“Ex Machina” heralds creation of life, but Doctor Geekenstein’s blueprint imitates pornography

ex-machina-tits-ass-mouth
“WHY DID YOU GIVE HER SEXUALITY!?” asks the geek tasked with debugging the anthropomorphic robot. Except they didn’t. Unless by sexuality you mean just the “female” bits and transluscent circuits where her belly and cranium should be.

These filmmakers gave Ms. Machina just the tangibles to titillate pre-sexuals: tits, ass, and a face for, um, facials. Their ideal is basically a blowup doll, upgraded to show off CGI; the Bionic Woman pared of nonessentials for viewers fixated on orifices; imagine the Six Million Dollar Man a cyborg whose flesh parts are lips and phallus. For male heterosexual tastes, a nubile female would have a womb. Otherwise the bare midriff would not be a thing. Nor belly dancing. But no mate of any age can lack a cranium. And a soulmate needs a soul. I think we can say the soul lives in the heart, but I’m pretty sure we manifest its presence under the cranium. A sexual mate, even as a sexual object, must be “all there” in the head, or is that just me?

The film “Her” pared the romantic partner down to a disembodied voice, this film preserves the body but disembowels her.

Presumably the filmmakers screen-tested their heroine on a focus group. If the results decided which virtues a virtual sex object requires for allure and which could be dispensed to skimp on parametric objects, I’m not impressed. Is hair no longer an asset to attractiveness? Ex Machina takes our depilation fetish to its nadir.

Spoiler: I haven’t seen the rest of Ex Machina. Does she have toes? Why or why not? How could she not have toes?

And what about “chemistry”? By chemistry I mean whatever electricity or scents we exude to guide ships in the night. Okay, no doubt biomechanical robots can be modelled to emit pheromones, but I’m sorry that’s about as romantic as boutique soap.

Whatever social commentary we are to make of this “high concept” thought experiment, I’m reminded of attending a lecture given by a geek who Time Magazine listed among the world’s most influencial people. He had coined the term “virtual reality” or some such and had shaped what the internet has become. I wondered why we entrust social engineering to antisocial engineers, then look to them as philosophers endowed with clarevoyance. With arrested adolescents for our gurus, of course “the internet is for porn.”

Jeanne Assam, rogue private security shooter, friend of George W Bush, to be honored in Colo. Springs for being gay

That’s it, my romance with the local GLBT community is over. Yes I had some qualms when my fey friends leaned hard on Gay Marriage when it was made a wedge issue in the election of 2004. Yes I rebuffed the campaign against Don’t Ask Don’t Tell because it implicitly encouraged military service in a time of US war crime. But I remained in the fold because I was reminded that equal rights for gays and lesbians are fundamental to the embrace of universal equality. Now my humanitarian tolerance is being tested by having to extend equality to moral-idiocy. Today I received an invitation to a GLBTA gala honoring former Colorado Springs lesbian Jeanne Assam, the most famous lesbian they could tap apparently. Famous for what? The name rang a bell. Assam was the disgraced police officer, redeemed New Life Church security volunteer, who preempted a presumed massacre by a teen abused-churchgoer come home to roost. He was bent on an armed rampage, but does that excuse Assam shooting him from a concealed position, without even an attempt at apprehension? Local GLBTA leaders think it does apparently, and maybe it’s no surprise then that they chose this photo to promote the event. Now I admit, next to preemptive war criminal George W. Bush, Jeanne Assam is an angel, even in sexuality-irrelevant Officer Unfriendly Ray-bans. But I say it’s time local GLBTA leaders give thought to showing equal consideration for the people of conscience community.

Americans upset by viral Single Ladies video don’t know their ass from TandA

Screengrab from Yak Films World of Dance videoYou thought ours was an oversexed culture obsessed with youth, but the recent furor over a viral video shows Americans don’t know their ass from their T & A.

Obviously everyone is aghast about too-young dancers gyrating to Beyonce’s SINGLE LADIES, but I think it says something hilarious about our ineptitude with sexuality. Like the mess of clueless philistines weighing in, I too am inexpert at what titillates about 7-year-olds, and it’s not going to stop me either.

Can we agree the Beyonce hit is lewd? I’m guessing her video was unremarkable, I recall the SNL spoof was camp, but what are Beyonce’s lyrics except deliberately crass? You expect a performance of “Single Ladies” to transcend its theme? You’re going to be offended regardless who is lip-syncing it.

Putting aside whether your daughter belongs onstage participating, where have you been? This is dance. Call it Vulgar Nouveaux or Burlesque Outré, it dates to Madonna’s mother’s virginity. This is dance, all you Kansans, onstage and on screen. Flashdance had nothing on Broadway, American Gigolo hid the sex behind clothes. Beside the point. Young dancers aspiring to tomorrow’s auditions want to learn what their role models are teaching. Children today love Spongebob, but they’re watching South Park and Family Guy too. The only uncomfortable party in the room is you.

I recently attended an elementary school talent show that included some dance-schooled troopers. Some of their precocious moves were admittedly out of place and some even off-putting, but it didn’t stop parents from appreciating the talent and obvious dedicated effort. Our little tarts didn’t come close, by the way, to the spirited Single Ladies performance, clearly well choreographed, taught, and executed.

