This is Not a Joke, So Please Stop Smiling

Sometimes when you're lying awake in bed at 2 or 3 AM and thinking about the state of things, do you ever come to that conclusion that maybe, just maybe, all things considered, being as honest with yourself and the world as you can, the best answer to life, the universe and everything is, in fact, nihilism?

What??? Me? Heavens no! Where did you get that idea? Did you not read the question?? I specifically asked if you ever thought that, not if I did.

Honestly!

It'll Sweep Up Our Skeleton Bones

For no good reason at all, here is a list of words that I think the more often use of which would make the world a better place.

fatuous
carom
disaggregation
sedimentary
snide
happenstance
savoir-faire
eluctation
finagle
traipse
moribund
malleable
natatory
lathe
boreal
sidereal
pie

Now for the good reason of there being a diametric list above, here is a list of words that I think the less often use of which would make the world a better place
discombobulate
fraction
faction
fiction
friction
affliction
defection
deflection
affection
infliction
Basically any word with the f-[glide]-i/ection sequence
pants
agreeance
admixture

Bullets From a Revolver

If there's one thing this crazy world needs, it's more information about what I eat. You could write a book about the food that I eat. Chapter last week's lunches would be called "Futility."

Monday: Weight loss shake.

Tuesday: 4 Jimmy John's mini sandwiches and Salt and Vinegar chips.

Wednesday: McDonald's

Thursday: Wendy's value menu special

Friday: Weight loss shake

But this weekend, the food was really good, and better yet, it was all home grown! You see, I decided that the imminent collapse of the US economy and the attendant hyper-inflation will soon make most food either unavailable or prohibitively expensive. Thus, I decided earlier this spring to learn how to grow my own vegetables. The first thing I learned was that I'm not very good at growing things. What nature somehow manages to do literally billions of times every year, I cannot accomplish, even with extensive effort. Not a single one of my seeds sprouted. I almost gave myself up for doomed. But then I remembered that you can totally just go down to the local fancy-pants grocery store and buy all sorts of plants that just need to be transplanted. The second thing I learned was that I am one awesome transplanting SOB. Not a single one of my plants died and now I've got lettuces out the head and tomatoes growing like crazy and 4 or 5 different varieties of peppers, I don't remember exactly. I hope I don't confuse a bell pepper and an habanero pepper, because that won't end well.

But back to the food we had this weekend that was all homegrown. Last night we had a fresh romaine and black-seeded Simpson lettuce salad topped with chicken sauteed with minced garlic, olive oil, a dash of vinegar, dried oregano, dried thyme, fresh cilantro and fresh basil. Then, tonight, we had fried eggs with cheese and a fresh basil leaf on top and a fresh black-seeded Simpson lettuce and green bean salad.

By the way, when I said everything was homegrown, I was not including the chicken, the garlic, the olive oil, the vinegar, the oregano, the thyme, the eggs, the cheese, the salad dressing, the toast or the beer. Other than that, it all totally was!

Then it Becomes a River

Well, since all I ever do around here anymore is give lists of things I've recently read, watched or listened do, I figured I might as well keep doing that! So here's some brief and superfluous notes on some albums I've recenly bought, borrowed, checked out from the library or otherwise listened to.

Sky Blue Sky by Wilco
If you like Wilco already, I'm sure you'll like this one too. It's very pretty and soulful. It is also a little bit of a downer, but so is life in general, so it's all good. The best songs are Impossible Germany, Side with the Seeds and Hate it Here. I would recommend that you listen to it while sitting in your office staring at your computer screen blankly and wondering how in the world you got yourself into this.


Nevermind by Nirvana<
Nobody needs me to say anything about this. For some reason, we didn't already own this. Well one thing I can say is that the album artwork for this album definitely aged better than the art for the next album in this list. The next one is almost comical.

Ten by Pearl Jam
Again, nothing I can say will add anything to the world. However, the fold out album art of the band members standing all together in a circle with their hands raised together is funny. It's like they are trying to be a football team or something.

Southernplayalisticadillacmuzic
This is Outkast's first album. I borrowed it from a friend of mine at work who basically only likes it because he thinks that teh Outkast guys are fellow conspiracy theorists, which, in all fairness, they might be. Other than their references to disease engineering and white plots to kill the black man, the album is very rap-of-the-mill.

Live at Stubb's by Matisyahu
An album full of mediocre (at best) reggae rap...BUT the rapper dude is a white Hasidic Jew! So it's cool in a Weird Al kind of novelty way, so I guess it has that going for it.

