Sucky Villain

For something on the order of 15 years, Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Vietnam-era fighter pilot and Top Gun instructor, has been fleecing the bejeesus out of his constituents as US Representative to the 50th Congressional district. He basically accepted a whole drawer-full of strawberries in return for guiding defense contracts to his paymasters' companies. Oh, and he didn't pay taxes on the ill-gotten fruity goodness. Yesterday, he pled guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery, mail and wire fraud, and tax evasion, and resigned his seat.

And he cried. Mother fucker. He cried. Now, I'm sure it's real emotional for a 65-year-old war hero and heretofore upstanding elected official to get stone cold busted ripping us all off, but HOW DARE YOU CRY, you evil prick? You're an Evil Prick! That's what you've been doing for 15 years. That's your job. You made $160,000 a year in Congressional salary, yet somehow lived in a $2.5MM mansion and drove a $550,000 Rolls. You had a yacht, ferchrissake. You've been flaunting how much you've been giving us all the shaft right in the pooper for 15 years, and now you're all weepy about it just because you got caught? Did Goldfinger cry? Ming the Merciless? Dr. Moriarty? Lex Luthor? No! They didn't plea bargain. They at least had a teensy shred of pride in their megalomaniacal sociopathic vocation. They didn't expect sympathy. They snarled and cursed and vowed to return to finish the job. That's why we like them. Perseverance. Committment. We feel better about ourselves and our heros because we vanquished them. And now you're blubbering on TV about "atonement." It's just not very entertaining. Act like a proper villain and embrace your prickitude, Duke. I think you owe us all at least that much.

Hah!

If you're just reading this now, after the fact, you don't even know that I've gone a little berserk and I'm just writing blog post after blog post in the wee hours of Shanksgiving morning, simply for the webcam sex pleasure of feeling my fingers hit the keys. So I'm playing online a couple hours ago and I've got the rockets, the bullets, Andre Agazzi, American Airlines, two beautiful red Aces in my pocket and this crazy or timetravelling maniac goes all-in ahead of me and I would have bet my five favorite leghairs that he had KK, but guess what? He pushed it all in with A-9 offsuit, and naturally I triumphantly called and then homie caught two more nines on the turn and river, cracking my apparently weak aces and I roared a red, red roar. Father, why hast thou forsaken me? Am I being punished? I was a 93% favorite on that bad boy. Please, tell me. What else? Schuyler lost her first two teeth five minutes apart. Have you seen Hero? That might be the most beautiful movie I've ever seen. Beautiful looking. I don't even know what would be in the same class. The same peer group, if you will. I rented Kill Bill Volume Two a couple weeks back. You may remember that I thought Volume One stank like fish. Well, oddly enough, I thought Volume Two was pretty good. And completely free-standing. No Volume One necessary. So if you're contemplating dipping your toe into the waters of the Kill Bill ouevre, just skip the first one. There was that one cool fight scene, but it wasn't worth it. Oh, man, I'm suddenly kinda sleep

Sucky Villain

For something on the order of 15 years, Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Vietnam-era fighter pilot and Top Gun instructor, has been fleecing the bejeesus out of his constituents as US Representative to the 50th Congressional district. He basically accepted a whole drawer-full of strawberries in return for guiding defense contracts to his paymasters' companies. Oh, and he didn't pay taxes on the ill-gotten fruity goodness. Yesterday, he pled guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery, mail and wire fraud, and tax evasion, and resigned his seat.

And he cried. Mother fucker. He cried. Now, I'm sure it's real emotional for a 65-year-old war hero and heretofore upstanding elected official to get stone cold busted ripping us all off, but HOW DARE YOU CRY, you evil prick? You're an Evil Prick! That's what you've been doing for 15 years. That's your job. You made $160,000 a year in Congressional salary, yet somehow lived in a $2.5MM mansion and drove a $550,000 Rolls. You had a yacht, ferchrissake. You've been flaunting how much you've been giving us all the shaft right in the pooper for 15 years, and now you're all weepy about it just because you got caught? Did Goldfinger cry? Ming the Merciless? Dr. Moriarty? Lex Luthor? No! They didn't plea bargain. They at least had a teensy shred of pride in their megalomaniacal sociopathic vocation. They didn't expect sympathy. They snarled and cursed and vowed to return to finish the job. That's why we like them. Perseverance. Committment. We feel better about ourselves and our heros because we vanquished them. And now you're blubbering on TV about "atonement." It's just not very entertaining. Act like a proper villain and embrace your prickitude, Duke. I think you owe us all at least that much.