Was outraged America also so unsophisticated to notice that the now infamous video was a multiple camera production? This wasn’t a family recording leaked by an indignant relative. It was a World of Dance competition where no one watching showed any shock at the performance. While I confess I’m still offended by the Jon-Benet pageant aesthetic, these costumes and the next Britney backup dancers did not surprise.

What entertained me most were the comments threading from the now multiple postings of the video. The original post accumulated over two million views and had to be removed for reasons that are self-explanatory apparently. On account of poorly-spelled death threats, I imagine. Eventually you’ll find observations defending the performance, but for the overwhelming part, everyone wants to weigh their indignation against the next, accuse the dancers’ parents of child abuse and round up a posse to chase the pedophiles they’re sure are lurking.

What I find endearing about their best Sunday earnestness is that these commenters wouldn’t know a stripper’s pole from where they get their haircut. Even as internet porn is so pervasive, and we worry it has saturated our psyche, it turns out the prurient pretenders– as hypocritical we know, as Republican congressmen– know as much about erotica as a prudes.

Even more entertaining is a certain tenor to their comments, part of a trend I’m horrified to recognize has been overtaking blogdom. It began I suppose when the personal computer extended the internet outside the lab. Emails used to abide a scientist’s protocol, then with the world-wide-web came spam. Blogs began with people who had something to say, and when comments deregulated to chat rooms, in came the freaks.

There’s a common tone to compulsive opinion-givers, I recognize it too often as I offer my own. It pervades the blogosphere now almost to have rendered discussion threads unreadable. It’s a tone of tone-deafness, in vocabulary, grammar and attitude. Related to a person not knowing what they’re talking about, the tell-tale ingredient is that they don’t care about the subject either. It’s a characteristic recognized in forced conversations and poor sales pitches, not always obvious when we’re regurgitating differences of opinion or ideology.

If I didn’t always before recognize the ignorance in the insincerity, this Tea Party tinctured pile-on has given me the scent.

The too-cursory indignation Middle America is showing about these 7-year-old dancers strikes a feeble, unfunny note. It’s the puritanical call for women of all ages to reduce themselves behind burqas, coming from voices self-loathing and unworldly.

Addict, pederast dies, much fanfare

But let’s look past the innuendo and unproven transgressions, to celebrate the man’s contribution to the cannon of Western popular music product. Please!

I hear celebrities dismiss the allegations of Michael Jackson’s pedophilia like too much water under the bridge, which would be true I suppose, if Jackson’s victims were more like John Wayne Gacy’s, buried under Neverland, instead of tucked into San Fernando Valley homes, divvying multimillion-dollar payoffs with their enterprising panderer parents. Will the confidentiality clauses stand between the public ever knowing which pederast was the more prolific? That innuended, I do concur those bottoms were small fry compared to Jackson’s true sick imprint on America.

The Michael Jackson TM projected a perversion of role models. Not even a cynical anti-hero, the self-crowned King of Pop was the nul-idol. Jackson rejected his skin color, his sexuality, even his place of belonging among mortals. Other than pathos for the sick dance-cyborg who never had a childhood, what humanity did Jackson share to communicate? To be fair, it wasn’t Jackson who kept the spotlight trained on his black/white Icarus act, foisting the unnatural deception that man can soar with a single glove.

Now dead, Jocko is heralded as among the greatest. But MJ was an internationally recognized poster child for enfeebled humanity, a glorified counter-renaissance man, resembling a human being like a drag queen pretends femininity. He may have channeled vinyl High Fructose Corn Syrup like no other, walking backward while dancing and such, but worth what legacy exactly? Jackson shares the ignobless of the Big Mac, the Lucky Strike cigarette, and DDT. Iconic and good riddance.

Michael Jackson did nothing for black emancipation, or acceptance of homosexuals, or the plight of the children of poverty. The vast majority of the world’s children are “robbed of their childhoods,” you narcissistic rich dumb-ass, and that didn’t stop you from amassing your vast fortune at their expense.

Jackson probably did more to amplify the phobia against pedophiles, the single minority he did incarnate, by denying the preponderance of indicators, by vilifying his accusers, instead of taking his riches to Dubai right from the start, to show the world into what true debauchers wet their willies.

He might even have championed sympathy for plastic surgery binge-purgers, but he lied about that worm-hole until his nose literally fell off. I remember when Jackson made public appearances in surgery masks, feeding the fiction that he was a germophobe. Meanwhile everyone in Hollywood knew from their own rhinoplasties about the actual face-saving purpose of those masks.

Perversely, it was Jackson’s least aberrant eccentricity that killed him. Drugs. Even as TV viewers watch Jackson’s body pass from helicopter to ambulance, over a red carpet no less, Big Pharma makes sure that the talking heads refer to Jackson’s narcotics as “pain-killers.” Jocko was in constant pain, apparently, like Rush Limbaugh and all overachievers etc, hence their susceptibility to addiction. You’d think the alibi would eventually defy credulity.

Prescription drugs circulate among the well-to-do, with the same ease with which the rich have access to good lawyers. The difference between street and medical drugs is that no one cares about the heroin or crack addict’s “pain.”

All the celebrities speaking in tribute to Michael Jackson want to minimize the ugliness Jacko paraded, even, and especially his drug habit. Some who profess to have been close friends express their utter shock at Jackson’s passing, at his frail condition and the magnitude of his drug use. How close could they have been?! Or how culpable are they still on Big Pharma’s not-yet-upped jig?

