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"Sea Kittens"

Touched off by another study arguing over whether or not fish are capable of feeling pain in any sense that you and I (assuming you are not a fish) can understand, PETA has this whole section of their site where they attempt to re-brand fish (especially those popularly edible) as "sea kittens," and invites you, in their typical over-the-top fashion, to dress and name one.  So I have.

As the father of two kids, and not someone who is an avid fisherman, I have to ask: wouldn't running Pixar's Finding Nemo over and over again at the site help more than this?  That "swim down" part gets my son every time.

I would also like to take this opportunity to once again assert that the Mohawk is the stupidest haircut ever invented.  You basically have to be Mr. T or an actual Native American to pull it off.  Otherwise, just shave your fucking head.

The King & The Soprano

Response to this has been predictably all over the place, with many people hating on it.  Those people are mostly on the Internet, which is not regaled in stories and fables all over our land for its calm intelligence and insightful analysis.  Hell, I'm on the Internet.  I didn't see this originally, because it ran on shitbag American Idol, and I'd rather lose a nipple to an orbital sander than watch that cesspool of a show.  I have seen it now - thanks, mom - and I don't hate it.  Let me tell you why.

First off, I love The King.  See the capitals He gets?  However, it's delusional to say that he would not have performed with Celine Dion.  Of course he would have, for a buck, for a cheap thrill, whatever.  Elvis was not artistically picky.  Probably would have nailed her, too.  For some of the same reasons.  So this could have happened in an alternate, albeit as fucked up as ours, universe.  I'm not the biggest Celine fan, but I found her more tolerable here than I ever have.  I liked how she was still less alive than the 1968 rotoscoped/hologrammed/CGI'd/I don't care footage of Elvis with which she shared the stage.  He was far more entertaining to watch, more into the song, big Japanese-offensive arm movements, bent knees for the impact with emotional lyrical content - the woiks, my friend.  The whole shebang.  Brand new Cadillac.

I did get the same water down the back feeling I got the first time I saw Fred Astaire dancing with the fucking vaccum cleaner.  Fine-ass Ginger Rogers, replaced by a goddamn vacuum cleaner, and I thought to myself, "This is the end.  HIstory's up for grabs now more than ever before."  (This is why I only had like, four close friends in school.)  It seems like a stunt that diminishes the original (it was a comeback special, people) unlike when Natalie Cole sang with her deceased father, which was far classier than this and required less tech.  But then, neither Elvis or Celine will ever be associated with class, unless you like yellow leather sitting rooms and anorexics.

Both of which have their place - they're just not considered icons of class.

Adorable Time Bomb

My daughter is 3 years old today.

She was born a month early in 2006, and she was tiny and irritable for six months.  Today she is 3, and shown here enjoying a hot dog (and mostly peanuts) at Five Guys.  She took her first steps while we were moving to Nashville with Jimbo and got a driving lesson from her Auntie Shannon on her first birthday.  Now she idolizes her older brother, read her first word not long ago, and likes to dig worms up out of the ground with her bare hands and then walk around with them for a while.  She's quite coordinated, runs very fast, and has quite the arm.  She enjoys being silly.  My favorite thing to hear her do is the song, "Mr. Golden Sun, Sun - please shine on me."  Makes me happy for brief firey bursts of time.  She's generally goofy and fun pretty easygoing when things go her way, but also has a tendency to completely fucking explode when her mood turns, hence the title.  Those of you who know me personally: picture my temper encased in the body of a cute, three-years-old girl.  She is wonderfully stubborn and determined, makes structures with pillows in the hallway, and has solid ideas about how phones and televisions should work - they both underperform her internal expectations.  I couldn't possibly love her more.

