Felonious Popes

Book Review: "Fifty Shades of Gray" by E.L. James (SPOILERS)

2013-09-13T19:04:00.000-04:00

I fucking hate myself.

Fuck you, too.

I fucking hate whatever masochistic impulse made me decide reading this piece of shit could ever possibly be a good idea.

I fucking hate all the assholes who pass by good books with good characters and good writing and latch on to this crap so hard that it sold squillions of copies.

I fucking hate the fact that some asshole on the Internet could take her shitty Twilight fanfic, file off the serial numbers, and make millions off it.

Seriously. Kill me now. Maybe I'll be reincarnated into a world with some actual taste in literature. In fact, the knife block is only a few feet away, let me go get one...

...

...

...

Okay, I'm back. Now that I'm slowly bleeding out from slit wrists*, let's talk about why it sucks. We'll go by the numbers, into the three big problems I have with it. (Note: I am spoiling the fuck out of this, because no one should ever read it. Ever.)

1. Characters

None of the characters in this book are interesting. None of them. Not remotely. Let's run down the list of "major" characters. First, there's Anastasia "Ana" Steele, our narrator and college-age cipher. If they made people in a factory from a central mold, she's what would happen if quality control fucked up and a blank mannequin got out. She's a generic English major doing generic things at a generic college, which happens to be in Washington State. I mean, I get why she's so bland (she's the Bella, the cipher that allows readers to project themselves into the book), but she really isn't a memorable character.

Could I possibly care any less about her adventures? No.

Then there's our hunky love interest, Christian Gray. He's an inexplicably, implausibly wealthy twenty-something "businessman". Where'd the money come from? *shrug* Business stuff, or whatever. How does he have time to do "business stuff" and fuck around constantly? I dunnoh, maybe he telecommutes or something. Come to think of it, he spends most of his time onscreen having sex or thinking about having sex. What business could he possibly be running that would allow him to do that and be super-involved in business decisions? Fuck if I know.

Also, he's a total asshole. He's a super dick. If you've ever doodled a penis in the margins of your textbook, that picture has as much depth as Christian Gray.

Aside from them, there's a few other characters that walk through the story. Ana's roommate Kate, who introduces the two star-crossed fuckers, is rich (and that's about all we get). Her guy-friend José is the obvious Jacob replacement, only now he's an offensive Hispanic stereotype with about twice as much rapiness. I think there's a few other people, like Christian's adoptive brother, who gets it on with Kate, and maybe Christian's butler, but that's about it.

Quite beyond the blandness of the characters, I've got a problem with how the author tries to pretend that she didn't paste these characters straight out of one of a million shitty romance novels. She tries to show how Christian is so angsty and damaged and broody, and why he's into BDSM, and it's fucking terrible. Apparently, as far as E.L. James is concerned, you can only be into kinky stuff if one of your adoptive parents' friends forced you to be their sub when you were a fucking teenager.

Without going into too much detail, I'll say that I have some kinks. The specifics are none of your goddamn business, but I do have them. And I was never abused, sexually or otherwise. So the implication that only a really fucked-up person would be interested in BDSM or other kinky stuff is offensive. Number one, it's offensive to people who like kinky stuff. But beyond that, it's insultingly offensive to actual survivors of abuse. Fuck you, E.L. James, for thinking this adds depth to your 2-dimensional character. You can multiply zero with whatever fucking number in the world. You're still getting fucking zero.

So, in summary, the characters make me feel like this, mostly:

Except when they made me feel like this:

2. Plot

The plot is probably the least-shitty part of the book, which isn't saying much. Mostly, it's your standard bullshit fantasy plot, where for some unknown reason, Very Important Person finds Nobody McGillicuddy astoundingly fascinating. If it were anywhere close to a decent book, there'd be at least a cliched reason for this. Maybe she's the Chosen One, or the lost heir to the Grand Duchy of Whogivesafuck. Maybe she's the fucking Girl Who Lived.

But all we get is the Least Interesting Person In The World getting a million rewards, with seemingly no justification whatsoever. And all throughout, it's described in the most boring way possible, because, for an English major, Ana Steele seems to know very little about how to write. So for me, it was mostly just this:

For hundreds of pages.

3. Writing

And now we get to the worst part of all: The monstrosity that is E.L. James "writing" an erotic story. This is literally the worst thing ever. A planeful of the most adorable kids in the world could crash in a grove of kitten trees, and this fucking book would still be the worst thing in all of history.

