”Mysterious pink spots” on area lawns turn out to be bird poop. W/ pic of bare hand holding newly demystified droppings.

  Penguins At German Zoo Stay Gay.

  If a tornado ever hits this zoo, we know what the evangelicals will blame it on.

… he said, with a sarcastic sneer.

  I do love science, but science reporting sometimes drives me to drink until I can’t resist the urge strip naked, cover myself in maple syrup and start hurling profanity and small children at the Internet.

  For instance, have you ever wondered why you sometimes jerk awake suddenly just as you’re about to drift off to sleep? I know I have. When I saw the lead to this story, I was compelled to read it, because it sounded like someone had come up with an explanation.

  Nope. Not so much.

  As it turns out, doctors and scientists are still absolutley clueless about the cause of this involuntary nocturnal spasm. The good news is, they’ve finally managed to name it. The phenomenon is now called “Sleep Start.” Which is good, because “Demons Possess Me When I Sleep” was factually and spiritually inaccurate, as well as a mouthful to say. Now that “Sleep Start” has standard nomenclature, I can go back to using the possession bit as the basis of an insanity plea, instead of wasting it on frivolous things like twitching myself out of bed once in awhile.

  CNN.com apparently just noticed that the author of The Secret is getting rich by preying on the fears and desires of the desperate, credulous masses. Seriously, CNN? I was griping about this back in March, and even then it wasn’t particularly breaking news. How are you just getting around to this now?

• The Guardian’s Rose Shapiro ponders: “Could this be the moment when alternative medicine finally gets the reputation it deserves and is seen for what it is - a massive social and intellectual fraud?” (The answer is, of course not. AM believers aren’t about to let a little thing like “evidence” shake their faith.)

• If getting coffee is part of the job description, the fact that she’s a woman doesn’t mean that asking your secretary to get coffee is sexist. (Asking her to serve it topless is DEFINITELY sexist. Or the theme for a Maxim photospread. But I’m being redundant.)

• You can be legally married by clergy in Pennsylvania, as long as it’s the right kind of clergy. (God Bless America. No, not your god. My god. Duh.)

• The Child Online Protection Act is still unconstitutional. (Being elected to Congress means never having to say “The law we passed infringes on the constitutional rights of adults to view acts of consensual sex. Our bad.”)

• Barney Frank and Ron Paul propose to limit enforcement of marijuana possession laws. (Frito-Lay stock triples. Phish announce reunion tour. World fails to end.)
• Catholic clergy group demands reparation for abuse of communion wafer. (Informal game of “Count The First Amendment Mistakes” finds six. In other news, disputed cracker still compost.)
• Texas high court balks at “chilling” religious freedom to conduct brutal exorcism rituals, throws out ruling in favor of victim. (Plaintiff appeals to Supreme Court. Blogger starts “Church of Everybody Has To Give Me a Dollar Or Get Stabbed.)
• American Family Association “ramps up” its boycott of McDonald’s, citing donation to 2007 San Francisco Pride Parade. (”Literally hundreds of families have promised to stop making purchases at the stores.” McDonald’s fails to end.)

I pulled this CNN.com screenshot at about 3:45 p.m. on Sunday 28 July:

Click to Enlarge

The same weekend that Iran’s freakazoid religious police are hanging people for dealing drugs, being intoxicated in public, and committing adultery, someone in Tennessee goes to church and starts shooting. The grisly scene in Tennessee — where apparently even the Unitarian woo-woos aren’t safe — is the fourth time in 15 months that a freakazoid Christian went to a house of worship and started blowing people away.

My point, and I do have one, goes thusly: On the one hand, you have the state religion authorizing, no requiring periodic waves of particularly cruel, slow, public executions (i.e., suspension hanging by cranes) for infractions of social norms that civilized people would consider minor. And on the other hand, you have the quasi-state religion, kow-towed to by politicians and spoken of with superstitious reverence by the entertainment industry, that also isn’t safe from murderous fanatics.

The guy in Tennessee went to a Unitarian church because the worshipers weren’t Christian enough. That’s logic for you. They don’t follow Jesus as closely as he does — so he kills them. If that’s not a Christian message for you, I don’t know what is.

