Deep Thoughts

The Grim Reaper: Personification of
Death, Level 15 Boss and total dick.

Celebrities die in three's, it's just a thing. I mean, sure, maybe we're just seeing connections in blind chance but then again maybe the gods hate even numbers. Who knows? Topping off this week's morbid trilogy of Phyllis Diller and Jerry 'The Count' Nelson, Neil Armstrong has passed away at the totally good run, but still kind of a bummer age of 82. Sometimes you've got to wonder what kind of messed up universe it is when death claims a comedian, a Muppeteer and the first man to walk on the moon all within seven days, but then you remember that death is kind of a bastard.

In addition to being the first guy to bounce around on the lunar surface, Armstrong was by far the classiest of the three Apollo 11 astronauts and he will be missed. Why classiest? Well, Buzz Aldrin appeared in Transformers 3 and Michael Collins (aka the other one) has been screwing people over for years as an impossible Trivial Pursuit question.

Sorry Mike, someone had to fly the ship.

A close second? 1419. Why?
The Defenestrations of Prague.

So I thought of something that kind of blew my mind. Until yesterday, we were all alive at the same time as the first human to walk on the surface of a celestial object that isn't the one we evolved on. Cool right? Keep in mind that humans as a species have been around for 200 million years or so. That's hundreds of thousands of years we could have lived in and we got to share the planet with Neil 'first guy to set foot on the goddamn moon' Armstrong. Could there be a better time to be alive?

Todd Akin just removed all doubt

Hey, you know who needs to shut up? People who talk about things they don't know anything about. Yeah, I know this includes you, me and everyone who's ever pontificated on any subject in which they're not an expert, but every once in a while a jackass comes along with a comment so epic in its ignorance as to be worthy of Viking sagas.

Gather around Olaf the story teller as he tells the tale of Todd, son of Paul, who did open
wide his great and mighty maw and then drowned in the river of bullshit that flowed forth.

Really, it's what he's doing.

Take Missouri Republican Representative and Senatorial candidate Todd Akin who made the following gynecological discovery during his long career as a sciencetition:

"...(pregnancy as a result of rape) is really rare. If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try and shut that whole thing down..."

-Todd Akin, Republican and medical genius

Holy shit! This is major! For ages we humans have been attempting to prevent pregnancies with everything from chastity belts to birth control pills that interfere with a biological cycle linked to the goddamn moon and you mean to tell me that women have been able to selectively 'shut that whole thing down' all along? What the hell ladies?

Above: A close up of one of the many vaginal turbo lasers that protect
the female body both from unwanted pregnancies and rebel scum. Source: Science.

Look out pregnant women,
Todd Akin's on to you.

Ok, so obviously Todd just opened his idiot hole, some stupid slipped out and he has since apologized. Ok, fine, happens to the best of us, but let's look a little closer at what he said: 'If it's a legitimate rape'? I'll say up front that I'm no rhetorical expert, but isn't he kind of saying that the body will prevent conception unless the woman being attacked is into it? So most women who become pregnant as a result of rape were actually not raped and are just lying? Jesus, Todd.

Representative Akin then continues to dig his own grave by suggesting that there should probably be 'some punishment' for rape, but that it should fall on the rapist and not the baby. As for the victim, I guess her vagina was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"I didn't say I hate rape victims, I'm just saying they're probably liars." 

-Todd Akin, cautionary tale

Hate Club

Did Tony Perkins just miss an opportunity to blame gay people for something? Check out what the President of the Family Research Council said about the LGBT activist who shot a security guard at-wait, huh? A who shot a wha?

Parallel universe? That was my first thought, but alas no.
Nor was it opposite day. This happened for real. 

Above: surprisingly not Floyd Lee Corkins II

Yeah, you read that right, a gay rights activist shot and seriously wounded Leonardo Johnson, a security guard at FRC headquarters in Washington. The assailant, Floyd Lee Corkins II (whose name pretty much guarantees you'd be reading about him in the paper one day) apparently thought that anti-gay groups didn't have enough material for their mailings and so strolled up to the FRC's HQ and opened fire. Man, remember the good old days when we could refer to those gun-toting, right wing nut jobs? Yeah, so much for that. Thanks Floyd. 

"Damn you Perkins and your defense
of the family, which we yearn to destroy!"