The Else by They Might Be Giants
They Might Be Giants' 12th album! It's okay! It comes with a full length bonus disc! THe bonus disc is at least as good as the actual album! It contains one of the best stalker songs I've ever heard! And a song about drunk driving! And a song about nuts that my son already knows! Are you convinced to go out and buy it? No?? Well, imagine my shock.

Some Loud Thunder by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!
Holy cow. I can't believe these guys were indie rock darlings! Not bad, but certainly nothing to right home about in ridiculous overwrought metaphors and forced significance. Plus, the song titles are borderline stupid. Mama, Won't You Keep Them Castles in the Air and Burning? , Upon Encountering the Crippled Elephant, Satan Said Dance? Seriously?

Everybody's Eyes Are Closed

The other day I was going for a walk at lunch. It's just this thing I do now since I don't have a train station to walk to anymore. Sure the walking is pointless but it's marginally better than sitting at my desk reading conspiracy theories on the internet. Well, anyway, this one day I saw some trash on the side of the road. But not just any trash, I see that ever day. No, on this day, I saw a CD lying there. So I thought to myself, "yes! A free CD! It's my lucky day!" But as I was bending down to pick it up, I noticed that it was cracked. Since I was already bending down to pick it up, I figured that I might as well just pick it up and throw it away when I got back to work. I was still pretty bummed though. I likes me some music. All my disappointment evaporated, however, when I actually picked it up and looked at what album it was. It was a Fall Out Boy album.

I can think of no better thing to happen to a Fall Out Boy album (or U2 album) than to be unceremoniously tossed out the window of a moving car and dashed to bits on our brutal, unforgiving asphalt dystopia. I decided at that point that I would ceremoniously burn the album in an ancient pagan ritual called.......uh, what the hell am I talking about????

There’s Only One Thing That I Know How To Do Well

For awhile there in the last couple months I was all, like “I’m gonna try to stop being so lazy and actually do something with my 30 minutes to myself that I get every morning instead of just laying there in bed after the alarm goes off dreading the moment at when I really REALLY have to get up in order to make it in to work ‘on time.’” I’m sure you can guess what I decided to do. Yep, that time-honored tradition of pompous, self-important and repetitious people everywhere: read non-fiction books to widen my understanding of the world. Unfortunately for me, a previously dyed-in-the-cotton fiction reader, non-fiction books generally do not offer any world-view-broadening capacity. They do offer gimmicks, though, so at least I had that going for me.

Nickel and Dimed: On (not) Getting by in America by Barbarbarbara Ehrhenrheich

If you can get past the (not) incisive parenthetical “not” in the title and actually get into the book you’ll find, well, you’ll find a book about how hard it was for the author to live like the poor folk she feigns compassion for. I was hoping for an insightful look into the lives of the people out there that work minimum wage jobs and have to somehow string things together. Or not. Instead, this book provides a wonderful portrait of just how annoying it was for the author to have to live in rundown hotel for a few weeks and how much working a minimum wage job sucked for her and how all the poor people she worked with (ancillary characters at best and typically just Socratic foils for the author's self pity) just didn’t get it that if they would just demand better pay, unicorns and rainbows would start shooting out of their asses. Oh yeah, she also loved to take stereotypical pot shots at the people whose houses she cleaned when she worked as a maid because they thought they were better than the people who clean their lovely suburban houses, but really, HA HA, THE JOKES ON THEM because Ms. Ehrenrhehich is so totally their intellectual and moral superior!! Take that!

At first I was frustrated that the book took such a one-dimensional (not to mention demeaning) look at the minimum wage subculture and didn’t delve into what life is actually like for that class or how they got there or what obstacles they face. But then I realized, hell, that kind of stuff doesn’t move copies! Gimmicks move copies (well over a million so far) and that’s what being a “muckraking” writer is all about, isn’t it? Making your readers think you care (and vicariously they themselves (not a real word, but whatever) care) while simultaneously using your story about being a fake poor person and your superficial dealings with actual poor people to make yourself a good chunk of money! Oh Irony of Ironies. But then again, writers got to make a living, too, so I guess I have that going for me.

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by The Most Awesomest and Brilliant Young Economist in the History of the World

I should have read this book before Nickel and Dimed because then the gimmickries of the first book wouldn’t have bothered me as much since I wouldn’t have expected anything deep or incredibly insightful. While well-written and interesting, Freakonomics explores the hidden side of things if your idea of “the hidden side” is “around the corner.” If you were thinking “buried under 50 ft of molten lava hundreds of miles off the coast of Madagascar,” sorry, but nothing is that hidden. For instance, did you know that drug-dealing organizations funnel almost all the money to the top and that the street soldiers, the ones that deal directly with the customers, hardly get paid anything? Shocking, I know. Dealing drugs is NOT the socialistic, money-sharing utopia we all thought it was! The other annoying thing about the book, for a statistically minded person such as myself, was that, as is typical of mass-marketed stuff in general, statistics were used extensively without any discussion of their significance or applicability. I trust the economists who wrote the book understand and are correctly using statistics, but man, I wish they would have used their position to encourage a more stringent statistical methodology in published materials. But still, it was a fun, gimmicky book to read so I guess I have that going for me.


