You Are Dumb - Gay Issues

Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:15:47 -0500

Gay Issues, 18 July 2008

Memo to Mark Sanford and David Thomas: GAY GAY GAY GAY GAY GAY GAY GAY GAY.

Man, I bet you're really uncomfortable now. I know you're very busy these days trying to convince people that you're OK with gay people, but you should just stop bothering. By your actions and your words we shall know you, and your actions are stupid and your words are even more stupid.

The trouble started when a British ad agency contracted with six locales - Atlanta, Boston, New Orleans, South Carolina, Vegas, and D.C. to be part of a campaign promoting gay tourism in England. As part of the campaign, a bunch of posters went up in the London subway system that said, oh, just as a random example, "South Carolina Is So Gay". One of these six locations reacted to being called gay in much the same way as a seventh grader, scrambling frantically to get the cooties off, pull out of the ad campaign prematurely, and not pay the $5,000 they owed to be part of it.

This was, of course, the only locale with the word "South" featuring prominently in its name, and it was, of course, Republican state senator David Thomas and Republican governor Mark Sanford talking in very deep voices, slapping each other on the back, and bragging about how much poontang South Carolina gets from its Canadian girlfriend you've never met. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"We welcome anyone to visit our state. But we agree with Sen. Thomas about using tax money to promote any group with a particular social or political agenda." - Mark Sanford's spokesman, Joel Sawyer.

First of all, congratulations, gay people! While the rest of us have to spend years thinking, evaluating, growing, and deciding on our personal social and political agenda, you're BORN with yours, and it's a mantle you automatically assume the instant you come out of the closet. Unless, I guess, that closet is in a Log Cabin. And hey, look, a Republican homophobe managed to get the word "agenda" right in there.

Of course, travel agencies, like any other marketing agency, sells to specific demographics all the time. Did Virginia concern itself with alienating non-lovers? It did not. Does Las Vegas worry about offending sane, sleaze-free men in happy marriages? Hell no. But insinuating that South Carolina might be friendly to gays? That's a problem.

"South Carolinians will be irate when they learn their hard-earned tax dollars are being spent to advertise our state as 'so gay... [Gay tourists will] get off the plane and say, 'Where are the gay beaches?' and no one will know what they are talking about." - David Thomas, to Time Magazine.

But remember, they're not homophobic. They just think that gay travelers will immediately seek out all the gay things they heard about from the travel agency before hitting the baggage check. Gay things that obviously do not exist in South Carolina, because if they did, South Carolina's upstanding, moral, straight citizenry would know about them.

The instant the bad publicity started, of course, they began backtracking. The governor and senator may not like your gay kind, but they sure do like your gay euros, all shiny and full of much more monetary value than straight dollars. Behold, as the forces of free-market capitalism war with the forces of bigotry in the souls of asshole Republicans!

"If a homosexual is attracted here, that's great. But I have a problem with tax money being spent on ads with a social viewpoint, particularly with sexual orientation." - Governor Sanford, ensuring not only that gay tourists will want to avoid South Carolina like it's Larry Craig's stall, but also ensure that the gay people IN South Carolina wish the economy weren't so shitty so they could get the fuck out. I hear Washington D.C., Boston, and Atlanta are so gay.

Local gay and lesbian groups, by the way, raised the $5,000 the state reneged on with the ad agency in an awesome bit of public-relations jujitsu that makes Sanford and Sen. look even more fucking ridiculous. But I think we should go one step further. So if you're flying into South Carolina anytime soon, do me a favor. As you walk through the airport and vicinity, ask any local you can find where the gay beaches are, preferably in an obviously fake British accent. If you have a monocle, bring that too. If we do this enough, they'll all have to learn where the gay beaches are in self defense, and South Carolina really will be just a little bit gayer.

You Keep Using That Word, "Intolerant"

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 22:28:23 -0500

Gay Issues, 6 September 2007

Memo to James Kerchick: YOU ARE DUMB. And yes, that's intolerant. And no, I don't give a fuck.

One of the long-standing canards of right-wing assholes is that the left is hypocritically intolerant. The argument goes something like this. Some people on the left have called some people on the right "intolerant". Therefore, everybody on the left must be tolerant of everything, or they are being intolerant, and since they've levied that claim against conservatives, they are therefore hypocrites.

Frankly, if conservatives can feel free to completely ignore logical inconsistencies that actually exist, I think liberals should reserve the right to completely ignore logical inconsistencies that can only exist within a superstructure of willful misunderstanding. But since that would make this a very short column, allow me to explain it to any dense motherfuckers that might be wandering through.

Liberals are intolerant. They're just not hypocritical about it. The word "intolerant" is shorthand for a specific set of attitudes - not just the intolerance itself, but the target of that intolerance. It contains within it historical and political connotations. You know, the same way "met the benchmark" doesn't actually mean "met a benchmark", but rather a complicated process by which the observer can position himself in such a way that it sort of looks like the benchmark has almost been met.

Today's specific example is James Kerchick, who wrote an article in the Boston Globe magazine about a month ago chastising the entire vast majority of liberal gays for being intolerant of conservative gays, like him. He based this, I shit you not, over the fact that he got dumped. By a liberal. Who used the excuse "I can’t date someone with a different belief system." Which is probably an excuse for Can't Fucking Stand Being Around You One More Second, but we'll take the guy at face value, because it leads to the following genius argument from Kerchick. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"But with him, as with other liberals I know, tolerance does not always extend to appreciating someone else’s differing political views. Now living in Cambridge and having grown up in the suburbs of Boston and gone to school at Yale, I’ve been surrounded by liberals for nearly all of my life. Most would be astonished to hear that they’re the most intolerant people I’ve ever met. After all, I, the supposedly closed-minded conservative, never considered this guy’s liberal politics anathema to the point of wanting to call off our relationship."

Liberals have never said you have to tolerate everything. We just say you have to tolerate things that don't personally affect you. Like two guys holding hands. Or skin color. Or whether Video Game X lets you shoot dudes in the nuts. Which is about as far away from Kerchick's relationship situation as it gets.

Conservative politics directly and negatively affect homosexuals. This is an incontestable fact. Which is what makes gay conservatives such insufferable dickheads - they have to ignore that incontestable fact in order to maintain their political view. Conversely, liberal gay politics are not threatening to gay Republicans, except to the extent that they point out how blind and stupid gay Republicans are, which at worst might make them stop being Republican.

