how dare he not like the war he's been in
sergeant kevin benderman applied for conscientious objector status last december. that was just 10 days before his unit was set to deploy to iraq, and benderman had already served 8 months in iraq and had been in the army for 10 years. but, things he saw in iraq (one example: a young girl burned) mad ehim question what he was doing there

thing is, his CO status has been denied now, and he'll be facing a court martial on charges of desertion

the military defines a conscientious objector as someone who "opposes war in all forms for deeply held moral or religious reasons"

maybe it's just me, but wouldn't seeing how horrible war could actually be and turning against the idea of it seem like soemthing that should count more (rather than less) than some liberal kid afraid to go to war*? this guy actually experienced war and saw firsthand how it didn't fit with what he was doing in the military...

...and now he faces up to 7 years in prison, reduction in rank to private and a dishonorable discharge

of course, maybe that's better, under the circumstances than being forced back into active duty in iraq

* not that that's all that goes for CO status, of course

all hail the new pope, same as the old pope
seriously, how does this make sense? the old pope was 84 when he died a couple weeks ago. the new pope (ratzinger) is already 78. wouldn't it make more sense to pick someone--i don't know--not already a fucking senior citizen on his last legs? hell, while we're at it, do we need people fawning over a guy who considers "dangers to the faith: sects, ideologies like Marxism, liberalism, atheism, agnosticism and relativism - the ideology that there are no absolute truths"? has the idea of anyone being progressive instead of sticking to the same old hardline shit been lost completely?

and, today is the ten year anniversary of the bombing of the alfred p. murrah building in oklahoma city. it's also the day william jensen cottrell of the ELF has been sentenced to more than 8 years in prison and ordered to pay $3.5 million in restitution for defacing and/or burning SUVs (to the tune of $2.3 million, so i guess that extra 1.2 was for the hurt feelings of all the evil SUV dealers and owners). and, zacarias moussaoui is offering for a second time to plead guilty. a federal judge is evaluating whether he should bother to accept the plea

it's a great day for democracy and freedom and all hail pope benedikt XVI (ratzinger's new name--pope antichrist junior just didn't have the right ring to it)

that old flower-in-the-gunbarrel gag

oscar the grouch is going on paxil
that's right. folks are fed up with his mood, and his therapist has finally done it. not too long ago, oscar was involved with terrorism, but now he's jumping (or slumping) on the drugged up bandwagon, medicating himself into mediocrity. it's just the latest bit of health news on sesame street. other recent street updates would include, of course, cookie monster cutting back on the cookie eating, cause of all those carbs of course. he's going to be eating more vegetables, cause cookies, it turns out, are "sometimes" food. prairie dawn, as one might expect, is certainly the ringleader in this tree hugging, carb hating, hippie craze that's coming down on the street

and, it seems like everyone's getting healthier these days. hell, even i got up early this morning to run two miles. and, the pope... did you hear about the pope's diet plan? he's not eating any more solid foods, and he's not drinking, and apparently, he's being put into some box to control his overeating. yes, you heard it here first. the pope wasn't always sitting and mumbling cause he was old. he just was too fat to get up and had a bunch of M&Ms in his mouth. but, the cardinals have put a stop to all that, even going so far as to parade him rather embarrassingly before millions of his followers and the aforementioned putting him into a box to curb his eating...

and breathing, too, but that's hardly on point now is it?

i needs me some evolution, right after the tractor pull

so, here's the thing: some imax theaters in the south (that is, in those scattered few actual cities have found it in them to grow up amidst all that backwoods, hick inbreeding and slavetrading) have taken it upon themselves to show films that included references to actual science

i know, that's crazy. how dare any institution dare to 1) suggest science has any place in the south or 2) reference any word with more than, say, six letters*

and, how could a film about volcanoes (cause that's the case in point that's gotten itself banned of late**) think that southern audiences in for some firey brimstone and death and destruction at the hands of mother nature (or god, rather) would care for anything remotely educational. we wouldn't want to offend anyone's worldview with facts

