When he couldn’t see the road in front of him at all, Bobby relented and squirted some cleaner on his windshield. After it was partially cleared of bug guts, Bobby lost patience and abandoned windshield-cleaning, and instead, he decided to reach down into the passenger-side floorboard to get himself another beer. He knew he still had four left in his Igloo lunch cooler, but it was so damn dark he couldn’t really see around the inside of his truck. He made a mental note to have Wade fix the lights on the instrument panel — and maybe the interior light too, depending on how much the criminal charged him for the gauge lights. Bobby stretched down as far to his right as he could, while still holding on to the steering wheel with his left hand. He practically had to lie down in the bench seat to reach the floorboard. As the truck bounced around he made a mental note to get Wade to check his shocks, too.

His fingers fumbled blindly in the floorboard. Work boots. Nope. Gloves. Nuh-uh. CD cases. Move. Empties. Gettin’ warmer. There. Cooler. Open…ah ha…un-opened beer.

Just as Bobby began knocking the ice off the top of the beer can, the steering wheel spun out of the grip of his left hand, he felt his truck lift off the ground, and suddenly, everything became all light and floaty.

…

…

And then crashing chaos. The tumbling truck tossed Bobby around in the cab like a cat in a clothes dryer, and in a point of irony that Bobby would never begin to understand, beer sprayed all over him as the truck entered the “tumble dry” mode of the crash.

And then stillness. The drip-drip sounds of leaking fluid. The squeak-squeak of a still-moving wheel.

Bobby knew the truck was upside down because when he looked up he saw the accelerator pedal. He felt sweaty, but he worried that the stickiness he was wiping off his forehead was something other than sweat and grime. He hoped it was oil. He knew it probably wasn’t. He couldn’t really make out where the side windows or the windshield had been, so Bobby aimed for the largest opening in the twisted, beer soaked metal and began inching his way towards it.

It took Bobby a good ten minutes to squirm and writhe out of his wrecked pickup truck. It had landed, after several balletic spins and flips, upside down and in a muddy ditch. Bobby plopped down in the brown, rancid water with a splash and stared at his mangled truck. He had heard people say that drunks usually walk away from violent car crashes without a scratch on them. He said a little prayer of thanks to Jesus for letting him be drunk. And for being sleepy. He felt sure his drunkenness and sleepiness had kept him relaxed and loose through the crash. The wreck may have shaken him awake, but Bobby could feel his sleepiness returning. His head hurt so damn bad. He rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands until he saw white spots. He could actually hear his brain throbbing, and an undulating pressure pushed at the back of his eyes.

Bobby laid back in the muddy water. The water covered his ears and almost went over his eyes. But his nose and mouth were above the surface of the brackish liquid, so he figured it was okay to take a little nap. Just long enough for his head to stop hurting.

Bobby awoke staring directly into the brightest light he had ever seen. It was so blindingly bright, he found he couldn’t even close his eyes to avoid looking at it. He opened his mouth to scream, but he discovered he was unable to make any noise at all. Bobby felt a pressure that was both pushing and pulling his body simultaneously, and he dug his fingers into the mud at the bottom of the puddle to steady himself. Bobby didn’t want to vomit, especially at a moment when his mouth refused to open. Eventually the undulating pressure in his head stopped, his nausea resided as quickly as it had came, and he felt the light pulling him out of his muddy bed. As he floated, he imagined that the mereungie on his gramma’s pies probably didn’t feel as light as he did. Right before he floated passed above the tops of the trees that embowered the wreckage of his truck, he passed out for the second time that night.

Bobby regained consciousness before he regained his sight. He felt frigid, and he realized all his clothes were gone. All the hairs on his body were standing on end, but his hands and arms were rigid at his sides. He tried to bolt upwards, but despite his muscles contracting in the correct manner, his limbs refused to move. He tried to yell for help, but his mouth wouldn’t open. His body remained as still as a statue. But on the inside, in his mind, Bobby was thrashing and screaming in pure terror.

Finally Bobby’s eyes opened. He wished they hadn’t. He tried to close them immediately but they were held open just as they’d been held shut a moment before.

Bobby found himself lying, on what he assumed was a table, in the middle of a stark white room. And Bobby wasn’t even sure the room was white because he couldn’t see walls or a ceiling or any solid shapes at all. It was just a sense of “whiteness” that Bobby felt more than actually saw. He head wouldn’t move to look at his sides, but Bobby moved his eyes and looked to his right has hard as he could. In his peripheral vision, just before the blackness that occurs at the corner of the eye, Bobby could see that he was only one person in a row of people. And these people, who were all naked, were simply floating several feet off the white floor.

At that moment, Bobby truly knew terror.

Bobby heard an excruciatingly loud humming noise in his head, and in start contrast to his rigid and unmoveable limbs, his mind became a whirling tsunami of gibbering, manic horror.