Jackson was the King of Sick Culture. His collaborator eulogizers are its second tier whores. What contemptible shills, who’ve got theirs, behind their Beverly Hills gates and their own golden narcotics tickets. Even at the premature passing of a unique creative soul, due without question to drug abuse, his peers don’t want to aggravate the corporate forces which continue to pervert the human social animal to beyond self-recognition.

Dave Schultheis of Colorado State Senate District 9- Lost in a Black Hole of Stupidity

Joe McCarthyIn this day and age, science has finally located the Black Hole of Human Stupidity and it is centered on Colorado State Senator Dave Schultheis, elected representative of Colorado State Senate District 9. That’s quite a dishonor, but Dave fully deserves the distinction. I mean today, how many public officials have Joseph McCarthy listed as a great American patriotic hero on their website? That’s major league Black Hole of Stupidity if there ever was one and the people of State District 9 elected this twit! Let his love of American fascist Joe McCarthy be expressed in his own words.

Here he answers a man who wrote him opposed to his legislative support for mandatory recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance…

6. Your passing references to McCarthy are noted. I would encourage you to do some reading on Mr. McCarthy. The modern myth about him serves the political agenda of the anti-American crowd, but it does not serve history or the nation very well. McCarthy was a golden boy from Wisconsin, the youngest sitting judge ever appointed in that state, and the youngest man to be elected from that state to the U.S. Senate. He married a Washington beauty queen after moving to the capital. Because of his natural talent and intellectual and moral strength, he was on the fast track to high places. He sacrificed his personal ambitions in order to confront no-kidding Communists who had infiltrated the U.S. at high levels, and his efforts helped lead to the conviction of Alger Hiss and other documented Communist spies. Secret Soviet cables known as the Venona Project which were declassified in 1995 have removed any doubt about this. It may sound far-fetched, given all the modern nonsense you have heard about McCarthy, but his true legacy was not one of forcing patriotism on innocent little children, an association you seem to draw. It was one of courageous, though imperfect, defense of the world’s freest and best political institutions. Again, I commend him to your prudent investigation.

I hope this helps you understand my point of view, and that of others advocating both formal, public patriotism, and inner, personal patriotism. This country is great. This country is good. Loving it deeply enough to advocate public ceremonies which reflect that love is not dangerous, but healthy. Naturally, I would be happy to answer your open letter, should you care to send one, with one of my own.

Best regards to you, and thank you again for taking the time both to write and follow up.

Dave Schultheis

See Rep. Schultheis Responds to Constituent on Pledge of Allegiance
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Want more words of wisdom from this homophobic and immigrant-phobic dingbat, Dave Schultheis? How about his website’s headliner quote against being tolerant? Here it is then…

“Tolerance is a virtue of a man without convictions.” — G. K. Chesterton, who strongly influenced C.S. Lewis

So who is this G.K. Chesterton whose quote Schultheis puts on his website? He became a major Catholic apologist right at the time that the Catholic Church was solidly fascist in its sentiments in countries like Spain and Italy. Here below is part of wikipedia’s description of Chesterton…

Accusations of anti-Semitism
Both Chesterton and Belloc have faced accusations of anti-Semitism during their lifetimes and subsequently.[17] Their criticisms of the “international Jewish banking families” are some of the most important reasons for these accusations. For example, Chesterton, Belloc, and Chesterton’s brother Cecil, were vehement critics of the Isaacs, who were involved in the Marconi scandal in the years before World War I.[18] George Orwell accused Chesterton of being guilty of “endless tirades against Jews, which he thrust into stories and essays upon the flimsiest pretexts.”[19]

In The New Jerusalem, Chesterton made it clear that he believed that there was a “Jewish Problem” in Europe, in the sense that he believed that Jewish culture (not Jewish ethnicity) separated itself from the nationalities of Europe.[20] He suggested the formation of a Jewish homeland as a solution, and was later invited to Palestine by Jewish Zionists who saw him as an ally in their cause. In 1934, after the Nazi Party took power in Germany he wrote that:

In our early days Hilaire Belloc and myself were accused of being uncompromising Anti-Semites. Today, although I still think there is a Jewish problem, I am appalled by the Hitlerite atrocities. They have absolutely no reason or logic behind them. It is quite obviously the expedient of a man who has been driven to seeking a scapegoat, and has found with relief the most famous scapegoat in European history, the Jewish people.[21]

The Wiener Library (London’s archive on anti-semitism and Holocaust history) has defended Chesterton against the charge of anti-Semitism: “he was not an enemy, and when the real testing time came along he showed what side he was on.”[22]

Chesterton condemned the Nuremberg Laws, and he died in 1936, as the Hitlerite antisemitic measures were temporarily decreased due to the Berlin Olympics, long before lethal persecution by the Nazis would start.

G. K. Chesterton From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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More? Here is State Senator Schultheis touting sales of a book that decries homosexuals as being just what? …’The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today’! See Intolerant Dave on Homosexuality

Hey, did you know that? They are the principal threat to religious freedom protected by none other than Dave Schultheis! (and CS daily, The Gazette! They share this nutty view that Christians are under major attack, too). Poor Christians…. Who can save them from the fags?

Yes, Dave Schultheis of Colorado State District 9 is lost in a Black Hole of Stupidity, but that’s North Colorado Springs for you! And Dave Schultheis is one of the few remaining living, openly McCarthyite fossils left in America! Incredible! And how he manages to fuse together MLK with Joseph McCarthy is an amazing feat! Only in Colorado do we have such genius! It’s an amazing place!