Today she woke me up at 6:45.  I got up and made an Abby-focused breakfast of eggs, bacon (she loves bacon), chopped fruit, and blueberry muffins.  She and her mom then went and got their nails done (study the pic) and Abby has flowers on her thumbs and big toes.  Max, Abby's Pa Pa, and I then hooked up with them and Susan for a Five Guys lunch.  Susan also bought her some sunglasses and a ridiculous birthday hat down the way from there, then we retired home for naps.  At 3:40ish, we went to Monkey Joe's - possibly the high point of the day - and met Abby's friend Jasmine and her family for some stupid & cathartic jumping around, sweating, sliding, and wrestling.  We also drank Icees and played games.  It was a great time.  We came home after that, cooked brats and ears of corn, had chips and pickles, and then tore into the gifts.  Abby had stuff from her Pa Pa and Grandma Casey and GiGi, me and her mom, and her brother Max.  Jasmine brought her a cool fair-trade bicycle guy, and the Guys got her a pop-up book about ladybugs.

She melted down twice today - it's a lot to take in when you're three - and she ate way more crap then is good for anyone.  But now she is asleep in a room festooned with balloons, and stacked with new presents, passed out safe and loved in a sleeping bag on her bed (something she's insisted upon since Max and I went to LBL with our sleeping bags) still wearing her pretty birthday dress from today.

Happy birthday, Abby.

The Rap of Japan

(inspired by a misspelled note from one of my wife's HS students...)

They live on some islands,
this meticulous race!
They work very hard so
they do not lose face!
Tokyo's the capital,
(it's the biggest one)
But you gotta hit the Ginza
if you want some fun!
They gave us Godzilla,
Manga and Anime,
and Hiro Nakamura,
on TV Monday,
Give mad props to Nippon,
Land of the Rising Sun,
They gave us the Prius,
and the bullet train,
They also make creepy robots,
and almost every game.
Their culture is rich,
complex and old,
They are mostly Buddhists,
with a lot Shinto,
Let's hear it for Japan,
where you can live 'til 80,
and chill beneath a cherry blossom
where it's always shady.

HAI!!

Cheney Running for Devil

Dick "Dick" Cheney, no longer happy now that his power does not extend to controlling a puppet government housed in the Oval Office, and not happy with the legacy of being simply a Defense Secretary, Vice President, and architect of two wars, has decided that it's time for him to quit just being a disgruntled and crotchety old windbag - no, it's time for some fresh ichor in the Office of the Prince of Darkness, and has decided to run for the Devil. 

Yep, time to kick the old Scratch out and bring in the Cheney - and really, why not?  Dick's older than the Devil - take a good close look.  Now back away and smear ash in your eyes.  Never look that closely at him again.  Those wrinkled stretch lines around the mouth from biting into baby heads are fuckin' scary that close up.  Dick's more evil than the Devil - the Devil used to be an angel, before he fell.  Dick only fell into a wheelchair that one time, and no one's ever accused that chicken-necked motherfucker of anything remotely angelic.  The only conclusion is that he's jockeying for the office of the Devil.  I'd say he's got a pretty good shot.  The resume's there, and his recent actions point in that direction.

How else do you explain the former VP of this country allying himself with a pompous drug-addict mouthpiece and turning his back on a former comrade, someone he's worked with for years?  That kind of betrayal is Shakespearean, Biblical, no - Republican.  Once again, we're in territory I really don't understand - is the right wing so mad about Obamamania that they're willing to surrender the quiet (albeit tarnished) dignity and moderate centricism of a statesman and skilled politician with a history of experience for the histrionic shouted gibberings of a man who used to be a disc jockey until he had the wit to realize that there was money in playing off people's fears?  Limbaugh's a schill, someone to get the rubes off the midway and into the tents, not someone you follow, or let dictate policy.

So Cheney's decided to lay off the standard regular manipulation for awhile, and go straight to the show.  He will be setting up an office in Hell, where I am informed he will kick back and make snowballs.