Silent Spring by Rachael Carson

This book is so important that I learned about it in one or maybe two of the countless classes I had on American History in my formative public school years. Blah blah blah, pumping noxious, carcinogenic chemicals into our water and food isn’t good for us. The crazy thing about this is that 40 years ago, when the book was written, a lot of people DIDN’T know that all these amazing new chemicals could be dangerous. Now that this danger is common knowledge, the book loses some of its “I DON”T BELIEVE IT!!!!” punch. But hey, Al Gore like it, so I guess I’ve got that going for me.


The Future of Life by Edward O. Wilson

Gimmick: Mankind has systematically, throughout history destroyed all life on earth up to and including humankind and a huge die-off of 80% of the world’s population is needed to return the Earth to its natural condition. L

But since the US is such a rich and powerful country, you and I probably will be among the surviving 20%, so I guess I’ve got that going for me! J

P.S. the book doesn’t say that last bit.


The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century by Doomy McDoomerson Kunstler

If you live in the suburbs and drive to work every day and go shopping at Target at least once a week (read: me), this guy hates you. He thinks you are blithely driving the world off a cliff and if you don’t know how to brew your own beer, make your own shoes and grow your own vegetables (I am 1 for 3 on these so far, but that’s another post) you are probably going to die or have to fight tooth-and-nail for you life in the near future. Peak oil, blah blah blah, we’re all going to die, the world is going to hell in a hand basket. So what? I know how to ride my own bicycle (if I actually owned one that is), so I guess I’ve got that going for me.


Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond

Boy, what I wouldn’t give for a gimmick. For all my bloviating about how other lame non-fiction books don’t give you a deep enough view of things, I sure could have used a shallow view here. I’m not even half way through it yet. I can tell because I haven’t got to the pages with the pictures on them yet. If you ever wanted to learn about the medieval Norse society on Greenland, this book is for you. If not, well, it might still be for you but you might want to skip a few chapters. I’m pretty sure he’s going to start comparing these old collapsed societies with our modern globalized world pretty soon, but I’ll let you know when I get to that part. Check back in, say, October. He also writes about the expansion and inevitable collapse of the “Anasazi” in the Chaco Canyon area to which I have been, so I guess I’ve got that going for me.

A Little Bird Never Tells Me Anything I Want To Know

Like any good citizen, I went to the Detroit Cityfest today. Yeah, it's at New Center. I gave a "veteran" $5 for three little American flag pins and I wore mine upside down. It was pretty rad. I also got to see, live in concert, Denice Wilson (or something like that). You know, the "Let's Hear it For the Boy!" woman? Plus I ate some vegan Ethiopian food. I'm sure you're all very jealous already, but wait until you hear this. We also got 6 free tickets to tomorrow night's Detroit Shock game. That's a WNBA team as you probably don't know. Apparently their games are so full that they wander around a big old festival handing out tickets all willy nilly and never worry about having more people than seats. Then, as we were leaving and driving through the depressed and dilapidated ruins of a formerly great American city, I realized that I don't care at all any more. There's nothing anybody can do to fix the problems and the whole country is going to be in that kind of shape in a few years anyway. Man, not caring is wonderful.

There aren't your lives all sooooo much fuller now that you know that about my day? Aren't they?????

Minimum Wage. HEEYAAAAAAH!

The other day, I was walking around the neighborhood when....ah, who am I kidding, I never walk anywhere. I mean, there aren't even sidewalks. By the way did you ever notice that just the name "sidewalk" is car-centric? Why is walking relegated to the
"side?" Why don't we call roads "sidedrives?" Anyway, what was I talking about?

So in our neighborhood we've got this meat store called Nitsche's Meats. Imagine my disappointment when they didn't have any, not even one, Ubermensches. The meat is pretty good though, if you're into that kind of thing.

More Coffee For Me Boss, Cuz I'm Not As Messed Up As I Want to Be

Thank you for all joining me here today. I know that I am usually only active clandestinely and that my audience with His Majesty has now fallen on hard times, but I have a very important topic with which to discuss with you at some point in time should you ever read this missive: Truth.

