Here are a few things to brighten your day…
- South Knox Bubba brings a great John Ashcroft quote to our attention:
“Weapons of mass destruction including evil chemistry and evil biology are all matters of great concern, not only to the United States but also to the world community. They were the subject of U.N. resolutions,” Ashcroft said.
Ashcroft: War Justified Even Without WMD. Ephasis added.
Just out of curiousity, what is “evil chemistry” and “evil biology”? Perhaps evil biology is Lady Justice’s bared breasts, and evil chemistry is… What? A class at the School of Evil? One of Dr. Evil’s doctoral classes for his degree in evil? If that’s the case, then I propose that John Ashcroft is Dr. Evil, valuable ally to Fratman and Robbin’. “Quick, boy-drunkard, to the Frat Cave!”
- Speaking of evil biology, my significant other and I found a nice book in Walmart that seems as though it could serve as a good summary of the religious far right’s views on women and women’s issues. The book is Lies Women Believe: And the Truth that Sets Them Free by Nancy Leigh DeMoss. Over at Amazon.com you can actually take a look at the book’s table of contents and first few pages. I know you’re all eager to know, “what are some lies that women believe?” Here are the highlights:
- God is just like my father.
- God’s ways are too restrictive.
- I have my rights.
- I should not have to live with unfulfilled longings.
- I don’t have time to do everything I’m supposed to do.
- A career outside the home is more valuable and fulfilling than being a wife and mother.
- My husband is supposed to serve me.
- If I submit to my husband, I’ll be miserable
- Sometimes divorce is a better option than staying in a bad marriage.
- It’s up to us to determine the size of our family.
- I shouldn’t have to suffer.
Uh-huh… The first chapter argues that women are more susceptible to deception because Satan tempted Eve first instead of Adam. This means, of course, that Satan will not only tempt women but will also try to drag women’s husbands and children into sin through them. But that’s okay because men are ultimately held responsible for their wives’ misdeeds.
I just have to keep reminding myself that these people are not representative of all Christians any more than the fundamentalists in Saudi Arabia are representative of all Muslims.
- Kevin Drum over at CalPundit has a good summary of the current economic situation in America. That’ll put a smile on your face, let me tell you.
- In other news, Limp Bizkit has a new single…
- In a speech before the Convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in New York, Nixon also said opposition to the war in this country is the greatest single weapon working against the U.S.
That’s the seven o’clock edition of the news. Goodnight.
If that was a bit too unhappy for you, I can recommend a couple good books:
- Jennifer Government by Max Berry is the only cyberpunk novel I’ve read that seemed just as interested, if not more interested, in developing its characters than in throwing around a bunch of nifty-neato-cool-kickass-studly-dude! ideas. I found the eponymous character and her daughter are particularly well-developed and are a breath of fresh air after the fantasy women of Neuromancer and Snowcrash. A couple of the other characters, I’m afraid, don’t fare as well. Still, it’s worth a couple bucks on the trade paperback or a check-out from the library. (Also, the Amazon.com reviewer compares Max Berry to Chuck Palahniuk. I don’t see it.)
- Uzumaki, Vol. 1 by Junji Ito is a pretty good manga about a town haunted by a shape, specifically the spiral. The art is decent but the ideas are good and the writing is nice (once you get past the first couple pages of exposition). The only real flaw the book has is the same one that most horror stories have: any sane person would have gotten out of town as soon as the first of the spiral’s victims turned up. Then again, I got the sense that this town was… special.
I thought “Jennifer Government” was terrible. Speculative sci-fi is too populated with plots revolving around Dystopian Everyman and the Feminine Free Spirit who shows him a non-status quo, better way to live.
They forgot one of the most important lies women believe:
If I take evil chemistry in college, I can get a job I’ll be happy in.
They’re clearly part of the axis of evil: Iraq, Iran, North Korea, chemistry, and biology.
Fantasy women in Neuromancer? I can’t think of a single character in that novel of either gender that I’d want to meet in real life or in a fantasy.
“….my significant other and I found a nice book in Walmart….”
For shame. Walmart may well bear the most responsibility for loss of living wage jobs in this country. And is doing enormous harm to the economy of this country. Remember when they used to lie that everything they sold was made in America? They don’t even bother to do that anymore. They bust unions, discriminate against women, make sure that the vast majority of their employees don’t work 40 hours in a week so that they are classified “part-time” & therefore not eligible for benefits (like health-care).
Please reconsider before shopping there again.
Fantasy women in Neuromancer? I can’t think of a single character in that novel of either gender that I’d want to meet in real life or in a fantasy.
I can’t either, but I felt that Molly (was that her name?) was a character created largely for her fetishistic sex appeal and golly-gee-cool factor. She was basically Laura Croft with blades in her fingers.
Please reconsider before shopping there again.
I agree wholeheartedly. Two things, though.
