Happy Halloween!

Pat Robertson Believes In Silver Shamrock

On Pat's website, a very disturbed woman wrote about Halloween:

"[M]ost of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches,” Daniels wrote. “I do not buy candy during the Halloween season. Curses are sent through the tricks and treats of the innocent whether they get it by going door to door or by purchasing it from the local grocery store. The demons cannot tell the difference."

So to Pat and his flock, the following is real:

Beware the magic pumpkin!

The Greatest Exhibits I've Ever Seen

Chicago's Field Museum: Evolving Planet.

Go there if you can.

Alabama's LCS May Just Get Picked

Just replace the mast with a stealthy column to support SPY-1F radars

With a new focus on ballistic missile defense, the Navy needs Aegis frigates. The problem is, the Littoral Combat Ships it's trying out are not the frigates it needs: they are multi-purpose pirate chasers and mine hunters. For half their cost, that would be fine. But they are turning out to be insufferably expensive, and we'll likely only need a handful for the mine-hunting, pirate-deterring role.

However, with a few modifications, the General Dynamics version may just work. It could be modified to an Aegis frigate. All that is needed is for the light radar SPY-1F to be amped up enough to detect in-coming ballistic missiles. That may take some money and time, but it would save the class and spare the US from having to start a new frigate class. And a cost of roughly $800 million would be a bargain. The GD competitor, however, could not support the SM-3, the Navy's anti-ballistic missile missile. So we may just be building frigates here after all...

Speaking Of JJ

Thanks to the Frank DeCaro Show, I'm addicted to Fringe. Of course, now it is in danger of being canceled.

Watch it. DVR it. It is X-Files meets Altered States. With some Twin Peeks thrown in.

JJ's Klingons F'n Rock

JJ Abrams' Star Trek originally had scenes with Klingons. Those scenes will be extras on the DVD. IO9 posted a clip of it.

Gladiator-masked, Number 2-like interrogator Klingons kick ass!

Jesus versus Gandalf Smack Down in the Village

I am, as usual, skeptical of "updates"of iconic tv & movies; but I'm willing to give this a chance.

Be seeing you.

Cinematic Truth

These Homophobes And Their Demons

Jonathan Methany of Gainesville, FL was an active opponent of a measure by the city that banned discrimination of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. One of the main arguments was that the measure would allow men to dress as women and go spy on unsuspecting ladies in restrooms. It's an absurd assertion, and it didn't work: the measure passed.

Methany has been caught spying on women with his cell phone camera in the restroom of the CVS he manages.

"When I Win The Lottery"

318 Forrest Ave, Oak Park, Chicago, IL

So Ahead Of Its Time

Flying cars never came to be, but I would still love to live here:

Chicago's Marina City

When building something actually meant something.

because I like you people

Latest cool science-y T-shirts - at io9 and TopatoCo.

I Finally Got My Favorite Pixies Cover

"I said this can't be me, it must be my double."

Way back when I was a teenager in high school, my best friend got a CD called I'm Your Fan: The Songs of Leonard Cohen. I loved Leonard Cohen, and I dubbed a copy of this tribute CD on a tape. Every morning of my high school senior year, I had an alarm clock with a tape deck that played the Pixies' cover of "I Can't Forget" to wake me up.

iTunes doesn't have the album, and none of the Pixies' compilations have this song. So I bought the CD off of Amazon. Sixteen years after I first heard it, "I Can't Forget" is still my favorite Pixies cover, and it remains one of the top ten songs they ever did. In addition, most of the other covers remain brilliant, including REM's "First We Take Manhattan" and Nick Cave's "Tower of Song."



"I'll be there today with a big bouquet of cactus."

Hard to Explain

Clyde and I both love the horror that is the movie The Salton Sea. Val Kilmer is the whacked out hero, but it's Vincent D'Onofrio as the incredibly frightening Pooh Bear meth dealer who makes the movie..

Now he got it for me for my birthday. Incredible! Never again will we wonder which of our thousands of hours of DVD's to watch.

I HAVE to.

I'm required to read Alister McGrath. Yes, THAT Alister McGrath. On the Reformation. I HAVE to. For my 500-level history class. Jiminy Cricket, what I have to go through to teach history to crazy teeners.

Movie Review: Outrage

This documentary could just as well be titled, "Why I Will Never Support Any Republican After 2003." If you have HBO, record and watch it.

How Many Times Have I Quoted Mrs. White?

Since I was barely a teenager, I have quoted Mrs. White's (played by Madeline Kahn) hilarious tirade from Clue. Now Buzz at Camp Blood has made it into a ringtone. So much for homos having separate interests...

"I hated her so much..."



You'll all be getting this ringtone assigned to you.

Lasers Are Boring

Below is the result of decades-long development of a military laser, here placed on an gunship.



Lasers are boring.

Black Francis: When They Come To Murder Me

Yeah Yeah Yeah Fans Will Find A Lot To Love

I bought and listened to the complete soundtrack to Where The Wild Things Are. If the movie is as good as the soundtrack, it will be a cult classic.

Naturally, Mr. Mulder

William Davis, who played the villainous "cigarette-smoking man" in X-files, is a skeptic and an atheist.

I Was Impressed

Star Wars: Clone Wars Season 2 premiered last night. I really enjoyed it, especially the zero-g battle pitting Anakin and clones against battle droids. Definitely worth checking out.

Recoil In Horror

Glenn Beck is the voice of the resistance. And he is a horror.



I have plenty of problems with idolizing any President of the United States. I had the same problems when Republicans did it to Bush the Younger. When I questioned their policies in Afghanistan and their grossly optimistic invasion strategy in Iraq, I was called anti-American, anti-patriotic, anti-military, and pro-defeat. As an atheist, I have been called worse by both sides. But this tirade is indicative of the modern Republican party, ruled now by the fetishists of the Christian moral authoritarians. No matter what the Democratic Party does from here on, it will be blamed on two groups: atheists and gays. We are their bete noir, their Michael Myers slashing their "rights" (read: Christian exceptionalism) through countless fantasy-narratives of invented persecution.

"If I Had My Way You'd Wear That Uniform For The Rest Of Your Pecker-Suckin' Life"

I went to see Inglourious Basterds. It is a spaghetti western set in Nazi-occupied France. And it is brilliant. I'll have to see it a couple of times more before I conclude that it's Quentin Tarantino's best film, but right now for me it is.

The All-American Weapon Of The Hostel "Bear Jew"

I am not surprised that the film is popular in Germany. After generations of guilt, and media-driven apologetics of "oh, but there were good Nazis who opposed Hitler," I understand the catharsis from seeing one's shameful historic, horrifying past put to a revenge fantasy. I was born in and now live in Alabama, and I wish this treatment would be done to the civil rights movement in the south. As someone who abhores the history of this fair state and yet is a product of it, I would relish in an anti-George Wallace revenge fantasy.

"There's a special level in hell for those who waste good scotch."

I would add that, were there a hell, another, lower level would be reserved for cowardly bigots who can't accept shame and defeat. That level would be filled with those southern "Americans" who still fetishise the Confederate flag. Can we start carving that symbol into their foreheads, since they are all too timid to do it themselves?