And that right there is why Kerchick's manmate couldn't handle his being a conservative, while Kerchick can snidely hold himself up as a master of open-mindedness. If you're standing on a porch, and the guy next to is standing on a two-story roof, it's not "equal" if you both jump off. Recognizing the gravity of the situation, as it were, is not intolerance. It's self-preservation.

The rest of the article isn't particularly descript, but there is one bit that would show a shocking lack of self-awareness if it didn't come from a gay conservative, for whom said lack is a requirement. After spending paragraph after paragraph complaining about liberal intolerance and his own moral superiority, Kerchick somehow manages to drop, with a straight face, the following:

"Yet there’s a common, unattractive feature that many conservative gay men share: a serious chip on their shoulder. Being part of a community that is so intolerant of their views, gay conservatives can be embittered, patronizing, and castigatory of their gay brothers. It’s not a particularly attractive attitude."

I'd have dumped the stupid son of a bitch too. Not because I'm a liberal and he's a conservative. It'd just be exhausting having to include the words "pot", "kettle", and "black" in every single sentence for the rest of my life.

Holiday Slack

Sun, 02 Sep 2007 21:46:43 -0500

Main Column, 3 September 2007

A little something to tide you over. It's Labor Day, and nobody reads the column unless they're at work, so I thought I'd just toss off, so to speak, one quick coda on the Larry Craig bathrouhaha.

Because I was watching CNN for a bit yesterday, and realized that if you still need to know what's wrong with the current discourse and media, here we have a situation in which:

A man commits a crime.

The man provides ludicrous and implausable excuses for his crime.

The man pleads guilty to the crime.

Evidence is released showing that the man has done things along the same lines as the crime in the past.

The man resigns in discrace over the crime.

The news media then proceeds to put people on the air who call into question whether the crime actually took place.

THE FUCK? I can understand the position that maybe the police shouldn't be hanging out in bathrooms waiting to be solicited, or whether Craig got a fair shake (again, so to speak). The "side" of this whole thing where Larry Craig is simply a hetero victim of a horrible misunderstanding, and has never even thought about hot man-on-man action isn't a side. It isn't even spin. It's not even the usual ass-covering before the inevitable guilty verdict. It's just crazy wrong, and crazy wrong in a largely non-partisan fashion. I know it's not the first time defiance of clearly established fact has been used to pad out the 24-hour-news cycle, but it's one of the more blatant.

Boise II Men

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 08:17:42 -0500

Republicans, 29 August 2007

Memo to Larry Craig: MINNEAPOLIS WELCOMES YOU AND YOUR PENIS.

Before we even get started, I need to get this out of the way right now. This column is proving incredibly difficult to write - for the sole reason that there are way, way too many good titles to give it. And while the blogosphere has taken a couple of them (My Own Private Idaho, for example), they didn't catch them all. Here are some of my other ideas:

Tap Three Times On The Restroom If You Want Me (it even scans!)
Why Yes, I Da Ho
MSPenis
Is That A Potato In Your Pocket Or Are You Just Horny?
Schadenfreudian Slip
Jumpin' Jiminy*

Now that that's out of the way, things become a lot easier. Oh, sure, repetition is a BIT problematic. I mean "anti-gay Republican turns out to be self-hating closet case busted for cruising" has gone from funny, to funny because it's true, to just plain true by now. Which could be the best thing ever to gay rights.

Because at this point, conservatives have two choices. They can support gay rights, or they can oppose gay rights and have the nation automatically assume that they're secretly gay. And the only person who hates being assumed gay more than closet cases are redneck hetero bigots. Which puts the whole lot of them in one huge fucking quandary, doesn't it?

The story's all over the non-Fox news, so I will spare you a blow-by-blow, as it were, of the details to focus on three things I see as fascinating.

First, he got busted in the men's room of the Minneapolis Saint Paul International Airport. This is the closest I've ever come to being in an actual place where a nationally famous illicit sex or sex solicitation incident happened, and I'd just like to say, EW. Not that the airport bathrooms aren't kept reasonably clean and nice, but the crowds! On the big list of erection-ruiners, a hundred dudes fresh off their connecting flight, trying to manage their flies with one hand and their oversized wheeled carry-on in the other, is pretty close to the top.

Second, his excuse that his foot was encroaching into the other stall because he has a "wide stance". Now, I'm a big guy. Six foot one. I mention this only because I had opportunity to use a narrow stall in a public restroom after hearing about Craig, and since the rest of the place was empty, I tried to see if a wide stance could get my foot into the Gay Danger Zone.

The answer is, surprisingly, yes. But only if your pants are up. If you're actually using the bathroom for shitting, your stance is only as wide as your waistband allows. And while Craig ain't svelte, the only way his foot could have strayed accidentally is if he was shitting at a 30 degree angle. And that's the last place in the world I want to be with a protractor.

And finally, one quick thing about his other excuse - that his hand was flailing around under the stall because he was picking up a piece of paper - a piece of paper the arresting officer said doesn't exist. But giving Craig the benefit of the doubt, does it really scream "I'm straight" to be so fastidious about clutter that you're compelled to pick up stray paper off of public bathroom floors? Not only is it a bit Queer Eye For The Straight Stall, but the guy's a US Senator and a Republican. That means he doesn't do things that other people do for him, including and especially cleaning up bathrooms.

Beyond those funny particulars, though, there really isn't anything that special about Larry Craig. He's one amongst many. Another name on the list, another "for a good time call" etched above the toilet paper roll of the body politic.

*Based on Craig's frequent use of the quaint term "Jiminy!" during his previous denials of his gayitude. No, I am not making that up.

Beyond Me

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 22:38:24 -0500

Florida, 24 August 2007

Memo to Bob Allen: OK, YOU GOT ME.

Various other items and priorities have kept me, until now, from mentioning the single most fucking astonishing thing I saw while I was on vacation. Something so stupid that I literally cannot figure it out. It boggles my mind.

No, worse than that. It Boggles my mind. It takes all the words and letters that would normally be in my head, shakes them around, then spends sixty seconds making a bunch of new words out of them - words that make no sense when chained together.

You may remember the curious case of Bob Allen, Florida state representative, who just pled not guilty after being arrested for allegedly offering $20 to give an undercover cop a hummer. As Allen was a staunch Family Values Republican, this of course was hilarious.