Mormons are REALLY Weird

And I know you think you know this already.  I do.  You're all like, "Yeah, fuckin' Mormons and shit.  I saw South Park.  I've seen Big Love - that show was huge for a while.  They're weird.  What the fuck can you tell me?"  (That was a pretty spot-on impression of you, you have to admit, yeah?) Here's the thing, though.  Until you read Escape, which I just finished, you don't know how actually really totally isolated abusively weird their day-to-day existence really is.  Until you do some basic reading online, until you really try to put yourself in their modest, non-red, slightly out-of-date footwear, you can't possibly know how mired in basic strangeness, how commonplace the unnatural and odd is for them.  Even after all that, you still can't really know.  You'd have to be born into it, and no one wants that.  Shit.

First, let's have a look at that picture.  You can sense some wrongness there as you ask, "Is that the 1960s popular singing group, the Funettes singing their hit, "We Love My Man?"  NO.  That's Merrill Jessop, who's currently in charge of El Dorado, Texas FLDS compound, and his first six wives.  I should point out that most of what I'm about to write concerns the FLDS and not the more "mainstream" LDS that has spawned the likes of Mitt Romney & the thousand and one syndicated TV public service ads of my youth.  The main differences are that the FLDSers think polygamy is part of the work, and the LDSers rolled over for the Feds and renounced that practice.  Also, just to confuse the shit out of everyone, the stricter fundamentalists drink coffee and booze, while the mainstreamers do not.  For those of you splitting hairs at home though, all of these people believe that resurrected Native Americans will go around ripping people's clothes off when Jesus comes back and killing anyone not wearing the proper underwear.  Those properly clad will get to go to Heaven and rule their own planet eventually.

There are only nine eight.  Get in while you can!  I want Neptune!

I highly recommend Carolyn Jessop's book, It's good and interesting and I enjoyed it while being simultaneously horrified by what lurks within its pages - but I can't wrap my head around people of faith.  Sorry Carolyn.  (Wow, that sounds familiar.)  We all know this, I'm terribly uncouth and unelightened - it's a hang up of mine.  To shorthandedly throw out, "Oh that's how they were raised," is a cop-out.  This is a college educated smart woman who knew that something was egregiously wrong with her family, community and marriage, but somehow still thought she'd be fucking up with God if she bucked the system.  How does that happen?  I can never decide if faith is something had by the very weak, who simply cannot deal with the facts, so they must believe in the imaginary, or by the very strong, who have managed to achieve a depth of commitment I simply cannot.  I know which way I tend to lean, especially when I read about a woman who allows herself to raped (kind of, I guess, part of the time, I'm all over the place on this one) hundreds of times by a man more than twice her age, about whom she had no feelings other than contempt, and eventually rage.  A woman who allows her children to be underfed, oppressed, brainwashed and brutalized - but steps up and eventually protects them.  Why does it take so long for some people to question?  Why are your internal beliefs so much more important than processing real information and adapting to circumstances?  I congratulate her heroism and commitment to escape, and her tenacity in seizing the reins of her life from others and taking control of herself for herself.

I learned all kinds of craziness from this book, and I had something I have always seen demonstrated again and again; most pious people are hypocritical fucks.  The women who rule the house are power players, nothing more, not holy women doing the will of their loving husbands.  They spy on one another and report back to their husbands, and they (and their kids) are favored because of this behavior.  They are seen as being "in harmony" with their husbands.  In the Jessop house alone, there is one insane wife (she waters her shoes and melts off part of her nose with chemicals), one megabitch, and three rebellions, one resulting in Carolyn getting away.  So - nice family tradition there, especially when you factor in all the wife-swapping (they call it "reassignment") and illegal marriage of old men to little girls.  You should bring this shit up next time a holy person starts bagging on gay unions.  Also:

