is this the only CD you have in here?"

So I'm making some changes.

Slot number four WAS Buffy the Vampire Slayer: "Once More with Feeling"'. It has been changed for Indigenous: Chasing the Sun

The slot number three change-out was in honor of Conrad Zero, because I know it will make him happy:

Bruce Springsteen's Greatest Hits was changed out for Revolver Modele: Discotheque Crypt.

More changes are likely on the way.

The power of the frame.

Teresa Lhotka — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 03:29:10 GMT

From Conrad Zero I get a link to this article in the Washington Post.

A world-class violinist playing on a priceless violin, posing as a street musician, and his value is only recognized by a few people...a handful who have dabbled at being violinists, and one who recognizes the musician.

People who rushed past, perhaps flipping spare change, perhaps trying to shout over the annoying noise of this bothersom begger...what would they have done if they had realized that they were getting a free front seat at a performance that they would never get another chance at again?

What do people simply throw out as useless, meaningless, even stupid...just because they don't have a reason to really look at it's value?

How much of our "junk science" is the public policy equivilant of a virtuoso with a nearly priceless instrument being ignored by commuters too busy to bother knowing what they are missing?

[UPDATE: Michelle gives us a link in the comments to a blog entry that expands on the "framing" aspect of the WaPo story. She says that in order for the audience to respond to a classical musician in a street musician setting, he needs to develop skills for presenting to that audience appropriately for the kind of audience they are, and in the situation they are in rather than actually expecting them to respond to a performance just because it is good and worthy of their attention.

This is EXACTLY what I've been trying to say. Thank you, Michelle.

Quote from the blog entry:

A busker is someone who can turn any place into a stage. Obviously, Joshua Bell needs an actual stage. As a busker one needs to interact with those around, break walls of personal space, and lure people into a collective and spontaneous group experience on the street, in the moment, with you. A bad busking act is when the performer doesn’t make an effort to connect with the audience. Like musicians who play for themselves, not acknowledging the audience, just burying their heads in their instruments.

Hanson on "300"

Teresa Lhotka — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 02:51:46 GMT

I was going to be done with "300" commentary from conservatives...but Karen sent me this one and I couldn't resist.

It's by Victor Davis Hanson.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/VictorDavisHanson/2007/03/22/300_fact_or_fiction

It is thoughtful, measured, sensible, and doesn't invent opportunities to smear "liberals" with defamatory characatures.

Now, I promise I'm done.

Basham on "300"

Teresa Lhotka — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 01:12:31 GMT

Karen sent me another Townhall.com article on the movie “300”. It’s by Megan Basham. I’m not doing a paragraph-by paragraph response this time because I’m kind of bored with the subject. I left off most of the gratuitous “liberal” bashing because with stuff from the Townhall site, that just rapidly approaches the level of punctuation (ubiquitous, and only meaningful when done well).

Despite its hard R rating for nudity and violence, there’s good reason for this. Where last year's despicable, pro-terrorist comic-book-based flick, V for Vendetta, made pathetic claims for cultural relevance, 300 is the real deal. The filmmakers didn't have to impose parallels with today’s geo-political reality; history had already done it for them.

Careful Megan, you said “hard” and we all know what that does to poor Ben Shapiro’s brain. He won’t be able to see beyond your terrible affliction of anti-subtlty.

Wait…DESPITE the “hard” R rating for nudity and violence? Who in their right mind saw the previews for this movie and went to see it in the hopes that it would offer something besides eye candy and frame after frame of spectacular, Technicolor slayage?

V for Vendetta; did we watch the same movie? I thought conservatives LOVED terrorism when it was aimed at totalitarianism? Did I mis-read the flag-waving adulation for Red Dawn and that Rambo movie when he went and fought for the Taliban?

Sparta's Ephors, the cloistered academics of their time, claim that the gods don’t want war and won’t support Leonidas' stand.

Actually, it’s pretty clear that Leonidas was the scholar, with his appeals to rationality and logic. The Ephors were superstitious, religionists pretending at mystic power while indulging their human desires with young, easily manipulated prey.

In the meantime, back in the city, an oily politician (Dominic West of The Wire) undermines the King's mission at every turn, arguing for diplomatic resolutions and claiming that Leonidas has started an "illegal" war that will draw destruction down on all. Leonidas wife, Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey), counters that it is Persia who began the war and urges the Spartan congress to commit more troops.

What Ms. Basham fails to mention in the above summary was that the “illegal” war involved an ACTUAL invasion on Greek soil. So, a war to destroy the actual people who were involved in an attack on the nation’s soil was appropriate. Had Leonidas gone off an attacked a country that had nothing to do with Persia’s invasion attempt, it would have been right to call it madness.

Not the least of which is that that a people that honors its artists and scholars above its warriors eventually becomes a weak, effeminate people. The grim efficiency of the Spartan career soldiers stands in stark contrast to the brave but incompetent Athenians who hack away at the enemy like, well, like a bunch of actors and craftsmen.

I’m shocked! Shocked! I tell you to hear a conservative commentator show such disrespect and such a dismissive attitude of the contributions to our “citizen soldiers” in the National Guard who are serving in Iraq. Truly, “support the troops” means something different to the ilk of Megan Basham. But on the other hand, there are worthy things in her review as well, such as this nugget that can only be read to be a criticism of able-bodied armchair cheerleaders:

Going hand in hand with this is the demonstration that high military standards must be kindly but firmly maintained, regardless of the hurt feelings such standards might engender. When a well-meaning but physically unfit applicant is turned away from battle, it is clear that Leonidas does not mean to be cruel but to preserve strength of his troop.

Yes, Megan, I agree, we should not tolerate arm-chair cheerleading from able-bodied, service aged young men and women who cheer for the war yet neglect to enlist and fill our ranks. They say they support the war, but if they REALLY did, the army would not have had to lower its’ recruiting standards. At least we can find one area where we can agree.

Conrad Zero on "300"

Teresa Lhotka — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 02:17:56 GMT

As often happens, I think Conrad Zero said it best.

Shapiro on "300"

Teresa Lhotka — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 15:41:05 GMT

Someone sent me this Townhall article by Ben Shapiro in my e-mail (since I still can't view their sites due to my IP address being blocked by them. Which is certainly not because they are a bunch of weeenies who can't take mild criticism, or because they are vindictive little bitches who like the feeling of power they can get from banning IP addresses with small numbers of users. I'm sure there is a reasonable explination. I'll let you know what it is just as soon as they answer the e-mails I sent them asking what it is.)

Here’s a fun link to a spoof site that addresses Ben Shapiro.

Anyway, Ben Shapiro doesn’t like the movie “300”. But he likes that he can read into it stuff that he imagines “liberals” don’t like. And he has (I imagine) a fair amount of fun quote-mining and torturing an alleged “liberal” quote, and a quote from someone in the Ahmadinejad administration in order to produce a shadow of the “liberals agree with the terrorists” cannard. But let’s let Mr. Shapiro speak for himself.

"300" is not a particularly good movie. The comic-book tale of the battle of Thermopylae (480 B.C.) brims over with excessive nudity and violence. The dialogue is often laughable -- lines like "This is madness! This is Sparta!" leap to mind.

Oh, I don’t know…stilted and over-blown dramatic dialogue is, after all, one of the literary hallmarks of the epic. Beowulf's swaggering challenges to Grendel come to mind. Although in fairness, you might have to be a public-schooled liberal in order to see that. After all, public schools don’t teach what cultural conservatives call Judeo-Christian values, but they DO familiarize you with all those pagan Gods and Goddessses so you can understand Greek literature, as well as non-Greek epics such as Beowulf, or even “Christian” work rife with pagan imagery like the epic poetry of John Milton. If only liberal public schools didn’t love the roots of Western Culture so much, we might all agree with Ben Shapiro, and the world would be a better place.