While I was gone, as I'm sure many of you saw, police released Allen's post-arrest interview with police. In it, Allen said he only made the offer because he thought the undercover cop, a "stocky, black guy", was going to rob him.

Herein lies the source of my confusion. Because not only is there no way whatsoever in which Allen's excuse makes sense. there's also no way whatsoever in which Allen's decision to USE THAT EXCUSE makes sense.

I mean, let's start with the idea that he's telling the truth. Let's say that he's not gay. Doesn't love dick in the slightest. But he IS a screaming racist. So when he goes into the bathroom, he sees a stocky black guy, thinks he's about to get robbed, and panics. Now, it's not easy to put my feet into the shoes of a screaming racist panicking in a bathroom, but I can see how Allen thought any one of the following might be a good idea:

Leaving the bathroom.
Giving the guy money so he won't hurt you.
Offering to suck the guy off if he won't hurt you.

I'm not saying that some of these aren't hugely better ideas than others. I'm just saying I could see how Allen, possibly coming off a viewing of an Oz season set, might settle on any of these as a valid option. What I can't see is Allen settling on TWO of them. That's just bad bargaining. Offer the money first, and have the blowjob as your fallback position.

But that's fine. Allen's excuse makes no sense because he's probably lying like crazy. But what a lie! It's quite possibly the second-worst lie you could tell in that situation.* I've seen a lot of stupid, vile shit in my time doing this column, but I am completely bewildered by the thought process that led to this excuse.

Did he think it was plausible? Was he so racist that he thinks anyone would be so scared of a black guy in a bathroom that they'd do the same thing? Or is he so homophobic that he'd rather everyone thought he was incredibly racist than think he might like a bit of the old dirty sausage every now and then? What kind of man thinks that THAT is what he needs to say to escape punishment and evoke the sympathy of the masses?

And how the hell did someone that mentally deficient end up getting elected to public office... even in Florida?

*The worst lie, of course, being "I mistook the undercover cop for Hitler, and wanted to thank him for all the great work he did in the 40s with some cash and oral sex."

The Religious Kool-Aid Litmus Test

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 22:25:27 -0500

Religion, 21 August 2007

Memo to the believers: ARE YOU DUMB?

You might think you are. You might think I think you are. After all, religious stupidity does get it in the face here on a regular basis. And fuck knows, the odds aren't in your favor. But if you live your life right, it's possible to believe in an invisible sky daddy and not be dumb.

I've been trying to distill this into a simple, bulletproof rule for a while now, and I think I've finally nailed it down, with one glaring exception. The definitive religious litmus test.

If you truly believe that your God or Gods will like you better as a result of fucking up someone else's day, there is something wrong with you, your particular sub-brand of religion, or, most likely, both.

The one exception to this rule are young-earth creationists, whose harm is more long-term and societal rather than directed at specific individuals, but still have something very wrong with them.

The beautiful thing about the "fucking up someone's day" clause is that it eliminates the most common justification for shitty behavior amongst the godly: "It's for their own good." I don't care if you think that ruining someone's day is going to save their immortal soul. You're still ruining someone's day and thinking that Jesus is smiling on you for it.

The other nice thing about it is that it covers a wide variety of shitty behavior. Suicide bombings ruin people's days. Protesting funerals ruins people's days. Shoving bloody fetus pictures in a woman's face further fucks up a day that wasn't so hot to begin with. Handing out Chick tracts instead of candy at Halloween ruins a kid's day.

I'm not saying that it isn't occasionally necessary, or even fun, to fuck up someone's day. But when it's motivated by the idea that while they may be making other people uncomfortable, inconveniencing them, distressing them, or killing them, but their God demands it of them and will smile upon them, well, that strikes me as about as wrong as it gets.

The incident that clarified this all for me was the recent case of High Point Church in Arlington, Texas. It involved the funeral of one Cecil Sinclair, age 42, Navy veteran and homosexual. High Point, one of those huge projection-screen and gift-shop style megachurches, agreed to host the funeral, providing food and a video presentation featuring a montage of pictures of Sinclair. The day before the funeral, they pulled out. Reneged. Left the Sinclair family hanging. Guess why? ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"Some of those photos had very strong homosexual images of kissing and hugging. My ministry associates were taken aback." - Rev. Gary Simons.

If two men hugging and/or kissing qualifies as "very strong homosexual images", then there is no such thing as a weak, or even a moderate, or for that matter, even a strong homosexual image. Two clothed men hugging is the mildest homosexual image you can have. So apparently, High Point Church was willing to host the funeral for a gay dude as long as nobody ever actually mentioned he was gay.

This, of course, ruined the Sinclair family's day for the express purpose of pleasing his deity, a deity so great, so powerful, and so awesome that the graven image of a mansmooch under his large and lavishly-appointed mega-roof would upset him unduly.

And just in case you think I'm being unfair to Rev. Dumbfuck, enjoy this savory analogy from the Dallas Morning News.

"Perhaps a mother who is a member of the church loses a son who is a thief or murderer, Mr. Simons said. The church would surely volunteer to hold a service, he said. 'But I don't think the mother would submit photos of her son murdering someone,' he said. 'That's a red light going off.'"

That's lovely. Not enough that you cancel the funeral. Not enough that you make the family scramble for new accommodations at the last minute. No, you've got to make absolutely sure that her entire WEEK is fucked up by going to the newspaper and equating her son, dead in middle age from surgical complications, to a goddamned MURDERER because you saw a picture of him kissing another dude. And that's why Gary Simons doesn't just fail the test, he defines it.

I Know From Disapproval

Thu, 26 Jul 2007 22:42:54 -0500

Politics, 27 July 2007

Memo to Jim Naugle, poll-watchers, and Glenn Beck: YOU ARE DUMB.

I'll be going on vacation soon. Don't worry, gentle readers. I am making arrangements for your daily dose of vitriol and dick jokes to appear in this space, as if by MAGIC, while I'm gone. But just like you can't leave home for a couple of weeks without cleaning out the fridge, you can't leave the column for a couple of weeks without cleaning out the half-full jars of fruit spread that clog my research tabs. SPASTIC TOPIC MONKEY FRIDAY!

We start with the mayor of Fort Lauderdale, Jim "Fucking Buffoon" Naugle, who thinks that no price is too high to achieve his ultimate goal - the elimination of gay sex from Fort Lauderdale's public restrooms.