"many people here believe in creationism, not evolution," says the director of an imax theater in charleston. "we've got to pick a film that's going to sell in our area." and, so, she didn't take the film... which makes me wonder if the passion recut is getting an imax-size viewing this easter weekend

and, that brings up another point (since i will be out of town and can't get a separate blog entry on easter this week): why the fuck are people still bothering with all that easter crap and getting offended by evolution anyway? are they really all that shortsighted and pathetic that they have to believe in some greater power that is going to save them all from their sinning ways, the smoking and the boozing and the casual whoring around? can't we maybe get folks to accept responsibility for their own existence and not wait on christ to show up and save us from the offenses of the world, or for the government to step in and save us from evil husbands intent on seeing us starve to death, evil dictators intent on being unlikable and holding onto nuclear weapons it wouldn't make any sense to use anyway, for papa bush to protect us all from dwindling social security and the horror that is islam?

how about we sit down all the silly people that would be offended by a reference to evolution in a fucking science film and force them to take a biology class, to learn something about genetics and natural selection... and don't let them get all offended with the "i ain't come from no monkey" shit, and teach them what evolution actually is for a change (maybe point out that if basic evolution weren't happening (with the lord almighty behind it or not) all of them redneck bastards would be identical and wouldn't be able to tell one trailer dwelling piece of ass from another... not that they'd care, cause one of em gets pregnant, they could always just say some other redneck did it, cause who could tell differently?

now, if anyone's been offended by anything i've just said, well, go smoke yourself another pack of cigarettes, get yourself drunk and try not to run over that dog in your driveway or those kids of yours playing in the street and convince yourself that this particular liberal elite prick will get what's coming to him... cause, i sure will, won't i, when armageddon passes and judgement day arrives?

* count em, evolution has a shocking nine letters, not to mention more syllables than most southerners could even count, let alone pronounce or understand

** "volcanoes of the deep sea" makes a connection between human dna and microbes inside undersea volcanoes

where's my feeding tube?

so, everybody's weighing in on terri schiavo. president bush rushed to washington from his vacation to sign a bill that would put terri's case under federal scrutiny, to "error on the side of life" by forcing her to be kept alive, cause one citizen's right to not be a vegetable is the business of the commander in chief these days

see, no one is allowed to die by their own choice. that is just wrong. and, nevermind the sanctity of terri's marriage and her spouse's legal right to have a say in his wife's treatment. a person can't be married to a vegetable any more than he can be married to someone of his own gender

at this point, there is one clear way to get things on their way. and, here's teddy dunn to present it:

of course, there is one person who has yet to weigh in on all this. she was young when all this began and had never bothered to set down in writing a living will, but, today we have an exclusive here, terri schiavo voicing her side of the issue in her own words:

"kubg ksh looils shugkhush maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa"

wow, such eloquence

all is well

a couple entries back i spoke about a kid arrested for writing a story about zombies attacking his school. thing is, it has since been reported that there were no zombies in his stories and he had contacted some fellow students about creating some sort of military-like organization, and possibly actually getting a school shooting deal going. so, maybe this kid was actually planning... something. or maybe all that was still just harmless fun. of course, to think about a crime is the same as committing that crime, these days. hell, you don't even have to have thought about the crime of which you're accused. you could just be committing some other crime (or even just committing something that is a sin) like adultery

yeah, that's my transition to scott peterson, sentenced to death yesterday. see how advanced we are as a society. we kill people over circumstantial evidence just cause they don't happen to be the most upstanding members of society. and, not only that, we make them pay for their victims' (actually, i guess that should be victim's, as i discount that whole conner-inclusive crap) funerals. yes, along with his death sentence, peterson has been ordered to pay $10,000 restitution for funeral expenses, plus $5,000 for some unexplained reason

and the united states house of representatives passed legislation yesterday to delay the removal of terri schiavo's feeding tube in florida

the house also voted 388 to 43 to approve $81.4 billion more for our wars in iraq and afghanistan

in the michael jackson case, prosecutors seem to think pronography involving adults is useful to pedophiles

a bomb exploded in kandahar, killing at least 5 and wounding 32

and deforestationa, pollution and overpopulation continue

but the passion recut is in theaters, so all is well

the purposelessness of college: a sequel
Now Playing: a perfect circle - emotive
for the original purpose of college essay, have a look here or here

now, you know what annoyed me yesterday?

hayley's 9, in 4th grade, and yesterday someone from glendale college came to her class to talk about college. also, this week they've got a field trip to ucla (hayley won't be going, but not cause i think it's a stupid indoctrination thing to get kids thinking about college far too early, rather because of a scheduling conflict). and, for yesterday's "college day", they were allowed to wear sweatshirts from their favorite colleges...

