Pat Robertson: Expert on the AIDS

So how much crazier does Pat Robertson have to get before someone fits him for a straight jacket and tin foil hat and hauls him off the set of his show? I only ask because during the 'Ask a Paranoid Televangelist' segment, Pat basically accused every HIV positive person in San Francisco of intentionally infecting others just for the hell of it.

Above: Ironically, the fact that Pat Robertson still has a TV show is the best
evidence Atheists have that the universe is a cold, empty expanse devoid of meaning.

Those sparks flying out of
Katy Parry's breasts? AIDS. 

It started with a viewer who volunteered to drive her church's bus but later found out that one of her passengers was HIV positive. Since most 700 Club viewers are pretty sure you can get the AIDS from watching Katy Perry videos, 'Mary' was convinced that if she got into an accident, this guy's blood would squidge its way out of him and seek out her arteries like that alien oil stuff from the X-Files. Because of this totally rational fear, she stopped going to church entirely.

Statistically, only one in 20 people
will get AIDS from a church bus.

Pat, of course, starts off with his usual bullshit about the secret gay cabal that rules America from a smoke-filled boardroom deep under the Castro District, but then concludes that driving an HIV positive person to church isn't quite as dangerous as say, having unprotected anal intercourse with him, which wasn't really on the table anyway. Here's an excerpt from the show:

Pat: "You didn't catch anything, so keep going to church and praise The Lord. You got any thoughts on that one?"

Pat's semi-rational co-host: "You know, I think you were doing a good thing by transporting this man, I have known many people with AIDS and have never felt fearful of a scenario like this. I guess even if you'd had a car accident...I mean-" 

This woman could tell us that leprechauns steal her thoughts at night and
that the moon is made of oatmeal and she'd still be the sanest person on the 700 Club.

Sensing that his co-host was making too much sense, Pat decides chimes in with some serious, 'round-the-bend space-lunacy, and I warn you, this is bonkers, even for him, so like, sit down.

Yeah, if one were to quantify Robertson's crazy in terms of
Christopher Lloyd characters, this one would be like 7 or 8 Judge Dooms.

Here goes:

Now available in grape, strawberry
and AIDS, they're positively delicious!

Pat: "You know what they do in San Francisco? Some of the gay community, they want to get people, so if they've got the stuff (referring to HIV), they'll have a ring, you shake hands, and the ring's got a little thing where you cut your finger."

Pat's semi-rational co-host: "Really?"

Pat: "Yeah really, it's that kind of vicious stuff that'd be the equivalent of murder..."

"AIDS for everyone!"

-The Gay Community,

according to Robertson

Holy shit. I mean, just, holy shit. According to the article, CBN (Robertson's network) has cut the comments from the video, and Robertson himself has issued an apology...well, it's not so much an apology as it is a statement defending his remarks and explaining how we misunderstood him: 

"I regret that my remarks had been misunderstood, but this often happens because people do not listen to the context of remarks which are being said."

-Pat Robertson,

on why we're all idiots

You see, when he said that the gay community was infecting people with secret AIDS rings what he really meant to say was that the gay community was infecting people with secret AIDS rings. See the difference? It's all about context. Thanks for clearing that up, Pat.

Pictured: Pat's AIDS ring comment going unchallenged by everyone in the goddamn room.
For real, anyone want to step in here? Camera guy? Producers? Anyone? No?

Let's disregard our evolutionary imperatives!

Pictured: Evolutionary winners
wisely fleeing from fire.

Nope, I'm not dead, I just went to Burning Man again. If you've never been and only know about it from stories on the internet you probably think it's nothing more than a giant drug-fueled orgy in the sands of the Nevada Desert, but this is completely untrue. It happens in a dry lake bed, so there is no sand. Here're some links to my previous attempts (2010, 2011, and 2012) to share with you why I and 50-70 thousand like-minded individuals swear off internet connections and toilets with running water for an entire week in order to get dangerously close to fire in stark defiance of whatever evolutionary imperative keeps other animals running safely away from it. It's quite a thing.

Here's this year's Man, standing atop a giant flying saucer.
Spoiler alert: it doesn't end well for him.