Obama outed himself as a bigot when he crawled into bed with Rick Warren

Just like Clinton, Obama won’t hesitate to throw gays to the dogs if he thinks it will buy him a single vote from the rabid right. I told you he wasn’t to be trusted. And just as we saw with Prop 8, most of the black community only wants equal rights for themselves, not anybody else.
 
Say it out loud: Barack Obama is a coward.

Of course, Obama openly declared his bigotry against gays before the election, declaring they did not deserve equal rights in marriage. So this really shouldn’t surprise anyone that he would flip off the gay community like this. “Change we can believe in,” my ass.

During the campaign, I had so many arguments with his supporters, who insisted that he was the miracle that would make everything right with America. When confronted with the reality of his positions (as on gays) they would insist that was only to get elected, but, “just you watch,” once he was, then we would see the “real Obama.” Well, Ladies and Germs, the election is over, and there it is: the REAL Obama — flipping the bird to his supporters.

Only a moron would think his hiring every right winger he can find somehow doesn’t mean his is going to be a right wing administration.

What, am I the only one who realized what being a Chicago politician meant? It means he’s an asshole who can’t be trusted. But now I suspect a lot of his supporters are beginning to realize that. Though there will always be those who will defend him, no matter what — just like those Republicans who constantly made excuses for Dubya, or those born-again Christians who spend their entire lives dreaming up excuses for their “god.” People are pathetically stupid.

Disgraced: 66 nations in the UN have backed a resolution decriminalizing homosexuality.

Big hold outs: the USA, Russia, China, and the Vatican.

The nations that are more progressive than this dying backwater: Albania, Andorra, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chile, Colombia, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Gabon, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Guinea-Bissau, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Montenegro, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Paraguay, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Timor-Leste, United Kingdom, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s Dec 29 notes, thomasmc.com.

What to do with that prick?

penisA US analysis of data has thrown a new loop into what to do with the world’s pricks? I know that many women are especially interested in this question, especially America’s nurses, who often debate this question amongst themselves for hours at a time. Shocking, but true…. but Circumcision HIV impact doubted!

Sexism and the City

Miranda and SteveI’ve been revisiting old episodes of Sex and the City a lot lately. It’s a fun show for a girl to watch. New York City neighborhoods, ultra-chic fashions, Manolo Blahnik shoes, ever-changing hairstyles. And an endless stream of nameless but memorable lovers.

The show becomes decidedly less fun when any of the girls ends up in a serious relationship. Can a long-term partnership ever compare favorably to a brand new sex-soaked love fest? Surely not. I can handle Carrie and Mr. Big because Christopher Noth is incredibly dashing and always just a hair out of reach. And Charlotte can have Harry because she’s the show’s I-believe-in-love ingenue and she needs monogamy. But the relationship between Miranda, the successful attorney, and Steve, the soft-spoken bartender, is a huge drag to watch.

Miranda is the least attractive of the girlfriends and her personality is off-putting. Brooklyn boy Steve-with-a-heart-of-gold is able to overlook her coarse communication style and soften her with his sympathetic ear and tender loving ways. Okay, fine. I could take that for a few weeks.

But for some godforsaken reason the writers let this stupid relationship go on until Miranda winds up preggers, wants to abort, can’t because Steve’s so adorably earnest, has the baby, decides to keep Steve, blah blah blah. The writers should’ve killed them both off right then. There should be no happily ever after on Sex and the City. The whole point of the show is the friendship between the women. Men are unreliable, thus expendable. But girlfriends are forever.

The thing I really hate about the Miranda-Steve relationship is the whole rich girl/poor boy thing. Charming initially but odious when morphed into powerful-manly-girl/emasculated-but-fighting-nobly boy. Financially secure Miranda is portrayed as shallow, greedy, hardened and immoral, while affable loser Steve is the white knight come to love her into domestic simplicity.

Forget independence, ignore achievement, never mind separate identity. The message is that what we really want, in the deep recesses of our scarred hearts, is to give it all up to a good guy like Steve.

Pride Fest a good place to avoid crackers

Pride FestCOLORADO SPRINGS-
Time for Pride Fest 2008, Sunday July 20 in Acacia Park. Its summer fair atmosphere is what Springs Spree used to be, reinforcing a fun, intimate sense of community. What’s Pride got that Springs Spree or Territory Days do not?
I have a theory. Homophobia.

It’s the same reason a gay bar has the best dance scene. Fewer idiots afraid of caching the gay bug. Bigotry, idiocy, poverty, obesity, fit a socio-economic profile that tends to be uneducated, uncultured and I’ll say it, lousy company. Homosexuality may cut across the same proportional demographic sample, but at least at the annual Pride Fest the conversationally-challenged are outnumbered by the heterosexual social-minded participants. My true colors.

An obsession with the boyish figure

Fashion designers share an obsession with Catholic priestsWas this magazine ad for Calvin Klein’s OBSESSION FOR MEN controversial because it featured an underage Kate Moss disrobed, or because it winked at the greater fashion culture fixation masquerading as the androgynous waif look: the sexualized, pure, although suggestively available, almost shapeless, pretty, prepubescent boy?

More statistics to sleep on

I hear that less than 25% of the American public knows approximately how many US soldiers have died in Iraq. The total as of today is 3,986. Two other US statistics of note: of men in prison and teenage girls:

The 4,000 death was predicted to fall a month from now, until a casual suicide bomber ambled up to a group of our soldiers. The death toll was five, though I find it beyond curious that Iraqi observers were insistent it had been six.