For your reading displeasure, I'd like to present some samples of this crap.

"Aargh!" I cry as I feel a weird pinching sensation deep inside me as he rips through my virginity.

But with a penis.

Hmm… he’s soft and hard at once, like steel encased in velvet, and surprisingly tasty – salty and smooth. Speaking as someone who has become intimately acquainted with a dick, over the 20+ years that said schlong has been attached to me... dicks don't feel like that.

He’s my very own Christian Grey flavor popsicle.

Saving the worst for last.

Jesus H. Fucking Christ on a fluorescent green pogo stick. How did this fucking shit get published? Who thought this shit was worthy of reading? I'd like to know, so I can punch them in the face. And give them a book that isn't written so terribly.

He's going to kiss me there! Where the fuck is "there"? Her fingers? Her toes? Her vagina? Her doorknob? Her microwave? If you want things to get hot and heavy, be fucking specific.

My inner goddess sits in the lotus position looking serene except for the sly, self-congratulatory smile on her face. This is E.L. James attempting to anthropomorphize Ana's inner monologue, only somehow, Ana's "inner goddess" is dumber than Ana. The only thing that I enjoyed about this is that occasionally Ana's "subconscious" shows up, and we both hate Ana with the passion of a million fiery suns.

Conclusion

I still fucking hate myself for reading this shit.

I still fucking hate E.L. James for writing this shit.

I still fucking hate all the assholes who brought this shit to my attention by spending actual money on it.

Fuck you very much, motherfuckers.

So, before I completely bleed out, I'm going to find something better to read, like, oh, maybe, anything else at all.
_________
* I haven't actually slit my wrists. And you shouldn't either. Seriously. Don't.

Book (Excerpt) Review: "Genesis" by Ken Shufeldt

2012-10-22T03:04:00.001-04:00

I realize that usually, when one reviews a book, one reads more than just a part of it. But I am going to tell you, right off the bat, this book is so terrible that I couldn't stand to read more than a few pages from the Prologue. And this is not some self-published slop thrown up against the wall of Amazon, oh no, dear reader, it was published by Tor Books, one of the major SF publishing houses.

Genesis can be best categorized as a shitty apocalypse book, in the vein of Left Behind. The prologue takes place during the Persian Gulf War, when a group of "rangers", by which the author presumably means these guys, and not those guys, finds an archaeological site guarded by Republican Guards. There's some military babble, and they call in a B-52 for some reason that I don't quite get.

And then it turns out that the leader of the "rangers" is a member of a secret society, and he calls home to tell them that he's found some ancient sarcophagus of some alien dude with a name that contains "Adam". They send some other guy out, and he somehow gets it back to America, where blah blah blah, oh fuck, this stupid infodump isn't fucking over and it's only been like three pages, oh fuck me this is so fucking terrible.

The point of it is, this is a terrible fucking book, and the author has no idea how to dole out information on the characters without dropping it on you like a ton of alien bricks. I'm not entirely sure how this book could be made better, (the simplest way would be to not have written it or published it in the first place) but I know for certain that this isn't how you do it.

Now, when I first heard about this, I assumed it was just another part of the vast sea of terrible self-published dreck that has flooded the eBook stores these days. Imagine my astonishment when I found out that, somehow, this book had gotten through the editing process at Tor Books, a publisher for which I generally have a lot of respect. If, say, Baen had been the publisher, I wouldn't have been as surprised. Baen, despite the gems in its firmament (like the Vorkosigan Saga), has a well-deserved reputation for publishing terrible books, like John Ringo's Ghost or the entirety of Tom Kratman's oeuvre.

So I'm left wondering how in the name of fuzzy pink kittens this book managed to get off the slush pile and onto the printing presses. I can think of two possibilities: either the book somehow became worse in the editing phase or the author had some sort of dirt on an editor at Tor. Otherwise, I would have to accept the possibility that Tor just fucked this up, and that's not a bridge I want to cross.

Having read this excerpt, I want a refund from someone, whether Tor Books or Amazon, despite the fact that I spent no money on it. If they could give me an extra few minutes of my life to cover the time I wasted on this goddamn book, I'm certain I could find something better to do with that time. Maybe I could poke myself with rusty needles from heroin junkies, or swallow bits of glass coated in smallpox, or stick a gun in my mouth and pull the trigger. Any of those activities would be infinitely preferable to reading that excerpt again.

