Usually I call big, link-filled posts “What I’m reading instead of working,” but today, all I’ve had time to do is scan the news during a short break. Well, if it weren’t for deadlines I’d never get anything done.
So – have some news, politics, books, gay marriage, and Google searches!
At Patterico’s – HotAir.com Had Almost 1/3 the Traffic of the L.A. Times’s Entire Web Site in October. What I call “the news” is actually blogs. I don’t even have cable TV anymore. I get my news almost exclusively from the internet, and it’s mostly from conservative blogs. I keep an eye on DKos and DU and Huffpo to see what poo the monkeys are flinging – and because I am not trying to insulate myself from opposing points of view – but I tend to avoid the media because I’m sick of the hypocrisy. Blogs come right out and admit their bias. You know exactly what you’re getting. I respect that. We need full-time information gatherers and that’s a valuable function the media provides, but it’s infuriating how they twist things and pretend they are honest. So I limit my daily dose of outrage by tuning most of it out. And evidently so do many people, because the LA Times – a major newspaper! – can only scare up three times the traffic of Hot Air, which isn’t even the biggest blog out there. Die, media. Die! Because the sooner you comprehend that your current product isn’t selling and why, the sooner you’ll find a new product – hopefully a more honest one.
The Democrats have been denied a filibuster-proof majority. I’m almost disappointed, because now – aided and abetted by the media – they will blame every bad development their policies generate on the fact that those eeeevil Rethuglicans blocked the Really Good Legislation that the Democrats wanted to pass, that would have Solved The Problem!
I’ve recently become aware of a new movie called Twilight, based on some really popular books for girls. Evidently a vampire romance, but not of the Anne Rice variety:
Stephenie Meyer has re-created the sort of middle-class American youth in which it was unheard-of for a nice girl to be a sexual aggressor, and when the only coin of the realm for a boy who wanted to get lucky was romance and a carefully waged campaign intended to convince the girl that he was consumed by love for her.
Which is actually a pleasant surprise. During NaNoWriMo, Meg Cabot, author of The Princess Diaries books, sent out a pep talk, and I clicked through to her site. It’s one of my favorite movies and I was curious about the books. In an excerpt I received an unpleasant surprise; the books aren’t much like the movie. But more than that – in this book series for teenage girls, Princess Mia goes shopping for vibrators with a group of her friends. I didn’t think I was a prude – in fact I still don’t, sex is nothing to be embarrassed about – but this is a book for teenagers, for pity’s sake. Is it really necessary and appropriate to include sex toys?
However, Twilight does in fact go Anne Rice in a big way eventually -
(Because it takes three and a half very long books before Edward and Bella get it on—during a vampiric frenzy in which she gets beaten to a pulp, and discovers her Total Woman—and because Edward has had so many decades to work on his moves, the books constitute a thousand-page treatise on the art of foreplay.)
(sigh) Not exactly what I’d want my preteen daughter reading. Whatever. That’s why we have parents – to screen the information their children take in.
The Prop 8 musical takes the time to try to deconstruct Christianity. Doesn’t the bible say that homosexuality is an abomination? Jesus appears and says, “Well, the bible says a lot of things…” and equates homosexuality with a shrimp cocktail, and plays the Leviticus card. We’re not stoning people or selling them into slavery anymore, so that invalidates the whole bible and our faith. These folks have no comprehension of the old covenant and the new covenant, what the purpose of Jesus’ incarnation and death was and how it changed the entire equation… none of it. And that’s our fault. Just as heterosexuals generally and Christians specifically have abandoned marriage, we have also largely abandoned our faith. If people don’t know the basic tenets of Christianity, that’s entirely our fault. It’s one thing for people to reject Christianity, but at least let them reject the real thing – not some wacky construct based on the behavior of cultural Christians.
(added) Michelle Malkin wonders who’s going to make the other Prop 8 musical.
There’s gotta be someone out there up for making the other Prop. 8 musical — the one with angry activists storming restaurants and Mormon temples, hectoring elderly people over their signs, and hounding donors large and small until they pay off their tormentors in the name of tolerance. Anyone?
Finally – I stumbled across a nifty search operator in Google recently – movie: followed by the name of the movie gets you show times or reviews.
Well, break’s over – back on my head!
The shellfish argument is full of holes but is appealing to many because so few bother to study the passages. I address five serious flaws with it in flaws of the shellfish argument.