weirder and weirder

via (thanks to Harry Shearer and HuffPost for pointing this out.)

So the leader of the Florida church that is planning on burning Korans on 9/11? Turns out he's more of a cult leader than a church leader (the difficulty of making such a distinction being something I will leave for another time.) From an article in Der Spiegel:

Various witnesses gave SPIEGEL ONLINE consistent accounts of the Jones' behavior. The pastor and his wife apparently regarded themselves as having been appointed by God, meaning opposition was a crime against the Lord. Terry and Sylvia Jones allegedly used these methods to ask for money in an increasingly insistent manner, as well as making members of the congregation carry out work.

Not only that, in Cologne, Germany, Jones was recently kicked out of an evangelical church, the Christian Community, for reasons related to his extremism as well as financial irregularities.

This is just the guy we need presenting an American fascist face to the world when it comes to Islam:

...a 58-year-old former hotel manager with a distinctive mustache, is also the author of a polemic book titled "Islam Is of the Devil."

Where's the right-wing outcry against this idiot? Where's the Christian outcry against this idiot?

Oh, they're probably all working for no wages at his furniture import business, living in sub-standard housing, having already been bullied into handing over all their worldly possessions to Jones. From Shearer's piece quoting the Times of London:

"He (and his second wife Sylvia) left Germany in 2008 after one of their three adult children... along with a former church elder... accused them of financial and labour (sic) abuses... (the Florida church) is funded by TS & Company, a furniture shipping business owned by the church, which buys vintage pieces from Europe and sells them at profit in the U.S. The workforce is comprised of the Jones's disciples, who work for no wages and live cost-free in tatty properties owned by the (Joneses)."

Wonderful. Onward Christian soldiers.

ADDENDUM: As Fred Kaplan of Slate points out here, Republicans being such staunch supporters of the troops (in lip-service, at least) it is strange indeed that there isn't more of a push-back against the Terry Jones from people like McCain, et al.

FYI, Twilight fans

And by the way, if your gong to sparkle, get the hell off my lawn.

*going

and there you have it.

via via

nearly a third of texans believe that humans and dinosaurs co-existed.

why did we argue against them seceding again?

will that last one to leave before the end of civilization please turn out the lights.

more theatre

Here's a neat story. So an Oregon high school decided to forbid its students from putting on a play, 'Picasso at the Lapin Agile,' because a parent complained that the show had references to drinking and sex. But a local college got a request to host the play, and according to state law, the university president says she has to allow the show to be presented there.

'LA GRANDE, Ore. (AP) — A play banned from La Grande High School will instead be done at Eastern Oregon University after the president said she had no choice but to allow a student group to rent space for the performance. University President Dixie Lund said last week she wouldn't allow high school students to perform Steve Martin's "Picasso at the Lapin Agile" on the campus because the superintendent and school board had forbidden it in at the high school.'

Which is kinda cool, on the face of it. The underlying issues are more troubling, to me, however. For one, why has it come to this pass, where ONE SINGLE COMPLAINT can lead to a play, or a book or anything else being banned from schools because the precious snowflakes there may somehow be damaged by the material? I mean, really? Even referring to drinking or sex could so wound these kids psychically that we must ban a play from being performed? I may be out of the loop here, but I was under the impression that high school kids had some vague knowledge that something called 'sex' existed in the world. And I'm pretty sure they may have seen their parents drink at least once.

Now, i'm not saying we should broadcast 24-hour porn on wide-screens in classrooms (although, come to think of it, if you want students to pay attention...) But it seems clear that kids know a hell of a lot more than their parents think they know. And perhaps they even know more than their parents. The more you try to hide something from others, the more it peeks out.

The thought process that leads certain people to assume that they know best for everyone, and that they must somehow bravely step forward to prevent the soiling of others' minds is the last remnant of the dying patriarchy, the sad lostness of Old Religion, that charming set of superstitions and lies that was made up by our tribal ancestors in the desert in order to keep The Mob in line. One can only hope that we're moving forward towards MORE information, MORE exposure to new ideas for children. Good lord, we're getting dumber by the minute--thank the gods that someone realizes that kids aren't going to freak out and run off to join a sex and liquor cult (Elliot's?) upon seeing actors portraying people who drink and fuck.

art? or pre-school?

i can has millions of dollars nao?

So, here’s a funny story (via fark) about an Aussie art gallery that got tricked into showing the ‘art’ of a two year old. The paintings are priced from $350-$2000, and the gallery owners decided to allow the child’s paintings to remain on display even after they found out about the deception. Quoth the parents:

"Of course, every mother is proud of their child. I didn't tell him (Jamieson) because I had all these feelings going through my head — fear, embarrassment."

Er, yeah. That and visions of what you could do with the potential scratch you could make off of your kid squirming around in some paint.

So to find out if the kid’s pictures had any merit, the reporter presented them to the paper’s art critic without telling him anything about the artist:

That's a view shared by The Age's art critic, Robert Nelson. When shown the works without any information on the artist, Nelson said his first impression was of "credible abstractions, maybe playing on Asian screens with their reds. They're heavily reliant on figure/ground relations."