Many people are under the impression that Truth is a universal absolute, that there is one true way that events happen that can be firmly documented and agreed upon by those willing to embrace it. By embracing this vision of Truth, one has the advantage that one gets to feel smugly superior and/or (usually and) pontificatory about it. Making Truth an absolute, unarguable standard means that one must also go to absolute, unarguable lengths to defend it. Some have even gone as far as to argue (often on the internet) over it, which is odd if they believe the Truth to be unarguable. Those extreme lengths are horrifying in their breadth and depth.

Other people, on the other hand, believe that truth is nothing more than a story that someone tells to make themselves feel better about the absolute disaster that this universe unarguably is. This belief would imply that any given person's truth is just as true as Ignatius Riley's truth is true. For some this is hard to accept.

However, a deeper investigation of "Truth" reveals that both camps are not only a little bit wrong, but a lot of bit wrong.

You see, Truth is an anagram for thurt. Wait. No, that's not what I meant. What is important is that "Truth" is an anagram of "Ruth T." This is an unarguably obvious reference to Ruth T. McGrorey, former professor in and Dean of the State University of New York at Buffalo's School of Nursing. Some of McGrorey's most notable work was while working as a Consultant in Nursing for the Paraguay Project (University Archives collection 19/1/708). This project was initiated by the US State Department Project to provide the National University at Asuncion with UB's health sciences expertise. A three-year contract was signed between the Health Servicio of Paraguay and UB in 1956 and renewed continuously until 1971. The contract set up an exchange whereby Paraguayan doctors were sent to study at UB and two Buffalo faculty members, in addition to short-term consultants were sent Paraguay. While in Paraguay McGrorey helped to develop a Nursing School at Asuncion. McGrorey also implemented many changes nationally, helping to bring Paraguayan nursing and medical standards on par with North American standards. In 1962, Asuncion honored McGrorey with the Distinguished Visiting Professor title and in 1969 an honorary doctorate.

So the truth of the matter, or should I say that the Ruth T. of the matter is that everything we think of as truth, whether you are of the arguably unarguable school of truthspeak the unarguably unarticulated vague school of thinking, is actually just a reflection of the efforts of one mid-twentieth century nurse who went to Paraguay and probably started several underground socialist movements that are still in existence today known as the Paraguayan Socialist Nursing Liberation Faction of the International Sisterhood of Paraguayan Nurses. They have been known, from time to time, to carry out shadowy terrorist actions at the behest of the overlord of the underworld, Eudora Welty.

We're Just Trying to Bug You

Hey, did you hear the one about peak oil?

No?

Okay!

So, this guy walks into a bar and he sits down at the bar and the bartender says to him, "Hey Bar, what can I getcha?"

The guy looks up and he says "Give me a long, tall, cold glass of Light Sweet Crude, Black Gold, Texas Tea."

And then the bartender says, "Dude, we ain't had that here since 2009."

So the guy is all, "What???? Why the hell not?"

And the bartender (his name is Jake, by the way) says "Well, due to the rapid growth of several third world economies, the demand for Light Sweet Crude is rapidly out pacing the dwindling production of the same. This leads to obvious macroeconomic consequences worldwide from rising transportation costs to widespread social and political turmoil. Millions have died so far and the worst is probably yet to come as we reach the section of the global Hubbert's Peak curve of oil production with the steepest negative slope. We won't see any improvement until the second derivative of the curve hits a zero."

"Okay, fine," says the guy that walked into the bar at the beginning of the joke. "I can has cheezburger?"

The bartender pulls out a gun and shoots the guy in the left ass and says "There's some social turmoil for you!"

LOL!!!!11!!!


Please forward this joke to 10 of your best friends. Otherwise you will suffer economic, social and political turmoil

List Tuesday: Prosthetic Foreheads on Their Heads

Motion Pictures That I Watched in the Last Week Reviewed and Rated on A Scale of 1 to Pants.

1. What the (Bleep) Do We Know: See Here.
   Rating: -Pants


2. Dune: As solipsistic, blowhardian and inelegant as the book but way worse. It does have the bonus that its star, Kyle Maclachlan is from my hometown or something. Also, he was in Showgirls, a marginally more bad movie.
   Rating: e-1.


3. Bonnie and Clyde: This one was really good. I’d seen it before, but it’s still fun to watch. It stars Warren Beatty (aka Dick Tracy) and Faye Dunaway as the titular characters. (Also named after the characters? A muffler shop in my hometown. The shop’s logo is a gun.) The best thing about this film is its schizophrenic jumps in mood from slapstick car chases set to “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” to the “heroes” contemplating the murder they just committed. Or, like at the end, when it’s all lovey-dovey and then they die in a “hail of gunfire*” (spoiler alert: Bonnie and Clyde die). Historically, this movie is notable for the introduction of squibs and realistic violence into modern cinema. Before this movie, all the violence was obviously non-realistic because LOOK! PAUSE IT! Now rewind. That guy is so totally still breathing! There are also two Genes in this movie, Gene Hackman and Gene Wilder (in his debut performance), so it has that going for it.
   Rating: Assless Chaps.