As for the nudity and violence, I am surprised. I would have thought that Ben, a (presumably) red-blooded American boy would have loved it. But as a cultural conservative, I guess he’d rather it be suppressed and sublimated as religious zeal that only occasionally expresses itself in excessive binges that can be blamed on temptation by demonic forces. Whatever floats your boat, I guess.

David Wenham, who plays a Spartan soldier, narrates throughout the movie; his narration is guffaw-inducing. "Only the hard and strong may call themselves Spartans. Only the hard . Only the strong ," Wenham gravely intones. At another point, over footage of Spartans graphically slaughtering the oncoming hordes of Persian dictator Xerxes, Wenham intensely growls, "We do what we've been trained to do. We do what we've been bred to do. We do what we were born to do." There are no descriptors for this kind of purposeful anti-subtlety.

Shorter Ben Shapiro “hu-huh…he said ‘hard’ hu-huh.”

“There are no descriptors for this kind of anti-subtlety”? Um. Yes, there are, in fact, descriptors for it. Literary imagery, for instance. You might, if you were the product of the liberal public school system, have come across it while studying literature. If you had, you would realize that those words were drawing a parallel between the mental and physical “toughness (or “hardness”) of the Spartan people as depicted in the story. You may realize that literary imagery uses certain qualities of descriptive language that are independent of what springs into the blood-engorged, hot-throbbing brains of young conservative weenies who simper and whine about sex and violence. I’m sure that all this has a terrible effect on your delicate constitution, Ben, but try to hold it together, buddy.

Nonetheless, "300" is drawing a crowd. It is drawing a crowd for two reasons: First, the movie is visually interesting, combining over-the-top comic-book imagery with live-action realism in the same way "Sin City" did. Second, Americans are interested in watching movies that pit good against evil.

OK, no argument there.

The Spartans of "300" are brutal. The opening scene of the movie depicts a Spartan soldier, standing on a cliff overlooking a valley of skulls, inspecting a baby to make sure it is hardy enough. If the baby is too weak, we are told, it will be left for dead. This isn't exactly civilized conduct.

It is if you are a Spartan, living in the time when the movie is set. Oh, I’m sorry. That’s liberal moral relativism isn’t it? I forgot. We are supposed to judge cultures and history by our own measure, and our own values, rather than learning to see them as they saw themselves so as to understand them and actually learn something about humanity. Just judging them from our own perspective so we can hold up our example as elevated above the rest of human history is so much better. That way, we can see ourselves as having some sort of divine writ of exceptionalism. Yes. Excuse me. Please, go on.

But the Persian hordes make the Spartans look like members of a British tea club. Xerxes is an androgynous giant of a man with more body piercings than Christina Aguilera. His camp is full of decadent bisexual promiscuity. He seeks worldwide dictatorship and threatens Sparta with mass murder of its male citizens, rape of its female citizens, and use of women and children as slaves if Sparta fails to submit to his rule.

Ben, you ARE aware that this is an obvious conscious interpretation of how the peoples often depict their opponents? This couldn’t possibly be the result of a tradition in nationalistic epics of depicting one side as being completely right, and depicting the opposition as being completely without merit, right? You define what you are, and then you selectively define your enemy as that which you are not.

The Spartans, by contrast, say they are fighting for "freedom." In which case, "300" is an old-fashioned battle between the forces of freedom and the forces of oppression.

Yes. That is one possible element of an epic story. Having one side champion a virtue, and the other side is inherently everything that is antithetical to that virtue.

And the left doesn't like it at all. Many reviewers have panned "300" not on artistic grounds, or even on grounds of inanity, but on the grounds that the Spartans in the film are a bunch of jackbooted thugs; that the tyranny they fight is less tyrannical than Sparta; that good vs. evil is too simplistic. "His troops are like al Qaeda in adult diapers," writes Kyle Smith of the New York Post. "Keeping in mind Slate's Mickey Kaus' Hitler Rule -- never compare anything to Hitler -- it isn't a stretch to imagine Adolf's boys at a "300" screening, heil-fiving each other throughout and then lining up to see it again." A.O. Scott makes the obligatory racial point: "It may be worth pointing out that unlike their mostly black and brown foes, the Spartans and their fellow Greeks are white."

Who is this “left” of which you speak? The last time I checked, The New York Post was one of Rupert Murdoch’s little fiefdoms. You don’t really think that the “liberals” who work for Rupert Murdoch actually represent liberal opinion, do you? Really?

The Iranians don't like "300," either. Javad Shamqadri, an art adviser to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, proclaims that "300" is "part of a comprehensive U.S. psychological war aimed at Iranian culture." "Following the Islamic Revolution in Iran," explains Shamqadri, "Hollywood and cultural authorities in the U.S. initiated studies to figure out how to attack Iranian culture … certainly, the recent movie is a product of such studies."

Yeah. Megalomaniacle nut-bags tend to see themselves reflected everywhere, view themselves as attacked and embattled where they actually are not, and tend to read far, far too much into things, while at the same time missing the actual cultural relevance of the intended references and giving inappropriate weight to incidental facts. (shrug) What ya gonna do?

Ben now ends his commentary on the movie “300” by taking a paragraph or two to let his lips flap uselessly, making a lot of meaningless noises interspersed with specious swipes at liberals, confusions of Islam and liberalism, and spiced up with a little useless sophistry in a grumbling ramble that just sort of trials off into a feel-good re-frame of a nice-sounding platitude:

Of course, "300" is not meant to be a historically accurate portrayal of the battle of Thermopylae. It is a cartoonish movie with a simple theme -- a theme that resonates with the American public. It is no surprise that the Iranian regime -- the embodiment of evil in today's world -- objects to a movie depicting a conflict between ancient Western civilization and ancient Persian civilization as a conflict between good and evil. And it is not surprising that the left objects to any movie pitting freedom against tyranny and coming out squarely on the side of freedom.

"300" is not as morally murky as movies like "Syriana," "Babel" and "Kingdom of Heaven." The movie has many weaknesses, but its strength lies in its affirmation that there can be good, there can be evil, and that good must be willing to withstand evil's best efforts to annihilate it.

Is anyone else surprised that Ben had nothing to say about the fact that the movie also depicted the great weakness of Sparta to be a "evil" hold-over of reliance and delegation of too much power to religious leaders and superstitious mumbo-jumbo that will give it’s “spiritual” stamp of approval to the advantage of the side that gives out the biggest payday?

Or that the most slimy of all the politicians misused and abused moral principles that he himself didn’t value to silence opposition?

I suppose I could go through and point out all the "real reasons" why conservatives who hated the movie chose to hate it. Or I could go through the movie and catalogue all the "real reasons" that the conservatives who liked the movie liked it (for instance, the hero was a despotic leader who made a unilateral decision to go to war against the advice and council of his allies and the deliberative body of his government AND, within the context of the story, was right to do so)...

...but that would just be silly.

Sorry, Ben, it’s just a story. A re-telling of a timeless, compelling, epic story that was well told for what it was, preserving some classical elements and re-imagining others as would fit the purposes of the story-tellers (which was to entertain a modern audience that had some passing knowledge of both comic books and classical literature, a fondness for high production quality, stunning visuals and the occasional exposed breast and death metal riff) and has no real meaning beyond that.

The Mob rules

Teresa Lhotka — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 15:43:23 GMT

I'm sure everyone has heard of the strange case of how two young bloggers got hired by John Edwards to blog for his campaign, and the right-wing smear machine kicked into high gear.

