Will 20/20 be Must-See or Must-Miss TV this week?

Or Must-Not-If-You’re-A-Miss?

Looks like 20/20 is going to be doing a story on the Manosphere’s ongoing campaign to destroy women fight for men’s rights by destroying women. See, there’s this whole contingent of men on the internet who think that feminism is “going too far”, by, you know, wanting equal pay for equal work, the ability to be hired without discrimination, the right not to have politicians legally enforce their baby-factory status, the right to bodily integrity, the right to not be treated as the Homemaker or Baby-Raiser By Default, or the right to do things that men can do without fear or expectation of being raped or sexually harassed, coupled with immediate blame for same.

You see, the manosphere knows the real issues here: women just want to be lazy asses and never work or join the military, they want to be able to choose who to have sex with (HORRORS!), and then when they get too old and ugly (at, like, 25), spermjack men to have their babies against the guy’s will, thus setting men up for a legal hell of child support without ever being allowed to see the children thereafter.

That’s right… both feminists and “men’s rights activists” are generally fighting for many of the same goals, except for the ones that are totally invented in the MRA’s depraved minds and never actually happen in real life.

So ABC is going to do a piece on how these men hope to achieve equality and end all these shameful issues caused by patriarchy, by… you guessed it… mistreating women on the internet.

Trigger warning: Paul Elam. Yes, he’s his own category of trigger warning.
Continue reading “Will 20/20 be Must-See or Must-Miss TV this week?”

Will 20/20 be Must-See or Must-Miss TV this week?
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Watch Pat Robertson's enlightenment about trans folk evaporate!

Good ol’ Uncle Pat is a mercurial fellow. One day he seems to have some humanitarian concept within his grasp, and flails about almost grabbing that brass ring, then the religious folk criticize him and he has to regain his religious street-cred. So he plays dumb on the topic, and says something incredibly ridiculous. This time, he forgets everything he said the last time I had to grudgingly laud him, losing all the ground he gained on becoming a decent human being with regard to trans* folk.

A horse that’s been castrated becoming a gelding? Really? I don’t even have the words to express how big a category error that is. It’s as tangential to the topic as if you started talking about how sometimes toddlers get into Mom’s makeup.

Watch Pat Robertson's enlightenment about trans folk evaporate!

Pine River, MN's puppy mill animal seizure, and our temporary foster dog

About a month ago, since Jodi can’t work on the Spousal visa she’s under, she decided to start volunteering some of her time at a local animal shelter. The shelter was at the time flooded with animals after a puppy mill — Country Pride Kennel, owned and operated by 60 year old Deborah B. Rowell in Pine River, MN — was shut down and all the animals were seized. All 130 animals. All of whom were evidently kept in insufferable heat, mud-filled hovels as kennels, and rarely with available clean water or shade. One was reportedly found dead in its kennel, in fact. Enough of the dogs were pregnant on being seized that the shelter ended up with more than 200 animals to deal with.

Continue reading “Pine River, MN's puppy mill animal seizure, and our temporary foster dog”

Pine River, MN's puppy mill animal seizure, and our temporary foster dog

Mock The Movie: Miami Connection transcript

Miami Connection pretty much hit the sweet spot for Mock The Movie mocking in every possible way. It included mediocre martial arts, ridiculous gore, 80s synth rock music, and a plot that almost sort of made sense if you overlooked the fact that a rock and roll band that knows Tae Kwon Do is the only thing stopping a group of ninjas from wresting control of all of Florida via cocaine distribution.

Oh, and did I mention that this is apparently a real band? Witness their 25-year reunion!

Transcript below the fold!
Continue reading “Mock The Movie: Miami Connection transcript”

Mock The Movie: Miami Connection transcript

River City Ransom: Underground kickstarter

Holy shitting fuck, you guys have to see this. There’s a kickstarter by some indie devs by the name of Conatus Creative, with a not insignificant amount of Canadian developers, has the official license for an honest-to-goodness sequel to the king of 8-bit fighters, River City Ransom.

Their goal is met for Apple, Linux and Windows development, but they have flex goals for consoles. And you could get your name in the game — or your likeness, or your favorite quote — by funding at one of their higher tiers.

I totally wish I had the dosh to throw at this right now. I cannot wait to see this game. The Scott Pilgrim homage was good, but it wasn’t quite all I was hoping a modern RCR would be. This, on the other hand, would be 24 hour gameathon fodder.

(If you don’t know what the original was, here’s a great review, proving the vlogger, PixellatedMemories, eerily prescient by the end.)

Hat tip to David Rolfe who knew me well enough to know this was right up my alley.

River City Ransom: Underground kickstarter

Body-shaming in a progressive movement in 2013? Color me shocked.

Melody Hensley is deciding whether or not to get a nose piercing. Like you do with all grave decisions about body modification, she asked friends on a social media service what people thought.

Turns out that a number of people in the freethought community have some decidedly backward views on the matter — not that, at this point, you should be surprised that we as a group are prone to every one of the foibles of society as a whole. In this specific case, not just as a matter of giving their opinion of “yes” or “no”, or making some lame joke about it. I’m talking full-on body modification shaming, occasionally veering straight into body-shaming, the likes of which I almost never see leveled at men.
Continue reading “Body-shaming in a progressive movement in 2013? Color me shocked.”

Body-shaming in a progressive movement in 2013? Color me shocked.

Tim Minchin addresses University of Western Australia graduates (UPDATE: With transcript!)

This is an absolutely sublime speech. It is full of both realism and optimism at the same time. It is full of skepticism. It sounds nihilistic at times, but Tim Minchin does that oratory sleight-of-hand that has you looking one way while he delivers a truth sucker punch from the other.

This speech has brightened an otherwise fairly dismal day for me. I hope it does likewise for you!
Continue reading “Tim Minchin addresses University of Western Australia graduates (UPDATE: With transcript!)”

Tim Minchin addresses University of Western Australia graduates (UPDATE: With transcript!)

Michael Enright: Atheists, you're not being silenced, so stop talking about it!

A reader forwarded me this via email as a sort of quick-bloggy bit of material, I suspect at least in part to get me blog just to prove I’m still alive. So, here we are!

Michael Enright, of CBC’s venerable The Sunday Edition, has decided to take on one group that’s really overreaching, that’s already gotten all the attention it deserves, that’s been given all the deference it could want and yet still keeps grasping for more: atheists. Seriously, can you think of another group that’s already won all its campaigns to be allowed to exist in peace and yet keeps, you know, talking about how horrible it is to be them, to have to play second-fiddle to all the overprivileged people in our society? Nope, none, just atheists!

He starts out by electing Richard Dawkins as our pope.

If the atheists of the world could ever organize themselves into a non-religious church, their first Pope would undoubtedly be Richard Dawkins.

Yeah, off to a GREAT start.
Continue reading “Michael Enright: Atheists, you're not being silenced, so stop talking about it!”

Michael Enright: Atheists, you're not being silenced, so stop talking about it!