4. Chinatown: Depressing as a…..something or other that’s real depressing. Maybe like a raccoon caught in a bear trap and it’s still alive and struggling to reach the rifle that the hunter just dropped because he got mauled by a bear and now the bear is trying to maul the raccoon before he gets the rifle and you know that the raccoon is doomed but keeps on reaching for that gun. Sorta like that. I think the main point of it is that the harder you try to prevent something horrible from happening the more likely it is to happen. Especially if you end up in Chinatown because we all know what goes on there. Also, it has realistic violence (and incest)! Thank you Bonnie and Clyde director Sam Peckinpah! It stars Jack Nicholson and, huh, that’s weird, Faye Dunaway. It won Oscars for Art Direction, Car Direction, Water, and Bandages.
   Rating: More Fedoras then you can shake a stick at.


5. Network: The best movie ever made about a fourth-place network news broadcast and its descent into banality and journaltainment. Actually, I’m not kidding. This one is a recent addition to my top 10 movies ever list (again, I’d seen it before but that was when I didn’t understand that the entire universe was utterly meaningless and doomed and there’s no point to anything, so I didn’t get it as much.) Basically it’s all about how everyone has their price and it all doesn’t matter anyway because somebody else is controlling everything so they can make some more money. It’s also probably the funniest movie ever written by a guy named Paddy. And it was spoofed in UHF, so you just KNOW it has to be good. It stars William Holden and, WTF??? Faye Dunaway again??? I must look like some kind of Faye Dunaway obsessed uh….person. Great. Except, wait a minute, now I’ve got a good excuse when the FBI/NSA/CIA/DIA or whoever looks at my library records (oh don’t worry, they’re looking at yours too) and see that I checked out a movie that glorifies bank robbing and death I can just say, “well look at the other movies I checked out! They all have a young Faye Dunaway, so obviously I’m just in love with her. Thirty years ago!” Except Network also features a group of domestic terrorists, I forgot to mention that part. Crap. What have I gotten myself into?
   Rating: I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore!


6. Duck Soup: Uh, I only watched about 15 minutes of it. Sorry
   Rating: A Painted-on moustache.


7. The Bicycle Thief: Just in case you don’t get it, in case you don’t quite grip the fact that everything falls apart and the center never holds and life sucks most of the time, you should watch this movie. It builds and builds (in a post-war Italian neo-realist way of course) up until the end when the main character humiliates himself in the eyes of his young son. The end. It’s arguably De Sica’s best film. It is currently in an argument on this topic with the next movie in this list.
   Rating: Threadbare, third-hand linen trousers


8. Umberto D.: This is arguably De Sica’s best film. Unlike the previous one, there is at least a small glimpse of hope at the end. Sure the eponymous character is broke, debased, homeless and alone at least he didn’t go through with the suicide because of his cute dog. (Spoiler Alert!!! He doesn’t go through with his suicide attempt at the end because of his cute dog!) Of course you’re left to imagine what happens after the film ends. Sooner or later, Mr. Ferrari is going to get malaria or something and die homeless in some back alley in Rome and his cute dog will probably have to eat his dead body for sustenance. So it f’n goes.
   
   But really, I like the movie. The cinematography is great and it’s primarily performed by non-professional actors. When it looks so good, who cares if it’s all about the banality of evil. Or not even evil, just the banality and hopelessness and inevitability of life?
   Rating: 10,000 Lire



9. The French Connection: Probably the best drug-running espionage detective movies I watched that day. There’s this one part where Gene Hackman is driving a commandeered car through the streets of New York (?) chasing an elevated train that pretty much is one of the top three movie car chases ever. It also has realistic violence! On the whole, I would watch it again if I didn’t have to return it to the library.
   Rating: Plaid suit pants with a .45 strapped to your ankle.



10. Red Dawn: WOLVERINES!!!!!
    Rating: Patrick Swayze 50 - Communist Pigs 1



11. Tokyo Monogatori (Tokyo Story): Quite possibly the 4th best movie ever made (behind Citizen Kane, M, and Howard the Duck). Basically, nothing happens in the whole movie. You really have to listen for what’s NOT said (don’t you want to slap me now? I always want to slap people after they spout some BS like that). The camera angles and views are phenomenally telling. It’s like you’re a voyeur sitting on a grass mat in almost every shot, just watchinfg things unfold. It’s an even better movie to watch if you’ve had a lot of dealing with Japanese people. Trust me. What is it about, you ask? Just Google it or something, they know more than I do. Essentially it all boils down to this…
    

    Kyoko: Isn’t life disappointing?
    Noriko: [smiling] Yes, it is.