let's go over that last bit again. fourth grade students, kids ages 9 and 10, are supposed to have favorite colleges? these kids are at best 9 years from college (barring early escape from lesser school) and we want them not only thinking about college but thinking about it so specifically to have a fucking favorite? i still wonder if hayley should be making and receiving the amount of phone calls she does, and now she's supposed to be planning for college? they really want to break a kid's spirit, don't they?

i mean, we wouldn't want kids to act like kids. and we certainly wouldn't want anyone to wait until, i don't know, after fucking puberty to make big decisions about the direction of her life, for god's sake. children MUST choose a career by age 10 or they will never be successful. that is certain, no?

they must enter preschool early, get into a good kindergarten, and, a la doogie howser, have the option of testing out of elementary and going straight to university... except that last part would be wrong, of course, since half the purpose of so many years of schooling is simply to delay entrance into the larger scope of things, the work force, for if we had too many people entering the work force at the same time, everything would fall apart... except that doesn't make much sense. inevitably, all those kids WILL join the work force (well, except for the ones who choose homelessness or what have you). staggering the entrances does not change the number of them. adding years and years onto the indoctrination (a la grad school and masters programs) does not change the numbers. it just makes everyone too damn busy to notice they are being taught things they will probably never need to know (and not in that high schooler's assumption way that even basic math is never gonna be useful, cause that's just rebellious, pubescent stupidity talking), and they are being dragged through so many tests and lectures that by the time they get out and get into the rat race of the working world, they're practically thankful, so much so that they forget that they've just escaped one prison only to be confined in a new one, just cogs in a machine (to mix metaphors), bricks in the wall, nails in the coffin of our culture and our world

fuck it. better to keep all the kids in line by confining them indefinitely to school than to have them thinking they could actually affect the world in any meaningful way. we qwouldn't want that, now, would we?

zombie terrorists and slaughtered donkeys
martha stewart is home, michael jackson's trial has begun, the number of us soldiers killed in iraq passed 1500 this week, a united nations report said more than 80 million africans could die from aids by 2025 (if some sort of genocide or famine doesn't get them first, of course) and a teenage boy was arrested as a terrorist after his grandparents reported him for writing a story about his high school being overrun by zombies* and armageddon still isn't here. go figure

in other news, lars von trier said he'll cut the scene involving a donkey being killed from manderlay, his follow-up to dogville cause some folks complained**. nevermind that the meat went for food after. he went ahead and cut it because the political and social content of the film was too important to lose over the donkey bit. as limited an audience as the film's going to get anyway, i'd say keep it in, but i also supported that girl making art out of pieces of euthanized animals a few months back, so... i'm not exactly the average person, am i... of course, i am in the audience for von trier's trilogy about the us (of which manderlay is the second film)

now if that donkey had been killed in a high school in kentucky, he'd have a real problem on his hands

* cause, apparently, "anytime you make any threat or possess matter involving a school or function, it?s a felony in the state of kentucky"

** more than 300 letters from groups and individuals in the us (of course, cause we're all about the strongly-worded letter these days), germany, britain and denmark about the scene, filmed in sweden

the mood setting should include "ineffectual"
Now Playing: a perfect circle - emotive

of course, no one but my wife will probably be reading today's entry anyway

by the way, i finally looked up terrific and it certainly does have a negative meaning despite it's colloquial use

that is all

or it should be

a contestant on the contender killed himself... or rather a guy who had already been eliminated (apparently, as just yesterday on the radio mark burnett said they had ten of the 16 episodes done and news reports of this guy's suicide said his part was done) killed himself. don't know if it ties together, maybe depression from putting his all into a goal he didn't achieve leading to shooting himself, or if it was unrelated (which seems unlikely). burnett says they won't make any special edits for the dead guy (though i'm sure there will be some on screen dedication or mention of the suicide). so, the next step is getting someone to die on camera, then we can get series 7 or the long walk or the running man going and accept that we're not trying to replace the british empire so much as the roman one, what with the gladiator battles and all the spectacle and violent pomp and circumstance. no matter how real the special effects are nowadays, we still always know that the death isn't real and the explosions were done with safety experts all over the place. and, that's just quite real enough, is it? besides, the real thing will be cheaper

and, since i'm talking to just my wife, are you getting off work early today or what?