• FLDS women are not allowed to like any foods their husband doesn't like.  This is seen as being "out of harmony" with your husband, and is a sin.  If your hubby don't eat shrimp, neither do you.
• FLDS couples rarely, if ever, see each other naked.  They fuck through flaps in the holy underwear.  This might be a blessing due to the massive age disparity evident in most FDLS couples.  What 18-year-old woman is hankering after some 50-year-old beefcake?
• The ocean is the Devil's domain, and so going in it, unless fully clothed, is a sin.  Going in fully clothed is seen as daring.  So yes, Mormons believe that 2/3 of the Earth belongs to the devil.  And that fish are demons.
• Mourning someone for more than a week or so, even a sibling or child, is seen as a refutation of God's gift of having taken that person back to Heaven, and will result in a good solid shunning for your overclad ass.
• They sometimes have prayer meetings at 2 in the morning.  Small kids are dragged out of bed for these.  If you ever begin to question the word "cult" in application to the FLDS, keep this fact in mind.  Combined with the isolation and charismatic leader, sleep-dep is a step towards killing people on an airfield somewhere.  And now they have a compound / temple in Texas, too.  Mormons aren't supposed to need a temple until the End Times.  So guess what time they think it is?
• They play "apocalypse" as children, where they act out the tribulations and second coming, complete with non-Mormon attacks and the dead Indians coming back from the grave.  This is apparently quite common.
• Child abuse is seen as a properly administered corrective.
• If you're a woman, you're property; it's your job to breed a bunch of Mormons for your husband, because a man with a lot of wives and children gets to be a big muckety-muck in Heaven.  Of course, you get to spend eternity with him as a reward.  He controls you so much that you can't even go to the hospital without asking him, and the FDLS ambulance services in Colorado City pretty much enforce this.
• Homosexuality is seen as being demonic.  Of course, lots of fucked up religious people believe that, so it's not terribly unique.
• Disease and misfortune are the work of God in your life, and are there because you were sinful or disloyal in some way.  So if you're sick, it's your fault.  Clean up your fucking act!
• "Blood atonement" is murder or suicide, condoned by some FLDS doctrine, that says that you have screwed up so badly, you must slit your own throat, or someone needs to come kill you so you can die for God to accept you in the afterlife.  This could possibly happen on airfields.  This is a more recent, Warren Jeffs-era trend.  Warren Jeffs also hates black people, outlawed the color red, and married a 14-year-old.  Of course, he's in prison, which is a strong tradition for Mormon leaders.

All true.  Except for the "fish are demons" thing.  Mormons believe fish are plants, like most people.  Oddest of all, is this: Each Mormon is meant to recieve something called a "patriarachal blessing," which is like a fortune cookie combined with a laying on of hands where a church elder tells you what you are spiritually, and where you're supposed to go with your life.  Most people get led like sheep with this, and are told, basically, to do what the guys in charge want them to do.  Sometimes, this is combined with a "pre-existence story," which is a statement about what your soul was like in the prelife, before your Mormon parents doctrinally fucked and brought you here.  Some people are special, and some not, and you can count on the church to let you know.  Isn't that nice?

Ironically (and to finish this entry, I think) one of the jobs Carolyn Jessop got when she escaped was designing and sewing clothing for HBO's Big Love show.  This is a bit like hiring the ex-Navy Seal as stunt coordinator, and I find it hilarious.  Much as I simply cannot grasp how anything with Bill Paxton in it is even remotely a success - why do you people keep watching him? - you cannot grasp the strangeness of the FLDS until you read her book.

And, as I say, you really still won't.

Wolverine: Origins

I gotta say: Meh.

I think that this is the first X-Men movie (though the last one reflected a transitional phase for the franchise) for the generation of comics fans that came after me.  Possibly even the generation that came after them.  The point is, I'm old.  I knew that watching the previews for the Transformers sequel (Turturro must be seriously hurting for money) and for Terminator: Salvation - I was actually irritably bored.  Hurry the fuck up, I have zero interest in these obviously flushable movies.  I give two fifths of an airborne fuck about Shia getting psychic messages from Cybertron, Megatron, or the Uniflate 1000, and Christian Bale calling dystopia to morning prayers.  Fuck you and your detail-ridden previews, without which idiot sheep America wouldn't go to your shitty movies, because they're part of what screwed this viewing experience up for me in the 1st place.