Never mind that the Fort Lauderdale police say it's not a big problem. Jim Naugle knows better! How does he know better? The fuzzy intersection of rampant speculation and libel law means we should all probably just work it out in our own heads. Even if working it out in the head is what's got Naugle so upset. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"We're trying to provide a family environment where people can take their children who need to use the bathroom without having to worry about a couple of men in there engaged in a sex act." - Remember this, because it's going to be important in about 45 seconds.

His proposed solution? $250,000 "robo-johns", self-cleaning, computerized portable toilets that pop open after a short time. Presumably, the developers have spent years timing huge dumps and blowjobs, and have found the precise cutoff point where the assumption of constipation stops and the conclusion of fellatio is reached. But as many of you know, when you have kids, EVERYTHING TAKES LONGER.

if you're really trying to create a family environment for kids who need to pee, what's more traumatizing for your average eight year old? Some moans and thumps from the next stall? Or a technological monstrosity that pops open before you've finished your business and secured your matching Garanimal bottoms? One of these things will be strange and confusing. The other will make them NEVER WANT TO PEE AGAIN.

And speaking of exposed polls, here's a little tip for all you political junkies, especially those of you with right-wing blogs. When you hear that Bush's approval rating is, oh 27%, and Congress's approval rating is, oh, 14%, try to remember that one of those numbers is an apple, and the other one is an orange. A fake, plastic orange, only suitable for really ugly interior decoration.

The President is one person. If person A likes him, and person B does not, that judgment is at the very least made about the same fucking dude. They may have various reasons for their like or dislike, but they're operating on a somewhat common framework.

Congress, on the other hand, is well over five hundred different people. If you're a Republican, you don't like Congress because Brit Hume told you you weren't supposed to. And if you're a Democrat, you don't like them because they haven't skewered John Ashcroft, shackled Karl Rove, and passed single payer universal health care. And if you're an independent, you don't like them because independents don't like ANYBODY.

It's a no-win situation. Which means at least the Democrats should be comfortable with it by now. But more importantly, it's COMPLETELY MEANINGLESS. In the current political climate, I'd be terrified if Congress had a -high- approval rating. Because that would mean both sides had found common ground on which to pass legislation, and the only common ground politicians have these days is fucking over anyone who isn't a politician.

And finally, Glenn Beck, the epic dipshit who, you may recall, once asked Keith Ellison to prove he wasn't working with the enemy. As we all know, one of the big problems with the media right now is that it's almost impossible to actually discredit someone. No matter what stupid shit they say, or how often they're completely wrong, if you tune in next week they'll still be in their chair, in their suit, saying something just as stupid and wrong.

But Glenn Beck's decided to take things one step further, reaching out to voices that, in saner times, were completely discredited, and giving them national airtime. Specifically, the John Birch Society.

An artifact of the Cold War, the Birch people saw Communists everywhere - especially in the Civil Rights movement, President Eisenhower, and fluoridated water. They've since turned their keen grasp of reality onto the subject of immigration, which I'm sure is a great comfort to us all. The point is, nobody's taken the John Birch Society seriously about much of anything for the past, oh, 30 years or so. Until Glenn Beck had Birch spokesman Sam Antonio* on to discuss how we are being taken over by Mexicans or some damn thing.

This means one of two things, and neither of them are good. Either Glenn Beck thinks that, for some reason, he needs to stake out a whole new claim of crazy territory to make his schtick work, or we've now all gotten so crazy that the John Birch Society is part of the mainstream. And whether he's making it happen or just pointing it out, Glenn Beck can go fuck himself with a fluoridated fountain.

*An actual person, not a character from Alien Nation.

A Pronouncement Of My Own

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 22:02:47 -0500

Movies, 20 July 2007

Memo to Adam Sandler and Kevin James: NICE TRY.

Quick caveat. For the purposes of this column, I am not criticizing the film "I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry". I can't criticize the film, because I haven't seen it, and more importantly, YOU CAN'T FUCKING MAKE ME. Instead, I will be criticizing everything I know about the movie to date, plus related items I know about society and media.

With that in mind, you know what the most astonishing thing about "I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry" is? It's less palatable to me than Three's Company, because, in a sentence I never, ever thought I'd write in my life, at least Three's Company is intellectually honest.

Hear me out. Three's Company features a character who pretends to be homosexual for personal gain, and wacky hijinx ensue when authority figures try to prove that they're really straight. "I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry" features TWO characters who do the exact same thing.

What Jack Tripper gets out of the deal are cheap rent and access to Suzanne Somers' 1970's breasts. He doesn't understand homosexuality. When necessary, he puts on a ridiculous flaming gay stereotype, because, well, it was the 70's, and that's what people did. Not people in the 70's. People on TV in the 70's.

In "Chuck and Larry", though, it's much... "nicer". It's all about a pension for Kevin James' kids. Providing for family. Presenting gay stereotypes, but in an allegedly enlightened manner. It's these man-children who have all these misconceptions about what being gay is like, and it's funny, and by the end I'm sure they'll learn something about the gay community... and themselves.

Like I said, at least Three's Company is honest about it. "Chuck and Larry", like so many other modern comedies, want to make the coin that comes with sophomoric audience members who want to laugh at the icky, uncomfortable fake gay. But they need plausible deniability to get away with it. And that's where the heartwarming shit comes in. You know, like the kids asking if Chuck and Larry are "homosexicals". Awww. Don't it make one want to fwow up?

Beyond that, though, do we really need a movie about how straight, white Average Joe Americans just can't cut a break, so they have to masquerade as minorities to get all the sweet, sweet extra benefits being gay gets you? I don't think we do.

You know what version of "Chuck and Larry" I want to see? I want to see the version where they have to have sex. They could do it tastefully. Actually, please do it tastefully. I don't need to actually see Sandler and James having sex - gay or straight, individually or together. But the movie should make them have sex.

In fact, the movie should have them have sex, and then the movie should have one or both of them enjoy it. Now THAT'S some uncomfortable, awkward comedy. And heck, if they both enjoy it, you could even give the movie a happy ending. So to speak.

But there will be no happy endings in Chuck and Larry. Just a lot of jokes about man-kissing, underpants, and Rob Schneider in Charlie Chan yellowface (but it's OK. Really. Because he's half-Filipino.) Hollywood must actually think there still aren't enough movies I want to punch.

Nonconsensual Reality

Sun, 08 Jul 2007 20:23:37 -0500

Main Column, 9 July 2007

Memo to Bill O'Reilly: STOP LYING.