In the case of Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwen, the right-wing blow-hard cry that saying the Pope and other religious leaders obstruct gay rights is “anti-catholic”. Hey! You can’t say something that is true but unflattering of the Pope! That’s anti-Catholic! Plus, these women use bad language and are independant Freethinkers. The religious right couldn't have that. So they round up their posse to send out rape threats and death threats to two young women to show their Godly support of The Church.

Eventually, the young women resign from the Edwards campaign.

We’re getting dangerously close to mob rule rather than rule of law, here people.

So I’ll leave you with a little quote from Black Sabbath. Just call it a little consolation for the fact that bands like Black Sabbath were seen as the CAUSE of the destruction of civilization, rather than prophetic foretellers of it: and that their “Christian” accusers are the ones carrying the torches and pitchforks.

Close the city and tell the people that something's coming to call
Death and darkness are rushing forward to take a bite from the wall, oh

You've nothing to say
They're breaking away
If you listen to fools...
The Mob Rules
The Mob Rules

Kill the spirit and you'll be blinded, the end is always the same
Play with fire, you burn your fingers and lose your hold of the flame, oh

It's over, it's done
the end is begun
If you listen to fools...
The Mob Rules

You've nothing to say
Oh, They're breaking away
If you listen to fools...

Break the circle and stop the movement, the wheel is thrown to the ground
Just remember it might start rolling and take you right back around

You're all fools!
The Mob Rules!

--Black Sabbath “The Mob Rules”

More on Dinesh D’Souza

Teresa Lhotka — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 04:00:37 GMT

He has an article in the Washington Post.

Ya know, I heard him on MPR just today. I was listening as I put the second coat of paint on the walls of the guest room. I didn't agree with everything he said, but at the very least, he was speaking more-or-less reasonable and measured and refrained from acting anything like Ann Coulter. And I actually agreed with some of his basic ideas.

So I followed the link at Pharyngula to the WP article, and to my surprise, he comes off as a megalomaniacal nut in print:

The second reason can be gleaned from the common theme in the reviews: that mine is a dangerous book. But if a book says things that are obviously untrue and can be disproved, then it is not dangerous -- it is merely fiction and should be ignored. A book is dangerous only if it exposes something in the culture that some people are eager to keep hidden.

And what is that? It is that the far left seems to hate Bush nearly as much as it hates bin Laden. Bin Laden may want sharia, or Islamic law, in Baghdad , they reason, but Bush wants sharia in Boston . Indeed, leftists routinely portray Bush's war on terrorism as a battle of competing fundamentalisms, Islamic vs. Christian. It is Bush, more than bin Laden, they say, who threatens abortion rights and same-sex marriage and the entire social liberal agenda in the United States . So leftist activists such as Michael Moore and Howard Zinn and Cindy Sheehan seem willing to let the enemy win in Iraq so they can use that defeat in 2008 to rout Bush -- their enemy at home.

When I began writing my new book, this concern was largely theoretical, because the left was outside the corridors of power. Now I fear that the extreme cultural left is whispering into the ears of the Democratic Congress. Cut off the funding. Block the increase in troops. Shut down Guantanamo Bay . Lose the war on terrorism -- and blame Bush.

Pointing this out is what makes me dangerous.

He must have given that part of the speech while I was out of the room replenishing the paint in my paint tray.

He's all, you know, ooooh look at me, I'm a big scary subversive. As if opposing a Gold Star Mother best known for camping in a field, a documentary maker, and a Poly-sci professor while supporting the guy who has all the trained troops under his command is soooo subversive.

Here's another quote:

One radical sheik even told a European television station a few years ago that although Europe is more decadent than America, the United States is the more vital target because it is U.S. culture -- not Swedish culture or French culture -- that is spreading throughout the world.

It's dangerous to say that American Culture is pernicious, infectious and offensive to religious fundamentalists? Well, maybe. It might inspire some Eric Rudolph wanna-be to set of a dirty bomb in L.A.

But I have to wonder, how is it that WE get saddled with the pop culture? I mean, when I list the five or so people who I personally know who don't own televisions; only one considers himself a conservative - and he's not opposed to gay marriage, thinks Bush botched the handling of the Hurricane Katrina crisis, and is disgusted at the management of the war in Iraq despite the fact that he was all for it before it happened (I think he just doesn't like to pay taxes).

Most of the liberals I know consume very little mainstream culure. Most of them are voracious readers of books across a wide spectrum of subjects and styles. Almost all of them are married and in bed by ten o'clock most nights.

They still think Brittney Spears is the current teeney-bopper pop star. Many could not pick Brittney Spears out of a Tiger Beat line-up.

Seriously, make up your mind people, are we the "Intellectual Elite" in our Ivory Towers with our tweed jackets and plether elbow patches, or are we the mainstream heartbeat of America ’s decedent culture? Or are we just everyone you don't like lumped into a big stew pot you call "liberal" and there's really no reason to it at all?

Seriously, I think you should all just get together, have a meeting, decide once and for all who the "liberals" are, and what their REAL agenda is (we can't build the fire while we're pouring the water, now, can we?)

At any rate, the one that burns me up is this: how is it that "liberals" want us to lose in Iraq so that we can defeat Bush at home? Who do these people think we are? Do they think we don't have friends and family fighting that damned war? No, we may not have wanted it to begin with, and we might want it to be over as soon as possible…but we DO NOT want to lose this war.

And, intellectual elite that we are, we would know that it was a bad deal to sell out our men and women in uniform to defeat a guy who can't even stand for re-election.

Alright, that's it.

Teresa Lhotka — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 14:16:38 GMT

No more watching "Rome" and "Battlestar Galactica" in the same night.

I can't take that much of man's suffering and inhumanity to man (or Cylon) due to his petty, short-sighted, self-serving nature.

I was in and out of sleep with terrible dreams all night. Between Adama on Galactica, and the prostitute/assasin boy on Rome (and what's become of Verinus), I was completely done for as far as a night of restful sleep.

Parental Braggy-bragging

Teresa Lhotka — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 16:28:47 GMT

Adventure Boy has always had a problem with Math. Math has always been difficult, painful, frustrating and elusive for him.

Last year, the C- he eventually scored in Math was kind of a triumph. The first time he had gotten better than a D in math.

This year, he got an A in Algebra for the first quarter. Indeed, his lowest grade is a B-. He has two "A's" (Algebra and Art) and the rest are B's and B+'s.

Yesterday he shuffled up to me with a hang-dog sort of expression and presented me with a certificate informing me that he has earned an "honor point" in his Algebra class.

"What's this?" I asked.

"I don't know, some stupid thing, I thought you might want to see it." He answered.

On the certificate there is a list of attributes that go into earning an honor point. Several of them were circled, indicating that those are the traits that earned him the Honor Point:

Consistent Effort, Initiative, Helpfulness, Positive Attitude, Participation.

If you get enough honor points, you become a "Student of the Month", and your parents can get one of those smug little bumper stickers to put on their car and brag to total strangers stuck in rush-hour gridlock.

Apparently, Adventure Boy told Rocky "That's the worst thing that can possibly happen to you."

So I guess if he WERE to earn enough honor points, and became a student of the month, I would probably not say anything to anyone about it. But you know, I think Adventure Boy was still proud of himself, and secretly proud to get the honor point certificate.

Attn: all sports racers

Teresa Lhotka — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 04:25:02 GMT

zeFrank makes my brain hurt.

Go.

Watch, laugh, learn.

Embrace the pain.

I started with the first episode about two weeks ago, and I'm almost caught up.

The space between my eyeballs just went numb.

Oooh! Ooooh! I know the anwer!

Teresa Lhotka — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 14:53:45 GMT

The ancient Babylonian batteries have confused, and mystified archeologists for decades...those who don't outright reject their authenticity, that is.