And then, suddenly and without warning, the terror began to slide and melt away as if coaxed by a hypnotist, and his inner-self became as calm and subdued as his limbs were motionless. He felt the pressure return in his head again, but this time he didn’t care. It was gentler this time, and Bobby felt as if the humming presence in his head was flipping through his thoughts and memories like a child playfully fanning the pages of a flip-book. The feeling was distinctly pleasurable. Bobby finally relaxed, and just as he began to drift off, he felt the chilly touch of metal fingers exploring his naked, mud-crusted body. As the last bit of consciousness drifted away, Bobby wondered if he would ever see home again, or if he was, in fact, dying. He said a prayer to ask Jesus for forgiveness for his wicked life just in case.

———————————————–*

Rlyeh sat in his chair, lethargically staring down the long conference table, dreading the upcoming meeting. He tried to form what he could consider to be an acceptable explanation for his team’s failure, but he simply couldn’t. He knew that no one on the Rejoinder expected anything more than a detailed report on his initial findings, but he had begun the preliminary survey with such high hopes. The room felt chilly, even though he knew it wasn’t. He felt like the empty chairs were mocking the ambiguity inherent within his report. He closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing in slow, methodical breaths.

The noise of people filling the room jolted Rlyeh awake. Chairperson Hojannes took her seat at the head of the table, and the people began to settle down and organize notes in preparation for the meeting.

Hojannes cleared her throat and addressed the room, “Okay everyone. We need to get started. Before we delve into your respective reports, the Navs have told me that tomorrow we’ll need to begin prepping the stasis chambers an hour earlier than originally planned. They’re afraid a solar wind maelstrom will affect the Rosen fields, so they want to get an early start. Please inform your teams accordingly.”

“Now, who would like to start us off?”

For a split second, Rlyeh started to volunteer to go first to get the whole thing over with, but just as he began to speak, Investigator Simon cut him off. “I’ll take the lead, Chairperson Hojannes,” Simon said in an authoritative voice. He cleared his voice and stood.

“As you all know, pre-mission hypothesis stipulated that the CO2 level in the atmosphere had risen to such a degree that, over a long period of time, the biosystem of the planet incrementally and gradually became harsher and eventually uninhabitable. The commonly accepted timeline as predicted by modeling for this gradual system failure was in the 2-3 hundred year range. We are now fairly certain that while the biosystem was, in fact, slowly changing after the industrialization paradigm shift, a massive biosystem breakdown occurred sometime around 2170. Up until that point, humankind was still able to survive on the surface, but my team posits that after that 2170, humanity would not have survived anywhere except underground or many meters under what was left of the oceans.”

Investigator Simon typed a string of commands into the workstation in front of him and said, “Let’s take a look at this model my team designed. Hopefully it will help to illustrate the effect of both the gradual and the massive biosystem events.” The lights in the cabin dimmed gently, and floating several inches above the center-point of the table, a shimmering, 3-D image of a blueish planet appeared. Rlyeh sighed inwardly. While immensely competent, and quite friendly to boot, Investigator Simon bored Rlyeh to sleep. Since the lights were already dimmed, and everyone in the room was concentrating on the model in the middle of the table, Rlyeh decided to close his eyes for a moment. Just for a moment.

When Rlyeh opened his eyes, he was shocked to see everyone staring at him. He was confused. Chairperson Johannes looked irritated. “Investigator Rlyeh, I asked if you had any thoughts on that?”

Rlyeh inhaled deeply and rubbed his eyes. “My apologies to everyone, but especially to you Investigator Simon. I certainly did not mean to drift off during your presentation. It’s just that I was up with my team all night trying to construct a hypothesis robust enough to accommodate all of our data. I realize that is not an acceptable excuse for falling asleep.”

“You not only slept through Investigtaor Simon’s presentation, but through Investigator Prin’s presentation as well, Investigator Rlyeh,” said Chairperson Hojannes in a flat voice. “She didn’t realize you were napping, and she asked you why you think the human population, at the beginning of the 21st century, seemed so dead-set on finding a single precipitating cause for the changes they were noticing in their global environment?”

“Despite the fact that even the most elementary scientific mind should have realized that a myriad of occurrences affect the biosystem,” added Investigator Prin helpfully.

Rlyeh shuffled his materials anxiously and replied, “Well, again, I want to apologize. I truly didn’t mean to fall asleep, but after everyone hears my presentation I hope that you will all understand my frustration, if not my exhaustion. First, let me say that the phenomenon observed by Investigator Prin and her team is something that my team continues to struggle with explaining as well, but unfortunately, I’m not sure I can offer any theories. Just observations and supposition.”

“First, let me detail our data set. My team and I procured one thousand subjects from a one hundred year time span. Five hundred females and five hundred males. We obtained brain maps of all the subjects, as well as comprehensive verbal and psychionic evaluations.”

Investigator Simon raised his hand. “Initially, the academy was concerned about the verbal evaluations because of the archaic nature of their language. Did that pose a problem?”