Hm. That's not the most accurate command I've ever issued from the top line. I mean, yes, I'm upset that Bill O'Reilly's lying, but it's more accurate to say that I'm upset that what Bill O'Reilly said turned out not to be true.

We all know that the right wing in general, and Bill O'Reilly in particular, love to just make shit up and say it to each other. This builds up a fake network of internally consistent citations. O'Reilly can cite Drudge, Drudge can cite Malkin, and Malkin can cite O'Reilly, and like the man that goes back in time and impregnates his own mother, the genesis of the original seed becomes an ineffable mystery.

It's horrible propaganada, cancer on our society, perpetuated by a lazy corporate media that's forgotten the basic tenets of journalism blah blah blah. But there's one thing you've got to admit. When it comes to turning the Left into a viable threat, they've got some INCREDIBLE ideas.For example, as I've often said, I wish sometimes the Left really were a bunch of secular heathen atheists openly hostile to even private expressions of religion conducted by individuals in homes and/or completely apolitical houses of communal worship. Not necessarily because I think we SHOULD be that hostile, but if they're gonna be scared of us for that anyway, it'd be nice if we actually had the power and the drive to actually BE threatening.

Similarly, while I don't actively support roving gangs of hundreds of lesbians, carrying around pink pistols, raping people, and forcibly converting them to homosexuality, I want to live in a world where that happens. Because it's so much more fucking INTERESTING than the threats we actually do face. And it's easier to see coming. There's a reason ninjas don't wear pink, you know.

Alas, our world is boring and dull, and we continue to be threatened by straight old white men in suits who are crazy, stupid, and yet constantly turned to for advice. If they even HAVE pink pistols, they keep them safely tucked away out of sight of the general populace.

But that didn't stop Bill O'Reilly, who, if certain credible allegations are to be believed, masturbates constantly with a collection of vibrators, from devoting an entire segment of his show to the non-existent Lesbian Gang Threat. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"In Tennessee, authorities say a lesbian gang called GTO, Gays Taking Over, are involved in raping young girls. And in Philadelphia, a lesbian gang called DTO, Dykes Taking Over, are allegedly terrorizing people as well." Bill O'Reilly, June 21. I love that Bill O is so fucking nuts that something like this can go two weeks without people noticing.

Anyway, a couple of blogs have gone ahead and investigated, which, for O'Reilly's benefit, is when you find out if things are true before you say them. I'm glad they did, but they may have wasted their time. Like Phoenix Wright, I've spotted an important contradition in Captain Falafel's testimony. One group, Dykes Taking Over, is inherently lesbian-only. The other group apparently wouldn't mind who takes over, as long as they're Gay.

Yet, according to Bill, the more inclusive group is in Tennessee, the less inclusive group is in Philadelphia. Since this flies in the face of all known reality, so must O'Reilly's story. There are no pink-pistoled handguns, no gays or dykes actually taking over, no gunpoint, and presumably toaster-free, lesbian conversions.

And once again, liberals are left with the short end fo the stick. Not only do we have to live with the complete lack of pistol-packing women in sensible shoes, we have to deal with the fact that the Crazy Third will, forevermore, believe the lesbian gangs are waiting to jump them in the Wal-Mart parking lot, which means a bunch of short-haired male Indigo Girls fans are going to get hassled by store security if they crank their stereo too loud.

In other words, just like in his phone conversations, Bill O'Reilly leaves nobody happy except himself.

No, Look At All THOSE Members

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 05:55:10 -0500

Technology, 12 June 2007

Memo to the Pentagon: I HAVE IDEAS.

Man, there are times when even I realize I am in the wrong fucking line of work. It happens whenever I see other people getting paid large sums of money for shit I know I could do. And not just in that delusional way some people talk about actors or pro wrestlers, I mean shit I could actually do.

You know, like think up gay bombs.

This is one of those stories I know I saw when it first came out, and couldn't believe I hadn't mocked already. But an extensive search of the archives on the word "bomb" revealed nothing but an obsessive fascination with neutron bomb references. So here we go. The Pentagon. Of the United States. Wanted to build a bomb. That made the enemy gay.

It was part of a non-lethal weapons proposal from Wright Laboratory, run by the Air Force out of Dayton, Ohio. The idea was to create a chemical weapon that, when released, would make enemy troops incredibly horny for each other, causing them to abandon their mission for lots of hot gay sex. You know, like every pizza delivery guy in every porn video ever. It's the kind of idea that makes you think it was late on Friday out at Wright, the proposal was due on Monday, and the entire office had spent the morning playing Minesweeper* and fantasizing about deserts full of writhing, copulating men.

The story came out a while back thanks to the efforts of a bunch of fucking Berkeley hippies with the radical idea of using the Freedom of Information Act to look at what the government is doing. Apparently some people don't live by the aphorism about government and sausage, and actually want to know when they're slipping a little melamine into the pork links.

And speaking of slipping, sausage, and pork, the gay bomb proposal, which originated in 1994, asked for seven and a half million dollars to research a gay bomb. Seven and a half million dollars? I realize at the Pentagon that's, oh, less than one thousandth of what they "misplaced" in Iraq, that's still a lot of money just to turn people gay for a little while.

Which actually gives me an idea. If I may crib a smidge from the old Bloom County strips about the missile defense system made entirely out of paper money, why not skip the middleman? Assume an enemy army of 100,000. With a budget of $7.5 million, that means you could offer $750 to each and every soldier of the opposing army. In exchange for which they would leave the battlefield, go off somewhere, and have sex.

Now, that doesn't seem like a vast sum of money to us, but keep two things in mind - first, 10,000 of the soldiers will be willing to do it for free, so there's a cost savings you can use to fund the more reticent soldiers. And second, this is America. We don't fight industrialized nations with high standards of living these days. We fight the kind of countries where seven hundred and fifty United States dollars goes a long way. Enough, perhaps, to make soldiers go a long way.

As much as I hate to live up to the Democratic stereotype of thinking problems can be solved just by throwing money at them, my plan beats the Pentagon's plan in a number of ways, the most important being that it doesn't have to work as intended. If the Air Force bomb gets the enemy aroused, but fails to turn them gay, their soldiers will still be shooting at us. Oh, they may be a bit more chafed, but unless that significantly throws off their aim, our troops aren't any safer.