What? It's like research...

Ever year the event has a theme and this year's was Cargo Cult. What the shit does that mean? Well, a cargo cult, according to my exhaustive and scholarly wikipedia-based research, is an anthropological term for the effect contact with a technologically advanced culture has on a less advanced one. It happened on Star Trek like, every third episode and usually ended with Captain Kirk phasering the Bejezus out of some primitive society's god and leaving them to pick up the pieces of their shattered belief system.

"Prime Directive, schmime smirective, you're worshiping an ancient computer and everything you
believe in is a lie. Now, step aside so I can murder your god and get back to boning alien chicks."

- Captain James 'Space Douche' Kirk

What does any of this have to do with tens of thousands of Burners dressing up like extras from Mad Max and setting art on fire? That's a complicated question, and instead of answering it I'm just going to show you some photos I took.

El-wire, watered down cocktails and fire. Do we really need a reason?

Here we are stopped dead in traffic
26 miles from the gate. 26 miles.
Also pictured: my thumb.

This year seemed super-crowded compared to last and according to the rumors fluttering on the hot dessert breeze, it actually was. Last year's attendance was something like 56,000 which was way lower than the cap of 60,900. This was probably because people were put off by the complicated ticket lottery system. This year had a far simpler ticket distribution system and was supposed to be capped at 68,000, but a random gate person I spoke to said the actual count was closer to 71,000 which could mean that there were counterfeit tickets or stowaways or that 3000 people just snuck in.

Perhaps something like: 'Abraso-Ruff'
or 'Bloodletter' would be more apt. 

Whatever the case, the porta potties are usually a good indicator of attendance and this year they where...what's the word? Heinous. Despite the best efforts of the guys with the vaccu-trucks whose job it is to maintain them, they were heinous, suggesting a volume of usage (i.e. poo) the planners were unprepared for. Speaking of the facilities, I would like to have a word with the good people who do the advertising for Morex™ brand toilet tissue. I'm not sure that it's appropriate to describe 1-ply anything with the phrase 'silky soft.' Ever.

Anyway, I'm not complaining, it was a great burn. I camped with some awesome people who brought, get this: a zipline and a Stargate. Yes, a goddamned Stargate, complete with lights, smoke and sound effects. Yup, I was camping with my people: nerds.

Neeeerrrddds!

Above: Implausible!

There was also some fantastic art this year. The Church Trap (see below) was one of my favorite. Here's its website. When we went to see it there was a line of people waiting to get married in it. It was rad. It was also where I ran in to two friends from my first Burn back in 2010, which in a crowd of 70 thousand people is as statistically unlikely as it sounds. In fact, if you go out with friends at night and get separated you just sort of have to write off ever seeing them again. Maybe forever.

Pictured: A grown-ass man dressed-up like the
monkey from Aladdin pointing at a subtle metaphor.

Behold some more pictures:

Here's a flaming pachinko machine which instead
of fabulous prizes pays out in third-degree burns.

Bo-ring.

Or don't. Whatever.

It's a metal octopus that drives around shooting flames.
Suck on that, every other thing ever. 

If Burning Man had an official sport it would be hooping. Even better than hooping: LED hooping at night.

Rad, huh? Now check out the one on the left.

Yeah, that's a LED hood with programmable patterns.
I don't understand why people even need drugs at this place.

It's not just the Man that burns at Burning Man, most of the art pieces are burnt as well attracting huge crowds who wait for them to burn to the ground so they can leap through the embers.

Oh look, a hot, suffocating conflagration. Can't wait to get closer.

Like, for real. What is wrong with us?

Look at this: the grim specter of fiery death actually appeared to tell us to stay
away from the goddamned fire. Did we listen? No. Of course we fucking didn't.

Of course the reason for the season, The Man, is best part of the whole thing. Tens of thousands gather around the fire perimeter to watch and hope to hell the prevailing winds don't smother us with molten nails and flaming wreckage.

These blurry people are some of my friends waving
laser guns as we set out for the Man on burn night.

Before the Man burns, hundreds of fire performers put on an amazing
show seen here behind that guy's hat. Incidentally, what kind of
fancy dick wears a tall, view-obstructing hat to the fire show?