For one thing, they don't appear to have served any useful purpose, as there have been no discoveries of ancient Babylonian motors, or ancient Babylonian wiring, or tablets full of ancient Babylonian building codes (other than the ones declairing that any house broken into have the body of the burgler sealed into the breach).

But I know what they were used for.

Don't tell anyone, but they were used to fuel the Stargate.

Thank you, thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Yes, you may tell Dr. Jackson that I will gladly accept a position on his research team. Late nights are not a problem.

New ancient language may shed light on human history.

Teresa Lhotka — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 12:53:10 GMT

Oh dear.

So, I read this story from the New York Times about how the Mexicans have discovered a stone with thee-thousand-year-old writing on it, and my first thought is:

“I wonder which Gu’old this belongs to.”

News Flash, I’m a geek – but it gets worse.

Now, scholars are tantalized by a message in stone in a script unlike any other and a text they cannot read. They are excited by the prospect of finding more of this writing, and eventually deciphering it, to crack open a window on one of the most enigmatic ancient civilizations.

Daniel would have it all figured out by now, you know – he’d stay up day and night, taking his little wire-rimmed glasses off, rubbing his fingers through his tousled hair, and putting them back on, standing over his desk, head bowed, one hand resting on the text in benediction, the other gripping a cup of coffee as he raises it to his pursed lips.

God, Archeology is so *hot*.

Then, after the montage of well-framed shots of Daniel’s furrowed brow and tousled hair and pursed lips, he’d give a report in a rapid-fire staccato of blazing brilliance that leaves everybody in his intellectual dust.

Cameron would ask a dumb question, and Daniel would reveal with a flourish the name of whichever nasty beastie they are going to open up a can of whoop-ass on now.

I clearly need mental help.

But in all seriousness, this is a very exciting find, and my sincerest congratulations and best wishes to the real-life geniuses that are going to unlock its secrets and share that knowledge with the rest of us.

Now, where is that yellow pages. I’m thinking this Daniel thing might require electroshock therapy.

Quote of the Day

Teresa Lhotka — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 04:33:42 GMT

“What are you implying Jon? That O’Reilly and Geraldo are narcissists enthralled with their own overblown egos? Projecting their own petty insecurities onto the world around them? Inventing false enemies for the sole purpose of bolstering their sense of self-importance; itty bitty Nixons minus the relevance or a hint of vision? How DARE you.”

- Stephan Colbert

“The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Your Morning Devotional

Teresa Lhotka — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 13:26:59 GMT

Penn and Teller did a Bullshit! On the Bible. I really enjoyed it, although I was uncomfortable with Penn constantly referring to it as “The Damned Bible”…but that’s just my hang-up. It was pure and simple button pushing for no reason other than its own sake, and that makes me uncomfortable…which I believe was the point.

Anyway, at the end, Penn urges everyone to read the Bible from cover-to-cover. He says this is because “we need more atheists”.

And it got me thinking about how I came to reject the idea of the infallibility of the Bible and the general usefulness of the revealed religions.

Well, I’m not an atheist, but I come pretty close. I guess the best description might be “Deist.”, although that just might be because I haven’t spent enough time really digging into Deism yet to find out where I disagree with them.

But we were talking about my long, slow fall from the state of grace that is Theism (general lumping of the revealed religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam…or the “Abrahamic traditions”)

It started with “Christian” behavior. With judgment and hypocrisy and outright religious abuse where the abused were supposed to bear that abuse as a testament of their faith. Even a child should be able to see that is sick.

So, confused; I went to the source. I figured I’d had enough of people handing me little slices out of the Bible and telling me what they meant (and sometimes telling me that they meant the opposite of what they appeared to mean, as if it was “profound”.)

I have read the Bible from cover to cover several times in the course of my life. OK, so I skimmed the begats (you know, Bob begat Joe, who begat Fred, who married Latisha and begat Leonardo, who was the Father of the Nation of Whogivesashit) and lists of Israel ’s rulers and judges and stuff…but I’m pretty sure I didn’t miss anything. My eyes physically traveled over all the words, and my brain woke up for the important parts, like the genocides, suicides, the idol worship, prostitution, mutilation of corpses, and conditions under which God wants you to stone your children to death, or when it’s OK to sell your daughter into slavery and such.

What I learned, is that there is a reason why we have devotionals and sermons and a liturgical calendar. It’s because the Bible is at its best with a sober, semi-sane, fairly modern editor who can sift out all the stuff that is self-contradictory, warped, sick, irrelevant, confusing, and in direct contradiction of what Christians believe their religion is.

Christians have a very solid system of filters in place to make the Bible a coherent, cohesive moral guide. The different denominations each have a separate system of interpretive filters, but they all pick-and-choose what parts of the Bible they think are important, relevant, or even should be read at all. They all leave out a lot of inconvenient and unpleasant stuff.

But the system of interpretive filters contributes many times more of the meaning than the source material does. That is probably why I was told, by a Sunday School teacher, that I should not read the Bible on my own, but should always read it with a parent, or a teacher, or a pastor…someone who could help me interpret the Bible correctly. It was stressed that a person should not rely on their own understanding to interpret the Bible, because they were not trained to do it correctly.

This seemed odd to me, as I had been told that one of the things that made Protestants better than Catholics was that Protestants had the advantage of a personal relationship with God, while Catholics had to go through the church and through their saints, ect. (confessing sins to a priest rather than directly to God, “praying” to the saints rather than directly to God, etc.)

It seemed odd that I could have a personal relationship with God, but I needed a pastor to read the Bible.

Fundamentalists will often criticize “lukewarm” (AKA mainstream, AKA relatively sane) Christians for “picking and chooseing” which parts of the Bible they will listen to…and thus flouting Biblical authority.

And yet, the fundamentalists do the same. They pick-and-choose all the stuff about how they get to judge and condemn and berate their fellow man, and leave out all the stuff where they are told to be modest, and to not make public demonstrations of their faith, and not to act holier-than-thou (hint: telling people what God says and what the Bible says they should do, when there is just as much support in the Bible for their viewpoint as there is for yours…is the very soul of holier-than-thou).

I am continually shocked, when I reference the Bible in an argument with various “Christians”, at how little knowledge they actually have of their own holy book. I often find that they have not read it from cover-to-cover even once, but instead have gone through a Bible study or devotional series that guides them through their particular denominations interpretive filter. My general impression is that there is an inverse relationship between the amount of the Bible they can quote from memory, and the amount that they have actually read.

But I HAVE read the Bible cover-to-cover several times, and I have come to the conclusion that it is a human document, with all that it implies. It has human flaws, contradictions, and failings. Its stories and commandments and precepts are by turns as wise and foolish, as flawed and perfect, as freeing and as cumbersome as the human condition itself.

Which is not a condemnation of the Bible. It is what it is. It can be nothing else. I would urge you to read it if you haven't already. And when you are done, like anything else you encounter in life, take from it what is good, leave what is useless, damaging, or unhealthy behind…and reach for what is better, using the reason, judgement, and freewill that are your natural gifts as a human being.

If you belong to a Christian denomination, I would urge you to recognize that your church has already made some of those choices for you, and to ask yourself if that is the role you want them to play.

Meet the new boss...

Teresa Lhotka — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 15:59:57 GMT

Conrad Zero answers the question “Who do I have to blow to fill a decent playlist to make the last three miles of my training run bearable?”

Kinda.

Apparently, It’s you; yourself…and if you could do THAT, you’d never leave the house.

We’ve become an impatient society. We have very little time to ourselves. We have very little attention to give to anything besides our responsibilities.

More and more, people are spending 50+ hours per week at work, and when they come home, they’ve got home improvement projects, gardening, kid raising, getting little Johnny to soccer practice and little Katie to Karate class at the same time, across town, cleaning, volunteer work, taking care of ageing parents, etc.

