Tribulation Force, pp. 28-32 "Three men and one woman are trapped in a building! Send help at once! If you can't send help, send two more women!"— Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho), in Duck Soup Bruce Barnes has a plan. That, it turns out, is why he's called this special emergency executive session of the Tribulation Force — even though it's taken him eight pages to get to the point, what with all the crying and male-bonding going on. But Bruce... Read more
Tribulation Force, pp. 21-29 The Left Behind books are filled with vast, massive impossibilities — every child on earth vanishes and everyone's daily routine continues unaltered; a jetliner makes a harrowing emergency landing, threading its way amidst the unprecedented wreckage of a half-dozen passenger planes, and no one on board ever gives it a second thought; a passage that reads, "I looked, and there was a white horse! Its rider had a bow; a crown was given to him, and... Read more
Everybody needs some inspiration … "Naked," Avril Lavigne"Nan, You're a Window Shopper," Lily Allen"Nao Esperanto," Kirsty MacColl"The Narrow," Matt Jones"The National Anthem," Radiohead"Natural," Howard Jones"Natural Blues," Moby"Natural Gift," The Kinks"Nature Boy," Nat King Cole"Ne Me Quitte Pas," Nina Simone"Near You Always," Jewel"Nearer Than Heaven," The Delays"Nearly Lost You," Screaming Trees It wasn't until I saw the juxtaposition of Lily Allen and Kirsty MacColl here that I realized, ah, so that's who she reminds me of. Read more
In his New York Times column, Frank Rich calls that NOM ad (see the previous post) a “camp classic,” which it is, and sees it as “the bigots’ last hurrah,” which I’m afraid it isn’t. The ad alludes to several cases of Christian chauvinists “suffering for their faith” because they ran afoul of anti-discrimination laws. None of those cases has anything at all to do with same-sex marriage, mind you, and none of them is really explained in the ad.... Read more
By now I'm sure you've seen this ad, from the National Organization for Marriage: We could go through a point-by-point refutation of the ad's innuendo about the Big Gay Stormtroopers menacing California doctors, Massachusetts parents and tax-free beach-front property managers in New Jersey, but it would be wrong to dignify such brazen BS by pretending that anyone shoveling this crap might even slightly believe it to be true. So instead we'll just stick with the two-word rebuttal of everything this... Read more
Tribulation Force, pp. 21-27 After spending much of the first chapter presenting their notion of the Proper Limited Role for Women, the authors begin Chapter 2 with some reflections on Manliness. Both of these discussions are excruciating, but where the previous one was often infuriating, this one is just kind of awkwardly embarrassing. Godly manly men must be manly, it seems, yet still in touch with their feelings — but not in, like, a gay way or anything. Manly men... Read more
Sign me up. "Machines," Twitchen Vibes"Machines (Live)," Twitchen Vibes"The Mack Daddy on the Left," De La Soul"Macy's Day Parade," Green Day"Mad About You," Sting"Mad Drums," The Delgados"Mad Mission," Patty Griffin"Mad World," Gary Jules"Mad World," Sara Hickman"Made in the Dark," Hot Chip The Gary Jules cover of Tears for Fears' "Mad World" is of course from the soundtrack for Donnie Darko, which easily earns a place in my all-time Top Five List of Movies With Giant Rabbits. Read more
That Fox News varnish is getting out of control and the effect seems to be spreading. So let this be a lesson to you kids out there: Don't huff the varnish from Fox News. It'll make you stupid and crazy with rage. And stupid and angry never leads anywhere good. The photo on the left, from AP photographer John Bazemore, was taken from a "Tea Party" rally orchestrated in Atlanta yesterday where varnish-huffing angry people waved signs suggesting that President... Read more
Strange but true. And on Easter Sunday no less. Warren canceled a scheduled appearance Sunday morning on ABC News' "This Week," saying he was "sick from exhaustion." Exhaustion seemed like a reasonable explanation — the guy preached six Easter sermons, after all, at the end of the holiest, and therefore busiest, week of the Christian calendar. He'd been scheduled to preach 12 sermons, plus the appearance on ABC, which seems to me a bit too much for anyone to take... Read more
The anti-tax Tax Foundation gets a lot of attention each year when it announces its annual calculation for what it calls "Tax Freedom Day." I don't understand why we're supposed to take this seriously. What they do, more or less, is divide total tax collections by total income to arrive at a rough estimate of the difference between gross pay and after-tax net income. They calculate what percentage of the total that difference is, then pretend the calendar is a... Read more
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