The hottest summer

I just walked outside to feed the Legion of Geese and it was sweltering. Not only humid but hot as a blast furnace. Which reminds me...

Lately, I've heard several weather forecasters say we're "entering the dog days of summer". What planet were these people on for the last two months? The dog days are just beginning? It's been one big Dog Summer. These folks are pre-programmed. It's August so they speak of dog days. It's mindlessness personified.

And as long as I'm on a weather rant, where the hell are the drag-queen weather-girls? I can't believe that in this day and age, a major city like NY doesn't have at least one fun, drag-queen weather-girl. It's 2012, people. Get with the program. Or is being a straight female a requirement for the job?

I'm ignoring the male weather forecasters since they all seem to be gay -- but they're not allowed to act gay. I heard from a reliable source that one of the local gay NYC weather guys was told by the network to "butch it up". Jeez. They can't even wear fun outfits and make fun of stuff, as is our god-given right. Seriously, why is the weather (and the news) so straight?

Okay. As you were.

Michael Rowe nails the chicken

In The Great Chick-Fil-A Snake Oil "Faith" Hustle, Michael Rowe eviscerates the Christian snakes who slithered over to Chick-Fil-A this week to display their hatred for the TV cameras. Here's an excerpt, but do read the whole thing:

The spectacle this past Wednesday of "Christians" and other, more generic garden-variety anti-gay bigots lining up around the block to "support" Mr. Cathy's enterprise and to cram their faces with junk food on the specious grounds of "supporting Biblical marriage," or "supporting free speech," was a pageant of banal, cheerful deep-fried American hate, unified in bigotry and detestation of a group of their fellow Americans who were different from them, all the while licking grease from their fingers and congratulating themselves on their piety and rectitude and patriotism.

The fact that Chick-fil-A claims to have posted "record" sales on Wednesday doesn't meant that thousands of Americans waddled into a fast-food joint to deliver a "blow for freedom" or a "blow for Jesus" or "traditional values."

America didn't get any holier or more "free" last Wednesday. It just got meaner and fatter, and even more rage-filled than it was before Mr. Cathy decided to sell his version of Christianity instead of chicken.

Perfect. (And let me tell you, this spectacle was particularly disgusting to me because I'm a vegetarian. "While licking grease from their fingers", indeed. Ugh.)

PS: If you're a blogger and you write a post about Chick-Fil-A, be sure to append the tag: "tastes like hate". It will become like Santorum and "frothy mix". Whenever anyone googles Chick-Fil-A, "tastes like hate" will pop up in the results. Get on this immediately!

Wide stance extended

You remember dear Larry Craig, don't you? The congressman whose story went like this: "I wasn't coming on to the guy in the next stall with my foot -- I just have a wide stance [when I poop]." Oy on so many levels. But today, he went a step further.

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Former Republican U.S. Sen. Larry Craig aims to fend off a federal election lawsuit against him by arguing his infamous July 11, 2007, Minneapolis airport bathroom visit that ended in his sex-sting arrest was part of his official Senate business.

Could this man be more bizarre? Wait, there's more.

"Not only was the trip itself constitutionally required, but Senate rules sanction reimbursement for any cost relating to a senator's use of a bathroom while on official travel," wrote Andrew Herman, Craig's lawyer in Washington, D.C., in documents filed Thursday. 

The very fact that he would call attention to this again is beyond insanity. And it's such a pathetic notion: he was doing government "business" in the bathroom. There's so much fun with wording here. Just as "business" could refer to having a bowel movement, saying the "trip" was "constitutionally required" could be read as "he really had to go". It's just stumblingly bad on every level.

As my header said: wide stance extended. The man should have flushed this episode down the toilet long ago. But apparently he likes being a bathroom joke. Good. He deserves the scorn. Closet cases are the lowest form of human being -- always have been and always will be. I'm cheered by his public shaming. Good old Larry!

Bad...but also good?

You've seen the news, I assume.

As police and store employees grappled with graffiti that appeared overnight on the back wall of a Torrance Chick-fil-A, online supporters and protesters alike criticized the vandalism.

"Tastes like hate" was scrawled in large black lettering on the wall of the restaurant, mimicking the chain's advertising.

Listen, kids. It's not okay to do this. Vandalism is not a virtue. But on the other hand, a zillion newspapers and web sites carried the image you'll find at the link, or at least printed the phrase "Tastes like hate" (often in the headline). As a result, this slogan is now burned into people's minds.

And that's a good thing. Because Chick-Fil-A does taste like hate.

Mars landing to occur this Monday morning

I've been too nervous to talk about it. But now the landing for the Mars rover/science lab is imminent. I swear, I'm a wreck. The landing sequence is downright alarming -- so many things could go wrong. In fact, let's say it out loud: success seems all but impossible. Still, I've got my fingers crossed. And according to the linked article, NASA is rather confident about the mission.

As for the timing, it's going to land early Monday morning. Am I going to stay up and watch it live? I don't think so. If the landing is a bust, I'd rather hear about it in retrospect. I'd be too depressed if I watched it live and it turned into a disaster. Besides, there won't be any images from Mars until much later -- days or weeks. It will take a while for NASA to roll out the rover's abilities.

But this is very cool and if it succeeds, it will answer a lot of questions. Surely, there was life on Mars at some point. I suspect it's still there, hiding underground, and I look forward to waking up on Monday morning to read the good news. Dog, if you're listening, help NASA out on Monday, okay? Thanks.

Be still, my heart!

I was extremely excited to see the news today:

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican says Pope Benedict XVI has completed the third installment of his planned trilogy on the life of Christ.

The publication date will be announced after "Jesus of Nazareth" is translated into various languages from the Benedict's original German.

It's a wonder they can announce something like that without using several exclamation marks. And not only will there be a new, exciting Jesus book to read, but I learned of a strange nuance to the art of speaking about a pope. Note the odd language up there: "from the Benedict's original German." 

You can't even say his name now without saying "the" before it? I guess it's kind of like calling Springsteen "the boss". Wow. I mean, I knew there were uppity ways of signing your name if you're a cardinal -- like "Timmy Cardinal Dolan" instead of Cardinal Timmy Dolan. But this one is new. I'm doubly excited!

I wonder what the Benedict is doing right now? No, wait. I'd better not think about that or I'll fall out of my all-but-constant state of sanctifying grace.

What if we became Vulcans?

You know the Vulcan story. They had to fight their basic instincts in order to become a peaceful, productive race. Seems to me, humans could use a program like that.

Imagine if we admitted our faults and tailored our society to counter them, as the Vulcans did. If we admitted our tendency to believe in the irrational, for instance, we could instill proper respect for reality. Like the Vulcan people, we would benefit greatly from teaching logic at an early age. Imagine humans who could actually understand the issues involved in an argument! It's possible.

What if we went so far as to admit that evolution produces only predators, including humans. Everything preys on something else. And in our world, where we don't have to kill our food, this vestigial tendency plays out in human-on-human violence. What would happen if we admitted this and adopted a no-fight, no-war world?

What if we taught children the truth, that there is no god. What if we explained that the same ability that makes us see faces in the clouds, makes us see gods? Imagine how we'd prosper, unhindered by false gods.

What if we admitted what we are, and worked with it? What if we became Vulcans?

UPDATE: For anyone who sees this as a silly suggestion, try to remember that the human race is in the process of killing itself. Global warming will cause the extinction of at least 50% of all Earth's creatures by the year 2100, and humans will become extinct some short time after that. And we're not doing a damn thing about it. That's because we can't see reality, can't use logic, can't plan because we think a fairy god will save us all. We need a global intervention. I suggest the Vulcan model.