Every minute of every day is packed, and more and more people are finding that their remaining “me” time is limited to the time alone in the car on the commute to and from work. Not exactly quality time. And during that little slice of space-time, most of us listen to music. It’s really the only thing we CAN do during that time.

So, as Conrad points out, we have a lot more options for good independent music out there. By-passing the marketing and pre-packaging, and slick-production-value-masquerading-as-art morass feels good…but it takes time, and the pay-off isn’t always what we expected.

We have a choice, we can keep letting the marketing industry polish up a bunch of turds and sell it to us as diamonds…or we can dig through a big pile of crap in search of our own real diamonds. Neither seems compelling. Either way, you end up with a bunch of shit

In the search for good, independent music, there is no getting around the fact that you will have to listen to a fair amount of crap…but I’ve got a couple of suggestions.

1) Go to your nearest independent music store (In the Twin Cities, the Electric Fetus, for example) find someone who is willing to help you, and say “I’m interested in finding a good, local or regional band. Something new, that I haven’t heard before. They might ask you some questions to figure out your musical tastes, they might just shove a CD into your hand and walk away…but at the very least, you’ve had someone who works with music daily do a little sifting.

2) Combine your search for new music with other leisure-time activities. Go to pubs where they have live music, and bring your friends. Get your eating, drinking, socializing and music exploration all out of the way at the same time.

3) Expand your role. Dust off that old instrument whether it’s a viola, or a guitar or an electric keyboard. Join a community orchestra, a fiddling circle, or form a band. Get voice lessons. No, you don’t have to be good, no, you don’t have to perform. Music is most enjoyable when you are completely involved in it. The best way to get completely involved in it is to make it. If you think other people won’t enjoy it, that’s OK. You don’t have to share, but you’ll be surprise how much fun it is just to DO.

4) Accept the inevitable. Be OK with hearing music that isn’t your favorite or to your taste. Be willing to risk that few minutes on something that doesn’t work out. Yes, some of it might be just plain bad, but give it a chance. You might find something in it that you can appreciate. It requires some mental discipline, but it will blend over into other parts of your life. Not everything has to be perfect, or exactly what you want at any given time. We’ve been conditioned to expect that in life, and when it doesn’t work out that way, a lot of us react with frustration or anger. That’s not healthy. Some music is crap. Some good music isn’t to your taste. It won’t kill you to have listened to it. There’s always the next song.

So, get out there and explore. Don’t worry if you cover unpleasant ground, or find out that you’ve been covering fallow ground, or that your just now discovering a great “new” band that all your friends have already gotten tired of. It’s not a contest. It’s not about being cool or being “in the know”…it’s not about always having the “best” music experience. Like life, it is want you make it. And you’ll do better if you just jump in.

Isolation and Individualism

Teresa Lhotka — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 16:16:34 GMT

My friend Barb came to visit this weekend with her mom and her brother, Joe.

It was a lovely time. I really enjoy Barb and her mom. Barb’s mom is my model for what a mom should be. One I regularly fall far short of, but she is the mom that I want to be someday.

One thing our visit did, though, was illustrate just how much I don’t miss living in a small town.

Barb and I were going for an after-dinner walk, when she mentioned that her mom caught a ride down to the cities from Bemidji with the mother of another friend of ours. Let’s call her “Battleship Ellie”. Anyway, Barb, Barb’s, mom and Ellie were at dinner, when Ellie mentioned that she hadn’t seen much of my mom since my mom and dad moved up to and even smaller town two hours north of Bemidji .

Ellie mentioned in a rather prompting way that she didn’t see my mother in church anymore. The implications sounded to Barb like Ellie was concerned that my mom might not be attending church at all.

Barb replied with something letting Ellie know that she didn’t know my mom very well, and wasn’t familiar with her church-attending habits, or why they might have changed.

The family-style communities of small towns have their upside. No argument. But they are a double–edged sword. Yes, everyone takes care of each other in a small town…but on the other hand EVERYONE TAKES CARE OF EACH OTHER.

It’s like having a couple hundred sets of parents keeping track of your church attendance, whether or not your working, how your garden/yard/house/ are looking, what your children are up to, etc.

If your behavior isn’t up to community standards, people assume there is something wrong, and bring you casserole dishes and call you up to offer a helping hand, or use an errand to ask another mutual friend’s children to explain your lapse in church attendance.

This is great if you need help….but torture if you just don’t feel a lot of pressure to measure up to community standards. I don’t need a big garden. If the plants are healthy, I don’t worry too much about getting every little weed as soon as it pops its head above the ground. Flowers bordering the house: EXTREMELY optional.

On the other hand, in the big city people don’t feel the need to let you know kindly and helpfully and hintingly if you’ve fallen below community standards. Ellie’s son lives in Minneapolis , and has recently had a LOT on his plate. So he’s more behind than usual on home maintenance and yard work, in addition to being in the middle of a number of projects. This neighbor let him know by leaving a nasty, swear-word laden note on his door. Casseroles may be passive aggressive, but at least you can eat them, and it saves you time having to cook dinner while you work to put your life in order.

Still, I prefer (and I can’t believe I’m saying this) the suburbs, where you can live next door to someone for twenty years and exchange five words with them a year…mostly neutral peasantries. They don’t know you, they don’t want to know you, and they’ve got enough business of their own to want to get into any of yours.

Yep, there’s something to be said for our disintegrating society’s slow slide into the snake pit of individualism and isolation: I like the quiet.

Travelin' Music

Teresa Lhotka — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 15:22:11 GMT

Sue has a few days off before she starts her new job, so we went for a hike yesterday at Taylor’s Falls Interstate Park. I was gone all day, as didn’t get to work out. Still, it was fun, and while it was not working out, it was certainly not sitting around on my butt either. Plus, I got to hang out with Sue.

I bought us some stuff for a picnic lunch and drove up to her place. She drove us from her house to Taylor ’s Falls.

On the way, we listened to a CD of folk music that I bought for her at the Smithsonian Institute a few years back.

It’s one of those “authentic voices” sorts of folk CD’s…more of an anthropological effort than a musical one, is what I’m saying.

It’s odd and quirky, and the voices are common ordinary people singing common, ordinary regional songs.

You have to be able to appreciate that sort of thing in the first place, and on top of that, you have to be in the right mood to listen to it. We both just happened to be in that mood. So we’re driving along, listening to this music, and I say:

Me: “Ya know what I miss?”

Sue: “What?”

Me: “Variety shows.”

Sue: “Really?”

Me: “Yeah.”

Sue: “I guess I enjoyed them a little, but I don’t miss them. My mom made me watch LAWRENCE WELK”

Me: “I liked Lawrence Welk.”

Sue: [indecipherable strangling noise…]

Me: “What?”

Sue: [strangling noise now recognizable as suppressed laughter.]

Me: “What? I can’t like Big Band music?”

Sue: “I like almost any kind of music. Except polka music.”

Me: “You don’t like polka music?”

Sue: “Well… the other day I was running, and I ran past this one house with some old

person home in the middle of the day, and they were blasting polka music, and I

realized that it was really good to run to.”

Me: “Well, it has a good beat.”

Sue: [giving me a “who ARE you look”, and apparently not trusting herself to speak.]

All I’ve got to say is anyone who can’t see the good in Frank Yankovich had better have some other damned fine qualities.

While hiking the trails, we found that apparently, the Minnesota side of the park is having a little trouble with trail maintenance, so it took us a while to find a trail that we could follow all the way around. The Wisconsin side is much more impressive, as you can go on a trail that goes right along the cliff bluffs that plunge into the river. Still, we got at least three miles worth of decent hiking in, and somewhere north of that in total ground covered.

