May 30, 2004 by s.z.

Comic Strip Prognostication There is no single panel Family Circus today (the Sunday strip is about Mommy beating Daddy at tennis, causing him to divorce Mommy and shack up with Flo Capp -- since it's kinda dark, I don't think it will work for fortune telling). So instead I offer you Brenda Starr.  As to what going on in it, I haven't the vaguest notion.  I've never read this strip before, and it seems to be one of those soap opera ones where you have to read it everyday for years to keep up with the plot.  But here's what seems to be happening: Brenda is stalking Donald Trump for her newspaper.  Donald counters by running down her friend the dirty bum, causing Brenda to get leprosy when she contemplates having to ask for another extension on her story. I think it means that the next season of "The Apprentice" will end in MURDER! But that's just my uninformed opinion.  Even more than usual, I welcome your imput on this one. 6:50:50 AM

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Never Mess With a Woman With an Edgy Blog For some more Sunday fun, go see Wonkette Smack Michelle.  Oh, and speaking of skanks, here's part of what the Inkwell's Charlotte Allen had to say to a reader who chided her calling Washingtonienne a "ho" and for seeming to agree with Michelle Malkin that Wonkette and Washingtonienne were little better than harlots: Well, I won’t comment on whether Cutler and/or Cox deserved the epithet "skank" from Malkin. Instead I’ll let these photos (courtesy of DazeReader) of Cox and Cutler almost but not quite doing the Britney-Madonna thing during some late-night partying speak for themselves (Cox is on the right--and ye of delicate sensibility, beware!). I admit that as a journalist, I find Cox’s behavior, at least in these photos, professionally puzzling. Good reporters are supposed to maintain some distance--emotional and physical--from their subjects in order to preserve their objectivity. And Cox is a married lady, too, with a most respectable husband in soon-to-depart Washington Post book editor Chris Lehmann. Cutler is an all-too-familiar Beltway type--but et tu, Cox? Yes, those photos are indeed not for those with delicate sensibilities: seeing two women with their arms around each other might lead to a fatal attack of the vapors. And while I can't speak for Wonkette, I didn't realize that running a gossip blog required such high ethical standards.  (And now I guess we all know why Mr. Wonkette took that job in NY, don't we -- his wife is having an affair with Washingtonienne.)  Anyway, if Wonkette wants to smack Charlotte, I'll be more than happy to link to that item too. 6:21:07 AM

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"SHOCKING BANNED BOOK! The book the government does not want you to read!" Thanks to David E. for alerting us to this shocking forbidden book: Ending Court Ordered Child Support. Let's find out just how shocking this book (well, Adobe document that we have to download and print ourselves) is, and why we should pay $37 for it: First of all the government does not care about the children, zero, zip, nothing! The only thing they care about is money, and that is were you come in. Last year all states combined made a profit of $72 billion dollars by scaming people like you. So the states keep all the child-support monies they collect?  The bastards! Are they screwing you?So how does this child support sham usually work? This is a good example: Lets take an imaginary guy, we will call him Joey. One day our friend Joey finds out that he is going to have to pay child support. Poor Joey.  He's just minding his own business, when he suddenly finds out that not only does he have kids, but that he has to pay to help support them.  You can imagine his shock. Joey heads down to the court house and they tell him that he is going to have to pay $200.00 a week. Now Joey is thinking WOW, not only is that half my paycheck, but twice the amount I was spending when the child lived with me. Joey never realized that maintaining two separate households would cost more than one.  Joey never should have been allowed to breed.  He lives on this remaining $200.00 a week for a few years, always struggling to survive. One day he tries to lower the amount. Let's say, Joey is married now and has two more children that live with him. Let's say that Joey is a dope, and even though he was really struggling to live on his $800 a month, he remarried and had more kids.  And let's suppose that he blamed the first kid for making his life so tough.  And let's say that we have no sympathy for our friend Joey whatsoever. Joey tells the court that he is forced to spend more money on one child then the two that live with him and he just can not do it any more. What the court says: Sorry Joey, we do not care if your two kids are starving, we want that money. You should get another job or we just might have to throw you in jail. Yes, Joey tells the court that he just can't support his first child anymore, now that he has two new (better) ones.  And somehow his tragic plight fails to move the court. So our friend Joey goes and gets another job. What do the government vultures do then? They jack up the support order! Now they are telling Joey to pay $300.00 a week. As any red blooded American would do, Joey says screw this! Why work a second job if they are going to extort more money from me and my family. See, Joey's second job paid only $100 a week, and the greedy government ordered that all of it would go for child support.  