Despite the interruption, Rlyeh was pleased the question came up so early into his presentation. “No, Inspector Simon, it did not. Linguistically, their language does not differ significantly from our own. Remember, our language is but a variation of theirs, and since the phonology remains fairly constant between our language and the older languages of the test subjects, we had little to no trouble programming a translator to communicate with them.”

Investigator Simon looked satisfied, so Rlyeh continued: “All subjects came from mid to low economic status, and all subjects possessed mid to low education. Of course, all metrics are based on averages of the time period in which the subject resided.”

“One thing that came as a surprise to myself and my team, and this is something that we have yet to factor into a final analysis of the data, is that 90% of the subjects believed in,” Rlyeh scanned through his notes. “A kind of post-life. Details differ from subject to subject, but essentially they all held this belief.” Rlyeh looked back up at his fellow investigators’ confused faces. “I know. We were confused, too. Both verbal and psychionic evaluations revealed a belief in this premise. Essentially, these subject believed that after they died, some intangible portion of themselves would…go, for a lack of a better term, somewhere else. The location and the details of this other place differed according to the subject’s region of origin, but the belief was essentially ubiquitous.”

“Do you suppose there was an error with the translator?” asked Chairperson Johannes.

Rlyeh shook his head. “No Chairperson. We checked the code and the running program. Several times, in fact. No, eventually we came to the consensus that this was simply symptomatic of an intrinsic flaw in their cognitive processes. The test subjects were able to hold two opposing beliefs simultaneously. All one thousand subjects suffered from this cognitive disability.”

At the opposite end of the table from Rlyeh, Investigator Landry looked up from his notes. “My team has also encountered this phenomenon while constructing a history of our pre-diasporic ancestors. In fact, they had a term for this themselves. ‘Cognitive Dissonance,’ I believe.”

Rlyeh nodded at Investigator Landry. “Indeed? Appropriate title.” Rlyeh quickly scribed the term into his notes for later review. “Thank you, Investigator Landry. Well, our preliminary findings show that this phenomenon influenced the subjects to such a degree that their survival was doubtful even if the planet had remained habitable. Again, through our verbal and psychionic evaluations, we observed the subjects holding two or more opposing ideas simultaneously, and thus, preventing rational thought. 13% of the subjects were aroused by homosexual stimuli, such as probes or pornographic images, yet they proclaimed homosexual behavior abhorrent. 65% stated that it was morally wrong to provide financial support to economically indigent humans, and yet, all of our subjects were economically indigent themselves. 97% denounced what they considered to be fanatical notions of the post-life, and yet all the subjects held fanatical ideas of the post-life themselves. These subjects are, excuse me, were, the most inconsistent and hypocritical beings my team has ever encountered.”

Rlyeh paused to take a drink of water. He nodded toward Investigator Prin and said, “Now, to address your question. I feel quite sure the scientists of that time knew that there were mutually exclusive factors that were mutating the biosystem of their planet, but taking into account the data gleaned from my team, I feel quite sure that it was,” Rlyeh looked at his notes for Investigator Landry’s term, “”cognitive dissonance” that your team observed, as well. According to our evaluations, 765 subjects investigated had heard of the term “global warming,” but only 22% understood the term on even an elementary level, and of those 22%, only 3% believed it was something that humankind could reverse. Accordingly, it’s no wonder this group died off, and again, my team feels sure that on a long enough time-line their erratic and overly violent behavior would have led to extinction anyway.”

Chairperson Hojannes raised a finger to pause Rlyeh. “Is that feeling supported by modeling, or is it based on conjecture?”

“Purely conjecture.”

“Very Well. Continue,” said the Chairperson.

“My team and I are actually amazed that our ancestors were able to make it off the planet at all. Frankly, the subjects in this sample are representative of the leaders of the population of Earth from the 20th century onward. I know our mission here aboard the Rejoinder is the first of many, but I feel confident enough to state that the subjects we examined are one of the primary reasons for the destruction of our species on the planet Earth. Granted, when this system’s star left its G2 stage and became a Red Giant, then human life on the planet would have ceased regardless, but these subjects accelerated the destruction of our species on planet Earth by roughly ten million years. And that is a conservative estimate. When we began this mission, I felt sure my team could formulate a robust theory which would explain these test subjects, but unfortunately, much more research is warranted if we ever want to fully understand this group of pre-diasporic humans.”

Investigator Simon stopped taking notes and asked, “Despite your initial trepidation regarding your report, I find your results simply fascinating, Investigator Rlyeh. Other than the category ‘test subjects,’ have you categorized these humans in any meaningful way?”

“Yes, Investigator Simon. Just a moment.” Rlyeh scanned his notes. “For the sake of simplicity, we actually began using the same name they use for themselves: Republicans.”