So, in conclusion, this is a terrible book and I weep for the fact that there is a sequel that somehow got released. If you're a masochist, and you feel like seeing some of the worst writing I've ever seen, you can find it on Amazon.

Quote of the Day, September 1st, 2012

2012-09-01T19:19:00.000-04:00

"There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them." -William Jennings Bryan

This Is... Mitt Romney Is A Terrible Politician, Episode 18,000,000

2012-07-26T17:57:00.000-04:00

The Daily Telegraph, July 26, 2012:

Mitt Romney is perhaps the only politician who could start a trip that was supposed to be a charm offensive by being utterly devoid of charm and mildly offensive.

(For context: "The personal links between the paper's editors and the leadership of the Conservative Party, along with the paper's influence over Conservative activists, has resulted in the paper commonly being referred to, especially in Private Eye, as the Torygraph." -Wikipedia, "The Daily Telegraph")

This has been... Mitt Romney Is A Terrible Politician! Tune in next time to hear Mitt say:

(Merci beaucoup, Shakesville)

Movie Review: The Dark Knight Rises (NO SPOILERS)

2012-07-20T03:17:00.000-04:00

Ho. Lee. Fuck.

That is all.

The Republican Party Is Filled With Idiots, Part MMMMMMMMMMMXVI

2012-07-07T12:53:00.000-04:00

Doop-de-doop-de-doo, reading my email, doop-de-doop-de-doo...

"People now don’t die from prostate cancer, breast cancer and some of the other things," Collins said.

Hi there, Mr. Collins. Speaking as someone whose mother managed to die from breast cancer about two years ago despite five years of treatment (which, might I add, was very expensive)... you are an idiot.

The Republicans must have discovered some vast deposits of stupid somewhere, to come up with so many idiots in such a short span of time.

Random Musical Interlude: Florence and the Machine, "Dog Days Are Over"

2012-05-11T10:53:00.000-04:00

This Just In

2012-05-11T10:43:00.000-04:00

Mittens was a dick to other students in high school:

One former classmate and old friend of Romney’s – who refused to be identified by name – said there are “a lot of guys” who went to Cranbrook who have “really negative memories” of Romney’s behavior in the dorms, behavior this classmate describes as “evil” and “like Lord of the Flies.”

The classmate believes Romney is lying when he claims to not remember it.

“It makes these fellows [who have owned up to it] very remorseful. For [Romney] not to remember it? It doesn’t ring true. How could the fellow with the scissors forget it?” the former classmate said.

In other news, the sky is blue, water is wet, and bears shit in the woods.

I am amused like you humans. Ha. Ha. Ha. I am a relatable guy, and totally not a robot from outer space.

Compare and Contrast

2012-05-10T22:11:00.000-04:00

Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free;

That all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and therefore are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being Lord, both of body and mind yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do,

That the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time;

That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical;

That even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor, whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the Ministry those temporary rewards, which, proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind;

That our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry,

That therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence, by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages, to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right,

That it tends only to corrupt the principles of that very Religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments those who will externally profess and conform to it;

That though indeed, these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way;

That to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy which at once destroys all religious liberty because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own;

That it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order;

And finally, that Truth is great, and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them:

- Thomas Jefferson, "Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom", 1787

Random Musical Interlude: Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, "Mastermind"

2012-04-25T11:17:00.000-04:00

This is totally on my wish list.

A Tale of Two Androids

2012-04-25T10:30:00.000-04:00

I think at this point, we can all agree that Mitt Romney is going to be the Republican nominee. Regardless of what Newt Gingrich might think, assuming that he does think at all, or the fondest hopes of the Paultards for a brokered convention (Please. I could use the entertainment.), he's going to be the guy who gets to lose to President Obama on the first Tuesday of November (Cthulhu willing).

(H/T Shakesville)

The problem with Willard "Mittens" Romney is that in a time when the economy could, at best, be described as "meh" for most people, he is rich. And not only is he rich, but he's like a caricature of a millionaire. He talks about how he doesn't follow NASCAR a lot, but he has friends who own NASCAR teams. His wife owns two Cadillacs, and his renovated house in California will apparently have a garage large enough that he'll need an elevator to move his cars around. He tried to pander to Wisconsonites by joking about the time his Pappy moved a factory from Michigan to Wisconsin. When he went to college, he paid for his apartment by selling stock Pappy gave him for his birthday. I think what we've got here is a failure to communicate.