    
    
    Rating: 6 beers and an old pair of fishing shorts.

*All reviews of Bonnie and Clyde are required to use the phrases “hail of gunfire” or “hail of bullets.”

There are 17 links in this post.

Turn Off Your Smoke Machine

Warning: This post will discuss the single biggest failing of the modern American Christian church. If you can't take it, then stop reading now and save yourself. If you can take it, let's start a movement to end this horrible abomination.


Simply put, the single biggest failing of the modern American Christian Church is not any of the following:

1. Leadership


2. Fundamentalism


3. Guns


4. Stale Communion Bread/wafers (this one was close)


5. Reticence to change

No, it is not any of these. It is the architecture. Modern American churches by and large have the most boring, uninspiring, unhelpful architecture in the history of the known church universe. Let me "explain."

If I wanted to let everyone know that I was an obnoxious, horrible douche*ag (edited for content), would I drive a Jetta with a broken mirror and wear 5-year-old socks? NO! I would wear crisp power suits with red and blue striped ties, have a faux-hawk, drive a BMW 325xi (or maybe the Z4 convertible if I was going for the douchebag/tool difecta) and probably have a Hill badge displayed prominently on my person at all times. (Side note, by driving a Jetta with a broken mirror and wearing old clothes, I'm saying that I'm totally not in any way a douche).

Likewise, if the modern church is serious about it's beliefs that it and It alone hold the keys to the knowledge of good and evil (God = good, funky buttlovin' = evil, pants = ????*) then the church buildings need to show it. If the way, the Truth, and the Life is through the church, let me know, man. I mean, Jesus H. Christ, if I knew all this important stuff about Jesus H. Christ, I would write it in big letters and perhaps statues of sinners burning in hell all over my church. Come on McLean Bible, give the people what they want need. Admittedly it's probably hard to simulate eternal hellfire but there's gotta be something you could do other than look like a mall (actually, there may be something to this....aw, never mind). At least try to be majestic or something like the Crystal Cathedral.

When it comes right down to it, the modern "traditional" American church is the only church movement/body/pantaloon in history to not match it's architecture with it's theology. here a just a few examples"

1. The Catholic Church - Huge, ostentatious cathedrals, some even built with the bones of their enemies**.
   What is says: "We own you. God lives here and we own him too. Plus, we have a truckload (cartload? Popemobileload?) of money, so we've got that going for us. Plus we have cool miters, so we've got that going for us."



2. Islamic Mosques - Tall minarets, domey looking things.
   What it says: I don't know. I don't speak Arabic.



3. Good Ol' One Room Clapboard Baptist Churches - "One Room Clapboard Churches" kinda says it all.
   What it says: One Room Clapboard Churches. Simplicity. Something to do with water or immersion, or squirt guns or something. Also potluck dinners that the same person will bring the same pot of spaghetti to every month for 50+ years.



4. "Emergent" "Churches" - so many options to reflect who they really are!
   
   • Coffee house - "Look how cool we are! We meet in a coffee house! A secular coffee house!"
   
   
   • An Old Warehouse - "Look how cool we are! We don't care at all about our image!"
   
   
   • And old unused church building - "Look how cool we are! We're 'subverting' the mainstream church!"
   
   
   • Strangely, for all the gushing over the "ancient-future" idea, I have yet to hear of an "Emergent" church that meets in underground catacombs like the authentically ancient Christians did. That would actually be pretty awesome.
   
   
   
5. Episcopalian Church - I don't know, something vaguely English/Celtic looking.
   What it says: "If you liked Lord of the Rings, you might be Episcopalian***!"



6. Unitarian Universalist - Anything they damn well want to build.
   What it says: "Do you like it? If not, we'll change it so you do like it!"

So come on mega-churches of America, take back the mantle of "most important buildings in the city!" Show the people what you're about! Bring out the Left Behind-style corpse dummies. Kill Persecute a Muslim. Fight in the Holy War! You've got a soul, now be a soldier! Or a construction worker!




*The Southern Baptist Convention recently published a document disavowing its former stance on the necessity of wearing pants. Pants-wearing is now technically a "greyish area" as defined by the bylaws of the Convention.****

**Could just be the bones of dead parishioners, teh internets were unclear on that point.

***If I am confusing Episcopalian and Anglican, please forgive me since I don't really care at all which is which.

****Not actually true. Pants are still required at all times.

A Watch With A Minute Hand

Due to an unexpected day off from work, I've got some extra time. What's the best thing to do with extra time? Yep, go to the library, check out 6 movies and watch them. I was going to write a post reviewing each of the six movies, but I couldn't wait more than 3/4 of the way through the first one. It's called "What the (Bleep) Do We Know. Putting it into the same post as Network, Chinatown, Duck Soup and Bonnie and Clyde wouldn't be fair to anyone.