The truth about the mosque is actually pretty damn boring. It’s going to go inside an old Burlington Coat factory that closed down after 9/11. The building is in a depressed area of NYC, and it’s been vacant for nearly ten years. Technically, it isn’t even a true mosque because the only thing that can take place in a mosque is worship. The building will have “Muslim prayer space, [and] the Initiative’s plan includes a 500-seat auditorium, theater, performing arts center, fitness center, swimming pool, basketball court, childcare services, art exhibitions, bookstore, culinary school, and a food court serving halal dishes.” So it actually is a community center, despite what Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are trying to tell everyone.

It’s also a bit of an exaggeration to say the site is at Ground Zero. It isn’t. It’s about two blocks from the northeastern edge of the World Trade Center site, which is a bit more like five blocks from where the towers actually stood. Traveling five blocks in NYC can be like traveling to a different country–five blocks can be the difference between a fifty dollar duck confit and a five dollar handjob.

Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam of the proposed Islamic community center, was even invited to an FBI meeting to lecture about the relations between Muslims and non-Muslims. So he’s definitely an untrustworthy character.

One last thing regarding this mosque: In 2000, the republican-led Congress passed the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. Currently, GOP is calling for the government to block the building of this new mosque, which might be a violation of the First Amendment. But it’s surely in violation of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, which was passed through the republican led congress with unanimous consent. If you don’t believe me, click the link and read the language of the act yourself.

I can hear your collective reactions through the computer “But Mark, if it’s no big deal, and it would be illegal for any government institution to block the construction, why are the republicans throwing a big fit?”

Easy. Misdirection. A red herring. It’s the political equivalent of telling someone “hey, your shoelace is untied,” and then busting the person in the nose when he or she looks down.

The republican party has a illustrious past of using the red herring to deflect voter attention away from their inherent shittiness. The red herring they are most likely to employ  is a black or brown person, or some other scary, non-WASPy individual. Examples? You got it, but be sure to buckle up because it’s gonna be a long and bumpy ride.

Let’s start with Reagan. What was his sleight-of-hand move? Scary black women. Reagan convinced the voters that there were thousands and thousands of welfare moms, which he dubbed “welfare queens,” and if we elected a democrat to the presidency we would bcome a welfare nation and there would be thousands more of the lazy, child-producing, Cadillac driving black women. Never mind the fact that the woman Reagan used as an example, Linda Taylor, probably never even existed. Black people on welfare were going to steal all our hard earned money!!!! Vote republican!!!

Now let’s move right along to George H. W. Bush. What was his “your shoelace is untied” maneuver? Scary black man raping people. While Michael Dukakis was the governor of Massachusetts, he supported a program that would grant certain prisoners, even those that were convicted for life, a furlough.

Pay attention now because the devil is in the details with this story. This furlough program was not Dukakis’s handiwork. It was actually signed into law by the previous governor, a republican, by the name of  Francis W. Sargent. Originally, the furlough program didn’t cover inmates that had received life in prison, but the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that it should, in fact, cover those serving life. Again, Dukakis supported it after the fact, but he had absolutely nothing to do with it passing or the expansion of the program.

During Dukakis’s time as governor, Willie Horton, an inmate in Maryland, was release for a weekend furlough via this program. He did not return to prison like he was supposed to do,  and while he was out, he assaulted a man and raped his girlfriend.

George H. W. Bush used this as an example of what would happen if you voted for Dukakis, despite the fact that Dukakis had nothing to do with the whole debacle besides saying he thought the program made sense. Bush went on to make the case that Dukakis was planning on releasing all the scary black men from prisons. And logically, those black men would immediately begin raping white women as quickly as they could. Vote republican!!!

The republicans tried like hell to distract the American people away from Bill Clinton’s suaveness, but fortunately for our economy, none of the republicans had an effective enough red herring to totally topple Slick Willie. They were partially successful during the 1992 midterms, as they were able to retake the majority in Congress. The republicans actually had to use two bugaboos as ruses during the 1992 midterms: uppity feminists and socialism.

The republicans understood that their base, fundamentalist Christians, do not like feminists and strong women. So they relentlessly attacked Hillary. While at the same time, Clinton was attempting to pass a comprehensive health care plan, so they were able to not only fall back on the old tried and true “welfare queen” shtick, but they also went with the “they’re transforming us into socialists!!”

After the midterms, the republicans weren’t all that successful at distracting us away from Bill. Sure, they tried to impeach him over his affair with Monica Lewinsky, but most people recognized that whole thing as the dog and pony show it was, and in the end, the impeachment probably hurt the GOP as much as it did Clinton.

Moving right along, George W. Bush, along with Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, were masters of the red herring. We should bow down before their techniques. They first used the red herring during the 2000 primaries. Bush and Rove began a “whisper campaign” in South Carolina, through which they began a nasty little rumour that John McCain had fathered a black baby out of wedlock. More scary black people! McCain subsequently lost S.C., and eventually the primary nomination campaign.