And you might say, "Dude, you're being unreasonable when you expect a millionaire born to a wealthy family to connect with ordinary people." The problem with that line of argument is that the 43rd President was a millionaire born to a wealthy family, and he spent eight years in the Oval Office. Not only that, but both Dubya and Mittens were born to politically connected families. The difference between them is that Mittens can legitimately claim to be a businessman of enough skill to have made some money, even if it came at the cost of American jobs. Before Bush became Governor of Texas, he basically failed into one company after another.

But one of them was someone a lot of Americans could relate to enough that they could picture sitting down with him and having a beer with him, while the other is stiff and awkward around potential voters, and doesn't know how to pander. Say what you will about Dubya, he at least seemed like a reasonable facsimile of a regular American. His policies may have been disastrous, and he may have left office with Nixonian approval ratings, but he had a modicum of personal charm.

I think the difference can be expressed in fictional terms by comparing both of them to notable TV androids. In this analogy, Bush is one of the skinjobs from the rebooted Battlestar Galactica. He looks and acts human, and only when you dig beneath that exterior do you find the heart of a robot bent on exterminating humanity.

Mittens, on the other hand, is Data, from Star Trek: The Next Generation. He's obviously not entirely human, even though he tries to act like a human, and it doesn't take a keen observer to detect this. He's making a valiant effort to seem human, but it doesn't come naturally to him, and it's pretty obvious.

I'm sure he's desperately hoping that doesn't turn out to be a problem in November.

Book Review: The Host, by Stephenie Meyer

2012-04-03T18:08:00.001-04:00

(SPOILER ALERT)

I managed to finish this book, though it was a near-run thing. I'd heard that it was better than Twilight, and that is true, I suppose. Twilight was terribly painful, but the fact that this was "science fiction" meant that I could focus on the SFnal elements, as opposed to the incredibly boring characters.

So, let me tell you about these characters. The narrator for most of the book is a parasitic alien who has gone throughout the universe, and has now arrived on Earth, which has mostly been assimilated by the aliens, aside from a few pockets of renegade humans. The problem I have with the aliens, as opposed to other parasitic aliens, like, say, the Yeerks from the Animorphs series or the Goa'uld from Stargate, is that these aliens don't seem like tough opponents. They don't seem like the sort of species that would accumulate a space empire. They don't seem threatening as antagonists. Anyhoo, everyone talks about how strong the narrator is, but she runs away from her problems rather than face them, and when she can't run away from them, she just finds some dude who is strong enough to protect her, which is INFURIATING.

The second main character is Melanie Stryder, the girl whose body the narrator inhabits. At first she seems more interesting than the narrator, since she survived the apocalypse that swallowed up most of humanity, but when she and the narrator find her lost True Wuv, she melts into this babbling useless mess which is ALSO INFURIATING.

Then there are the survivors, who are quite a cast of characters, if by "cast" you mean "interchangeable bunch of ciphers", for the most part. There's crazy Uncle Jeb, who made the surprisingly large complex of lava tube caves, the adamantly anti-alien Kyle, and Ian, who falls in love with the narrator for some reason.

At any rate, as you might imagine, if you know Stephenie Meyer's books, the climax is resolved too easily and all the heroes end up paired off in heterosexual True Wuv relationships. If you have the opportunity to read this book, find something better. Something like, say, Charlie Stross's Laundry series (which has a new book coming out this summer) or Daniel O'Malley's recently published urban fantasy The Rook, both of which take place in Britain and are much more interesting.

Verdict: The tagline on Stephenie Meyer's website for this book is "Science fiction for people who don't like science fiction," but it's more like "Science fiction for people who don't understand science fiction."

Random Musical Interlude: The Civil Wars, "Poison & Wine"

2012-03-26T10:49:00.001-04:00

Movie Review: The Hunger Games

2012-03-23T23:15:00.001-04:00

So, I just got back from The Hunger Games, the adaptation of the latest young-adult sensation, and it was a blast. I haven't finished reading the series yet (I haven't even finished the first book), but I knew roughly how things would go. And they went very well.

The one thing I was a bit meh about was the amount of shakycam they used. I think that's really overused in movies today (for instance, Unknown, which had way too much shakycam), but it wasn't too bad. It wasn't all shaky, all the time. There were some departures from the original book, but that's to be expected in any adaptation of a book.