On the other hand, if we pay them to go off and have sex, and they just go off and don't end up having sex, they still have to leave the battlefield to maintain the illusion, lest we shoot them and take back our $750. And I bet if you worked out how much, on average, it costs the US to shoot a brown person in the face when you count the body armor and the fuel and the food and the bullets, it's probably much more efficient to pay them to shoot each other in the face. So to speak.

*Which at this point is probably classified as a DARPA military training simulation.

C. Ignorant Doof

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 19:45:01 -0500

Wingnuts, 8 June 2007

Memo to Dr. Holsinger: OH SHIT, YOU'RE ONE OF THOSE.

Just to give the week some much-needed symmetry, I'm returning to the fascinating case of Dr. James Holsinger, that fucking monkey's pick to be Surgeon General. On Monday, we discovered that not only was Holsinger instrumental in keeping gay people from becoming pastors and church members in the United Methodist Church, but that he helps run Hope Springs, a "recovery ministry" that helps people "recover" from being gay.

So we know he hates the gay. But people hate the gay for all kinds of reasons. Because they think God hates the gay, and they want God to like them. Because they don't want to admit they ARE gay. Because they were raised wrong. So what's Holsinger's excuse? A big clue can be found in a study he authored in 1991 called "Pathophysiology of Male Homosexuality".

That sure do sound all medical and scientific, don't it? I mean, he used a word like "pathophysiology". He must know what he's talking about. He must have lots of solid science and careful study going into this work, because there's no way something called "Pathophysiology of Male Homosexuality" would sound like the ravings of a complete fucking nutjob. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"It is absolutely clear that anatomically and physiologically the alimentary and reproductive systems in humans are separate organ systems; i.e., the human does not have a cloaca. Likewise it is clear that even primitive cultures understand the nature of waste elimination, sexual intercourse, and the birth of children. Indeed our own children appear to “intuitively” understand these facts."

Allow me to translate. "Ew. Doody comes out of there. Also, I have a secret desire to fuck a chicken." Apparently, the future Surgeon General of the United States is in favor of basing medical policy on the INTUITIVE UNDERSTANDING OF CHILDREN. Never mind how creepy it is that he's talking about children's intuitive understanding of sexual intercourse and waste elimination. But it gets better.

"The anatomic and physiologic facts of alimentation and reproduction simply do not change based on any cultural setting. In fact, the logical complementarity of the human sexes has been so recognized in our culture that it has entered our vocabulary in the form of naming various pipe fittings either the male fitting or the female fitting depending upon which one interlocks within the other. When the complementarity of the sexes is breached, injuries and diseases may occur as noted above. Therefore, based on the simplest known anatomy and physiology, when dealing with the complementarity of the human sexes, one can simply say, Res ipsa loquitur - the thing speaks for itself!"

You see, the human body is not a truck. It's a series of tubes. And only when the right tubes touch the other right tubes can the sweet water of Jesus flow through us. He's one of THOSE. The plumbing-obsessed homophobe. He's so obsessed with plumbing he used a metaphor about ACTUAL PLUMBING. As far as Holsinger is concerned, God created Adampenis and Evagina, not Adampenis and Stevestinkybutt.

I hate the plumbing-obsessed gay-bashers. Not for the obvious reasons - that they ignore all the straight folk who do the same things with ostensibly wrong parts all the time. And not because they're anally-fixated weirdos who really shouldn't be Surgeon General. I hate them because it's such a specious fucking argument from people who believe that God designed Man.

Here's a thought. If God didn't want people to have anal sex, maybe he should have done more than make it a bit tricky and uncomfortable. In fact, since God hates it when we jerk it, suck it, or stick it in the back door, why the hell are we shaped the way we are? By all rights, we should be going around with tiny Tyrannosaurus Rex arms, a mouth that strains airborne krill*, and a bunghole that secretes Novocain.

The administration, by the way, is standing by their retard. The official line is that the paper was written in 1991, and that's what EVERYONE thought about gay sex back then. You know, in the Dark Ages. Of course, they still carefully avoided the question of whether Dr. Holsinger still believes gay men are flaunting our species cloacalessness for all the world to see. That's a subject best left to the confirmation hearings, where he can lie about them to Congress.

And he will. Because godly types can become enlightened. Closeted gays can come out. Those taught wrong can reject what they were told. But the plumbing-obsessed? They don't change. They're crazy to the bone.

*Obviously, God would also have to create a shitload of airborne krill, but that's what omnipotence is for.

Tiny, Like Edamame

Thu, 14 Dec 2006 07:45:26 -0600

Wingnuts, 14 December 2006

Memo to Jim Rutz: YOU... WELL, YOU MUST KNOW.

"It almost writes itself." It's an old, tired phrase, and in many cases diminishes the craft of writing. Nothing writes itself. Someone has to sit there and put the words in order. Effort must be made. In the specific case of this column, all kinds of choices have to be made. How to lead in. How to get out. How much background detail to give. What part of speech is "fuck" going to be this time? It's not rocket science, but it doesn't almost write itself, either.

Except, you know, when Jim Rutz tries to convince everyone that tofu will shrink your penis and make you gay. Then it's so easy it's almost embarrassing. It's like Michael Jordan competing in the Special Olympics.

Rutz writes for WorldNetDaily. WorldNetDaily, as you may know, is the crazy old uncle of the right-wing web family. You know, the one that carries a BB gun to shoot down black helicopters and is constantly shitting itself. I'll admit, I don't know much about Jim Rutz, but I don't need to. Because he's the kind of guy that would write, in all seriousness, something like this. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That's why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today's rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products."

Jim Rutz is insane. Possibly clinically. The basis of his theory, and I'm being incredibly gracious by calling it that, is one small nugget of truth - that, as plants go, soybeans contain a lot of estrogen. Plant estrogens.

From "soy = estrogen", he makes the following equivalencies: estrogen = female, female = gay, and gay = bad. Using the Commutative Principle of Craziness, this leads him to the conclusion that soy = BAD.

One of the problems with being a complete fucking psycho is that you have a limited array of techniques for getting even other complete fucking psychos to take you seriously. Luckily, Rutz* has mastered the ancient art of rectonumerology. Here's a list of the pseudoscientific claims he makes without a single reference to any actual published research:

Research is now showing that when you feed your baby soy formula, you're giving him or her the equivalent of five birth control pills a day.
Most babies are bottle-fed during some part of their infancy, and one-fourth of them are getting soy milk!
For example, if your baby gets colic from cow's milk, do you switch him to soy milk? Don't even think about it. His phytoestrogen level will jump to 20 times normal.