Of course, this doesn't make any sense, but we're just supposing here. He goes back down to that dreaded court house to let them know. And what does the black robed thug tell our friend? Sorry Joey, we don't care if you can not afford it, you have shown us that you have the ability to pay that amount, so were not going to lower it, and if you do not pay it were going to label you a deadbeat and throw you in our debtors prison until you come up with that money. We have debtors prisons there days?  No wonder the government doesn't want you to read this book! The government vultures have the true meaning of this government racket  so well hidden from the general public that Joey doesn't know that there is a simple legal way out. Joey is going to spend the next twenty years as a person who is nothing more than a modern day slave, a criminal, a marked man. Poor Joey.  Let this be a lesson to you: never have kids.  He can not go out and get a better job becuase then they will just take more money. He can't buy a house becuase the government ruined his credit. He can not plan for the future because with the child support vultures on his back he will never be allowed to have one. Our friend Joey can't do a thing, he's screwed! The child support vultures are going to bleed him dry until the day he is in his grave. Wow, most child support orders end when the kid turns 18, but not Joey's.  For some reason, he has to pay for the rest of his life -- which presumably ends prematurely,  since the government won't let him have a future.  I guess suicide is his only option.  Hey, that's probably what the book tells you: avoid paying child support by killing yourself. Here are some statistics about users of this book from the National Fathers Rights Association, the "small nonprofit orginization" which wrote it: 78%   This amount of people went through with the process and successfully ended there court ordered child support.  [...] 30% of the people that had there child support order vioded decided that becuase of the abuse they suffered under the previous court order that they would no longer pay anything at all. And with this legal process they have a right to do so. Yeah, because these people were ticked off at the previous court order, they figured it was just fine if they now longer supported their children.  Of course, since we don't believe any of this "information" is true, we don't have to get irate about it. 73%  Of purchasers of this information were woman. This was a big suprise to us. The common story here was that the womans husband or boyfriend was being ripped off by the child support system and they wanted to help them. There is nothing more endearing then a woman who sticks up for her man and we applued these woman. There is nothing more disgusting than a woman who thinks that the children from a man's first marriage should be ignored once he hooks up with her.  We hope these women rot in hell. 18%   Are in the military. Our friends in the military are the hardest hit by the current child support laws. How would you like to risk your life for your country and have up to half of your paycheck taken from you. A big thing here was that we were made to relize that there are actually woman out there that go after men in the military becuase of the guerenteed payout. We actually had a hard time believing this at first but after reading hundreds of email from our military friends, we'll it's a fact.   Wow, there are women who force military men to marry them, then they have children and get divorces, just for the guaranteed child support!  That is indeed hard to believe -- but if a website with such excellent writing skills says it's a fact, I guess we have to accept it.   Anyway, if you're in a situation like Joey's -- you're really stupid, irresponsible, and heartless -- you might want to spend the $37 for this book.  And based on the skill and care used in the promotional material, it will be worth every penny. 5:49:34 AM

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Our Sunday Doug Giles Sermon Well, Doug first delivered it last April, but I guess he's on vacation this week.  Probably out killing crocodiles or fishing for marlin with Hemingway.  But anyway, let's take a quick look at Doug's Townhall column for the week, "The Wild Man."  In it, Doug once again derides quiche, trots out that old "Adam and Steve" line, reinvents the Garden of Eden as a hunting preserve, and defines the Godly life as one modeled on equal parts of "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom" and "Fear Factor". When God created Adam, he didn’t breathe life into this divine concoction of spit and mud in order to develop a race of weak, lazy, irresponsible and chubby quiche-eaters. [...] Please also note that when Adam was created, God didn’t throw up a Double Tree Inn next to the spot where he was fashioned.  There were no 7-Elevens.  No Blockbusters.  No A/C.  Neither Sushi bars nor SuperCuts.  And this one’s really going to hurt … no McDonalds.  No Double Tree Inns?  