Shit that Pissed me off this Week – 7/13

Two weeks of shit but CONvergence took up most of it so it is still a pretty light week.

Rob Schneider is a Complete Idiot

Knowing that Rob Schneider is an anti-Vaxxer is not a big deal.  I mean, lots of people with no medical knowledge believe that vaccines cause cancer even though they don’t.

Thing is, why the fuck is he being allowed to talk about anything in public.  Someone want to tell me the last time the guy was funny?

Anyone who says Duece Bigalow can leave right now.

The dude doesn’t even look funny.

All sorts of clueless people say clueless shit all the time.  Famous people say it into microphones.  That doesn’t bug me as much as this:

Why is Rob Schneider still getting microphones stuck in his face????

Daniel Tosh Manages to Make Rape Funny – wait – no he Doesn’t

Speaking as a comedian who frequently works blue, rape is a dangerous topic.

My personal philosophy is that no topic is ever out-of-bounds as long as the joke is actually funny but there is not a lot about rape that can be made funny unless you are making fun of the rapist. Even then, things are pretty touchy.

And if you tell a bad rape joke – you are never going to get that audience back.

So Daniel Tosh makes some rape jokes and a member of his audience objects.  In the comedy business, this is interpreted as heckling.  Tosh decided to slam her down in the most offensive way possible.  By suggesting that it’d be hilarious if she got gang raped.

I don’t think that Tosh really meant it and I think he was trying to make a (muddled) point about the nature of comedy.  The end result was that he had to apologize (while claiming that the story was taken out of context) but he will probably have no difficulty making money as a comic.

As a comedian who will never be as well-known as Daniel Tosh, I’m annoyed because he should know better.  He could have diffused the situation but he ignited it.  He could have told a funny joke about rape (they do exist) Bad call.

Note:  The comedy club owner disputes this account of events.  Tosh has apologized for the incident.  My point here is that he treated a heckler situation poorly and went after a topic that is almost never OK.  Guy has guts but he failed his save vs. heckler.

Florida Christian Group is Asked to Remove their Unconstitutional Gift, Refuses to do so

This monument pissed me off a few weeks ago.  The county has been hit with a lawsuit because it is a religious symbol on public land and that isn’t legal.

The county, for their part, doesn’t want to fight the lawsuit.  They want the monument removed but they can’t afford to do it.  They asked the people who presented them with the gift to remove it.

And those folks refused.  They said they prayed about it, though.  And God wants them to leave it there.

Because god really wants an organization that doesn’t pay taxes to force the county to pay money defending a lawsuit they already know they are going to lose and then pay more money to remove the monument they don’t want.

Thanks for the gift, assholes!

For the 33rd Time, the House of Representatives Votes to Repeal Obamacare

I get it.  The Republicans don’t like Obamacare.  The don’t like it so hard, they will spend vote after vote saying, essentially, “look at how hard we don’t like Obamacare!”

NPR’s marketplace did a segment this week estimating how much it costs the taxpayers for the House to vote on this issue over and over again.  Their numbers (which I question a little) were that it costs the taxpayers in excess of 2 Million dollars every time the House votes to repeal Obamacare.

That is based on congressional salaries that will be paid anyway but the point is this:  couldn’t we pay them two million dollars to do something other than cast a symbolic vote 33 times?

Atheist Assholes Vandalize a Church

“Hey, wait Tim, aren’t you an atheist?”

Yeah.  And I don’t approve when other atheists make me look bad by spray painting shit on the side of a church.  I don’t believe in god and I don’t believe in religion invading public policy.

That doesn’t mean that atheists should go around vandalising churches because that just makes us look like assholes.  It doesn’t change minds, it closes them.

To be fair, we don’t know for sure atheists did this (they misspelled “atheist” for instance) but the rhetoric (“god=delusion”) suggests that conclusion.

Fortunately, Hemant over at the Friendly Atheist has started a fundraiser with the church.  Originally it was to pay cleanup costs but the church has already done most of the cleanup so it will go to a non-denominational charity instead. I’m feeling pretty poor in the wake of CONvergence but I’m going to chip in a couple of bucks because it is a great opportunity to show the faith-based community that atheists may be heathens, but we aren’t dicks.

Conservative Talk Show Host Says Atheist Chicks are Easy

I swear you aren’t allowed to be a conservative talk show host unless you are a sleazy jackass.  Not only does he say Atheist chicks are easy, he further says that a “lot of them are goth and hot.”

I think this says more about his particular sexual preferences than it does about how easy atheist “chicks” are, doesn’t it?

You have to admit that the guy has a pretty low opinion of Christians because he implies that the only reason Christians work with atheists is because they might get to bang a hot goth atheist chick.

Maybe if they want to get more people into church on Sunday, they should start putting black lipstick on statues of Mary.

Hey Scott Voorheis! Does this turn you on??????

That new, pansy version of Land Down Under

This new version has been around for a while but I was just listening to the original version and it made me realize how boring the new acoustically mellow version is.  Take a listen to the original.

The new version isn’t bad and I’ll bet it was pretty cool to listen to Colin Hay perform it live.  But let’s be honest.  Isn’t it kind of….dull?

It bugs me that this version of the song is getting a lot of airplay when the original version is so much better.  

It’s like that new version of Nik Kershaw’s “Wouldn’t it be Good.”  Which I also dislike.

Look, radioland, I (and the rest of my generation) may be getting older.  We still like our rock songs to be – you know – rock songs.