ONE PERCENT of all Americans is behind bars. The number represents 7% of all Black Americans, 11% of young black males, and 3% of Hispanic males. The work gulag capitalist enterprise system in China boasts the next highest incarceration rate, where the percentage of the Chinese population imprisoned is 0.1%.

One in four teenage American girls have an STD. That’s three million girls aged 14-19. 48% of all black girls, 20% of white girls. In 18% of the cases the STD is genital warts.

Pastor Billy, there are some real nuts and perverts out in Manitou Springs

There is a building out there in Manitou Springs that is full of nuts. The building houses the remnants of Pastor Billy Hargis’s ‘Christian Crusade’ , Hargis being a commie-phobic radio evangelist from Texarkana, who lost his ministry when caught screwing with both man and wife in a married couple whose marriage he had just performed! Talking to each other they both discovered that they had both lost their virginity to Billy! Some ministry it certainly was!

Here is how Manitou based Summit Minstries and their ex-Billy Hargis disciple, Pastor David A. Noebel, was described in PublicEye.org back in 1993.

Summit Ministries
Summit Ministries of Manitou Springs, Colorado, is a little-known Religious Right organization whose work is national in scope. It is a 30-year-old Christian organization specializing in educational materials and summer youth retreats. Its president is Rev. David A. Noebel, formerly a prominent preacher in Rev. Billy James Hargis’s Christian Crusade. As early as 1977, Noebel authored The Homosexual Revolution, in which he claims that “homosexuality rapidly is becoming one of America’s most serious social problems.” He has also written several books claiming that rock’n’roll and soul music are communist plots to corrupt US youth. Summit Ministries later published AIDS: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome: A Special Report, co-authored by David Noebel, Wayne C. Lutton, and Paul Cameron. For the last several years, virtually every issue of The Journal, Summit Ministries’ monthly newsletter, has contained several anti-homosexual entries. Summit Ministries has just published Noebel’s new book, Understanding the Times: The Story of the Biblical Christian, Marxist/Leninist and Secular Humanist Worldviews.

Noebel’s background with Rev. Billy James Hargis’s Christian Crusade helps to explain the historical friendly relationship between Summit Ministries and the John Birch Society (JBS). Both the Christian Crusade and the John Birch Society represent a political sector known in political science literature as the “old right.” Born out of the conviction that communism was rampant in the United States, both organizations believed that the civil rights movement was manipulated by communists, that the National Council of Churches promoted communism, and that the United Nations was controlled by communists. In 1962, Rev. Billy James Hargis purchased an old resort hotel in Manitou Springs, which was renamed The Summit. The Summit became a retreat and anti-communism summer college.

Summit’s relationship with the John Birch Society is deeper than mere ideological affinity. In fact, in 1983, a donor responding to a John Birch Society fundraising letter sent a check to Robert Welch of JBS, and received a thank-you letter from Welch. The check, however, was made out to Summit Ministries.

Rev. David Noebel was a member of the John Birch Society until at least 1987, and for many years Summit Ministries took out full-page advertisements for its summer youth retreats in Review of the News and American Opinion, two John Birch Society publications.

Summit Ministries is also politically close to Dr. James Dobson and Focus on the Family. Dr. Dobson, especially since moving to Colorado, leads seminars at Summit Ministries, and his endorsement of Summit’s work was prominent in Summit’s material promoting its 30th anniversary. David Noebel is on the advisory board of Colorado for Family Values.
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to see the full article go to Constructing Homophobia
Colorado’s Right-Wing Attack on Homosexuals

Also check out Summit Ministries itself. And for more about David A. Noebel and his Billy James Hargis connections see wikipedia.

And for more about how the Rightwing preacher was laid low by sexual scandal see the 2004 obituary for him in The Guardian.

Boeing and Torture- a local company’s business

Boeing is one of the military leech contractors who have their local Colorado Springs offices at the corner of Academy and Fountain, where Peace Activists have held several vigils, one just recently. Driver-byers hardly notice the place and that is much the way military leeches like to keep it. Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah was tortured under the direction of the US government, and in US courts is now suing a subsidiary of Boeing for having flown him on their ‘rendition’ flights.

Aren’t you proud to be an American? More about this case and another local military leech called CACI and their involvement in torture also. ‘Black Site’ Survivor Relates Horrific Tale

Hillary the Hoss

Zogby says that is there was an election today, that Hillary Clinton would lose to any and all of the top 5 Republican contenders for president. Does Zogby (like many pollsters) have a hidden agenda that he is using his crafted poll results to promote, or is Hillary the Hoss that unpopular for real?

Let’s face it, the voting part of the public, according to Zogby, currently would prefer Mormon Milt in office more than it would Hillary! Now that’s a sign that the return of the Clintons is not something the public actually wants. But why not?

I think that there are two reasons. First off, many think correctly that Clintonism is Bush-lite. We couldn’t have gotten Dubya without first having a Slick in office. In Texas, we got Dubya after having mealy mouthed Ann Richards in as governor.

Clintonism is kind of like a ‘vaccine’ to prepare us for the plague…. and we get it. We hurt so bad and then some demand to have ‘the vaccine’ back again even. It’s a vaccine that makes you sick and sicker.