Bush, Rove, and Cheney pulled off what is perhaps the greatest sleight of hand in political history: They convinced a whole nation that all brown people are the same. That’s right, they convinced us all that Saddam Hussein and Iraq were ultimately responsible for 9/11, despite the fact that they had exactly zero, zilch, nada to do with the attacks on the World Trade Center. You see, Bush, Cheney, and Rove knew that fighting in Afghanistan was going to be shitty, shitty work. There was no real face of the enemy, and Afghanistan hadn’t really even recovered from the beating the Soviets had issued during the ‘80s. So they needed a reason to go into Iraq. What they need was some “proof” that would serve as a distraction.

Wanna know where republicans got their “proof” that there had been a relationship between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda? An informant named “Curveball” who had embezzled a shit-ton of money from Saddam and had a history of making things up.

That’s it, you’re saying? We actually started a second war on the basis of some information from an embezzler who had a history of lying? Well, no. You see, both Saddam and Al-Qaeda are Muslim. And they’re all brown.

So we went to war, and in the process, Bush pulled off the greatest incident of misdirection ever. Hey, look, more scary brown people! Let’s fight them, too!

He also used the red herring against John Kerry during the 2004 campaign. He was able to cast John Kerry, an honest to goodness war hero, as a liar and a war dissident.

I’m going to move away from G.W.B., but I could literally write several posts on the uses of the red herring fallacy during the Bush presidency. But we don’t have time. Onward to…

2008. The GOP, sensing that using uppity women and godless sodomites as distractions for the upcoming presidental election might not work, went back to the tried and true formula: Scary Black People. Except this time, the scary black person was the actual candidate for President of the United States! AAHHHHHH!

First they said his Christian minister was anti-American. Then they said that Obama was secretly a Muslim. (first he’s a racist christian and then a militant muslim) Then they said he wasn’t born in the U.S. Then they said he was best friends with a terrorist. Then they said he was schooled in a radical Islamic madrassa. Then they called him “elitist,” which I think is a synonym for “uppity.”

And on. And on. And on. Scary Black Man. Obama has been a blessing for those who practice the art of misdirection.

And now they’re at it again. Scary muslims in NYC building a mosque. It’s all an illusion though. You want to know the real reason they’re pushing this thing? The midterms. They’re trying to get us scared again because they know that scared people won’t give a shit that the republicans haven’t done jack shit since January 2009. They’ve vetoed everything they could. They’ve refused to compromise on anything, and they’ve brought Congress to a standstill on issues that are usually procedural. But muslims are scary! Vote for the republicans or you could be killed by muslims!

If you really want to know the true character of the GOP, look no further than the GOP stalling of the 9/11 responders bill. The republicans vetoed yet another version of a bill that would provide health care to the first responders of 9/11. You know why? Because at ground zero, on the day of 9/11 and the hellish days that followed, there were some undocumented workers that helped with rescue operations. And now those people are sick, and the GOP, the party of the Christians, doesn’t want to pay for the health care of people who are here illegally.

That’s the true character of the GOP: Hateful. Racist. Greedy and Petty.

So on November 2nd, remember that the GOP is trying to distract you with all kinds of bullshit and nonsense. Vote for any of the candidates besides the GOP candidates because otherwise, you could wake up on November 3rd with a bloodied and broken nose.

Ellis describes the two thus:

They were an incongruous pair, but everyone seemed to argue that history had made them into a pair. The incongruities lept out for all to see: Adams, the short, stout, candid-to-a-fault New Englander; Jefferson, the tall, slender, elegantly elusive Virginian; Adams, the highly combustible, ever combative, mile-a-minute talker, whose favorite form of conversation was an argument; Jefferson, the always cool and self-contained enigma, show regarded debate and argument as violations of the natural harmonies he heard inside his own head…[t]hey were the odd couple of the American Revolution. (163)

To some degree, the United States is still haunted by the ghosts of Adams’s and Jefferson’s political disagreements. A direct comparison of the Federalists to the Democrats and the Democratic-Republicans to present day Republicans would, of course, be ludicrous. For one thing, the political ideologies of Adams and Jefferson were inextricably entwined with the Revolution. As often as Americans whinge and bitch about politics, Adams and Jefferson actually lived through political turmoil. For another, Jefferson hated religion, and this is not something that has remained unnoticed among current Republicans. Ellis claims that “like Voltaire, Jefferson longed for the day when the last king would be strangled with the entrails of the last priest” (139). While Adams wasn’t as venomous towards religion, his father was a minister and he considered himself a Unitarian, he most certainly held beliefs that current reading would view as deistic. Their deistic beliefs alone make a direct comparison with modern-day politics futile.

But I think I can easily provide an analogy of the political divide between Adams and Jefferson while simultaneously providing one that will help us understand the schism between political parties today:

“The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse” by Aesop.