The Review
PLEASE DO NOT WATCH IT. It is the worst movie in the history of the world (even worse than Practical Magic if you can believe it). How it ever got more than 1 star on Amazon is as beyond me as any little grasp of science is beyond this movie. It's like watching the crazy chef character from Beakman's World explain the ideas from a Deepak Chopra book. If that doesn't put you off, how about this? The main message of the movie is that anything wrong in your life is your own damn fault because you are thinking wrong and are addicted to your negative emotions. The Holocaust? Yep, those European Jews brought it on themselves because they really were addicted to the persecution. (No, smartass, Godwin's rule doesn't apply here because I didn't specifically mention Hitler. Crap!) Same goes for those negative thinking idiots in Darfur etc. And to add to all these horribly mis-guided ideas, it's a crummy movie. I mean, it really just sucks. Note to the filmmakers: if you are going to have interviews in a movie implying that these people know what the hell they are talking about, you really, really, really have to put their names on the screen or else I'm just going to assume they are a bunch of phonies reading from a teleprompter. This is essentially the polar opposite of a real science movie. I've never agreed with censorship, but if all copies of this movie could be loaded onto a rocket and fired into the heart of the sun, the universe would become a better place. Maybe by positively thinking, I can make it happen. *closes eyes and meditates on breaking the laws of physics as taught to do by this movie* Damn. It's still playing. What a bunch of baloney.

WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T WATCH THIS MOVIE.


A few choice quotations -

"I'm taking this time to create my day. I'm affecting the quantum field."

"You are a God in the Making"

"God is the superposition of all spirits."

"I can influence space itself. I am responsible for all those things."

"It is my belief that our purpose is to be [something idiotic that I couldn't hear because I have no category in my mind to understand such a nonsensical statement]"

"Everyone is God"

P.S. I'm going to start praying to You today.

P.P.S. I know what the (bleep) they know. They know how to make a God-awful synth-heavy soundtrack.

P.P.P.S. Oh, oh oh this is too good. One of the "experts" is a teacher at, I can hardly say this with a straight face, Ma....Maha.....Maharishi University. ROTFLMAO.

This is Where The Party Ends

I'm sorry. I haven't been blogging regularly. I looked. There's no blog equivalent of Metamucil. And eating more fiber doesn't help. Trust me.

Just so you know, like most things in the world, my life since my last post can be summed up succinctly with to TFD comics. They are eerily accurate. F'n Drew, man.

I Came Back as a Bag of Groceries

Well, it's that time again folks.

*everybody shouts "WHAT TIME IS IT?"*



It's time for more rambling reviews of some CDs I recently bought!

*everybody shouts "YAY!!!"*




Funeral – Arcade Fire: I'd downloaded this one a long time ago so it's not like I'd never heard it before or anything. But still, it sounds way better in full quality on my car stereo (I now drive 14 miles each way to work every day. Ugh.) than it did in 128kbps quality on my crummy, standard-issue iPod headphones. There are lots of pros to this album: sweeping soundscapes, poignant if melodramatic songwriting, grand instrumentation etc etc. However, there's a big con: poor, poor packaging. I want to listen to the CD, not spend all my time figuring out how to remove it from the stupid cardboard sleeve. Once you get it out, I would recommend not ever putting it back in.

P.S. Mike, you would like this, I'm pretty sure. They use a hurdy-gurdy.




The Greatest – Cat Power: This album is the sauce to Mama Cass's ham sandwich. I mean that it's so full of stuff you might choke on it. Wait, no, that's not what I mean at all. Crap. Um, it's an album full of songs by a chick singer with a large dollop of Al Green, a cherry of Van Morrison on top and Carole King noodles. Not really good driving music, but good for, you know, sitting around, eating goldfish crackers and drinking a limited release Phat Abbot Tripel Belgian Style Ale by Arbor Brewing Company.

P.S. It appears that Michigan has some pretty decent breweries.



Wincing the Night Away – The Shins: (At this point in the post it is okay to start thinking, "what is all this indie BS? Is this guy some sort of, like, wannabe cool person who just follows all the popular streams in 'indie rock'?" Well, pretty much yes) If you've heard of this album, and who hasn't, you've probably heard that it's good. I won't abuse your illusion because it's not an illusion. This is a good album. Well, if you like their first two it is. Maybe even if you didn't like them it still is. I wouldn't know because I did like them and I can't exactly go back in time and unlike them. Who do you think I am? Buck Freaking Rogers?