Reason # 2 IMO is the sex division. Ditto heads amongst the male side can handle fascist minded idiots like Donald, Dubya, and Dick quite well, as can their ditto-headed wives who are accustomed to that mindset, and get it in heavy doses in their cathedrals and homes. But when the lineup is reversed, such as it was with Janet (Reno), Madelyn (Albright), and Hillary around, the ditto minded males begin to retch, grimace, growl, and become quite psychotic. That’s alarming, too, to their women folk. They just want to protect their investments.

So what big negatives Hillary has as Hoss in the hoss race! Strangely enough, conservative men prefer their corporate whores to be male, and not female. That’s going to work against Hillary the Hoss. Apparently many top conservatives, even prefer all their whores to be male! That’s a known fact now.. we just can’t get away from it any longer.

Still, Hillary the Hoss has quite a grip on The Machine and even Zogby’s nay-saying can’t probably break it. We are in for a truly comic ‘election’ so laugh through your tears if you can? The breakdown of society can get ugly when it was actually an insane asylum to begin with. We can rest assured that there is madness that lies ahead… Hillary or no Hillary as Hoss, the Boss.

Teletubby Tinky Winky and Prof Dumbledore are outed!

Telebubby Tinky Winky is outed! And in other breaking news, Professor Dumbledore’s own mentor, JK, has turned on her own creation and revealed his deadly secret. Yes, Professor Dumbeldore likes young male Hogworts!

I smell yet more literature ahead here for inquiring young minds coming from this wealthy writer! But Tinky Winky’s career is probably over, as is Professor Dumbledore’s. Now, can somebody clear up this nastiness about Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson?

Almost $1 billion payout in Southern California alone!

Remember back when the Catholic Church was trying to stonewall and lead the public into believing that the pedophiles in The Church were a minor and isolated aberration?
 
That certainly has changed hasn’t it? In the last 2 months the Catholic Church has had to fork over almost $1,000,000,000 in Southern California alone to their former victims of their pedophile priests! And how many victims more are there than just the ones now getting compensation?
 
See the BBC report- US Church agrees sex abuse payout

Taps for Larry Craig? Maybe not.

Officer Dave Karsnia
My 9-year-old twins learned about stereotypes in school last week. Ever eager to share social messages they receive while in the hands of the state, knowing that hours of rollicking fun will result, they vomited the latest rhetoric gleefully into my lap.

This is a picture of Dave Karsnia, the Minneapolis cop who took down Larry Craig. He received the Officer of the Year award in 2003 from none other than Dick Cheney, which somehow seems appropriate. Karsnia has, based on my limited exposure to all things gay, the look of a cute young, uh, gay guy. Without the adorable personality no doubt. I wonder what would’ve transpired if the officer had resembled Dennis Franz in NYPD Blue?

Why isn’t the gay community outraged that the state has hijacked its image and used it for nefarious purposes against them? Aren’t we shielded from self-incrimination by the Constitution? Perhaps the Constitution was what Larry Craig was reaching for on the floor of the bathroom stall. To wipe his lyin’ heinie. Thank god he didn’t flush. Whatever.

I actually wanted to post the transcript of a call made, before the big press conference announcing the intended resignation, by Craig to his attorney Billy Martin. Craig accidentally left the message on a complete stranger’s phone. Mother of God. If I were his wife I would be so pissed. Larry! Good Lord, pull your head out now and then!

“Yes, Billy, this is Larry Craig calling. You can reach me on my cell. Arlen Specter is now willing to come out in my defense, arguing that it appears by all that he knows that I have been railroaded and all that.

“Having all of that, we have reshaped my statement a little bit to say it is my intent to resign on Sept. 30. I think it is important for you to make as bold a statement as you are comfortable with this afternoon, and I would hope you could make it in front of the cameras.

“I think it would help drive the story that I’m willing to fight, that I’ve got quality people out there fighting in my defense, and that this thing could take a new turn or a new shape, it has that potential. Anyway, give me a buzz or give Mike a buzz on that. We’re headed to my press conference now. “Thank you. Bye.”

Go figure. I can’t imagine that Arlen Specter is supporting Larry Craig for altruistic reasons. It certainly can’t be indignation about civil liberties under fire, nor state-sponsored stereotyping. It must have something to do with partisan House politics. As usual. I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough.

Tucker Carlson sitting in a tree

Do you care whether Tucker Carlson head-bashed a gay man in a bathroom stall, or was on the receiving end, or wants to pretend he could have done it, or that it didn’t happen at all? The point is, Carlson described it with a gay-bashing swagger, and his TV colleagues laughed about it like they would have loved to have been there. Gay bashing and laughing about it, is not only not PC, it’s not acceptable. Tucker Carlson is a little creep for many reasons, and now for hate speech. Profuse apologies and commitment to sensitivity training or bye-bye.

UPDATE:
Oh my goodness. For some reason I thought Tucker Carlson and his bow tie were discovered on the Jeopardy Tournament of Champions. It turns out he’s not even a graduate of Trinity College, he’s connected. His father was a broadcaster, ambassador, head of the CPB, and they’re related to the Swansons frozen food fortune.

Jane Eyre, Bertha Mason and Grace Poole

And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dream’d—Ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dream’d
On the cold hill’s side.
 
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—“La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!”
 
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.

I’ve always been captivated by archetypes of the feminine pariah.
These are the vixens about which cautionary yarns are spun to bridle man’s lust by fomenting a distrust of his opposite sex. They especially served to poison the power of woman, particularly when it was derived from her sexuality.

