Shit that Pissed me off This Week – 11/30
Kentucky Law Forces People to Acknowledge that Only God Can Protect us from Terrorism
To be fair, I’m expecting most people in Kentucky believe this anyway. Forcing the dept of Homeland Security to post a plaque acknowledging the contributions of God really feel like a violation of church and state, though, doesn’t it? The Kentucky courts, for some reason, don’t actually see it that way.
Actually, the Kentucky supreme court has refused to hear challenges to the law so it becomes difficult to determine exactly how the courts see it.
But let’s be clear here, if god is responsible for protecting us from terrorism, we have put our faith in the wrong guy. I don’t know if anyone else was paying attention on Sept 11th, 2001 but I didn’t see a big divine hand inserting itself between those airplanes and those buildings.
Let me catch that for you!
Passing a law saying god will protect us from terrorism after god has already failed to do so is like hiring a guy to stop people from shoplifting at Wal-Mart after you watched a video in which he was ignoring his friends who were shoplifting at Wal-mart.
Die Hard – The Swede
If I were ever a super hero, or so I’ve imagined, I would be known as Offensive Racial Stereotype lad. I bring that up because at CONvergence this year, I played a small role in a Swede of Die Hard and my super hero alter ego came out to play.
I have a small role but it is one that will ensure I shall never be welcome in Japan. The punishment, without a doubt, fits the crime.
Nearly six months later, the Swede is done and it was worth the wait. Enjoy!
Alphabetical Movie – Kill Bill Vol I & II
When I talk about Kill Bill, I typically refer to the two films as my favorite Tarantino films. I differentiate them from what I consider his best film because those are two distinctly different concepts. One is talking about the movie I derive the most pleasure from watching. The other is evaluating the skill of the filmmaker.
Both are subjective measures, of course. Calling a film your favorite is a far more honest measure and one that doesn’t invite any useful argument. How can you possibly disagree with me about which Tarantino film is my favorite?
We can disagree all over the internet about which film is his best. Yet those arguments are always informed, at least a little bit, by which ones are our favorites. Read More…
Alphabetical Movie – Kiki’s Delivery Service
My youngest is at the age where he is capable of watching movies over and over again. He’s reached the point, though, where he doesn’t watch the entire movie. He’ll only watch parts of it.
He seems to be keyed in to the Alphabetical Movie Project a little bit. This may be a result of the fact that I try to watch most kids’ movies with the kids. Makes it a nice family event. What it means, though, is that Devon has typically already been watching the next movie on the list.
He won’t watch the movie all the way through, though. He’ll just watch his favorite parts over and over again. Often he’ll watch the end of the movie and then skip to somewhere in the middle and then skip to someplace near the end again and then go back to the beginning. It’s as if he is taking these films and trying to cut them together the way Quentin Tarantino might.
Tuesday Morning Geeks Without God Features a Very Drunk Molly
This week is the second of two episodes we recorded at Omegacon. If you listened to the first one, you will know that Nick and Molly had been drinking before and during the first podcast. By the time we recorded the second one, Molly was pretty drunk. Drunk Molly is, quite honestly, really god damned funny.
We did manage to spend some time talking about Fearless comedy, which was theoretically the goal behind the podcast. We also spent a while talking about sex education, which was not at all what we had in mind. All in all, it was quite the recording session. Enjoy!
Alphabetical Movie – Kick-Ass
I’ve written about Butt-Numb-a-Thon a few times over the course of the Alphabetical Movie Project. It is one of those unique moviegoing experiences that I’m supremely fortunate to experience every year.
One thing about being in a room filled with rabid, cheering film geeks, however, is that I never really know how good a film is.
I mean, Harry tosses something awful at us almost every year, but that’s on purpose. He also shows us a lot of premieres that I inevitably enjoy because of where I am watching them. When I sit down and try to evaluate them later, I’m left puzzled to determine if I liked them because they were good movies or if I liked them because of the unreal environment that is Butt-Numb-a-Thon.
New Monday Morning Silliness
This week’s Vilification Tennis web updates include a few new things by yours truly. The re-make of Red Dawn naturally inspired me to think about what the next re-make of Red Dawn might be like. So I wrote a Movie Dick article about it.
We also recorded a podcast right after our Vilification Tennis show on Friday night. It’s a little bit different from most of our podcasts. We skipped fucked up news and spent a while talking about the show we’d just done. We also talked about a lot of other comedy ideas, including rape jokes. Seriously – trigger warning. If that is the sort of thing that bothers you, I would hope you have already decided not to listen to our podcasts.
Matt got on a roll near the end of the podcast that will either offend the hell out of you or entertain you. I can’t say which. If you like it, great. If you don’t keep in mind he hit his head pretty hard earlier that evening.
Shit that Pissed me off This Week – 11/23
Conservative Christian Commenter Shows Remarkable Lack of Knowledge about Nature
We haven’t gotten a lot of comments from right-wing Christians over at Geeks Without God yet. I guess we haven’t quite hit the big time. I’m sure that we may eventually be awash in commenters telling us we are going to hell but we’ll need to have patience for that. Someday we will be truly famous on the internet!
We did get a comment this week and what annoys me is not the comment, but the tremendous level of ignorance that it contains while being only a paragraph long.
If you are going to argue that homosexuality is unnatural, don’t start by arguing that it doesn’t happen in nature. Because it does.
No really! It was an accident! We just tried to have sex with her at the exact same time!
Now as a whacked out conservative Christian, you have all sorts of articles that will try to make the argument that sure, homosexuality occurs in other animals, but it doesn’t count. So why deny homosexual behavior exists in wild animals when you can just make excuses for it?
Please note that last link takes you to Coservapedia so beware: that way lies madness.
The point here is that the argument is useless obfuscation. Who cares if homosexuality occurs in other species? Birds can fly. Fish can breathe underwater. Humans can’t. Different species do different things that are completely natural. The presumption that homosexuality is a behavior that is somehow the only thing an animal species does that is counter to the natural order defies logic.
Humans, in fact, do a ton of stuff other animals don’t or can’t do. There is no presumption that most of those things are unnatural. Homosexuality gets special attention because one passage in a very long book has been given far too much relevance.
A Christmas Gift for your Favorite Atheist!
So I’ve been doing a little writing about Atheist Voices of Minnesota over the last few months. Geeks Without God did a podcast about it. I took part in a public reading.
And I was just told that the book has sold a respectable 500 copies, which means that it has recouped publishing costs! Sweet!
But hey, with holidays coming up, it’s a great time to give your favorite atheist some reading material. So if you are so inclined, just grab a copy of this charming little ad and send a subtle “hey – check this out” e-mail to someone who might be interested in giving you a book.
At this point, 100% of all sales go directly to Minnesota Atheists so while there are no Black Friday deals for the book, you can feel good because your purchase price is going to a good cause.
Alphabetical Movie – The Kennel Murder Case
If there is one thing that I really enjoy about the availability of cheap DVDs, it is the ability to pick up an old film I’ve never heard of for just a couple of bucks. Most are horrible, grainy copies of movies that are in the public domain but they aren’t on Netflix so how else am I supposed to watch them?
Aside: Why aren’t they on Netflix? They are in the public domain!!!!
The Kennel Murder Case is just such a movie. I was browsing the shelves at half price books and there it was for a measly $2.00.
Now Half Price Books has a lot of cheap old movies for sale. I don’t buy every one of them. Hell, I hardly buy any of them.
But this one had William Powell in it and I have a hard time saying no to a $2.00 movie starring William Powell.
Grail Diary 