Now you must know that a town mouse once upon a time went on a visit to his cousin in the country. He was rough and ready, this cousin, but he loved his town friend and made him heartily welcome. Beans and bacon, cheese and bread, were all he had to offer, but he offered them freely. The town mouse rather turned up his long nose at this country fare, and said, “I cannot understand, cousin, how you can put up with such poor food as this, but of course you cannot expect anything better in the country; come you with me and I will show you how to live. When you have been in town a week you will wonder how you could ever have stood a country life.” No sooner said than done: The two mice set off for the town and arrived at the town mouse’s residence late at night.

“You will want some refreshment after our long journey,” said the polite town mouse, and took his friend into the grand dining room. There they found the remains of a fine feast, and soon the two mice were eating up jellies and cakes and all that was nice. Suddenly they heard growling and barking.

“What is that?” said the country mouse.

“It is only the dogs of the house,” answered the other.

“Only,” said the country mouse, “I do not like that music at my dinner!” Just at that moment the door flew open; in came two huge mastiffs; and the two mice had to scamper down and run off.

“Good-bye, cousin,” said the country mouse.

“What! Going so soon?” said the other.

“Yes,” he replied. “Better beans and bacon in peace than cakes and ale in fear.”

Okay, I’m sure most of you have heard this fable before. And while I don’t necessarily agree with the moral it’s supposed to impart, it does capture the animosity between present day Democrats and Republicans and Adams and Jefferson. Jefferson made no apologies about being a Francophile, and he certainly did his fair share of traveling and living abroad, but he would immediately retire to his farm at Monticello at the drop of a hat, and in his heart he felt as if he was a simple, gentlemanly Virginian farmer. Of course, he wasn’t. He was much more than that, but what’s important here is not reality but self-identification. Jefferson viewed himself as a simple country mouse. Adams, on the other hand, was born and lived near Boston and educated at Harvard. He spent a good part of his life living in the hustle-bustle of cities like Boston, Philadelphia, London, and New York. Unlike Jefferson, Adams didn’t long a particular place or location to engage in silent contemplation. Adams did long for the company of his wife Abigail, but he seemed happiest in crowded cities where he could argue and discuss whatever was on his mind. He was the quintessential town mouse.

Many republicans still view the world through country mouse eyes. To a country mouse, self-government makes sense. You know all your mousey neighbors and they all know you. There’s no need for a strong government to help enforce laws because all the mice know each other. Taxes don’t make sense because the little country mouse village has no need for a government, much less an adequately-funded government. Unions don’t make sense to a country mouse because you know your boss. If there’s a problem, just go talk to the head mouse in charge. You know him, he knows you, and you probably know each other’s families. Obviously you can come to some agreement if you talk it out.

But to a town mouse, the country mouse’s view of the world is untenable. There’s so much going on in the town that self-government would never work. There are out-of-control mastiffs–someone has to do something about that. There’s great food and drink, but the company that makes jelly is based in another country, and the mice that work in the local factory aren’t getting a fair shake. Long hours, no benefits, and abusive bosses. The mousey employees had complained to their bosses, but they didn’t have any real power (rumors were the plant was owned by a group of felines from overseas). The mice thought about looking for other work, but the cake factory was the same. So they had to form a union so that their grievances were heard.

It’s no secret that urban voters traditionally vote democrat and rural voters vote republican. And if you’ve lived in both places it’s not hard to see why. When you live in the country you tend to feel, similarly to Jefferson and the country mouse, that you can take care of yourself. Since you aren’t forced to contend with many different kinds of people that hold many differing views on society, you feel disconnected from the rest of the world, and the need of a strong government seems tyrannical. But when you live in the town, like Adams and the town mouse, you realize that self-government simply isn’t enough. There are far too many out of control dogs running around for people to deal with. And beyond that, there are so many conflicting views, such as politics and religion, that without a strong government to continually pursue a common goal, the citizenry would be dissolute and combative.

In my experience, which is obviously anecdotal, people who live in the country oftentimes have a distorted view of city life. They view it as much more violent than it actually is, and they tend to view foreigners much more suspiciously. They also view most poverty as the result of laziness, which of course, it most definitely is not. They also have frighteningly skewed outlooks on unions, and they see any taxes as an imposition bordering on tyranny.

Of course, Aesop’s fable is fairly pro-country mouse, but like Adams, I think that dogmatic adherence to either of the philosophies of Jeffersonian self-government or Hamiltonian Federalism is pure folly, and the only way for the country to flourish is to find a way to continue to combine those two seemingly antagonistic philosophies.

Besides, beans and bacon can get boring as hell. I’d risk a fight with a bull mastiff for a shot at some jellies and cake now and then. I feel like Adams would support me on this.

Post Script: For more of my thoughts on country life, click here.

Post-Post Script: I’ll make a formal announcement at the end of the week, but I want to restart the reading group. Anniina suggested the sequel to Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood. I want to give those people that haven’t read Oryx and Crake the time to read it. Again, I’ll post details later this week.