I don't really want to go into spoilers, and I'm not exactly a film expert, but I enjoyed it. On the scale of book-to-movie adaptations, it fell more to the LOTR side than the Eragon side, in that it was faithful in all the ways that counted (also, it was well made) and it works well as a movie, even if you don't have a lot of experience with the book. I would recommend it highly.

So, that's number 1 on the list of "Movies I'm Looking Forward To This Year" (After #3, in no particular order):

~~The Hunger Games~~
The Avengers
The Dark Knight Rises
The Amazing Spider-Man
The Cabin in the Woods
Brave
The Legend of Korra (not a movie, but I'm really looking forward to it)
Prometheus
Skyfall
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

(I didn't enjoy the trailers nearly as much. The Kristen Stewart Snow White film looked surprisingly interesting, but they had a trailer for the [Cthulhu willing] final movie in the Twilight "Saga", not to mention The Host, yet another painfully boring and dumb Stephenie Meyer novel. Those are going to be super-crappy.)

Movie Review: "Unknown"

2011-02-22T00:04:00.001-05:00

Dr. Jason Bourne is in the office. His
prescription: Kicking ass.

Let's get things straight here: In the end, I rather liked Unknown. But it wasn't a foregone conclusion. For the first 20-30 minutes, I was thinking, "Why did I ever agree to come to this when I could have been reading?" As the plot progressed, and things began to unfold, though, I found myself liking it more and more.

(Spoilers may lurk below the jump.)

So the movie starts with Dr. Martin Harris (Liam Neeson), a researcher in biosciences, and his wife Liz (January Jones) arriving in Berlin for a major conference. From there, things start to go wrong, and culminate in Martin's taxi driving off a bridge into a river.

He's in a coma for a few days, and when he wakes up, he finds that no one remembers him, and, in fact, a different man is claiming to be "Dr. Martin Harris". From there, he enlists the help of a former Stasi agent turned investigator and the illegal Serbian cabdriver who got him into this whole mess to begin with.

Like I said in the intro, it takes time for things to unfold, but when they do so, it's actually pretty interesting. The uncertainty about what's actually going on, and the tension that causes is a nice touch.

With that said, I feel that I need to address the fight scenes. Holy shit, did they suck. I joked to my brother that I expected one of Our Hero's aliases to be "Jason Bourne", but although they lifted a lot of things from the Bourne films, they did not take the choreography to heart. It's possible, I suppose, that it was just where I was sitting (the front row), but all of the fights were pretty much incomprehensible clusterfucks, and I could never tell who was doing what. Maybe the Bourne fights were less realistic, but come on, people. We're talking about an amnesiac super-assassin beating/shooting his way through multiple major cities on the trail of a Sooper-Sekrit Gubmint Conspiracy. Realism is probably not what you should be worrying about.

But aside from the fights and the draggy first part, Unknown is solid action fare, and if you like that sort of thing, you'll probably like it.

History FAIL (Tea Party Edition)

2011-01-24T16:21:00.002-05:00

TPM:

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) had an interesting take this weekend on America's first European settlers, who she said "had different cultures, different backgrounds, different traditions."
"How unique in all of the world, that one nation that was the resting point from people groups all across the world," she said. "It didn't matter the color of their skin, it didn't matter their language, it didn't matter their economic status."

Uh, Michele? About that last sentence? Yes it fucking did.

I don't know if you ever heard of this, but some of the people who came here, like, say, the First Lady's ancestors, came here as slaves. And even when they were freed, they were subject to great restrictions on their civil rights, and had to work hard to be treated as something approaching equals to white people. And true equality is still nowhere close.

Then there's the people who came here voluntarily. Like the Irish. Or the Italians. Or the Japanese. Or perhaps the Chinese, to whose immigration Congress was so indifferent, that in 1882, they passed a law to stop it. Or, God forbid, the Mexicans.

~~Perhaps~~ Definitely, Michele, as mutual white people, you and I haven't felt the effect of our societal baggage as much as, say, a black man. That doesn't allow you to whitewash (no pun intended) our history, by pretending that every thing was always happy, and will always be happy, if the American people vote for "true conservatives" like you.

The USA is a pretty damn nice country to live in, don't get me wrong, but we've had problems in the past. Ignoring them won't help to fix their legacy, nor will it win you much sympathy with the people who have to deal with that legacy.

America is not perfect. Stop pretending that, and start working on something that could actually help with anything.