-Gay people  

So anyway, back to Tony Perkins. He said this:

"I believe he was given a license to do that by groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center who...labeled us a hate group because we defend the family and we stand for traditional, Orthodox Christianity." 

-Tony Perkins, defending and standing for stuff

The nerve! I mean, yes, sure, the Family Research Council's sole purpose is to express a hatred for gay people, but a hate group? That's just unfair. They're more of a hate club.

They're kind of like the Breakfast Club, except instead
of going on a journey of self-discovery, the FRC just gets
together and talks about how much they hate gay people.

Face it Tony, without
gayness, you're nothing.

But what I don't get is why Tony Perkins doesn't take the next logical step and blame the shooting directly on gay people. Let me draw a line for you: first, gay people had the audacity to exist which forced Tony Perkins to build an entire organization around blaming gay people for everything that's wrong in his own life which in turn caused the Southern Poverty Law Center to call him on his bullshit and label the FRC a hate group and that's why a lunatic with 50 rounds and a bag full of Chick fil-A shot an innocent security guard. See? If gay people would just stop being so gay, then nobody would have gotten hurt. Of course the irony here is that without the gay people he hates so much, Tony Perkins would have no career. 

Instead he'd have find some other arbitrary bronze-age, Biblical prohibition to harp on, and let's face it, getting worked up about shellfish and false idols is not going to get you on Fox News. For that you need hot Takei sex.

Yes, I'm probably a terrible person for even suggesting this but
can you seriously look at this man's face and tell me that the
shooting and subsequent media attention didn't totally make his day?

It's Fozzie Bear, not Fuzzy Bear...

In fairness to Aaron Sorkin, writing
100 episodes of witty political drama
is really hard without cocaine. 

Look, I love me some The West Wing. If President Bartlett were real I'd totally vote for him. Hell, if Martin Sheen ran for office, I'd probably vote for him. But if there was a criticism to be leveled against Aaron Sorkin during his coke-fueled days writing for a fictional White House it's that his Republicans had a tendency to be a little too evil. Like they sometimes crossed over from regular real life flat tax, school-voucher, gun-lovers into the realm of mustache twirling puppy drowners. And that's ok, I mean, it's just a TV show, right?

"Ach! Defund PBS? That's a bonnie idea!"

-Scrooge McDuck, one of the people

But is anyone else starting to think that the GOP is turning into Sorkin's cartoonish right-wing caricatures? Take Mitt Romney for example, in an interview with Fortune Magazine (because he's one of the people) he laid out how he's going to cut spending so none of the one percents have to sell thier yachts. The plan: take funding away from Amtrak, because who takes trains these days? Cut the National Endowment for the Arts because, cough...queers...cough. Oh, and defund PBS because Mitt Romney hates Sesame Street.

Above: Republicans

Sound familiar? Yeah, because it totally happened on The West Wing. So a man famous for being cruel to furry animals has proposed looting the network that gave us Cookie Monster and Oscar the Grouch. He's a season three cliffhanger away from selling orphans to North Korea to close the budget gap. What the hell? Muppet mugging should be enough to sink any Presidential hopeful's chances but luckily for Mitt, the GOP has an ace up their sleeve.

Of course by 'ace up their sleeve' I mean a vast and coordinated effort to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of American voters who might vote for President Obama. By the time the GOP is finished disqualifying every registered voter who isn't a rich, white male named Mitt Romney, there's a decent chance this guy will be our next President.

"In 143 years, there has been a staggering one instance of voter fraud in Pennsylvania.
I can't let that happen again. Yes, it does mean a few hundred thousand poor and 
minority voters won't get a chance to vote for Obama, but that's a risk I'm willing to take."

-Republican Judge Robert Simpson, totally not being shady

Pat Robertson is a total 'that part of the anatomy'

Pat Robertson has thrown down the gauntlet, defying homosexuals to 'bring forth a baby from that part of the anatomy which they concentrate on...' Daaaaamn! Oh no he di'n't!

Above: Pat Robertson, who unlike those homosexuals, is not at all fixated on
that part of the anatomy. Although he does spend a lot of time thinking about gay sex. 

The 3rd Amendment protects your
right to sacrifice babies to Molech.
Look it up, I swear it's in there.