We're Blogging Now,

Know what? I'm gonna post something else on this biznatch right about now, because I haven't posted in three weeks and I've already posted twice in about six hours and why shouldn't I post thrice in six hours? WHY?!?!?! I don't even have a topic. Each word I write is being plucked directly from the anusphere in real time. This is what KLF is ABOUT. Also known as the Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu. Furthermore known as The Jams. What's next then? Jesus Jumping Jehosaphat, how did this extremely loved by fratboys in the early 90s Hootie and the Godfersaken Blowfish song end up on my iPod????? Do I own this? I SPECIFICALLY checked the little boxy indicating my wish that the randomness of my playlist be filtered through the customer preference goodness of my song ratings and you can bet any and all that is dear to you that I did not give this now defunct or playing state fairs band of wankers any of my precious stars. Fahk. Ah, we're back to farm music. That's better. I got in a bit of a hoohah with the inlaws at the dinner table tonight because I pointed out that just because Bush's IQ would be an excellent golf score and it was all a big lie and we're not really doing so well in Iraq or anywhere else right now, that nonetheless it still might work. You'd have thought I'd said "I've decided to wash the car with my own blood tonight. Anyone got a cheese grater?" Oh, yeah , it's the Love Removal Machine. Check this one. With the exception of the odd adult cams moments when it dredges up some fricking Hootie song from my Norton Secured Recycling bin, my iPod makes me berry berry happy. Did I mention that Jennifer made a carrot cake for dessert tonight? THAT is what I'm talking about. I challenge anyone who's not clued in to discern any hint of carrot in that mofo. It's all about the pineapple and the spices. I never would have anticipated that I'd be writing about the pineapple and the spices right now, but sometimes, you just have to let art happen.

Turning Left

So Build-a-Bear, the place that sells the most ridiculously expensive teddy bears in the world but it's totally worth it because you have to make them yourself in a mall store full of Screaming Mimis, has just sent me an email announcing all the "Bobby Labonte" schwag they now have in stock. I'm all "OK, so what the fuck is a Bobby Labonte and why would I want one?" And, of course, it turns out that Bobby Labonte is a NASCAR guy. Again. Whenever I don't know, it's always NASCAR. And even though I don't give a good rodent booty about car racing, I could trot over to Build-a-Bear, and buy a Bobby Labonte bear, and for an extra $3, I could buy the little geegaw that would make Bobby Bear say "I love you" to me every single day. This is clearly a sign that we are approaching the end times.

I don't understand why Build-a-Bear would market racing-related ursine man-love to me in this way. I do like bears and cam girls, a fact which they've accidentally derived from some momentary lapse of reason wherein I let them have my email address, but SURPRISE, I like live bears that will tear your fucking neck off and munch on it, not teddy bears. My *daughters* like teddy bears, but what are the odds that two girls in God- and America-hating Lexington Massachusetts would be interested in some NASCAR guy? OK, so maybe the Mass connection gets us the same-sex tie-in, but that's still pretty thin.

And this reminds me of the NASCAR promotion at Dunkee's I saw a while back. Again, in Lexington. What are these marketing folks imagining? That Saiya and Alexandra and Ravi and Taj will roll up in their Priuses, fresh from Ultimate Frisbee practice and emo blaring, grab some bearclaws and start talking about who's got the pole position at Watkins Glen this weekend? It boggles the imagination. I'm sure the racing stuff works super excellently well in other places that aren't 90% populated by MIT alumni and staff and their iPod-mesmerized progeny, but I've done the math, and there are exactly 8,483,221 other notable figures who'd sell more crullers in Lexington than Jeff Gordon. Name three, you say? OK. How about Dora the Explorer, Alan Greenspan, and Christiane Amanpour? Hah. I scoff at your puny challenge.