Can it be coincidence that the promulgators of these literary tales were often gay?

Keats fleshed out a famous Circe of the middle ages, a woman who without mercy would seduce a knight to his death in the woods.

There are sirens of course, and la grande dame Delilah, and all forms of emasculating succubi. Another variant has been haunting me from gothic images in black and white which I remember from my youth, of the film Jane Eyre.

Do you remember poor Rochester? He was not free to love Jane owing to an entanglement kept secret, his wife, become mad, kept for her own safety locked on an upper floor. Her sudden offscreen cackle was one of the most haunting sounds ever.

I remember warning myself to avoid Rochester’s fate, that of caretaker to a self-destructive, utterly irrational woman, in the character of Bertha Mason.

Actually, I believe the mad woman is at the core of every romantic villainess. Why would a mate wish her suitor harm were she not insane? Excepting the entrepreneurial black widow, a woman can be sympathetic and maternal, like your mother, or she can be a femme fatale leading you to self destruction.

Charlotte Bronte humanized the cautionary stereotype, but externalized two malevolent wild cards — multiple personality and drink. I’d forgotten these elements until reacquainting myself with the plot just now. There was a second woman, Grace Poole, charged with looking after the mad wife. Grace however, was prone to drunken bouts. Bertha seized those opportunities to escape and wreak destruction.

Even when Bertha set the castle alight, Rochester fought through the fire to save her, losing his hand and his sight in the attempt. Whether you attributed her actions to insanity, or metaphysically to Rochester’s due for having lived the life of a rake, blame ultimately did not lie with Bertha, nor with careless Grace, herself a victim of a vice.

Would Rochester have been so honor bound to Bertha if her homicidal lunges had been ignited by her own intemperance? I wonder.

Not a homosexual, Craig is a hypocrite

Larry Craig offers his handWhen he says “I did nothing wrong,” does conservative Senator Larry Craig mean:
I did not lead the attack against gay rights as well as carp on and on about Bill Clinton’s impropriety?

Was Larry Craig peering into your stall in the bathroom? No. He was sizing up a man who appeared to be lingering there while others pooped and went. Smells something of entrapment to me. I can see airport travelers complain about hearing sex acts in neighboring bathroom stalls, but not for fear of unwarranted solicitation. Why are policemen detailed to interrupt a time-honored last resort among few social options for closeted lonely guys?

I believe Senator Craig when he says he’s not gay. To a homophobic conservative, the idea of a male partner may seem dirtier than a quick lewd act to feed his nagging alter-ego.

That said, I’m damn glad he’s unmasked for the humanity-hater he is. The GOP plays by no rules. We should celebrate the rare occasion it works for the common good.

Here he is calling Bill Clinton a “nasty, bad, naughty boy.”

Undercover urinal duty

policing the bathroomWhat’s with up with Republican legislators and men’s rooms? I love that the media is complicit in trying to limit the damage: disorderly conduct, ’nuff said. Though I also loved the subversively dismissive: what happened was “he said, he said.”
 
What are so many undercover cops doing in public men’s rooms? If they are following these senators, fantastic. But I rather think they’re targeting the usual suspects, gay men.

I confess an unnatural aversion to public restrooms. So I didn’t know they are out of control. Are they absolutely plagued by lonely homosexuals? Isn’t the gay hookup in a public urinal a time-honored tradition? I’d think consensual sex is a rather victimless crime. Or do police departments get the complaint all the time that Boy George is bugging them in the boys bathroom, man can’t pee in peace?

I’ve never been solicited in a men’s room. Does that mean I have yet to encounter a homosexual, a Republican senator, or it seems more likely, a cop?

I had to say something

James Harris has a great interview on Alternet with Mike Jones, friend and counselor of Ted Haggard. It is about his book, the one rejected by local lizard small shop keeper Poor Richard, and is titled, ‘I had to say something’. Thank good he did say something, too.

Jones is quite a contrast to many in America, who turn their back on the issues and turn their back on their own liberal communities and constituencies in cowardly, defeatist, and self serving manners. Leadership on issues and causes often can come from stranger quarters, while those who stand as leaders often or not leading.

If you get this book ordered from elsewhere, be sure to go into Poor Richards, and let the employees know that their owner, Richard Skorman is a pathetic nitwit for not carrying the book in his bookstore. With Democratic Party tied ‘liberals’ like Skorman all over America, rest assured that their call to reform that political party is as weightless as the multitude of advocates for that political orientation themselves.

Resistance to gay marriage is inevitable

Avenue Bistro on Nevada Avenue in downtown Colorado SpringsGay Pride kicked off this week at the Avenue Bistro on Nevada where a banner on the terrace reads GAY MARRIAGE IS INEVITABLE. May I just say, not to dampen the optimism, but what an unfortunate choice of a taunt.
 
Inevitable? Like death and taxes? Both are acknowledged certainties, but who relinquishes to either without a fight? Over my dead body would be my involuntary response, and I favor gay marriage. What kind of reaction does the gay movement expect to provoke from their detractors?

The decline and fall of Roman Empire was inevitable, as most certainly shall be ours. Is such the inevitability gay marriage advocates want to conjure? The association would be foremost on the Colorado Springs Fundamentalist mind I would guess. Don’t you see Sodom and Gomorrah haunting the imaginations of those resolved to protect the sanctity of marriage from the [sweaty] grasp of homosexuals? My biblical knowledge is limited, was there a sex act of preference in Gomorrah?

