Glenn Hauman: View From Above

Spotted this weekend: a “Conquer Cancer” specialty license plate on an SUV.

Gosh, what do you think pollution does to your lungs, stupid?

Saith Steve Gilliard at Gott mit uns about fundamentalist church leaders: “These folks are SO overplaying their hand. They totally misread how Americans see church…. Shelton, Dobson and the rest of these folks are a minority, about 15 percent of the country. The only reason to listen to them is that they drive voters to the polls. But because most Republicans are too lazy to keep their own field organizations, they are totally dependent on the church driven GOTV. So we get high drama wingnutism on display.

This may work, but my feeling is that this is gonna blow up on them like the Scopes Monkey trial. While they won the case, fundamentalism was discredited before the nation.”

Don’t I wish it was discredited. The sad fact is that it’s not yet, there are still lots of folks for whom faith has taken over their lives.

(Via Steve Gilliard’s News Blog.)

TV Squad: “Review tonight’s Smallville and win $100

Smallville returns tonight after a decent hiatus and we want you to review it for us. We’ll handle the cool screen captures but you provide the words. The best review will win $100 via PayPal. It should be an exciting return to form tonight with Lex being split in two by a kryptonite explosion. And we all can guess at how evil his evil side will be. Make the review concise but add thoughtful commentary too. Tell us how this impacts the series as a whole and how it ranks compared to past episodes. Length should be 250-800 words and the deadline for reviews will be this Friday (tax day) at noon.

Surely one of you can use the bucks.

I think there’s a market for an electric blanket that, instead of keeping your side of the bed warm, shocks the person on the other side of the bed when they try to steal your half of the blanket.

Anybody wants to build it, be my guest.

From a website called MovieGuide: “Movieguide is a ministry dedicated to redeeming the values of the mass media according to biblical principles, by influencing entertainment industry executives and helping families make wise media choices.”

Sin City:

Content:
Pervasive pagan moral worldview with murder, revenge, corruption, and prostitution, and strong Romantic philosophy that pits the individual against an evil society, as well as anti-Christian content includes two corrupt or evil priests, both of whom are murdered (one inside a confessional), and light moral element man risks life to stop a pedophile and end governmental corruption; 33 obscenities, but no ‘f’ words, and eight strong profanities; gory, bloody violence includes many people being fatally shot with some body parts flying off, man dragged from car, crooked priest shot in confessional, people hit in head with sledgehammers and hatchets, men impaled, decapitations with a head that is bandied like a ball, cannibal keeps decapitated heads on his wall, dog eats at dead person, corpses are cut into pieces so they can be dumped, murderer is electrocuted by the state, gun backfires and becomes lodged in man’s head, pedophile’s genitalia is pulled off, suicide, man almost hanged, woman lashed, grenade explodes, people punched, man jumps through windshield, people smashed into wall, and men’s heads are held in toilet bowls; fornication depicted, pedophile kidnaps a girl but is prevented from harming her, many characters are prostitutes, and reference to priests using hookers; upper and rear female nudity; heavy alcohol use; prescription drug abuse and smoking; and, heavy governmental corruption, heavy corruption in the Catholic Church, cannibalism, pedophilia, revenge, and kidnapping.

Summary:
SIN CITY is a blisteringly violent movie with an anti-social, anti-Christian perspective. It weaves together three stories of sadistic men pursuing their own warped brands of justice in a depraved city. Become educated about what’s in this movie and don’t support it.

Review:
SIN CITY is a different breed of comic book movie. There are no flashy costumes, there’s no Batmobile, and there is no hero. Instead of triumph, there is an endless barrage of evil acts and anti-biblical hedonism.

But hey, how can you not like a web site that also has articles like Neo-Nazis Kill Terri Schiavo? I fully expect an article about how this movie is responsible for the death of the Pope…

(Via Oliver Willis.)

“Jimmy, old buddy, buddy.
It’s Angel! You know how they allow you one phone call? Well, this is it.”

Jim Rockford’s Answering Machine.

I’ve just been interviewed on NPR for Creative Couplings. You can listen to it by going to NPR : A Very Special Star Trek Wedding

And just to remind you, you can get book one here and book two here. If you want it for the Palm, you can go here and here. And you can even get it from FictionWise here and here (because I’m tired of certain people bragging how high their FictionWise sales figures are– they know who they are).

Yahoo! News – Escaped Killer Hid as Poet in Chicago

“CHICAGO — As J.J. Jameson, he was a popular poet. As Norman A. Porter Jr., he was a convicted murderer who had escaped 20 years ago from a Massachusetts prison.”

J. Jonah Jameson, perhaps?

The guy who hacked an MP3 player into a PEZ dispenser now has a license to make an actual commercial product based on the design:

# The first version will be 512mb.
# Their will be six buttons along one of the skinny sides.
# Their will be an LCD screen.
# The head will be removeable and compatible with existing PEZ heads.
# The first production run will be small and made in the USA.
# The first production run will be early summer.
# Supports MP3, WMA, OGG, USB 2.0, mounts as flash drive.

Link

(via Make Blog)

(Via Boing Boing.)

Movie & TV News @ IMDb.com – Studio Briefing: “The recipient of a First Amendment Leadership Award from the Radio-Television News Directors Association has acknowledged that he was compelled to order several stations not to air Saving Private Ryan last November. As reported by New York’s Village Voice, Liberty Corporation President Jim Killer told the RTNDA: ‘It’s somewhat ironic that about the time I found out about this award, I was in the process of making a decision which ignored the First Amendment.’ Killer said that he had ordered the ABC stations, all of them located in the South and Midwest, not to air the film ‘because the FCC refused to issue a definitive statement that the rebroadcast was content-acceptable.’ The agency had earlier overruled a conclusion by its staff that the use of a variation of the F-word by Bono during a live broadcast of the Golden Globes Awards was not indecent, saying the earlier decision ‘is no longer good law. By our action today, broadcasters are on clear notice that, in the future, they will be subject to potential enforcement action for any broadcast of the ‘F-word or a variation thereof in situations such as that here.’ (There are 21 uses of the expletive in Ryan; last month, the FCC ruled that the film was not indecent.) Killer, a former broadcast journalist whose stations have been recognized for their news coverage, also said that as a result of the FCC decision, ‘We changed the way we do live shots’ in newscasts. Commenting on his remarks, the Village Voice asked, ‘Anyone feel a chill?'”