1.) I don’t shop at Wal-mart more often than every few months and even then to not buy more than an item or two. The place gives me the creeps. I try not to go there unless I really need to because of time constraints or because of…
2.) I don’t have a job. My significant other is on a very tight budget. Walmart is Satan, but when everywhere else charges twice as much for something you need…
Both of these aren’t the best excuses in the world, I know, but I feel they give me a bit of leniency.
PDP, the only reason anyone shops at Wal-Mart is because it’s cheap and convenient (and I agree that it’s creepy). I have to think that there are relatively few shoppers who head to Wal-Mart deliberately for the purpose of screwing the American wage-earner.
Actually, I’ve met a fair number of people who prefer shopping at Walmart to shopping at other places. Most of them were in Oklahoma, though, where if you don’t shop at Nordstrom’s you shop at Walmart.
And yes, the people who liked to shop at Walmart are as creepy as the place itself.
I think I may be the only person to have never even seen a Walmart, let alone ever shopped in one. Not that I have tried to avert my eyes or anything, just that they don’t have any in downtown Seattle, and I can’t leave my house except to go to the pharmacy. I think the character in Neuromancer is Molly Millions, but that might be Johnny Mnemonic, or she might be in both. I liked those stories/books back fifteen years ago (or whatever, who’s counting?) when I read them, but I don’t think I could read them again.
I think SnowCrash was supposed to be a spoof on the cyberpunk genre, so the blonde skater grrl was a necessary character, considering. Same thing with the Asian sword-fighting guy. *yawn* But it’s supposed to be a farce on the stereotypes of cyberpunk, at least, that’s how it was presented to me. If it wasn’t, then it does a good job at acting as one, in case someone is looking for a book that they can pretend is a spoof of cyberpunk.
I just read another William Gibson book, which I can’t remember the name of, but I think it was something like…oh, I just looked it up, it was Pattern Recognition, which I liked. And The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson which I really really really liked. But that’s just me.
All the books I get are loaners from a friend who can actually afford to buy books, so I can’t really be picky about the books I read. It’s too bad, though, because we have some really great used bookstores in my neighborhood and some great new bookstores too which are independent. I don’t think there are any “corporate” bookstores, except Half-Price Books which just moved in and people are like picketing them telling them to leave.
I guess I kinda like my neighborhood a lot sometimes. Sometimes.
Grr. KMFDM just got home from the bars and now they are playing their music too loud. Did I mention I live upstairs from KMFDM? They’re very nice boys, but damn are they loud at 3:30 in the morning.
Everyone knows the evil sciences are simply the products of bright ideas and poor funding.
it’s building a massive war machine robot to defend earth against aliens, but having congress cut off your funding when they see a “finished robot” that still doesn’t have an AI.
so you build 6 more, stick them in windowless rooms in the heart of a series of weird, thematic bases, and viola: you’re Dr. Wily.
that’s just an example, of course
and I enjoyed both those books myself when I read them, although I really do feel bad about enjoying JG. it felt rather pulpy and movie-scriptish, and, while enjoyable, the snobbish intellectual in me always gets all distressed about that sort of thing.
but Uzumaki is fun. I reccommend finishing out the series.
Evil biology and evil chemistry are just parts of mad science.
I think somewhere along the way, John Ashcroft was blinded with science.
My biggest problem with the Adam & Eve story is the idea that man took free will from God, that it was not a gift. Eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge gave Adam & Eve knowledge of good and evil, meaning that before that, they were just animals with God as their owner, saying “Don’t eat that, and don’t sharpen your claws on the sofa!”
The bible says God made humans in God’s image. Well, it is free will that separates us from the animals. I don’t think it means that God has two legs, walks upright and has opposible thumbs. The meaning is that humans are God-like in our ability to reason, learn and advance. To understand our world and universe. The idea that Adam & Eve stole free will (for what else is knowledge of good and evil than the ability then to choose one?) is the proof that Adam & Eve is just a story.
She PDP, not all Christians are nuts.
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People point to Walmart and cry “anti-union”.
Unions enable disfavored people to live satisfactorly without addressing their disfavor. This way their family’s problems are never resolved. Without the union they would have to accept the heirarchy, their own inferiority.
Unions serve to empower.
Walmart is anti-union because they are good. They try to help people address and resolve their problems by creating an enviornment where there are fewer hurdles.
Media ridicule and lawsuits are creations to reinforce people’s belief that Walmart is evil in a subsegment of the industry dominated by the middle and lower classes.
Low-cost disfavored Chinese labor is utilized by corporate america to maximize margins. They all do it. Only WalMart gets fingered because they are the ones who help, and those who seek to create confusion in the marketplace want to eliminate the vast middle class who have a real chance and instead stick with lower classes who may not work otherwise. So they dirty him up while allowing the others to appear clean.
The coining of the term “Uncle Sam” was a clue alluding to this::Sam Walton’s WalMart is one of few saviors of the peasant class.