Fortunately for those of us in the shadow of the hat,
the fire show wraps all the way around the Man.

This performer is either twirling a flaming hula-hoop,
or opening a flaming portal to hell. Either way, it was mint.

The burn starts off with fireworks the likes of which would make
 Gandalf himself drown his mighty beard with tears of inadequacy.

Then comes the 'splosions.

Yeah. It's a thing.

It's right about at this point that we were all hit with the crushing realization that it would be another 365 days until the next burn...well, that and a wave of eyebrow-searing heat. 

Beatletooth! Beatletooth! Beatletooth!

Lennon used to tip the pizza guy by
spitting in his hand. He was kind of a dick.

You know what's a little kooky? Buying someone's rotten tooth at auction for $30,000. You know what's batshit insane? Planning to use the tooth to grow a clone of John Lennon. Here, let me back up: John Lennon, like all British people, had terrible teeth. But unlike most people, he was a member of the Beatles, so I guess his housekeeper didn't think it was at all weird when he handed her the rotten molar he just had pulled and said: 'here, give this to your daughter.' Gross right?

Well, the housekeeper's daughter, a huge Beatles fan, kept the decayed mass of calcium in the family until 2011 when it sold it at auction for $30,000...of money.

"Going once, going twice...you realize this is a dead man's rotted tooth right?
You do? Alright: sold for $30,000. That figure again, $30,000...for the tooth."

-The Auctioneer, reevaluating his life decisions.

"Check it oot!"

What kind of person spends thirty goddamn thousand dollars on medical waste? Why, a Canadian dentist named Michael Zuk, who collects celebrity teeth. But what makes him different from the rest of us is that while most people would, I don't know, keep the tooth in a box and show it off at parties or something, Zuk has sent it to a lab in the US for gene sequencing. The plan: to bring the late John Lennon back to life, using science.

Above: A typical Canadian

Now, I know what your thinking: 'that's rabid-foam, 'round the bend crazy, even for a Canadian.' And you would be correct (but watch those Canadian cracks, ok?). Here's a quote from his website. Yes, he started a website, check it out, it's a treat.

"Many Beatles fans remember where they were when they heard John Lennon was shot. I hope they also live to hear the day he was given another chance." 

-Michael Zuk, DDS

Think about that next time
you let a dentist put you under.

Zuk claims on his website that the tooth is 'worth 25 Million Dollars or more to the right company' and that if 'Genetics companies miss out on this opportunity, their marketing people should be taken out back and forced to read [Zuk's] book on the absolute power of celebrity.' Um...ok. Oh, so you if had any doubt as to Michael Zuk's Omega-level crazy, please listen to his original song: Love Me Tooth. And while you're doing that, keep in mind that as a dentist, Zuk has access to tiny drills and anesthesia. Holy shit.

Sorry to disappoint, but there's more
than a shovel and a cloning machine
between us and a Ramones reunion. 

Ok, look. I don't want to crap on Zuk's totally sound idea, but is he aware that while it may be possible someday to clone a human, said clone isn't really going to be the same person just because they share genes. It's not like John Lennon 2.0 is going to pop out of the vat, fully-grown holding a guitar and strumming Imagine. He'll just be another kid who happens to share John Lennon's DNA. I mean, how many Sean Lennon albums do you own? Here's some more Zuk:

"Many will say the creation of a living clone of John Lennon is immoral or insane, but it can be argued otherwise. JL would have preferred to live a full life and continue his efforts for PEACE." 

-Dr. Michael Zuk,

pointing out that Lennon probably

would have preferred not to get murdered

Immoral or insane? Can't it be both?

Meat Popsicles

What? Don't like being fingerprinted? Well, then you should have thought of that before you decided to live in New York City's swanky public housing.

The en suite yellow circles make random police inspections more convenient than ever!

Help McGruff take a bite out of
crime...also human dignity.

Yeah, fingerprint everyone living in buildings run by the New York City Housing Authority. That's what NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg suggested on his radio show last Friday. According to Bloomberg,

"...5% of (NYC's) population lives in NYCHA housing, 20% of the crime is in NYCHA housing, numbers like that, and we've just got to find ways of bringing crime down there."

