In a celebrity culture, it’s useful to be able to put a face to what would otherwise be a shadowy menace. The Chinese get away with a ton of stuff just because they eschew the Colonel Gaddafi pillbox hat and the Saddamite turtleneck and Village People moustache and run their tyranny with a bunch of boring interchangeable guys in specs and cheap lounge suits.
they’ll buy up all your rights and all your wrongs
Looking for the words to one of my all-time favorite songs, I am amused to find most of it at the bottom of this page: “The Discipleship of Marriage, Part 3 – ChristianSinglesDating.com Article”. The opening/closing stanza is omitted, presumably because it frames the song as a letter to the lover being dumped (“when you waken I’ll be gone”). But much of what remains can be read as an attack on organized religion:
. . . They’ll try to stop you singing in the middle of your song
for they do not want you free, and they will not make you strong . . . .
[They’ll] tell you that the darkness is a blessing in disguise,
for you never have to notice if you’re sighted or you’re blind;
and they’ll do their best to keep you from the light.
Well okay, I suppose Jack Chick feels the same way about evilutionists.
(The song: “From me to you” was sung by Janis Ian:, but is out of place in a woman’s mouth, Woman was not designed to lead; 1Pet.3:1-7)
Where did she say anything about leading?
Yeah, okay, I guess it’s not hard to picture Ben Grimm with a yarmulke. (By way of Meryl Yourish by way of Gary Farber)
one horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms
Bon mot from Objectionable Content:
I have a somewhat detailed refutation of this notion, but if you’re pressed for time, here’s the abridged version: oh, come on now.
A spam today bore the title “ARE YOU A RESPONSIBLE PARENT????”
Got me there: No, I’m not. Wanna make something of it?
“Planes collide in midair” — raising the question: what are the boundaries of midair anyway? Is it midair if they’re one foot off the ground? One hundred? If there are mountains nearby, do they make a difference? When does a descending spaceship reach midair? In short, does midair tell us anything that air would not? Midocean can be defined as out of sight of land, or beyond the continental shelf, or in international waters; but none of these has an obvious analogy for air.
Mourn on the Fourth of July: A National Day of Protest
The goal, if any goal is possible to us, is no longer reform or restoration: it is resuscitation or reincarnation. This Fourth of July is no longer a holiday. It’s a funeral or, just possibly, a wake.