I need to stop here for a second, actually. Phytoestrogen is plant estrogen. A baby, the last time I checked, is a mammal. What, exactly, is the NORMAL level of plant estrogen in a baby? You'd think it'd be zero, in which case you can't have a level that is any amount "times" normal. Unless Rutz is talking about the hidden threat of making our plants gay, which, I guess, would be like dyeing poinsettias.

Research in 2000 showed that a soy-based diet at any age can lead to a weak thyroid, which commonly produces heart problems and excess fat.
Recent research on rats shows testicular atrophy, infertility and uterus hypertrophy (enlargement).
...estrogen ingredients in soy products may be boosting the rapidly rising incidence of leukemia in children.
There's also a serious connection between soy and cancer in adults...
60 percent of the refined foods in U.S. supermarkets now contain soy.

That's a lot to pull out of your ass. The guy must have a colon like a Teflon-coated pipe. And yes, I know that in the past three years, you can count the number of things I've cited on two hands and possibly one tofu-shrunken dick. But that's because I say two kinds of things: shit you can verify in ten seconds or less with Google, and shit I make up because it's funny. No endnotes necessary.

Never mind the fact that if any of this were even remotely true, the continent of Asia would be filled with the bloated, cancer-ridden corpses of billions of micro-penised homosexuals. Never mind that this theory doesn't even mention lesbians (baby girls fed nothing but hamburgers from birth?). Never mind... anything, really. The guy thinks tofu makes you want to have sex with men, but soy sauce doesn't (because it's fermented, it's safe). Whether it was his goal or not, for about two brief, shining hours, Jim Rutz was the dumbest son of a bitch on the entire doghumping Internet.

Pity I can't send him a trophy for his mantel.

*Who, from a calligraphic standpoint is one tiny tail away from being a complete Putz.

Assholes On Parade

Sun, 10 Dec 2006 22:49:29 -0600

Wingnuts, 13 December 2006

Memo to Kevin McCullough: YOU ARE DUMB.

I need to clear something up from yesterday. When I said that people discussing Mary Cheney's pregnancy should "Hate them and hate their choice and hate their child honestly, or shut your stinkin' holes.", obviously I'd prefer it if those people kept their yaps shut as well. Or, even better, stop being such idiots about gay people you'll never meet and actually stop hating them. Barring that, though, a little honesty goes... a little way.

Kevin McCullough is an honest commentator. That is the only nice thing I can say about him, and I only mention THAT because context requires it. McCullough posts at TownHall.com, where apparently Dennis Prager is the resident intellectual. Because as bad as Prager was on the Ellison Qur'fluffle, McCullough elevated public discourse to exciting new lows with his pieces about the Chenbryo.

He started by posting six questions he obviously felt were clever and thought-provoking, then, when told by the masses that he was a dumbfuck, he wrote a follow-up restating his points in statement form. Five of the six questions were used to make essentially the same point, which I summarize to save you the trouble of reading his tortured prose: ACTUAL PARAPHRASE TIME

"Chicks don't have sperms!"

I shit you not. You see, they couldn't make a baby on their own, therefore they needed help, therefore their relationship was fundamentally incomplete, therefore society shouldn't reward incomplete spermless relationships. And his sixth question was just a reprise of the "science shows children do best with a mother and a father" bullshit we're all tired of.

Having been stupid, and then having been informed that he was stupid, he proceeded to write a whole other column falling back on that oh-so common defense of the stupid - the Thought Police are trying to keep him from reaching certain conclusions. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"I'm not supposed to be allowed to think such things... Let's face it in America today if we bring up such obvious inconsistencies we are immediately branded and labeled a bigot. I was repeatedly labeled such this week for asking six additional questions arising from the fake act of two women supposedly 'becoming parents.'"

Tough shit. This is because only a bigot would call two women becoming parents a FAKE ACT just because they had some sperm shipped in. That's how it works. Bigots do bigoted things, and that's how we know you're bigots. That's like trying to get out of a ticket because you don't think going faster than the posted limits qualifies as "speeding". Mr. McCullough, if you want to prevent yourself from being called a bigot in the future, it's easy enough to do. Just stop saying stupid shit like this:

"And since homosexuals insist upon desiring limitless sexual activity, not governed by provincial rules and traditions, why would they want children?" - Um, because that's not homosexuals you're describing, dipshit. It's BONOBOS. Just because they don't want your brain-dead ilk imposing the limits on them doesn't mean they have, or want, no limits. Being gay doesn't prevent chafing. OK, one last quote, just because it really drives home what a smarmy dick McCullough is.

"I am curious as to why they would desire to reinforce the inferiority of their sexual behavior. And no amount of hate-mail from small minded radical activists will stifle the curiosity from which I seek to learn."

Fight on, you brave knowledge-seeker. How dare anyone try and stop you from learning? From asking ridiculous, loaded questions based on assumptions at right-angles to reality? You're curious. About gays. And there's nothing wrong with that. So go forth, Kevin McCullough, and learn. Be as gay-curious as you so obviously, so desperately want to be.

Still Buggin' After All These Years

Sun, 10 Dec 2006 20:02:15 -0600

Republicans, 12 December 2006

Memo to Father Jonathan Morris: YOU ARE DUMB.

Before I begin, a quick aside. You know how I know I've been doing this column for a long time? I thought it'd be funny if I titled my Mary Cheney column "Why Ya Buggin'", after the Run DMC song "Mary, Mary". But a nagging voice in the back of my head made me do a search, and not only had I used that title before, it was for a column about Mary Cheney. Go figure.

But anyway, Mary Cheney is pregnant, and I couldn't be happier. For me. A pregnant Mary Cheney is the second-funniest celebrity pregnancy I can think of, right after Jay Leno. If Jay Leno got pregnant, not only would it be funny, but it would mark a comedy milestone as the first time Jay Leno was funny this millennium. But pregnant Mary Cheney is even better, because it vaporlocks morons.

It's like the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. Right-wing fucks must, by their ideological imperative, criticize any homosexual, especially one that wants to raise a child. Because by doing so, they're destroying America. This is why it's vitally important, by the way, that Mary Cheney never put her hand on a Quran and wish someone Happy Holidays, because the Earth would open up and swallow America whole, leaving a vast sea between Canada and Mexico and rendering NAFTA virtually meaningless.