Ever seen a headline that reads anything like “Shooting spree at atheists’ gathering shocks community”? I sure haven’t. So in the interest of serious, in-depth research, I googled “atheist shooting spree.” Here’s what I got:

Click To Enlarge

Here’s another recent headline for good measure: “Israeli parents forget daughter at airport.” The ultra-Orthodox couple — and ultra-Orthodox anything tends to involve keeping the woman at home as a baby factory, even in the States — had multiple bags of duty-free shopping, 18 suitcases, and 5 kids. Guess what got left behind? One of the kids.

[T]he parents were unaware they had boarded the aircraft with only four children instead of five until they were informed by cabin staff after 40 minutes in the air.

Let’s work this backwards: Forty minutes in the air + time spent waiting on the tarmac + boarding the plane and waiting for everyone else to board the plane (did they board early as a party with special needs?) = probably over a full freaking hour that they didn’t notice that one of their kids wasn’t with them! And a 3-year-old, at that! And because it’s that kind of blog, I blame their religion. Any freakazoid belief system that requires you to have so many kids that you forget — or “forget” — to take one of them on vacation with you should just be banned and its practitioners caned. The Yahoo! news URL references the comedy film Home Alone; instead, it should reference something like the documentary Jesus Camp.

Week ending October 18th, 2008.

I haven’t been following too much news this week, and I’m a day late, but what can you do?

(- - -) to Me, Waldorf van Buren, for not keeping up with the news or even caring enough about current events. Bad Waldorf, BAD! (Bad Waldorf was a punk pop band out of the Tulsa punk scene in 1987).

(+) To Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin for last night’s SNL. The rest was crap, but I enjoyed Fey.

(-) To the shenanigans going on surrounding ACORN. Quit it, disgruntled Republicans. You want a controversy: Diebold, the economy, privatization of the military, the travesty of undeclared wars, do you need more? It is not voter fraud to submit a false name on a registration, it is voter fraud to show up at the poll showing identification the is not an accurate representation. If you sign Waldorf Van Buren on a registration, it is not fraud, but if you show up registered as Waldorf Van Buren, have an ID stating you are Waldorf Van Buren, but are not, in fact, Waldorf Van Buren, guess what - you’ve just committed voter fraud. Why don’t you focus on issues instead of made-up controversies? I guess you realize you can’t win this one with voter fraud so you may as well create a shitstorm where there is none. Smells like Rove to me.

(- - -) To the American movie going public. Beverly Hills Chihuahua? Seriously?

(+ +) To the Mormon Church, believe it or not. Well, not the church itself, which gets seventeen minuses, but to a stalwart group of followers protesting their church’s opposition of gay marriage. The Mormons have taken the stance that marriage is a sacred union between one man and multiple women.

(EVEN) To me. I didn’t watch the “debate” this week. I don’t like reruns so early in the Fall TV schedule.

Crap, I’ve been in rehearsals all week, so I haven’t been following as much as I should. I will admit to some election fatigue. I think Pfizer makes a pill for that.

• (∞+1) Still can’t believe Obama is the President-Elect. It is a very good thing, mainly because of item two…
• (∞/(∞-2.34981)) The last seven years and 8 or so months have been the turds of life. George W. Bush is still our President until January.
• (- -) Do you really think oil is going down because of a) a conspiracy, b) demand is lower, or c) I can’t think of a third reason. Don’t think so. Methinks speculators are still selling off oil stocks to make up for the losses they’ve taken in mortgage backed securities.
• (- - -) To us, the citizens and taxpayers of the United States. We suck. Or rather, we get our funds sucked from us without the promise of reciprocity.
• (+ +) It’s still so nice to see the shuttle launch, and nice to see it going on an ambitious mission. The urine into drinking water trick, though, leaves me with some doubts, unless they are like those cool suits in Dune.
• (- - - X ∞) A BIG WTF to the friendly citizens of the US for this - more threats to Obama than any other president-elect.
• (- - -) To News Organizations. Transition to Power? Come on! What, are you all upset that you didn’t get to use your nifty Election ‘08 graphics for a longer period of time? I know, 10:30 was early to decide an election, and early for a candidate to cut-and-run concede, but I’m sure there is other news out there… somewhere.
• (- - -) To those who claim actors should shut up about politics. I agree, but only if you shut up about Ronald Reagan.
• (+) To schadenfreude. I am not a fur-activist, nor do I like or dislike Lindsay Lohan, but the flour thrown on her while wearing an expensive fur DID make me giggle.