At some point, Sue made some comment about going to a party on Saturday night (It was my party, I confess. Fire-pit party. Those who might expect to be invited to such an event and weren’t don’t worry, your turn is coming…we just wanted to keep it manageable.)

Of course, I had to launch into “I went to a party last Saturday night, I didn’t get laid, I got in a fight…uh huh…it ain’t no big thing.”

Me [challengingly]: “Who sang that?”

Sue: “Lita Ford”

Me: “Right. I knew it was one of the three decent rocker chicks of the ‘80’s; Pat Banatar, Joan Jett, and Lita Ford."

Sue: “What about Olivia Newton John?”

Me: [indistinct strangling noises]

Sue: “What?”

Me: [indistinct strangling noise now recognizable as me trying to choke out a decent social platitude, and finally settling for:] “Remind me why we’re friends, again?”

We finished our hike without incident. I went to the gift shop and bought Sue a cheap commemorative pin to remember the day by. We snacked on Strawberries and teeny-tiny mini cheese cakes, and packed things up into the car to go home.

We drove without music this time, as our quota of “authentic folk music” had been reached, and I think we were uncomfortable with trying to negotiate any other selections…but we CAN seem to agree on the sounds of our own voices.

Whipping Shittys

Teresa Lhotka — Tue, 30 May 2006 12:15:22 GMT

We went to see X-Men 3 yesterday (as you will note in the entry below) and one of the previews was for The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift.

So I thought “What? They’re making another one?”

Yep…except without Vin Deisel and with a new twist. The races involve a technique called “drifting”. This is supposed to make the movie that much more cool and compelling.

When I was a kid in Bemidji , we called it “whipping shittys”. It was the big thing before “mudding” came along. You could do it out on the lake in the winter time, or in the Pamida parking lot, or along any one of a half dozen routs in the area with multiple hair-pin curves woven through swampland…or around corners in town on slow nights after about 3:00 AM.

And I dare any of those slick-haired pretty boys with their fancy mods to try to equal my friend Libby’s performance with the great maroon Catalina (with sloppy suspension) named “Bertha”. I’d like to see them try that shit. They’d never make it. Pee Wee Herman could do it with $100,000 worth of mods on his car. It takes skill to do it with a rust-bucket like Bertha.

“Drifting” with Bertha was a little like trying to drive a greased whale down a mountainside. THAT takes skill, and you can’t do it if you are worried about the wind mussing up your gel-and-glitter hair-do.

I have to say, the premise of this movie is a little weak. If it’s such a big deal, how come any ignorant redneck in Bemidji can do it? And furthermore…the ignorant rednecks in Bemidji do it because they must. There’s nothing else to do…this movie is set in TOKYO for Gods sake. I’m sure they could come up with something a little less bored-Midwestern-youth-with –too-much-beer-in-them.

What’s next?

The Fast and the Furious: Home-made explosives from common household items set off in gravel pits in Amsterdam ?

Or:

The Fast and the Furious: Mudding in huge 4X4’s down flooded logging trails in Borneo ?

Oh! Oh! I know!

The Fast and the Furious: Snipe hunting and cow-tipping with some stupid tourist in New Zealand !

Yeah. It’s a HIT baby!

X-Men 3

Teresa Lhotka — Tue, 30 May 2006 11:34:54 GMT

Just saw X-Men 3 with Grasshopper, Adventure Boy, and Rocky.

God, Hugh Jackman is hot as Wolverine. What’s up with that? I don’t even care for Hugh Jackman that much, and that much hair isn’t normally my sort of thing. Still…oh well. What is, is.

But back to the story.

It was pretty good. The theme was a visitation of an old theme: The positive, active, creative dynamic light force of the Yang versus the dark, passive, negative, destructive, brooding force of the Yin.

The story illustrates that you cannot have good without bad, light without dark, and Superego without ID.

We see Jean Gray, the previously “sensitive” flat-line embodiment of benign non-personality, resurrected from the depths and transformed into Phoenix…the part of Jean Gray that wants…anything other than what Scott and Xavier want her to want.

The duality of Jean Gray goes all flippy-floppy and bad stuff ensues. Oh, yeah, and along with getting in touch with her darkside, Jean also gets all touchy-feely with her full power.

I realize she’s evil now and all, but I have to admit, I like her better than I ever had before. That, and the ending, are about the only points that truly meet between this movie, and what happened in the comic series. They add a lot of stuff, subtract a lot of stuff, and stir it around with a liberal application of cool special effects, and that does manage to keep it fresh.

But when I talk about the Yin and Yang of goodness and badness, I am also talking about my reaction to them casting Kelsey Grammer as Dr. Hank McCoy. I love Beast soooo much (Really, it isn’t the hair thing. Lots of hair is a serious turn-off for me. Honest)

He contends with Nightcrawler as my favorite X-man. And yet I hate Kelsey Grammer. I hated him as the fussy, whiney, blubbering Fraiser in Cheers, and as the fussy, whiney, blubbering Fraiser in … Fraiser (no, I wasn’t fooled into thinking he was less fussy, whiney and blubbering just because they gave him a brother who was more so. Cheap trick…wouldn’t fall for it.)

I didn’t even like him as the fussy, whining blubbery Fraiser that he played in numerous commercials.

To be sure, he wasn’t Fraiser in this movie…(For one thing, Fraiser would have a mental melt-down being that blue and hairy)…but he wasn’t Beast either.

Yes, yes, he had the collegiate professor bit down, and yes, they made it clear he could kick ass (THANK YOU GOD for stunt doubles) and turn cars into ash trays with his bare hands…and hang from his prehensile toes…but what was missing was something that was so essentially BEAST and so essentially NOT KELSEY GRAMMER that I’m amazed it eluded the casting director.

Warmth. Tenderness, Compassion, Depth. OK, that’s four things and counting, as I intend to continue…

Yes, they implied his brilliance…but failed totally to convey even a glimmer of the sheer virtuosity of thought that makes Beast the character that he is. The Classically trained mind, the devotion to Enlightenment Philosophy, the musical acumen. Grrrr.

And what about his great, thick, black-rimmed glasses? Nowhere to be seen.

I’m sure they could have found a half-dozen decent actors who could have done it. Anthony Stewart Head comes to mind.

But once again, back to the story.

The ending was totally worth it…and no, I’m not going to spoil you. It just was. Hugh Jackman gets to be all intense and noble and suffering and ruthless and let rage war with love and grief through every fiber of his being. Very comic book ending.

Have I mentioned that Hugh Jackman is really hot as Woverine?

Ian McClellan and Patrick Stewart are complete masters, as usual, and their presence in the film make it better than it really has a right to be.

I had fun watching this movie. It wasn’t a work of art, but it clearly wasn’t meant to be.

e-horse-and-buggy-rides $50

Teresa Lhotka — Tue, 09 May 2006 04:40:53 GMT

YES! Absolutely! Please ghettoize your extreme ideology more! Take your “Christian” viewpoint and wrap it up in some insular community! Get it out of MySpace and LiveJournal and other places like that where us wicked hell-bound sinners play!

For God’s sake, protect yourself from education, communication, reason, modern thought, American Values, and Pop Culture (OK, I admit it, that should have come second). Oh yeah, and explicit discussion of sexual behavior which, even though created by God, is a dirty, disgusting thing you only do with someone (of the opposite sex) you love and are committed to in Holy Wedlock. (OK, I admit, that should have come first).

We shall call you the Cyber Amish and visit your quaint communities in search of digital quilts and durable cyber-furniture.

I just have one question: “Will you take a picture with me? For a souvenir? Come on, I want to prove that I came here and spent some time. It’s spiritual damnit, and I want a visual record of it.

Stephan Colbert has...