Love and kisses,
Teh Pope

No True 'Merkin

2010-10-25T13:54:00.000-04:00

Charles "Bell Curve" Murray writes in Kaplan Daily (forget about a link, this is far too bad for linkage):

There so many quintessentially American things that few members of the New Elite have experienced. They probably haven't ever attended a meeting of a Kiwanis Club or Rotary Club, or lived for at least a year in a small town (college doesn't count) or in an urban neighborhood in which most of their neighbors did not have college degrees (gentrifying neighborhoods don't count). They are unlikely to have spent at least a year with a family income less than twice the poverty line (graduate school doesn't count) or to have a close friend who is an evangelical Christian. They are unlikely to have even visited a factory floor, let alone worked on one.

Just so that you won't have to seek out his wretched pile of camel spunk, let me explain what he's saying. The whole article talks about some "New Elite" that apparently the Teatards dreamed up, and Chuck here decided must be right, because it fit his preconceived notions exactly. It's all basically one big violation of the "No true scotsman" fallacy. No true 'Merkin would live in a city, or not read Left Behind, or not watch The Price Is Right.

As I understand it, though, the great thing about America is not supposed to be that we are all robots who follow one exact path, but that we're a nation of diversity. Everyone, everywhere, is different from everyone else. We all have different experiences, and yet we're still Americans. I'm still an American in spite of the fact that I've never gone to Branson, Missouri, nor have I watched any mixed martial arts (though I do know what "MMA" stands for).

But the best part of all of this is that Kaplan Daily gave Murray a live Q&A time, in which he revealed that he is currently writing a book about this whole "New Elite" thing. Because Bobos In Paradise wasn't insipid and idiotic enough. Also too, I look forward to Andrew Sullivan giving it a rave review.*

*Cf. Murray's previous magnum opus, The Bell Curve. It's infamous for the contention that different races are more intelligent because of genetics. When someone calls your book "a scabrous piece of racial pornography masquerading as serious scholarship," ur doin it wrong.

Zombie Highways

2010-10-18T15:02:00.001-04:00

Oh hai, folks of South Atlanta! Did you know that Nathan Deal wants to build a big ol' highway right through your neighborhoods? Maybe you remember the Northern Arc, from when Roy Barnes was governor? All the white suburban folks were angry because they would have to move, and also deal with more traffic. In the end, the whole plan got scrapped. Welp, now you guys get to have the same kind of fun.

And, hey, it turns out that the Northern Arc is still alive and kicking. Because, of course, the best way to relieve traffic is to build roads, right? At this rate, my grandkids will inherit an Atlanta that has been completely paved over, in order to "relieve traffic". No one can possibly mention the possibility of a better MARTA, because it would bring drugs, murder, and uncouth brown people to the peaceful suburbs of Cobb and Gwinnett.

Thanks a lot, assholes.

Your D.C. Press Corpse, a.k.a. Trained Parrots

2010-10-18T14:47:00.000-04:00

Tom Scocca:

Dreary talk! While other people were getting ready to play or watch football, the political analysts were diagnosing or conjuring "GOP momentum" and the "enthusiasm gap." Even though, as before, most voters were not casting ballots, it was a pivotal weekend.

[...]

Well, that was certainly a blow to the Democrats. They might come out of this election cycle with a majority in only one house of the legislature. Plus control of the presidency. Basically, it is the French Revolution all over again.

Honestly, I don't know why people consider Politico to be a serious publication. They're the ultimate political stenographers, barring the occasional flash of real journalism, like Laura Rosen. In fact, I take back the title of this post. It's an insult to trained parrots. They, at least have an excuse: they don't know any better.

And Now For Something Completely Different: "Jack! You have debauched my zombie!"

2010-10-18T14:24:00.000-04:00

As a fan of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series, I heartily endorse this:

"Stephen, you stray from the point. There is a zombie climbing the halyards. Remove it. Feed it, sing to it, do what you must, but get it down before it entwines itself in the cat-harpings."

"Indeed I have fed it," snapped Maturin. "I laid in an ample supply of Portable Brains or ever we left the dock."

[...]

That evening, just as the Captain and Stephen were poised to launch into Handel's Creation (as transcribed for violin and violoncello), a wailing voice could be heard. Both men paused to listen. The words -- word, to be precise -- became clear.

"Ruuuuuuuummmmmmm!"

"Jack! You have debauched my zombie!"

