So. Much has been made over the last couple weeks on certain blogs about the pity-the-Trump-voter-who-can’t-get-a-blowjob articles that have been cropping up. I even intended, though never succeed) to write a post about the wonderful humanitarian work done by OK Cupid when they publicly posted a bit about users tendencies in 2017.
Many of you will remember the It Gets Better movement and its apotheosis: Rebecca Drysdale’s song and video.
Well, it turns out that Drysdale has a new project. The Ave Maria Bamford videos are consistently co-written by Maria Bamford and Drysdale. I’m not sure of the exact working relationship here as Maria Bamford is clearly the “star” of this youtube series, but it’s clear that Drysdale is integral to the writing. Drysdale even takes on an acting role in the latest video Ave Maria Bamford 112: The End of the World:
If you like dry, sometimes uncomfortable humor, and you don’t mind when someone pokes fun at religion, you’ll probably like the Ave Maria Bamford series. Enjoy!
It is often said that religion gives meaning to otherwise meaningless things. I’m of two minds about the claim. On the one hand, religion doesn’t add information in the sense of giving you more facts about the universe than you had without religion. On the other hand, it certainly is true that if a person speaks in religious code, familiarity with the religion certainly helps decipher quite a lot.
My tendency, though, is to come down on the side of those who believe it is false to say that religion gives meaning to otherwise meaningless things. This is because knowing the religious codes and conventions does not require actual belief.
Oh dear FSM: Megyn Kelly has decided to do “Hopeful Holidays” stories, and what has she decided to cover? White officers framing Black community members for crimes those persons did not commit.
As her guests she invited 2 men, one a white former cop who corruptly invented evidence when asking courts for search and arrest warrants and then turned that fraudulent evidence over to prosecutors to use to incarcerate innocent people. The other man is a Black man who was convicted and sentenced to 10 years incarceration (though only 4 would typically be served inside, the rest on parole) for possessing drugs that never existed.
Although I’ve been mostly offline and entirely unable to write coherently for more than a month, I have apparently had just enough time to come up with a new honor that Pervert Justice shall now start distributing to the most deserving. I call it the “Unclear on the Concept Award” and its inaugural winner is Kevin Swanson.
The delightful human being Swanson opined on the recent Alabama senatorial election, and it turns out that he has a theory which is rather thin at one end, rather thin at the other end, and, frankly, rather thin in the middle. It is, however, amusing to read:
PZ has an excellent post up, which I hope you’ve seen already, regarding the hatred of the Catholic bishops. I want to call out a small piece of that larger statement here:
Children especially are harmed when they are told that they can “change” their sex or, further, given hormones that will affect their development and possibly render them infertile as adults.
If you read this as the bishops obviously intend you to read it, this portion of their statement says:
You can’t actually change your sex, so telling this to children is bad. Also, it’s even worse when you change the sex of another human being, particularly a child.
So, Politico has just the story we need in the contemporary USA: a how-to for blaming everything Trump on a woman.
Nearly a year into his presidency, Trump’s behavior—as much as, or more than, any policy he’s advanced—stands as a subject of consternation, fascination and speculation. Psychology experts read and watch the news, and they have the same basic curiosity lots of people have: What makes somebody act the way he acts? None of them has evaluated Trump in an official, clinical capacity—Trump is pretty consistently anti-shrink—but they nonetheless have been assessing from afar, tracking back through his 71 years, searching for explanations for his belligerence and his impulsivity, his bottomless need for applause and his clockwork rage when he doesn’t get it, his failed marriages and his ill-tempered treatment of women who challenge him. And they always end up at the beginning. With his parents. Both of them. Trump might focus on his father, but the experts say the comparative scarcity of his discussion of his mother is itself telling.
Crafty ‘Cubi of Candy Corn! This is going to be terrible, isn’t it?
Oh, yes. Oh yes indeed.
Well, we’ve covered John Kelly enough. Though I am, as I said, relieved that the media world is piling on the ignorant, racist man for his statements, the time has come to set aside stupid, racist statements from famous people and …
…wait. Hold on. The teletype is clacking away as we speak, more info in a moment.
Oh My Freuding Freud. Tucker Carlson, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?
Because I write a blog, I can subject you to any damn fool thing I want, and they only thing either of you can do, my readers, is to stop reading. But then who suffers, huh? Huh?
And thus, while strung out on painkillers trying to find the way to finish the rest of my move today, I am taking the opportunity to write for you about a story that is years old, and not one like the Tuskeegee Experiments, which might occasionally still have up-to-the-minute relevance, or the Tuskegee Airmen, who were fortunate, indeed, to be part of a segregated air force unit so they didn’t have to fight side-by-side with Gungans. (I’m telling you, it was a pretty close call, there.) No, it doesn’t even have anything to do with slavery.
It’s just not that important. And yet, it is the very quotidian nature of it that stuck with me. I keep thinking every so often that I should write about it, then don’t because it’s never important enough. Well, today, strung out on a bit less than the prescribed dose of my prescription painkiller, so obviously not competent to consent to keyboard, there is nothing to stop me. Today is the day you get to hear me talk about the everyday horror that is vagina.
So, there’s been another horrific case of police abuse that made it to my eyeballs. It actually made it there a couple weeks ago, but I haven’t had a chance to write about it. Content note for cops abusing power, rape, sexual assault, and all the rape apologies, okay?