But where is Doug going to preach? No, wait, he conducts services at The Residence Inn at the Aventura Mall, the Royal Palm Ballroom.  (FYI, the Aventura Mall has more than 200 shops and dining establishments, as well as A/C.) Adam was placed, purposefully, in the wild.  The wild brought out something in this leader that your favorite shopping mall simply couldn’t provide. God’s second in command was directly connected with the Spirit of the Wild. Adam, the wild man, drew directly from the earth.  Fast food for Adam was the fleet-a-foot Antelope he was trying to smack with a rock.  Sorry to break it to Doug, but Eden wasn't a danger-packed wilderness, it was a garden.  Adam wasn't a big game hunter, he was a tiller of the earth.  And Genesis says that Adam, like every other creature in the garden, was a vegetarian before the Fall ("And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the fact of all the earth, and every tree yielding seed, the which is the fruit of every tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.  And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.") And guess what? Adam was not with some gay guy called Steve … he was with a beautiful woman: Eve.  And she was down with it, as well. Yeah, they were both down with it.  What other options did they have? I know this doesn’t sound like “paradise” for those who are immoral, lazy, stupid and fat, but it was God’s and primitive man’s idea of Yippee Land.  Yipee Land???  So, what caused this initial state of bliss to be lost to Adam?  Where did he go wrong?  What did he do, or rather not do, to lose this NRA Xanadu-like existence?  And what lesson from creation can we learn? You know, the idea of the Garden of Eden being a "NRA Xanadu-like existence" is the wackiest theological conceit I've heard all year.  Oh, and Doug, this is what Coleridge, the author of "Xanadu," had to say about its creation: "This fragment with a good deal more, not recoverable, composed, in a sort of Revery brought on by two grains of Opium ..."Church, in the fall of the year, 1797." Here it is: Adam’s reticence to be the wild man God called him to be cost him the sweet haven of Eden’s crib.  He refused to rule righteously and conquer the serpent, which put him on the outs with his Creator and demoted him to somewhere east of Eden. Doug apparently is preaching from a special ClashPoint Bible (Wild Man version) where Adam's sin wasn't disobedience, but failing to be a manly man and kill the snake.  But just who is the Wild Man? He’s the person who is god-smacked watching a wicked thunderstorm, who trips watching an eclipse, who sweats and is weirdly exited when riding out an earthquake and who is both terrified and overjoyed beholding a tornado.  Thus, the Wild Man is too stupid to come in out of the rain (and so gets god-smacked by lightning).  He watches solar eclipses without eye protection.  He enjoys an adrenaline rush from "riding out" earthquakes instead of seeking a safe shelter.  The Wild Man seems to be a major idiot.  The Wild Man feels one with God and with the wild.  This sends him in search of “Eden” -- the way it must have been.  The Wild Man understands both the fundamentals of God and the funk of nature. Yeah, nature can get pretty funky, what with all the manly musk and the lack of showers and deodorant and all. My ClashPoint is this:  The Wild Man experience produces an attitude, and this attitude is a threat to all that is evil.  The person who is wild has the attitude that he is not an easy prey. He ceases to be lugubrious and begins to become a lion.  He becomes a hazard to cultural constructs that would keep him, those he loves and all mankind dumb and down. With wisdom from above and senses honed on earth, the Wild Man is not a dutiful and domesticated “cow” of the politically, ecclesiastically and culturally correct constructs.  He is a lion – a strong, wise, fun-loving, lioness-loving leader – with a mission: to care for his family, his community and his culture as faithfully as he can. Yeah, the Wild Man is mega rad, Dude.  Anyway, since Doug has taken the lion as his spirtual ideal, let's learn a bit about lions from the encyclopedia: Lions are the most social of all the felids, and live in organized groups called prides which can hold four to forty members. The pride is made up of related lionesses and their cubs and one to six males which have fought their way into the pride. If a lion is killed by another lion trying to join the pride, the previous male's cubs will be killed to give way for the new dominate lion's offspring. When a female comes to realize her cubs are gone, she goes into estrus and mates with the new dominate male. So, lions live in free love communes.  The male has to constantly fight off younger males who want his females -- if the younger male wins the fight, he kills off all the other male's kids, and the female goes into heat and has sex with the new guy.  And this is the kind of behavior Doug wishes us to emulate? Wait, there's more: The males are the protectors of the pride, and the females are the hunters and take care of the cubs. The males fight and then lay around while the females do all the work.  I guess I can see the appeal this life may have for Doug.  But it still doesn't seem all that Christian to me. 4:02:24 AM