Clark-Flory comes to the exact same conclusion that any sane bookseller eventually comes to: Romance novels are socially acceptable porn for women. I worked at a Waldenbooks for many years, and every month the same group of sad looking guys would come in and buy the latest issue of Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler. And every month the same group of sad looking females would come in and buy the latest romance offerings from Harlequin and Silhouette. There were virtually no differences between the two groups.

I’d like to take Clark-Flory’s argument a step further. I think that the Romance novels are actually far more damaging than pornography. Pornography, by and large, is immediately identifiable as fantasy. Most reasonable people would be able distinguish between real people sex and porn star sex. However, romance fiction is not as easily identifiable, and even more concerning, it taps into and reinforces the gendered roles that have kept women as subordinates for centuries.

Let’s take the Cinderella story as an example because so many romance novels and movies follow the plot. Incidentally, this basic plot line dates back to the 1st century B.C. A young woman lives in an oppressive, abusive, or isolated environment. She feels misunderstood, unappreciated, and unloved–feelings that are quite common. Suddenly, a romantic and sensitive suitor comes along and falls madly in love with the woman. He’s rugged and manly, handsome, and chivalrous, and unlike everyone else around the woman, he recognizes the woman’s beauty and potential. He accepts where she came from, and he swoops her out of her lowly lifestyle and gives her a wonderful new life.

This type of fantasy insidiously reinforces the notion that women need to be rescued by men. The female never really initiates change in these stories, but rather waits on the male to change things for her. This fantasy also reinforces the notion that every person has a perfect mate out there just waiting to be found–the belief that everyone has a destined mate that is perfect, i.e. The One. As in, he’s the one, or she’s the one I’m meant to be with.

What an absolutely rubbish belief. With as many millions of people waltzing around this giant mudball of ours, the notion that each person only has one perfect mate is asinine. We shouldn’t think in terms of destiny but in terms of varying degrees of compatibility. Some might call this outlook cold, but love and varying degrees of compatibility aren’t mutually exclusive. It’s just that we should look at love as rationally as possible or realize we’re increasing the odds of heartbreak exponentially. For instance, if you’re in love with someone and you disagree about films, TV shows, religion, and politics, odds are good your relationship is going to be shit. Love that person all you want, but at the end of the day, you have nothing in common except some nebulous abstraction we humans have titled “love.”

I’ve been down the romantic “she’s the one” road that romance novels and films promise. It’s a road filled with potholes, deadends, and wrongturns.

As I wrote earlier in this post, porn, unlike romance fiction, is easily identifiable. From the costumes to the dialogue to the lighting, porn is nothing like reality. The differences between porn sex and real sex are like the differences between collegiate wresting and professional wrestling. Sure, collegiate wrestling is a great sport, and the competitors are highly passionate about what they’re doing, but not many people actually want to watch collegiate wrestling. It’s boring as hell. That’s real people sex.

But professional wrestling? Huge difference. There’s loud, bassy music that’s cheesy and awesome. The costumes are gaudy and sexy. The wrestling moves are exciting and damn near physically impossible to achieve without injury. That’s porn.

Now don’t get me wrong…I’m not trying to convince anyone that porn is harmless. It can be quite harmful, but so can just about anything in excess.  My point, rather, is that both romance novels and pornography are forms of escapism, but porn has been vilified while romance fiction has been, for the most part, ignored. Young adults are punished for possessing pornography, yet recent studies show that consumption of pornography does not lead to feelings of misogyny, sexual perversion, rape, or pedophilia. However, the very act of punishing young adults for possessing pornography, especially when coupled with religious fundamentalism, correlates quite highly with sexual depravity. Conversely, society not only condones, but, in many ways, encourages the unrealistic, romantic outlook of love.

Yet again our puritanical roots betray us. We shouldn’t worry so much about the sex. We should, however, be worried about Prince Charming. He’s a liar and a cheat, and quite possibly a serial rapist.

Predictably, people are quite upset about this. The black community is calling for Walmart to apologize, the Walmart manager is claiming he has no idea who made the announcement, and Barack Obama is gearing up for another beer summit.

I really, really, really, hate to do this, but I gotta take Walmart’s side on this one. Don’t get me wrong–I hate Walmart. I mean I really, really hate Walmart.

But this probably wasn’t their fault. In fact, I’m pretty damn sure it wasn’t their fault. When I was younger, and more of a mischief-maker, we used to go into Walmart, Kmart, and Target specifically to find courtesy phones and announce things over the P.A. system. It was a hoot. Down a few beers, wander around the store, find a phone, and announce something like “Attention Walmart shoppers: All shoppers with children must leave the store because your little brats are demolishing the toy section. Or “Attention Target shoppers: Please refrain from farting in the checkout lines. It’s getting a bit cloudy up here.”

I have a feeling that something similar happened yesterday in Jersey. It’s getting pretty hard to pull this stunt because most newer stores no longer have the phones scattered throughout the store. Employees now carry walkie-talkies so there’s no need for them, but in the older stores you’ll still find those clunky old phones. If you pick up the receiver and start punching buttons, eventually you’ll access the P.A. system. Some stores were so dumb they actually had the P.A. marked on the phone.