But at the same time, right-wing fucks cannot bring themselves to criticize a Cheney too stridently, because, well, she's still a chip off the old Dick. And it's not like a Ron Reagan thing, where the son took up ballet and completely rejected Daddy's politics. No, Mary has been a good soldier in the GOP army. Her gayosity even helped them score cheap points off of John Kerry in '04. She only destroys America in her spare time.

This internal struggle being waged in the "minds" of the GOP faithful finds its truest expression in a column by one Father Jonathan Morris on the Fox News web site. Morris thinks he's taking "the rare opportunity to examine the consequences of redefining the family to include homosexual couples, without getting bogged down with arguments about the moral status of homosexual behaviour.", which, of course, is hilarious, because if it weren't for the dipshits worried about the morality of being gay, none of these other arguments would be happening.

Morris makes a number of stupid arguments, which I mention here for completeness' sake. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"Mary thought the decision to get pregnant with the help of a third party was serious enough to merit a long talk with her girlfriend, but thinks her child should have no say in being born into a fatherless home." - You know, we've covered embryo fetishism and zygote fetishism here in the past, but this is the first time I've ever heard the argument that a pre-fertilization, pre-ovulation potential child-concept be granted rights in the negotiation of its future existence.

"Many single mothers make great moms, but the ones I know are the first to say that nature (God) got it right with the complementary nature of the sexes, for both human reproduction and parenthood." - Yes, and I'm sure the many unnamed single mothers who come into contact with Fox News columnist Father Jonathan Morris are exactly the kind of scientific representative sampling that will elevate the debate.

But back to the internal war. I'd like you to enjoy these two quotes in their fullness. The first is Morris' conclusion, and the second is Morris' attempt to seem like a reasonable person despite his conclusion. Ready? Here we go:

"Trading a father or a mother for a third party lover may seem to make sense for the couple, but it will never make sense for the child."

"I wish Mary, Heather and Mary’s child the very best."

HERE'S THE RULE, FUCKERS. You don't get to say you wish someone the best when you've just spent a dozen paragraphs explaining why they're doing a horribly wrong thing. Because you don't wish them the best. You wish for them to shut up, go away, and never have kids just so YOU can feel comfortable in a world that's changing faster than you can cope with. You wish YOURSELVES the best, not Mary, not Heather, and certainly not the child, who you've damned to a lifetime of inadequacy and confusion. No takebacks, no pretend-mitigation. Hate them and hate their choice and hate their child honestly, or shut your stinkin' holes.

This Week's Rollback: Eyes

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 22:29:01 -0600

Religion, 1 November 2006

Memo to the Save Wal-Mart People: GO FOR IT.

Just in case you needed even more evidence that the conservative movement is not only eating its own, but actually using other bits of its own as a decorative garnish for the main course of its own, look no further than the attempt by ultra-nuts-Christians to mount a fervent protest on November 24... against Wal-Mart.

Yes, Wal-Mart. Home of the low, low prices on products that still usually exceed the annual wages of the people who helped make them. Darling of the right and foe of the left, and for the exact same reason - being the standard bearer for the excesses of capitalism. Wal-Mart is proof that the market can solve any problem, as long as the problem is of the "needing toilet paper and having six bucks" category and not the "I need to see the doctor" variety.

You would think the fundies would spend their time organizing protests of the local organic co-op with the lesbian cashiers. But let's face it, even these dimbulbs know that's a lot of work for very little gain. Plus, as we've seen over and over again, these fuckers are so possessive they make Alex Forrest* look like the Dalai Lama. If they think a tiny part of what they consider theirs is getting taken away, they will go APESHIT. They'll start making signs and issuing releases and writing up websites and throwing temper tantrums.

And oh, how Wal-Mart did transgress. When you hear what Wal-Mart did, you're going to be shocked. Surprised. Amazed. Possibly awestruck. The fundies certainly were. Here's just a snippet of the phrasings they used to describe Wal-Mart's crime. ACTUAL QUOTE COMPILATION TIME!

"Satan has Wal-Mart in his line of fire... Wal-Mart has finally succumbed to this constant harassment and blackmail. She has now chosen a policy of appeasement to assuage all of the false accusations leveled against her in hopes that the devil will somehow stop being so mean... the world's largest retailer would also become the world's largest promoter of homosexual sodomy! ... [they are] an accomplice to the killing of little boys and girls in the privacy of American homes.

With rhetoric like this, there are only two possibilities. First, using a combination of Satanic arts, illegal technology, and alien DNA, they've reanimated the corpse of Sam Walton, cloned the corpse by the thousands, turned 90% of the clones gay, and sent all of them on a coast to coast rampage of ass-rape and child murder.

Or second, they're going to carry out Plan B and have donated .0002% of their 2005 profits to join the Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.

Yes, if SaveWalMart.com has its way, on November 24, complete fucking idiots with home-made signs saying "WAL-MART SUPPORTS SODOMY", "WAL-MART BETRAYED JESUS CHRIST", and "WAL-MART CELEBRATES SIN"** will show up at Wal-Marts all across the hickiest parts of America to protest a $25,000 donation and a vague commitment to treat its employees, customers, and suppliers in an equally shitty and reprehensible manner no matter what their sexual orientation.

And more power to them. Every inbred fuckwad outside Wal-Mart can join every inbred fuckwad INSIDE Wal-Mart on the list of inbred fuckwads I'm less likely to run into going about my daily business. That includes all the letter-writers featured on the site, like Kimberly Reyes of Dallas, who claims her and her husband's first stop after their honeymoon was Wal-Mart. Imagine how bleak that honeymoon must have been if visiting Wal-Mart was an improvement?

Nor will I be running into Kathy Heldreth of Charlotte, North Carolina, who claims in her letter to (a) have EIGHT CHILDREN, and (b) do all her shopping at Wal-Mart. May I suggest that if Mrs. Heldreth needs to make a little extra money on the side to cover the higher costs she will incur by boycotting Wal-Mart, that she volunteer as a research subject for scientists searching for the genetic component to stereotypes.

Fundies trying to save Wal-Mart from itself, while Wal-Mart tries to save the fundies forty cents on toothpaste. And the only one left smiling is me.

*Here's the rule. If I have to go to IMDB to make the joke, you have to go to IMDB to get it.

**Actual, I shit you not, suggested sign wordings from the website.