(thx Dr_Fidelius @ Tor.com)

Tea Party Parasites

2010-10-17T10:20:00.000-04:00

Hypocrite Joe Miller: I am not a hypocrite.

Back in June, Miller was saying this about his Republican primary opponent Lisa Murkowski, blasting her for supporting a state health care program:
As you are aware, just last week the Anchorage Daily News reported that the Denali KidCare Program funded 662 abortions last year. Senator Murkowski has been a champion of this program, voting against the majority of her Republican colleagues for CHIPRA (HR 2) in January of 2009.
Of course it now turns out that back in the Nineties, Miller himself and his three children (with one on the way; he now has eight) were at one point receiving assistance via a program almost exactly like the Denali KidCare program, which is only for low-income earners. Various reportsnote that Miller received this assistance after he’d bought a house and been hired by a prestigious law firm; he also got low-income hunting and fishing licenses during that time. It’s also come out that he received some $7,000 in farm subsidies and that his wife received unemployment insurance benefits.

But, but, young bucks buying t-bones!

Miller basically goes on to justify this by saying that he used it just to get through hard times, not like those moochy poor people who spend their lives on it. He also argues that welfare programs should be controlled by states, which is utterly incomprehensible to me. Why would states do better at managing welfare programs than the federal government? It's just useless bullshit dogmatic federalism.

This is one of the things I find fascinating about the Tea Parties. You have seniors carrying big signs demanding that the government get out of their Medicare, and demanding that there be no socialized medicine (except for Medicare). You have military veterans angrily insisting that the federal government is a big anti-federalistic parasite. Except of course that the government trained them, paid them, and took care of them in the military; and now that they're out, they probably get some kind of pension (or maybe they're in the Reserves)

But these things are not inconsistent to the Tea Party. Because they are Patriots, and those poor people (generally presumed to be of different skin color) are just big ol' moochers who don't want to be productive.

No double standard here, folks. Move along, move along.

(thx Kos)

But Mommy, Science is Hard!

2010-10-14T17:45:00.000-04:00

It should come as no surprise that Joe Lieberman and Joe Scarborough are full of shit, although I was a bit surprised that someone like RFK, Jr. would fall victim to the anti-vaxxers.

Then I read his article on it. It's a mass of hyperbolic conclusions, with no evidence provided for any of the assertions that he makes. There are "truckloads" of studies supporting the evidence. How big of a truck? How many? You do know that a truck could be loaded with nothing, right? Also, there's a "staggering number of earlier studies that indicate a link between thimerosal...and autism". Don't say that the number is staggering, actually give a number. It could well be a staggering number because it's very low- after all, celebrities wouldn't make baseless assertions without actual evidence. That's why they're celebrities, because they cannot tell a lie.

He gives absolutely no scientific evidence, so I'm afraid:

9

2010-09-11T20:30:00.000-04:00

It's hard to believe that it has been 9 years since September 11, 2001. Really, I just can't believe it.

When it all started I was 11. I was in sixth grade. Those 9 years cover all of my time in middle and high school, plus more than half of my time in college. They cover 45% of my entire life on this planet. It's kinda mindboggling.

And yet, I can still remember, like so many others, what I was doing that day.

It was a normal school day, until I got to science class. At some point, the principal came on the PA and said that everyone should return to homeroom. Nothing else. I had no earthly clue what was going on. The teachers either didn't know or didn't want to tell us. At this point, I'm inclined to think it was the latter.

So we all went back to homeroom, and sat there for the rest of the school day. All school events had been canceled, and lunch was curtailed. Parents kept coming in to pick up their kids, but none of us knew what had happened. At some point, the teacher turned on a radio that she had, and we listened to NPR, but the exact things that had happened were still a mystery.

It wasn't until I got home that I learned what had happened. Then, I saw all of the video, over and over again. Flight 175 hitting the South Tower. Both towers collapsing, one after the other. The huge clouds of debris bearing down on fleeing New Yorkers. Firefighters charging in to rescue people, sometimes at the cost of their own lives. It was probably too much for me to handle.

Even then, I called myself a Democrat, if only in a rudimentary, childish way. Bush's "victory" in the election had seriously disappointed me, and he hadn't really done much better since. But on that day, I felt that I should lay that sort of thing aside, and simply support my country. If only I'd had more reason to keep feeling like that.