I knew too much.  I knew EVERYTHING about this movie.  This may be where my fanboy status plays against me, but there were no twists, no plot jumps, no surprises, and a large part of that was from the damn previews.  I had already seen Blob, Emma Frost, Cyclops, Gambit, Wraith and Sabretooth, along with most of the major set pieces (save one) and the entire opening credits sequence before I ever threw down my nine bucks.  So what saves a comic movie when you already know everything?  Good acting, tight direction and a solid story.  Solid story?  I can't judge.  I know the ins and outs of this story like nobody's business and am no longer qualified to judge this version based solely on its relative merits.  I don't think Wolverine's as interesting when he has an origin anyway - I preferred him shrouded in mystery, unpredictable and with a dark past. 

I will say that as a plot device, adamantium bullets are bullshit.  From a narrative standpoint, they turn Wolvie into the boogeyman or something, on par with vampires and werewolves, something that can be defeated with the right plot device as a tool.  And if you'll permit me to push up my glasses for a moment, wouldn't you need an adamantium gun to fire adamantium bullets?  With an adamantium firing pin and trigger mechanism?  Comics don't do shit like that anymore.  Adamantium bullets are on par with the Beyonder and the Ultimate Nullifier.  They are teh suck.

The movie was directed like a video game, so make your judgments as ye may.  As far as acting goes, there are some moments that flat do not work (which actually may be the fault of the writing, I can never tell), but most do.  Those moments are too short, though, as is most everything in this movie, because there's too much in it, and correct me if I'm wrong, Kappelmeister, but the ear can only hear so many notes in the course of one evening?  Seriously, though, everything in this is clipped to within an inch of it's life, on-screen just long enough to push the movie forward - unless it's an action set piece, that is.  A horrifying act will be onscreen for half the time as the bar fight that takes place to avenge it.  And some of these action scenes are pretty.  Most are kind of ridiculous - you just don't care that these people can do these things, because the whole movie works to make them all feel expendable.  Adding in the fact that this is a prequel to movies virtually everyone has seen - you know who lives and who dies anyway.  With the one "stinger" after the credits exception of someone who seems to do both.  But in kind of a silly way.  I am informed that there is a 2nd "stinger" that sets up a potential sequel.  Yay.

More fanboy problems: When did Cyclops start heating things up with his eyebeams?  They're meant to be beams of force, not light sabers from his eyes.  When did Gambit become arguably the most powerful character in the X-Mythology?  I remember back when Wolverine Lite in his pink and blue costume and trenchcoat was focus-groupped into existence so girls would read more comics, and he was never that interesting.  I'm not even sure if he's in current continuity.  But I know a legion of younger fans clamored for him to be in a movie, and now I hope they shut the fuck up.  Young people don't know dick anyway, all us old bastards know that.  Why are two immortal people bent on trying to kill one another?  That seems a tad pointless, yeah?  What the fuck are the Blob's powers, anyway?  Deadpool's kind of wasted in this, and the swords in the arms thing is just stupid.  I gather he gets a spin-off, though, so we'll see where that goes.  I hope he's not the rip off of the Super Adaptoid he is in this movie, though.

Wait for DVD, if I'm not too much behind the curve to have already stopped you, and even then, unless you're hardcore fanboy extraordinaire, you could probably skip this one.  Magneto: Origins would have been a better movie.

National Day of Prayer

I was going to blog yesterday, but I was too busy praying.  Sorry.

I was praying so hard and continuously yesterday that I don't think I fed my kids, I may have hit an old lady with my Camry, and I didn't pay any sales taxes.  My pants may also have been on backwards.  You see those signs that say "Pray Without Ceasing" and that shit's hard.  Praying all day, without stopping.  You tried it?  First off, you have to start in by dreaming about praying before you even wake up, and then you gotta start right in praying while you're taking the morning leak & shakin' the dew off the lily.  You ever try drive-thru ordering while you're praying?  "Yeah, I'd like the Big Chicken Burrito and the Cardiac Nachos, please.  In Nomni Patri, et Fili, et Spiritus Sancti."  And washing praying hands is a bitch.  I don't think I really got them clean any of the times I did it - but I got the opportunity to pray about that, too. "Please Jesus, don't let me get the Swine Flu."