Riiiight. Whatever you say, buddy. At any rate, here’s my problem, o artsy-fartsy friends o’ mine: what’s the difference between this kid’s ‘art’ and that of other modern artists? Why should any adult’s abstract art be more highly valued than this kid’s, if experts can’t see a difference? For that matter, why isn’t the so-called ‘Butt Bandit’ deemed an artist for the fine (and chilly) work he did in Nebraska last fall?

I mean, I understand beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that. And believe me, I am not one to negatively judge another’s artistic endeavors without reason. It’s hard enough to create something without others trying to tear it down with only the intent to destroy for destruction’s sake.

But with a film or a play or a novel or an album, at least there is a common language by which we can all judge something. We can make arguments for or against the merits of said piece and perhaps come to some common conclusion about it. Not so with visual art, especially abstract art.

Again, artsy-fartsy peeps: is it just the language to describe and understand said art that is less commonly spoken, or is it that there is no language that can be understood outside one’s own head and heart to describe how art makes us feel, what we see in it?

And if that’s the case, why are there ‘art experts’ at all? What purpose do they serve if all art is purely subjective?

Beyond that, how can it be said that there are even 'great artists'? If each person's view of art is unique, then all art is of equal merit, depending on who is doing the viewing, right?

Right???

War on Drugs

War on Drugs

They're trying to infiltrate our precious bodily fluids!

Even in tough economic times, the war on drugs (read: war on sanity) remains a cash cow. Apparently it's important enough to patrol our norther border that Customs is going to start using a $10 million Predator drone to search for people crossing illegally and bringing in drugs. The planes can stay aloft for 18 hours, and fly at altitudes of up to 50,000 feet, so they can keep us safe from those nasty Canucks trying to cross our borders with their Great White Northern Lights weed. According to NY Times story, quoting John Stanton of the Customs and Border Protection Service:

Along the entire northern border, Customs and Border Protection officials make about 4,000 arrests and intercept about 40,000 pounds of illegal drugs each year.

For the moment, though, the flights from Grand Forks will remain mostly along the 300 miles of the upper edge of North Dakota and a slim part of Minnesota, Mr. Stanton said.

He went on to say that Customs was going to begin employing the drone flights "...because the planes had become available..." which just goes to show you, if you build it, they will come. If there's a technology available, the anti-drug fanatics will find a way and a justification to use it. To wit, in a delightfully Rumsfeldian quote

Asked whether he expected to uncover a significant problem with drugs, border crossings or terrorism in northern North Dakota, Mr. Stanton said no one was sure.

“We hope to actually use this aircraft to measure that,” he said. “You don’t know what you don’t know.”

Excellent. Your tax dollars at work.

General John Stanton of the Customs and Border Protection Service

i flought to chicago

A community college teacher in Maryland has been collecting delightful gems of the Manglish language for many years now, and a Baltimore Examiner columnist has published several of them in a recent column. (via fark.)

Here's one, in which a student explains his absence from class in a note:

“I was absent on Monday because I was stopped on the Beltway for erotic driving.”

Sounds like fun...

Here's a few more gems, and there's many more here.

• “The person was an innocent by standard, who just happened to be the victim of your friend’s careless responsibility.” • “Society has moved toward cereal killers.” • “Romeo and Juliet exchanged their vowels.” • “Willie Loman put Biff on a petal stool.” • “Another effect of smoking is it may give you cancer of the thought.” • “The children of lesbian couples receive as much neutering as those of other couples." Or, when asked to use the past tense of “fly” in a sentence: “I flought to Chicago.”

The funny thing to me isn't just the mangling of the English language, but the utter lack of thought put into some of these. (And before you get all high and mighty about community college students versus large university students, i must say that i personally encountered lots and lots of examples of idiocy like this both at Front Range Community College as well as at CU-Boulder.)

Here's a couple of winners:

• “Benjamin Franklin discovered America while fling a kite.” • “Christopher Columbus sailed all over the world until he found Ohio.”

I also found this online dictionary section that lists commonly misunderstood/misspoken phrases that is amusing. "A blessing in the skies" being one of my personal faves.

I believe that children are the future.

we are a nation of idiots.

I literally could not stop laughing as i read this today. Fed up with high gas prices and a decidedly non-interventionist stance by God, a group of people led by a fellow named Rocky Twyman (no, really) who is a member of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, has formed a prayer group to show up outside Shell and Exxon stations and pray for lower gas prices. (What, Conoco is doing the Lord's work?)

Because if there's nothing God hates more than shellfish and homos, it's you having to curtail your trips to the grocery store in your new Hummer. I mean, if Jesus didn't want me to leave my car running with the air conditioning blasting while I shop at Wal-Mart, he wouldn't have had humans invent air-conditioning, right?

And now Mr. Twyman has decided to take the fight to a higher power: the Saudi embassy in Washington. From the article:

"Our people are really suffering through this crisis," Twyman told Cybercast News Service. "We need the Saudis to release at least 1.2 [million] barrels of oil per day for about the next six months until we can get everything settled in America ... (I)f they can just do that for us, than this will help us get through this crisis."

Jesus wept.