-Mayor Bloomberg,
just throwing out some ideas,
some terrible, dystopian ideas

On a related Orwellian note, the city filed an appeal of a Federal Judge's ruling that the NYPD's policy of frisking anyone they deem suspicious (that is, suspiciously not white) was unconstitutional and had to stop. But why was 'stop and frisk' ok in the first place? I mean, did city officials miss that 1984 was a cautionary tale and not, like, a suggestion?

The Mayor also misinterpreted Ray Bradbury's classic Fahrenheit 451,
with tragic consequences for the New York Public Library.

Did we learn nothing
from Snake Plissken?

Look, I get that people prefer not to get robbed and stabbed, but there's got to be a better, less carpet bomb-y way to deal with it. I think Bloomberg's point is that a disproportionate percentage of crime is being committed in NYCHA housing (although not necessarily by the residents) and that fingerprinting everybody who lives there would help police ensure that they're keeping people who shouldn't be in the buildings out. Ok, so issue key cards or hire a doorman. Why is plan A to turn public housing into a John Carpenter movie?

"Nuke'em from orbit.
It's the only way to be sure."

And if all this crime is being committed in these complexes, then isn't it being committed against NYCHA residents? So this plan would fingerprint not only innocent people, but innocent victims. In fact, if they managed to fingerprint anyone who actually goes on to commit a crime, it wouldn't be because the program was a good idea, it'd be an accident. It's like waiting tables and spitting in all the food on the off chance that one customer turns out to be a shitty tipper.

"Benjamin Franklin once said: 'they who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little 
temporary safety, have made a really good deal.' Oh, sorry, my producer is telling 
me that's not the correct quote at all, but...but you get the point...right?"

-Michael Bloomberg,
doing it wrong

A stunning achievement in the field of sucking

"Wah wah."

-Riker's trombone

As I may have mentioned five or six times before, I didn't really like Star Trek Into Darkness. It's not because it was a bad movie (although it kind of was) it's that it didn't really feel like Star Trek. It was just another brainless summer popcorn movie. But my shrugging dismissal of the film was nothing compared to the scathing condemnation doled out by the Star Trek fans attending the Creation Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas who voted Star Trek Into Darkness #13 on a ranking of Star Trek films. Thirteenth, in a field of 12.

Wa-huh? Yeah, they counted Galaxy Quest, the 1999 Tim Allen comedy which, despite not actually being a Star Trek movie, ranked higher than STID on the list of favorite Star Trek movies. That's like...well, it's like this:

"My favorite child? Moms don't play favorites...but if we did I suppose it would go your older brother,
your sister, your younger brother, your cousin Alex, Dave from next door, then you."

Oh, right, the homemade uniforms.

Even if you take Galaxy Quest out of the picture, the film was still beaten out by the oft-reviled odd-number entries like Star Trek V, the one where the crew blows up God and Star Trek: Insurrection, the one where Worf gets a pimple. Even Nemesis ranked higher and that one was so bad, and did so poorly at the box office that they had to reboot the franchise. But Into Darkness made decent money, and it's got an 87% on Rotten Tomatoes. How can it be so well liked by movie goers yet so hated by fans? Like, what makes trekkies different from other people?

Don't say it...don't you fucking
dare shout Kha-damnit Abrams! 

They...ok, we, are kind of obsessed with the source material, so it's important to us that the filmmakers respect it. We're not asking a lot, just that they not go out of their way to piss us off, something director J. J. Abrams seemed to set out to do. For example, you can't rip-off Spock's death scene from the Wrath of Khan, and then expect us not to curse your name for all eternity. I mean, you're practically asking for it.

Whereas a normal person watches Into Darkness, says 'hey that was neat' and moves on with their lives, a trekkie walks away fuming at how the writers and director don't know a goddamn thing about Star Trek. That's the difference.

"I think the fans are really going to enjoy this film because it encapsulates
everything that The Star Tracks is all about: explosions, revenge, gratuitous
shots of Alice Eve in her underwear. I mean, warp me up Scotty!"

-J. J. Abrams,

The guy in charge of Star Trek