But he did. Check out this clip of his rant wherein he tells his bored-looking co-host about how he was reading Leviticus (you know, like other people read the news):

'...I was reading today in Leviticus, which is the law of the Old Testament, but it lays out the reasons why land will vomit out its inhabitants and he goes through a category of stuff we're calling constitutional rights: killing babies, offering them to Molech, and uh, it says that it is an abomination for a man to lie with another man as with a woman.' 

Wow, take that Molech worshippers...

The turkey baster: Proof that God loves
single women and lesbian couples.

Anyway, what a dick. I know there's really no arguing with a dude who looks to a 3000 year old list of do's and don'ts for desert dwellers as a guide for 21st century life, but holy shit Pat. There are lots of couples who can't bring forth a baby, it doesn't mean God hates them. In fact, we live in the future where there are tons of options for people with reproductive issues, up to and including adoption. Speaking of which, you'd think that if anyone who listens to Robertson's show actually gave a shit about kids, they'd be all for gay people getting married and creating even more stable homes for children.

'Thanks a lot, gay people.'

I guess what I don't get about Robertson and his fans, is that they're always looking at current events for clues about how angry God is at gay people. If there's a hurricane, it's because of gay people. Earthquakes, climate change and 9/11? Gay people. But it never works the other way. If it's a nice day you don't hear Pat Robertson going on TV with: '70º and sunny, huh, I guess God loves everybody. I'll just be shutting up now...' 


You'd think they'd take things like the increasing acceptance of same-sex marriage and adoption as signs that maybe God's cool with it. But hey, what the hell do I know? Like a Home Shopping Network that sells anxiety instead of genuine diamondoid bracelets and collectible coins, Robertson has built a career out of getting old people to send him money.

Above: Neil Patrick Harris, his fiancé David and their two children enjoying a lovely afternoon in the park.
Not pictured: the land vomiting up its inhabitants. Advantage: The NPH.

Bobby's World(view)

So Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (who despite being a grown man and a Governor still calls himself Bobby) has proposed a school voucher program which would allow parents to send their kids to a private school instead of one of our country's many underfunded, slowly collapsing, dream-crushing public schools. Super, right? No, it's not super at all.

Public School:
"...where your child really is just another brick in the wall."

"Ma'am, it says insufficient funds, do
you have another card you'd like to try?"

I get that the rationale behind voucher programs sort of makes sense, albeit in a Republican, let's privatize the fire department, sort of way. The idea is that they allow parents to have more control over where their kids go to school. Don't like public schools? No prob. Here's a voucher, send your kids anywhere you like. The problem is that the vouchers are paid for out of the education budget, so the public schools get even less.

Also, some of the schools that would be able to accept vouchers under Jindal's program are Bible-based religious institutions meaning your taxes are paying for other people's kids to learn about how the Earth was created on Tuesday in 4000 B.C. and that Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs around the Garden of Eden. Awesome.

"I'm not violating the separation of Church and State,
I'm just using State money to pay private schools
to teach kids about Jesus. I call it Reliducation."

-Bobby Jindal, assuming we're idiots

"If Steve has three apples and eats one,
how much does God hate gay people?"

"Why should my kid be forced to attend a public school where they teach evolution instead of Genesis and the answer to a math problem is a number rather than Jesus? "

-Concerned Parent

"Fuck you."

-Woman in labor

The answer, of course, is shut up. Let's face it, the only prerequisite for being a parent is having a functioning reproductive system. It's not exactly an achievement to crank out a couple kids, and people have been doing it for millions of years (or thousands depending on where you went to school). Just because you can reproduce doesn't necessarily mean you know what's best for kids. I know I'm speaking as a child-less shut-in, but since my taxes are paying for your kids either way, you can bloody well hear me out.

Public school is far from perfect, and I get that people want other options, but the crap these schools teach is anti-science, racist and partisan. Holy shit, these kids won't have a chance. Louisiana will be doomed to a generation of Rods and Todds Flanders. If you want to mess up your kids with Creationism and 'end of days' crap, fine, just don't expect the rest of us to pay for it.

"Where do I see myself in 5 years? I suppose getting raptured while the rest of you endure
seven years of Tribulation before God's righteous judgement. Also, I think I'd like to be a VP."

-Nicole, about twenty seconds before Judy from HR ended the interview

Now can we send astronauts to Mars?

See? Definitive proof of life on Mars.
Suck it skeptics.