The new Bistro banner replaced a straggler from last year’s campaign, featuring the dog who mooed, a theme wisely euthanized (to injure the concept further). To my mind that poor dog was an incredibly ill advised analogy for diversity of sexual orientation. Accept him or not, celebrate him if you were so inclined, but a dog who said moo by definition was not natural.

John Howard, Australia’s lunatic leader

Just what type of man is John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia? The answer is that he is the spitting public image of George W. Bush, our own lunatic president. In other words, he’s a bumpkin fool.

Here he is, pushing legislation to outlaw pornography and alcohol for all Australians. Just kidding. He’s just going to outlaw those baddies for aborigines! Aborigines face ban on alcohol and porn But only aborigines in one District! If they behave 1/2 of a year, then they can then drink and do pornography once again if Howard sez it’s OK!

Talk about blaming the victims for their problems, ay? What next? Requiring all Australian gays to wear condoms, while straights will not have that legal directive? With John Howard sniffing cane toad toxins, any ol’ thing might go down?

John Howard needs to be sent to Guantanamo for Australia’s protection it seems. He supports what Guantanamo is all about anyway, and there he can partake of the strict discipline he is in favor of for Australian aborigines and other moral defectives. He’s quite a bit defective himself.

Where does the ruling class get these guys? Tom Tancredo for President anybody?

Let me show you Bad Writing

New Life self awarenessPoor Richard writes that his bookstore will neither carry the Ted Haggard expose nor host a book signing by its author Mike Jones, sex worker to reluctant habitue, Ted Haggard. Skorman can do what he wishes, but to say the reason is because the book is badly written is a cop out. Any bookseller in this city has to admit they carry a not inconsiderable mass of atrocious dreck. Bad books sell, and alas Richard’s stand for a higher literary standard is the first to my knowledge.

I think Jones’ choice of an incompetent writer to ghost his Haggard Days memoir is likely spot-on for a Colorado Springs audience. What’s the best selling book here? The home-grown LEFT BEHIND series! I guarantee you a fourth grader has not encountered less inspired writing.

Not that our city is atypical, even today’s NYT bestsellers play to a descending literary IQ. From Dan Brown to whoever is your cheesy favorite I’ve no doubt. This phenomena was clocked most distinctly when Stephen King was given the 2003 National Book Award for his contribution to [the sales of] American Letters. What a banner year it was, 2003.

So why pick on poor male escort Mike Jones? I think it’s pure political cowardice. The New Life Crew and their fallen gay-bashing leader have done irreparable harm to the progress of acceptance of homosexuals. Here’s a chance to teach them something about from where comes their misplaced hatred, and Mike Jones stands without allies to do it. Jones is not an opportunist, he’s a hero doing a dirty job. Maybe the right man for the dirty job, to crack a cheap joke, but if Jones was truly out for himself, he’d have taken a mega-fortune from a conglomeration of fundie gay-hating institutions interested in keeping Haggard in the pulpit. Remember Bill O’Reilly’s non-consensual phone-sex while penetrating himself with a lifelike vibrating phallus? He and Fox paid an undisclosed fraction of a BILLION to make that story go away.

If I knew THE BOOKMAN could handle the heat of accusations that we were only doing it for the attention –we’ve exceeded our limit, thank you KVOR creeps particularly– my bookstore would of course host this reading and book signing. And I commend Jones for tastefully steering past whatever might have been the unwelcome lascivious play by play.

I believe the Ted Haggard comeuppance is of capital importance for Colorado Springs, not to gloat about Haggard’s suffering or about the humiliation of his flock, but to lift the veil from their self-hatred of homosexuals. Haggard is unrepentant about this by the way, and if I might offer a simplified analysis, he hates gays because he hates himself. What reason has he the temerity to suggest that we should hate them?

Let’s welcome Mike Jones to our town. Jones unmasked the Haggard hate monster, let him claim the lair. Jones can satiate our curiosity, feed the spectacle, accept our thanks for showing personal integrity, and move this story along. I most certainly think it took a lot of bravery for Mike Jones to do what he did. He showed the kind of courage we can’t even summon, as we deliberate about whether to extend him our hand.

Perhaps as a community of independent booksellers we can do it. Why ever are we afraid of the religious right? They don’t buy our books. When Christians do buy a book they buy it new from an Inspirational Bookstore, because it feels like a more deliberate investment in their faith, I’ve heard it explained, sort of like paying down on a tithe or Indulgence.

Do I fear the Fundamentalist wrath? If they’re under-educated, under-literate, bigoted ditto-heads, of course I do. I fear them like I would Brown Shirts or union busters. Fundamentalist have a terrible tradition for that kind of immorality. Ask anyone in retail, if a customer declares themselves to be a Christian, you actually have to watch them closely because experience has shown they are more likely to try to steal or cheat. Probably because that’s the sort of conflicted person who is drawn to simplistic religious dogma in the first place.

Of course I fear them. But Ted Haggard’s fall must not go without every spotlight we can summon. He’s still behaving like a bastard and we really should shout him down. Jones has given us Haggard’s Achilles Heinie/ [Meth]Habit, let’s use it! If no one is really going to step up to ask Mike Jones to town, I most certainly will. I’m sorry I came late to this discussion but good grief!