Teresa Lhotka — Tue, 02 May 2006 03:43:26 GMT

"Mr. President, pay no attention to the people who say the glass is half empty.

Because 32% means it's 2/3 empty. There's still some liquid in that glass is what I'm saying.

I wouldn't drink it, though. The last third is mostly backwash."

--Stephan Colbert

The White House Correspondant's Dinner.

Seriously, could you say stuff like that to the face of the POTUS? Really? How about the rest of it...

Take a watch at the entire evening. It's priceless. You will laugh your ass off. You will also find yourself saying "Oh holy shit, Saints preserve us...there's two of him."

Your Horoscope for today.

Teresa Lhotka — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 20:22:36 GMT

Via Bob Wagner...who I think actually believes in horoscopes...

A flash video of a Weird Al song mocking horoscpoes.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/305819

Andreas Katsulas has passed away

Teresa Lhotka — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 15:29:48 GMT

I actually heard about this a couple of days ago, but haven't commented because I just didn't know what to say, or how to say it best.

Mr. Katsulas was a fine actor, and I can only imagine that he was a fine human being as well.

I can think of no other explination for his nuanced, sympathetic and honest portrayal of G'Kar, the vengeful revolutionary turned religious icon. G'Kar was a character on Babylon Five. He began as a petty, self-serving, bitter ideologue and ended as a symbol of reformation, hope, compassion and forgiveness.

Mr. Katsulas made you feel exactly how you were supposed to feel about G'Kar every step of the way. He made the unsympathetic sympathetic, the unbelievable believeable, and the alien unmistakably human. He did it with grace, wisdom, and a percieved ease that can only come from painstaking and unrelenting craftsmanship.

He died of lung cancer at the age of 59.

"There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities, it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender. The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain."

--G'Kar -Babylon Five

And some people thought Bono was crazy...

Teresa Lhotka — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 15:17:07 GMT

Some progressives wondered what the hell Bono thought he was doing, going to talk to corporate mega churches about global warming and global social justice. Personally, I didn't figure he would find fertile ground there. [oops, my mistake. It appears that his tour of mega-churches was to talk about the global AIDS pandemic at any rate, the point stands; it appears that at least SOME mega church pastors and congregations are open to messages that are challenging to their faiths]

Of course, Bono has always had some weird associations. Anyone remember his little world tour with "W"'s Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill?

He doesn't appear to mind risking something being a waste of his time...and I guess it pays off.

The link goes to the Electroninc New York Times it requires free registration to see the article, but the gist of it is summed up in the title and first paragraph:

Evangelical Leaders Join Global Warming Initiative

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

Published: February 8, 2006

Despite opposition from some of their colleagues, 86 evangelical Christian leaders have decided to back a major initiative to fight global warming, saying "millions of people could die in this century because of climate change, most of them our poorest global neighbors."

So there you have it. Sometimes it pays to be a little bit crazy.

Monkeys

Teresa Lhotka — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 15:43:08 GMT

Many thanks to Ben,

who e-mailed me the link to this wonderful entertaining video.

http://www.ernestcline.com/dmd >>

It's a little funny, a little horrifying, and a little heartbreaking...but mostly it's just true.

Save Monty Python!!!

Teresa Lhotka — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 15:25:01 GMT

Here's a link to an entry by Peter David. Peter David is a fantastic writer, and his blog reflects that.

Anyway, this is a rather light peice that illustrates the chilling fact that our bright young intellectual eliet of the next generation are woefully ignorant of Monty Python.

Be afraid. Be very afraid

Irony Much?

Teresa Lhotka — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 16:26:29 GMT

Story about how a teenager's crime spree disrupts the "Dillinger Days" celebration in Tucson.

Criminals and crime stories are so romantic and dramatic...when they're not ruined by actual crime. For shame.

NEXT on FOX !!!!!!!!

Teresa Lhotka — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 04:12:39 GMT

Via The Moderate Voice.

Dirty little sneaks can make more money selling the blood of their instructors than honest, hardworking students caught short at tuition time can make selling their blood plasma.

Here’s a story about a right-wing group paying students $100 per class to turn over tapes and notes of lectures of “far left-wing” college professors.

It’s about time we started offering bounties on the heads of traitorous scum masquerading as “educators” in this country.

Then, we can expose them for what they are, and Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Ann Coulter can hunt them for sport.

PUNDITS GONE WILD!!!!

Just like “The Running Man”.

AWESOME!!

Oooh! Ooooh! We could have them mauled by bears.

And FOX can sell the video tapes; NEXT ON FOX!! FAST ANIMALS, SLOW ACADEMICS!!! This footage is too raw for the news.

After the carnage and bloodbath, we can go to the local campus watering hole and see what hijinks the students have got up to in the local bar with their $100 payday. Who knows? One of them might get drunk, whip off her shirt and kiss another chick…but not in a gay way…just in a HOT way.

It’s this sort of win-win-win scenario that makes America so great. God, it feels good to be one of the self-righteous moral elite. I could get used to this. Pass me a beer, and not one of those faggoty micro-brews. Gimme a Blatz Light. Yeah. American beer. USA ! USA ! USA ! I’m feelin’ all patriotic now….where the hell did that Lee Greenwood CD go?

"Everything old is new again"...again

Teresa Lhotka — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 16:09:04 GMT

Why are there so many crappy movies? A question addressed, in whole or in part, by Avindair, Missmollygrue, and Conrad Zero in their blogs.

Now for my .02…including the base I’m starting from.

I liked Crash (the good one with Mat Dillon and Don Cheadle). I thought it was a great movie. I liked Walk the Line. I know that’s not a popular call, but maybe I’m less jaded by “bad boy rocker” movies because the last one I saw was The Doors, and I liked that. I liked all the Harry Potter movies. And the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.

But I’m a movie philistine. I laughed my ass off at Beauty Shop; and I KNOW that’s a crappy movie, because I saw it on an airplane., and it’s featured in those stupid trivia things they run in the theaters before they start showing the commercials that they show before the trailers that they show before the movie.

When I was a kid (oh here we go again), I went to MAYBE one movie a year. Movies were expensive, rare and no matter how crappy it was, it was an EVENT. I saw Ice Pirates in the theater. What I remember about the movie:

1) We were somewhere other than at home in the middle of the woods doing boring chores.

2) There was a lot of action and excitement.

3) I saw a lot of people from school and church there, and there was a lot of visiting and chatting before and after the movie.

4) We went to Dairy Queen afterwards (also rare enough to be viewed as a possible sign of the apocalypse) and I had a Peanut Buster parfait and we laughed and joked and talked about the movie, and made fun of some of it.

5) Robert Urich had washboard abs.

Truly, an escape from everyday reality.

I have very fond memories of Ice Pirates. I have absolutely refused to watch it again because I know it’s a towering, smoldering pile of crap in a hat…and actually seeing it again would spoil it.

The movie did what it was supposed to do. It diverted us from our everyday life. It got us out of the house and into our community. It gave the whole family a common experience to share. It was part of a rare and magical extravagance that we just couldn’t afford to do with any kind of frequency. Because movie-going, or outside entertainment of any kind, was so rare it was almost as if the actual movie didn’t matter that much.

Now, of course, I am more sophisticated…being all, you know…not nine years old and all…and I see movies a LOT. Not a month goes by without me seeing a movie in some form or another. I’ve helped make a couple of films, and I see what goes into it, and I see some of the technical side now. I notice things like lighting, and camera angles and framing choices.

And I’m amazed at the massive, massive quantities of crap out there.