Check out this picture sent back by NASA's brand spanking new rover, Curiosity (see right). What the hell is that thing, you say? I'm glad you asked. I'm no astronomer, but the photo clearly shows an ancient Martian temple on the horizon. Since the structure was only visible in one shot and disappeared two hours later, I think we can furthermore conclude that the Martian High Command spotted Curiosity and has activated some sort of cloaking device in order to keep their advanced technology out of our hands.

Let's wipe that smug expression
of his, uh, head-ball...thing.

That's right, those sneaky, low gravity, CO2-breathers are alive and well and holding out on us. If there has ever been are more compelling reason to send a manned mission/full invasion force to the Red Planet I haven't heard it. I mean, who knows what other high-tech secrets they might they be hiding? Hover cars? Jet packs? Movies that aren't just remakes of older movies? The possibilities are endless and just waiting for discovery/conquest. Even if we don't find the remains of an ancient Martian civilization, scientists are pretty sure we'll find all kinds of science out there. What's a few trillion dollars compared to that? Look, I know most people need more to go on than a blurry shadow in one photo, but what else could this possibly be?

What's that you say? It's probably a smudge or a glitch or a part of the craft that delivered the robot to Mars? Who's side are you on anyway?

I've run some image analysis of my own, and the results have only deepened the mystery.
Who are these Martians, and why do they keep kidnapping princesses?

More likely than winning the lottery:
The real Spider-Man showing up at
your birthday party. It's simple math.

Look, all I'm saying is that ours is a culture that spends $58 billion on lottery tickets, and the odds of winning (depending on the lottery) are like a gazillion to one (where a gazillion equals 'not bloody likely'). The odds of life on other planets? Well, like I said, I'm no astronomer, but space is pretty damn big and there's got to be what, like two, three hundred stars out there? The point is if we can justify blowing money and resources on the thin hope that we may be able to spectacularly quit our jobs, why can't we see our way clear to dropping a couple trillion on deep space?

C'mon guys, we're not alone. Someday we're going to meet aliens and if we ever want to be able to look them in the beady little eyes (or compound optical nodes or whatever) we're going to have to log some serious space time. For real, it's 2012 and we've never been to Mars? We look like idiots.

"Oh, you've been as far as the Moon...the one over there? I see, well you must be proud.
Now if you'll excuse me I'm late for an appointment on Proxima Centuri, must dash you know.
Really though, it was a pleasure."

-Sub-Commander Thuuurax, barely concealing his disdain

NASA totally just scored, and then tweeted about it.

Despite its fun size budget (compared to the military), NASA just successfully landed a brand-new robotic rover on the surface of Mars. The Red Planet's latest metal overlord is named Curiosity and comes equipped with multi-spectral cameras, an alpha-particle spectrometer and a sassy attitude. Check out the rover's live blog shortly after touchdown:

Gale Crater loves it when you tweet dirty.

$2.5 billion? But everyone knows
life began in 4000 b.c. with two naked
people and a talking snake.

Did NASA just make a joke about boning Mars? Yes, yes they did. And they did it while landing a robot the size of a Prius (a nuclear powered Prius) on another planet, so these guys are rockstars. We should be funding them like NFL players. What's up with our priorities anyway? $1.4 trillion defense budget? No prob. Yet $2.5 billion for a remote-control science lab to explore Mars and possibly unlock the origins of life on Earth is somehow crazy. I have an idea: let's mothball the Predator Drones, sell Alaska back to Russia, give the money to NASA tell them to build us a warp drive. They could do it.

Think of it, we could totally be tweeting dick jokes from Gliese 581c within 10 years.

Yeah, I'm still stuck on this.*

What? Dan Cathy (left) likes to dress
up like a cow. I'm not judging.

On Friday, all the cool same sex couples headed to Chick-fil-A to kiss and freak out the norms. It was in response to Wednesday's Chick-fil-A/irrational homophobia Appreciation Day-which, if you recall, is Mike Huckabee's made-up holiday designed to show support for Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy's public hatred of gays and love of animal role-play. In effect, the gay make out session (or gayke out session) was a protest of a protest of a protest but Dan Cathy kind of asked for it when he opened his waffle fry-hole about gay marriage. Fair's fair right?

'James, he was just bringing our drinks.
Did you really have to harpoon the man?'