"The past is never dead. It isn't even past." -William Faulkner

In a way, 9/11 is still with all of us, to this day. The World Trade Center is far from being rebuilt. So many of those brave firefighters and police suffer from medical problems caused by exposure to dust from the WTC. We're still fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq as a direct result of this attack. 9/11 will reverberate through our society for years to come.

Live from the Great Orange Satan: "Georgia primaries: Results are in"

2010-07-21T00:23:00.000-04:00

[x-posted from Daily Kos]

Well, we have the results from today's primaries in Georgia, and they are veddy veddy interesting. In the governor's race, we're headed for a runoff on the Republican side, while the newly anointed Democratic candidate came through in a landslide. Meanwhile, there are also results for two potentially vulnerable Democratic seats. And it's all right below the fold, here:

Firstly, the governor's race. As expected, former Gov. Roy Barnes is the Democratic nominee, unsurprising given his recent poll numbers. On the other side of the aisle, we have a runoff brewing between former Secretary of State Karen Handel and former Congressman Nathan Deal. This has the potential for some quite fascinating wingnut freakouts, given that Handel has received the endorsement of teh Great Wasilla Wingnut, while Deal got a recommendation from Newt Gingrich. I say "potential" because I'm not sure to what extent the endorsers will back their respective endorsees. On the other hand, I do expect to get bombarded with despicable ads about how much Karen Handel likes teh ghey, and I also expect Handel to move way far to the right. She'll probably find some way to associate herself with the Tea Party in one way or another.

At any rate, I'm not sure about November. It seems pretty close right now between Barnes and either potential Republican candidate, although we're going to see shifting one way or the other during the rest of the campaign. I'm not sure how the runoff will affect Handel's or Deal's numbers in a face-off against Barnes; will it sour voters on the eventual nominee? Then there's the urban-rural dynamic in Georgia, which is always a factor in our politics down here. Nominating Handel might allow the GOP to compete more in urban areas, though I'm not sure this would actually be enough of a difference in the end.

Of course, the real news in this race is how the mighty have fallen. Yes, the Great Ox(endine), once the front-runner in this race, is in 4th place, and will probably remain there. Alas, poor Oxendine. So it is that the very imaginatively titled "Contract with Georgia" shall not come to pass. He's like Georgia's Mitt Romney (minus all of teh Mormon): He started out well, but faded when the actual election came around.

In other races, Carol Porter, wife of House Minority Leader Dubose Porter, won the right to lose to Republican incumbent Casey Cagle in the race for the Lieutenant Governorship. Also, Labor Commish Michael Thurmond gets the honor of losing to Johnny Isakson in the race for the Senate seat that Isakson currently occupies.

Now, on to the important U.S. House races. Jim Marshall (GA-08) and John Barrow (GA-12), both Blue Dog Democrats, both won the noms for their respective districts. Marshall and Barrow could be in trouble, come November, and I base that on the fact that they are generally in trouble when facing challenges. GA-08 has a PVI of R+10, while GA-12 (which does include some Democratic strongholds) is borderline at D+1. Barrow, then, may be heartened to learn that Republicans Ray McKinney (the teapartier) and Carl Smith are caught in a runoff. Marshall, I suspect, is less pleased that his Republican opponent, state Rep. Austin Scott won more than 50% and avoided a runoff.

I will end with the House race that most affects me, the 4th District. Hank Johnson has been a great congressman, and one misconstrued remark about Guam was not about to change my mind. I'm very happy to say that Hank beat former Dekalb County CEO Vernon Jones and Connie Stokes, a Dekalb County Commissioner. Mostly I'm happy because this marks the second electoral smackdown of Vernon Jones, who is a horribly egotistical asshat, the end. Congrats, Hank! I look forward to the crushing defeat of Liz Carter, the Republican candidate, on Election Day.

wasting my time

2010-07-20T00:18:00.000-04:00

I parked this blog name months ago, with some vague idea that maybe some day, I might use it in some way. Then, while I was archive bingeing on another blog, I started wondering why on Earth I hadn't made use of such a marvelous blog title. So, I'm designating this as my personal blog for when I feel like it.

Unfortunately, I can't really claim the idea for the title "Felonious Popes"; I lifted it from Lewis Black. Since he is a Jew, and I am a Presbyterian-raised agnostic, I think we're both immune from charges of blasphemy. Also, I doubt that there will be much to do with popes committing crimes on here, unless I feel like it.

Look for book reviews, essays, history lessons, or whatever I feel like posting to pop up here from time to time.