But the crap isn’t exactly crap. As in, there are multiple kinds of crap;

1) There’s The General’s Daughter - type crap (TGDTC) that just zeros in on the most horrifying exploitation of the darker side of human nature and then plasters it up on a massive, massive screen and makes you watch it over and over and over again and then hands you a cheat pay-off as though it were the most brilliant thing ever done. Its art direction, lighting, framing…everything that is used to make something pretty is exploited to the highest degree to make every millisecond of horror and degradation as polished, crystal and “pretty” as possible. Plotting, internal logic, pacing and pay-off are given no thought at all and it would be generous to call the efforts on those fronts slap-dash. The point of the movie is to force you to view a very very very graphic and brutal gang-rape over and over and over again, and to make it so visually compelling that you can’t look away. In my case, I walked out of the theater for a while and took a little mental vacation in the lobby for about twenty minutes…so I was not too numbed and traumatized to notice at the end that the murderer was some extra that got one line in scene two, and for whom there were no clues or set-up throughout the entire fucking alleged “story”.

This is the one kind of crap that I will not tolerate in my movies. I will endure a lot of emotional brutality from a movie if there is a reason for it. Look at Crash. THAT had pay-off. It broke your heart over and over again and every single time, it was worth it.

2) Ice Pirates – type crap (IPTC) fun, silly, over-the-top, but takes itself just a little too seriously. Could have been more fun if it had remembered that it was supposed to be crap and just sort of embraced it. Tries just a little too hard to be something it’s not, and ends up being neither here nor there. This sort of movie make makes me think of something Harlan Ellison has said repeatedly; (and I paraphrase) watching a bad movie is like having bad sex. If you can ignore those awkward moments when it’s quite obviously fumbling around trying to figure out what to do next, you can enjoy it while it’s happening, but afterwards there’s this sense of unfulfillment and regret. The successful counter-part to this would be something like “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”…which never forgets what it is, where its going and what its doing.

3) Me, Myslef and Irene – type crap (MMITC) is the kind of movie that doesn’t hook you in, and when they do the fade from the guy crapping on his neighbor’s lawn to the chocolate ice cream coming out of the dispenser, you just decide that life’s too short and hit the delete button on the DVR. It didn’t get the goofy human angle, before it went to the ridiculously gross and graphic potty humor. “Something About Mary”, on the other hand, spiked it.

4) Sweet Home Alabama –type crap. It’s a genre movie…a romantic comedy, as “zany mad-cap romp”, a “coming of age story”, a “buddy cop movie”…etc. they are the sort of benign, lukewarm crap that is just supposed to pass your time. It’s supposed to be safe. A critic can tell you that it’s a romantic comedy, they’ve followed the formula enough that you probably won’t be taking a risk…but they’ve probably had a talented enough script doctor freshen it up that you will get all the way through the evening before you realize you’ve seen this movie a dozen times.

These movies are not art. They are entertainment. And yes, there IS a difference. Just as the Art that hangs in museums is different than the pictures most people hang on their walls, these movies are not meant to edify, enlighten, break new ground, discover new horizons…human beings can’t do that every day. Some times most people just need to be diverted from their day. They need to get out of the house, be with other people, smell the special smell of industrial sludge being pawned off as “butter”.

Hey, prehistoric man told the same stories over and over and over again, adding little twists and turns, fine-tuning them to encompass new experiences…everything old being new again has been around for a long, long, time, and I don’t think all the blame has to be put on the shoulders of the suits in the entertainment industry. They have enough burdens on their souls as it is. Let’s be generous and merciful, people.

There are more kinds of crap, but the bulk of crappy movies fall into these categories for me. The first and third kind I absolutely cannot stand, and I wish they’d stop making them. They are an insult to the audience, in my opinion. (Although bear in mind these are also movies that I have admittedly not seen the whole movie so if you have a different opinion, you could just put it down to my ignorance. I’m OK with that)

Types two and four I have a little more compassion for…in some sense because if you are a flexible and engaged audience, you can let them entertain you. Yes, you might have to do some work as well, but if you are open and honest, and willing to do a little bit of the work yourself, you can leave the theater with a slightly lighter step than you had when you went in…and there is certainly a place for that. I’m OK with it.

Of course, we would prefer to have our entertainment grab us by the nose and pull us, helpless and gasping through the experience, never bursting the bubble, never missing a beat, never letting us go until long after the credits have rolled…and we get that from time-to-time…but it’s rare and bright and brilliant.

And I’m OK with that too.

Why I don't watch the news

Teresa Lhotka — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 16:47:22 GMT

Here's a link to Conrad Zero's Bolg entry about something horrifying he witnessed on KARE 11 news. He doesn't go into detail...but even his cursory description of the event is difficult to take.

It's one thing to be on the scene in person and have to witness something like this. But it's unavoidable if you are there. It's happening right in front of you, and there's nothing you or anyone else can do. It's terrible, but it is part of life. There's nothing personal about it. You get through it because you have to.

But to have it purposfully inflicted on you as infortainment by people who assume you want to see something like this is not just wrong, it's sensless, and it's brutal.

Bad stuff happens. We get that. Sometimes we're there and we have to witness it. But what the hell are you thinking when you put it on tape and put it on the TV and make us watch it when we don't have to? How does this educate, edify or enlighten me? How does this speak to or feed my higher nature?

Dudes, you're THE NEWS. I'm supposed to watch you for information about my life, my world, my government and the (general) state of my fellow man. I'm supposed to go to you to find out how to keep the crooks in Washington honest, find out what companies are endagering my life in their endless pursuit of profit, find out where to take my kids for the latest cultural/educational event.

And yeah, I like my sports re-caps. You can give me those too.

But you're not supposed to exploit my human weakness for prurient-interest stories. I don't WANT to be that person who slows down to see the blood on the pavement. I want to be a good citizen and drive by, keeping the traffic flowing so that help can arrive quicker.

Help me out with that, would you? Because we've all got a bit of the ghoul in us, and try as we might, sometimes we have to work really hard to not focus on something we know is not good for us.

Playing to that nature, encouraging it and profiting from it is NOT your job...and you should be ashamed of yourselves.

Guest Blogger III: Run Sim Boy Run!!!

Teresa Lhotka — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 04:15:51 GMT

For those of you who aren't aware, I sometimes post missives from Sue on my blog. This is one such item. I thought you would enjoy it - Trees

So without further ado...here's Sue.

Experienced first ever computer-induced trauma yesterday evening:

One of my Christmas gifts was the Sim Family computer game w/ every expansion pack you can get included. I should have known it would be too advanced...

Within less than 30 minutes, my first family became so unhappy with their living conditions, that their house was visited by a clown who would NOT leave. If you know me at all- you can guess I find the following to be nightmarish: Precious Moments figurines, anything people refer to as "precious" or "tender", crowds of slow-moving people who reek of fried food (hello- State Fair) and clowns. Clearly I could NOT let events continue. I exited the game without saving it, effectively ending their lives. Trust me, it was the humane thing to do.

Next family. Life was good. Nice farmhouse, good jobs, fun couple with one young boy. All was well until I had the man cook dinner. Minutes later the stove was on fire. The woman ran into the room screaming in a panic. I tried to have her put the fire out with the extinguisher, but she kept flipping out and then wouldn't fork over the entinguisher to the man. Tragically she went up in flames. The man refused to exit the house and soon was engulfed too. It was horrible. I got the boy to run out of the house, but then he kept running back in. I started freaking out too. Yelling "Oh, shit. Fire! Get out, you stupid people! Oh. No! Shit! Why won't you leave?! Get Out!!!" Panda Girl ran to my room- poised to dial 911 wondering if I had somehow set my computer on fire on something. I couldn't figure out how to stop the game. Got more & more upset thinking I was going to have to watch the little kid go up in flames. Panda Girl had to jump in and help me end the game.

Clearly I am not cut out for this Life Creation stuff. Too much pressure. Maybe I should stick to Tetris?