But then this happened. This dude named Adam Smith (but not this dude named Adam Smith) decided to take out his anger against homophobes on the cashier at Chick-fil-A asking her how she sleeps at night being single-handedly responsible for everything wrong with America. Like the random butler James Bond casually executes on the way to Blofeld's office, this woman caught the brunt for her asshole boss and that's not cool.

Then, like all great American heroes, Smith posted a video of his triumph over evil on Youtube. A video for which he was promptly fired from his job. Yeah, it sounds a little unfair, but don't feel too bad, he is a total jerk.

 'I think the two of us can come to a reasonable
agreement. How about I give you the kid?'

-Ellen Ripley

So where does it end? Got me. I'd like to say there's probably a compromise to be found here, but that's not the case. I mean on one side we have millions of Americans being discriminated against and on the other side we have the people doing the discriminating. It's like Aliens, there was no way for Ripley and the Xenomorph to work things out. Somebody was going out the goddamn airlock. While I'm not suggesting we space the religious right, I am suggesting that they put on their grown-up pants and accept that other people are entitled to equal rights.

I'm not trying to pick on Jesus fans here, I know not all homophobes are Christian, it's just that pretty much all the big, well-funded anti-equality groups are. There are plenty of Christians out there who don't go on bigoted tirades just like there're plenty of progressives out there who know better than to take out their frustrations on an innocent waitress.

Above: Members of the Raelian religious movement. They believe in
free-love, UFOs and have founded exactly zero anti-gay groups.  

That said:

Dear (some, but not all) Christians,

By the power invested in me by Obamacare,
I now pronounce you gay married.

Whatta ya say you drop the anti-gay marriage thing? Just knock it off. Nobody's asking you to violate your personal beliefs or to piss off God or anything. No one's going to force you to get gay married. Live and let live right? All I'm asking is that you stop spending millions of dollars to keep other people from getting married. Maybe take that money and go on a trip or something, or give it to starving children. Jesus loves that kind of thing.

Right now millions of children around the world are starving,
and that's a shame. But did you know that in some places two dudes can
 get married? Now that's a tragedy. Call now to learn how you can help.

Schick Quattro: 4 blades of
hell bound comfort.

The Bible says a lot of things. Love thy neighbor for instance, that's super. But you've gotta admit, it's not all gold. It was written thousands of years ago by tons of people. That part about stoning your wife to death for adultery? Yeah, that's not cool. We have marriage counselors and family court for shit like that now. Yes, there's some stuff in there about lying with another man being an abomination, but so's shaving and wearing two different kinds of cloth so let's not pretend there isn't some cherry picking going on here.

Look, I don't want to tell you guys how to run your religion, but Christianity inspired art, music and literature for two thousand years. Now you guys just come off as a bunch of sanctimonious, dinosaur-denying whiners with a persecution complex. What happened?

Sure, they gave us the Italian Renaissance, but what have they done for us lately?

*Last one about the Chick-fil-A thing, I swear.

Let's Appreciate Chick-fil-A®!

Thousands of Americans braved long lines and arterial blockages today to come out in un-support of gay marriage. Yup, it's Chick-fil-A® Appreciation Day: a special day set aside to recognize the irrational bigotry of people who stand by Chick-fil-A® CEO (and notable furry) Dan Cathy® and his homophobic comments.

'I think it's time we Christians took a stand against the intolerant attitude of progressives.
Who are they to tell us who we can and can't discriminate against? I mean, isn't this America?'

-Pat Boone, apparently unaware 

of irony and cholesterol

Pictured: A pair of happy Chick-fil-A® patrons
about to stuff their hate-holes. Enjoy!

Started by Mike Huckabee about a week ago, Chick-fil-A® Appreciation Day is generally observed on the first Wednesday in August. Traditional celebrations include going out to a fast food restaurant, eating breaded chicken and singing Chick-fil-A® Appreciation Day carols. Parents also tell their children the classic Chick-fil-A® Appreciation Day story. It's about two dudes who get married, and then America is destroyed by a wrathful God. It's fun and educational because it teaches kids the true meaning of Chick-fil-A®.

Of course you're probably wondering how marriage equality will ruin the institution and bring our society crashing down around us. Well, it just will, that's all, it says so in the Bible. Where? I don't know, somewhere after the part about the talking snake, but before the fire-breathing lion with seven heads.

'Why shouldn't gays and lesbians enjoy the same rights
as everyone else? Because shut up, that's why.'

-Mike Huckabee, making the
only argument they've got