Not that I'm only praying to Jesus, even though I know that's what Ricky Skaggs and Rick Warren would like.  No, I'm praying to Buddha, Allah, Yahweh, The Virgin Mary, Marie Leveaux, Hanuman, Joe Pesci, Galactus, Louis Armstrong, the Pope's Hat, Dan Brown, Dan Savage, the Savage Dragon, Umberto the Lizard God of Cheese Sandwiches, my pinky fingers, Father Time, Michelle Obama, The Kool-Aid Man, and you, if I get enough prayer requests.  The way I figure it, you gotta spread it around.  I mean, how'd you like to be in God's office on the morning that National Prayer Day kicks off?  The prayer phone's probably ringing off the hook early.  Very early.  I'm not adding to that problem.

In all honesty, this thing kind of snuck up on me.  Seems like the Christers were on top of it, though - they had billboards and notices and newspaper articlesall put together.  They must get together somewheres a couple of times a week and share information about stuff.  Too bad they don't seem this organized the rest of the time.  Still, I can think of a better use for all this organization - you knew I had one.  What about National Reflection Day?  Contemplation Day?  What about just fucking National Day of Thought?  Just a day when people come together quietly and think shit through.  That'd be nice, right?  And a damn sight more helpful than asking favors of an invisible friend in the sky.

If I hadn't been so busy praying up a fucking storm yesterday, I'd have suggested that to somebody.

LBL 09

Friday, May 1st, 6:50 AM.  Max and I are standing in front of his school wearing nametags on green lanyards, and hoisting enormous bags on our shoulders.  Our sack lunches have been labeled and placed in the box with the rest of Bus 1.  Over the course of the next three days, we will go into the woods of Northern Tennessee with 75 of Max's fellow second graders, and perhaps 40 to 50 parents, teachers, and people with a loose grasp of authority.  I can't go into a lot of detail that I'd like to, simply because it would require me putting people's names here that probably shouldn't be here.  So I'll hit some highlights, and then invite you to peruse the new photo album over to the left, which I will painstakingly caption.  With love.

The place where we went was called Land Between the Lakes, which I'm sure is a paradise when the grey and pregnant sky's not dropping rain for three days.  We slept in bunk beds (there's something reassuring about having your kid asleep on a shelf above you) and ate institutional - but by no means bad - food out of mint green trays.  We learned about outdoor survival, beavers, tree life cycles, frogs, fish, snakes, ponds, streams, hunting, hiking & various animals.  The main lodge where the mess hall was had many taxidermied corpses, and a couple of live reptiles.  We ate s'mores and campfired, we read by flashlight, we got along with people in rough situations, and we dismissed others as anchors to our woodsy progress.  I got to see how Max is with his friends, and I patched wounds, fixed glasses, helped kids through mud and cold and muck and rain.  We wrestled and sang and played and ran and made up superheroes in the rain, and one night - I told like six ghost stories.  In short - it was awesome, I'm glad I went, and Max & I had a great time.

I particularly enjoyed the beaver hike through six inches of muck - seriously.  I don't know why I had a good time, but I did.  I liked the stream study, and the part that most of the parents hated - their kids flying by in a rushing rapid - I thought was the shit.  Friday night, after the boys in my cabin were out - Buds & stogies and Wild Turkey were had by grown men in the dark on a damp porch.  The trip did not end until about 5pm on Sunday, and re-entering our normal lives, when no one tells you when to eat, and your primary worries aren't about shelter and moving forward, was weird.  I didn't see a computer all weekend.  I didn't use a phone.  I didn't know what time it was unless someone told me.

It's weird to be nostalgic for two days ago already.