P.S. The addition of some electronic instruments and stuff pushes this album from good to great.

P.P.S. Isn't Zach Braff so dreamy?
< /obligatory_zach_braff_mention_required_in_all_reviews_of_the_shins>




A Weekend in the City – Bloc Party: With a name like Block Party you'd kinda expect a hip-hop group or sumpin', right? But did you see? It's not "block," it's "bloc." Like the communist bloc! Get it! It's a subtle (or semi-reasonable facsimile thereof) reference to politics! Ha! How'd they ever come up with that?! But anyway, this one is not as good as their first one. I mean, it's still good and all, I just wouldn't write home about it.

P.S. I would write here about it though. In fact, I just did!



Neon Bible – Arcade Fire: I picked this up yesterday for $7.98 at, get this, Target (if you call it "Tar-zhay" I will, well, I probably won't be able to do anything about it because I am way up here in northern south-east Michigan). $7.98? Man, that is less than I paid for toilet paper at Target and all I'm going to use the toilet paper for is, um, well, you know. So first I thought I could just save money by using this CD as toilet paper but then they only had one copy left and it's made out of plastic and cardboard and stuff which is really not that comfortable to use as toilet paper. So instead, I listened to it. And I'm glad I did because I really like it. It's even more melodramatic than Funeral (seriously, "mirror, mirror on the wall, show me where them bombs will fall?" Melo. Drama.) It's also a lot angrier and bitterer than Funeral. Which is good because I'm pretty angry and bitter most of the time. Musically, it is, if anything, an expansion on their earlier sound. It's got huge church organs droning sometimes even. Plus, it's got 11 songs. Spooky.

P.S. Mike, you would like this one too I think.

P.P.S. This is a bogus review because I've only had a chance to listen to it up through track 8.

This post has 10 links

People Just Liked It Better That Way

Boy do I feel special today!

Get this: not one, but TWO of my very favoritest bloggers in wholest widest world linked to me today: Mike and Rusty. Now Mike linking to me isn't that uncommon but it's still special. Rusty on the other hand rarely links to anything but real, important kinda stuff. If you can call the Washington Times real....or important...but anyway.

Now, as all narcissistic bloggers must, I monitor my traffic from time to time. Here, in chart-a-rific fashion is what happens when either of my much more famouser friends (I did meet Rusty in person once and yes he was wearing a BoSox hat. No sweater vest though, sorry).



As you can easily see, my blog traffic is ego-crushingly low. Not that I care about that. But when I get links? Shooooooot, it practically goes through the freaking roof! Yeah!!

If only I had AdSense on this thing. I could have made, like, almost a dime.

List Tuesday: I Just Stood There Whistling

Reasons Why I Didn't Write A List Today

1. Myu fiungfersa are frpozrebn toghethert

I'm Your Only Friend

Well, we made it all the way to Detroit. It sure is weird to live in a different country. Canada will probably grow on me.

But it is snowing here, so I guess we've got that going for us. March comes in like a line, goes out on the lam up north here.

Also, just so you know, if you ever stay in Pittsburgh, you should totally stay at The Priory. It is the awesomest little hotel this side of the Allegheny River. Or was it the Monongahela River? Freaking Pittsburgh and its Three Rivers. Anyway.

Also, keep checking Why I Hate Detroit. I might keep posting there. I sure as hell hope NOT, but I probably will. Stupid Detroit.

List Tuesday: Why is the World in Love Again?

Things I Would Like to Do and Even Imagine Myself Doing But Probably Will Not Do On My Last Day Of Work In DC Tomorrow

1. Moo like a cow as we all move like cows off the train and onto the escalator to our untimely demise


2. Meet the Press


3. Sing songs from the Rocky Horror soundtrack out loud on the train


4. Dress like Dr. Frank N. Furter on the train*


5. Spend all day reading the whole internet


6. Hire a barbershop quartet to sing a goodbye song to my office


7. Talk to Charles one more time


8. Do some serious shreddin'


9. Eat some pie


10. Not miss anybody here in DC


11. Write a Goodbye, You Stupid City post on Why.I.Hate.DC (you there Rusty?)

*After telling this joke I always like to clarify that I'm only kidding. I believe tomorrow will result in the average amount of desire to dress up in fishnet stockings etc. If you were to do a "dressing up in fishnet stockings etc desire test" tomorrow, my name would be right in the middle.

Bad Photoetry Thursday: I've Seen Everything Imaginable

The Original!

Warcene Creed courtesy of Get Your War On!