So, what would make NASCAR compelling to a wrong-thinking northeastern empiricist like myself? Well, start with monitoring everything. It's just like the hole card cam on TV . Without the inside info, it's like watching paint dry. I want to know how much tread is left on every tire, how much gas is in the tank, Bobby Labonte's blood sugar level and how full his bladder is. I want live video of the inside of Bobby's car's pistons. Show it all on the TV screen, but don't let it get too busy. Information clutter is so 80s. OK, now bolt guns on all the cars, and give them all sweet spy features like James Bond's Aston Martin. Oil slicks, smoke clouds, and go-go-gadget hydraulic suspension. Throw an ejector seat in there and maybe try to eject a Hooters waitress into a cage of wolverines as you drive by. Perhaps Q is available for a consult. And let's make the tracks different shapes. This first-guy-to-1,000-left-turns thing is monotonous. Do all of that, and I'll buy an extra donut.

It COULD happen

Intelligent Design. I can't remember the last time someone came up with an idea that was so utterly self-deconstructing. Consider:

Intelligent Design is premised on the indisputable fact that science doesn't yet explain everything. And because science doesn't yet explain everything, (specifically the origin of life and the universe, and that some components of life and the universe are complex), it therefore stands to reason that there's a designer behind it all. Let me state right from the start that I don't know how we got here. I'm not a top scientist, nor can I see into the past. But the Big Bang and evolution seem like pretty good hypotheses to me. They get borne out time and time again by all sorts of scientific evidence. You know, crazy observable stuff like astrophysics and the fossil record. If someone comes up with better hypotheses that match the facts better, then I'm ready to consider alternative explanations. I don't really have a problem with anyone else believing that something different happened, and if they can make a scientific case for their beliefs, then I think it's not unreasonable for their case to be included in science curricula.

But. If there's no testable or observable evidence to support the Intelligent Design case, I don't think it should be included in science curricula. I mean, I can't tell you for certain that President Kennedy wasn't shot by an enraged yeti, but I don't think the Enraged Yeti theory belongs in history class. Because it's not history. It's made up. Saying "But you can't tell me who DID shoot President Kennedy" does not have any bearing on the veracity of the Enraged Yeti theory. It's a long shot. If there were curricula treating imaginary creatures and the things they do when enraged, the Enraged Yeti theory would certainly belong in the lesson plan. The problem with Intelligent Design isn't that it's wrong, or even that it's bad science. It's that ID isn't science. It's based on supposition. It's unobservable and untestable. So it shouldn't be taught in science class. Simple.

One thing that's always struck me about ID is that its premise depends so much on the state of contemporary science. Consider making the ID argument 300, 500, or a thousand years ago. The list of things that would fall into the "science can't explain it, so it must have been designed by Jesus' dad" category would be progressively longer the farther back you go. Basic physical forces, weather, disease, physiology, crop cycles, geography...go back far enough and you eventually hit a time when humans couldn't explain any of it. But over the years, as Man and Man's knowledge has progressed, those things all got explained. The progress of knowledge continues apace today. So when an IDer says that evolution can't explain the development of a particular component of an eyeball or a rotary joint on some microbe, remember to add the word "yet."

It's ironic that the Pat Robertsons of the world get so worked up about getting ID into science curricula. Wasn't the point of a lot of religious folks' arguments that science was fundamentally flawed as a means to understand the world? That it expresses Man's arrogance about our station in the universe? Why try to get on the science bandwagon now, after centuries of trying to slow it down? I think the answer has something to do with science's success. It's gotten too good to ignore. The human benefits of scientific inquiry are so many and varied that the leaders of the faithful can't concoct a compelling logical counter argument, even when they limit their case primarily to areas that are virtually untestable, like the origin of the universe, or what happens to the soul after death.

Here's a crazy idea: subject religion to the same style of scrutiny the IDers want to apply to science. Let's see. Where can we find a logical gap in scripture that we might be able to fill in with our wacky "science?" This is left as an exercise for the reader.

The claim that ID isn't religion in disquise is disingenuous. Remember, the origin of the universe isn't the only natural phenomenon that science can't explain. But then why is it the only one that the IDers want to explain away as divine action? Why not have a supreme being running a big time and gravity generator? Why not have the Holy Ghost presiding over detailed laws of quantum physics? I'll tell you why: the Bible doesn't talk about those things. Isn't it a little interesting that the alleged word of God doesn't address any physical or scientific phenomena that hadn't yet been identified at the time of the Bible's first publication? Did God just not want to spoil the surprise?

OK, well that should keep my membership in Heretics Anonymous current for a couple more months.

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