As a reformed mischief-maker, I cannot condone this kind of behavior. And there is no way I would advocate the following:

1. Find an older dept. store that still has these kinds of phones.

2. Do a bit of recon: Walk around the store for a bit and identify the largest group of people in the store.

3. Go to the phone you’ve already scoped out and then make the following announcement: “Attention Walmart/Kmart/Target/Bells/JcPenny/Sears shoppers: All (choose one based on your initial reconnaissance: white, black, hispanic, asian, presbyterian, catholic, jewish, obese, skinny, toothless, flip-flop wearing, etc.) people must leave the store immediately. Don’t make us use mace. Thank you for your cooperation.”

4. Go to the front of the store and videotape the reactions.

5. Post reactions on YouTube.

6. LOL.

There’s no way I would advocate that kind of immature behavior. But if you do commit this heinous, deplorable crime, please post a link of your hilarious YouTube video in the comments section.

Several weeks ago, I was planning a dinner for myself, Leigh, and my mother. I wanted to make three 1/3 lb. burgers, and I found myself flummoxed at how to calculate the amount of ground beef I needed. I texted my friend Tank, and he replied with a single line of text: “Is this a trick?”

Last week, a student corrected me on my math in the middle of a lecture. I had asked the students to complete an exercise wherein they needed to find argumentative claims in a particular set of readings. I asked them to find three definitional claims, three causal claims, three resemblance claims, and three evaluation claims. As I was finishing up my lecture, I told them, “After you’ve found your nine claims,” and as soon as I said that, a student yelled out “Twelve. Three and three and three and three make twelve.”

I doubt I could identify a causal chain of events that would explain why I’m an utter math failure. It’s more realistic to say that there were probably many different variables in the equation that equals me being a math-dummy. Granted, I have had some truly atrocious math teachers. My first math class in high school was taught by a coach, and he obviously wished to be anywhere but in a room with a group of degenerates teaching math. He let us completely run wild. We would cheat on tests right in front of him, and he never said a word. Our classroom was on the second floor, and one day, while our “teacher” was in the room, we wrote “BITCH” in big, bold letters on a sheet of notebook paper, and then we tied that piece of notebook paper to a long string. We then lowered it down to the window of the classroom below us, so that the much reviled Spanish teacher would know exactly what we thought of her.

With the benefit of hindsight, combined with my experience of actually teaching, I feel pretty confident that my former teachers weren’t the whole problem. No, my biggest problem was that in grammar school, I was smart enough that I didn’t really need to work to make good grades. I got straight “A”s without ever having to open a book. Thus, I never actually learned the basics of mathematics because I never had to learn them.

And now I find myself asking for help on problems as simple as 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3.

As a young student, nothing bugged me quite as much as having a teacher tell me to “show your work.” I heard that all the time. Show your work. Show your work. I hated hearing that because I didn’t understand why I needed to go through the trouble of writing out every step in a long division problem if I already knew the answer. I always felt that “show your work” was just a way to keep the students busy or a way to combat against cheating.

This is a small digression, but one that I think is important. As an undergraduate at Baylor, I became highly active with the karate club, and my participation in the karate club remains one of the few fond memories I have of Baylor. It probably helps that I met my wife in the there, but also, the experiences I had with the club are still informing my outlook on life.

One of the many things that James Melton, my late karate instructor, taught me was that a student doesn’t ever truly understand a particular thing until he or she is able to teach that thing to another student. I might be able execute a particular move well, but until I can explain how I execute that move I probably don’t understand it as well as I could.

I ran up against this little pedagogical peccadillo when I began teaching writing. I found that while I knew what a grammatical sentence looked like, I didn’t know how to explain why it was grammatical. This is why that many ESL students perform quite well in grammar classes and why native speaking students will oftentimes perform poorly in them. An ESL student has probably learned English by memorizing grammatical/mechanical constructions and verb conjugation, while the native speaker just speaks without actually understanding how his or her language actually works.

Now, as a math student, I either wasn’t taught why I needed to show my work, or I never understood the principle. Students don’t need to show their work to prove they haven’t been cheating, although that is certainly a valid, if not Big Brothery, reason. No, the students need to be able to show their work so that they understand the material. A student will never truly know something until they’re able to successfully teach that thing to another person, and having students show their work provides them with a way to “teach” the material without having to actually talk to another person.

*In the spirit of full disclosure, I’m willing to admit that I had to use the calculator to subtract 1955 from 2010.

Several weeks ago, I befriended an old high school teacher on Facebook. I can count on one hand the number of teachers I had in high school I actually liked and respected. Actually, I can count on three fingers, but this guy I was actually pretty indifferent about. He didn’t really teach all that much. At least not my class. Each morning when I would walk into his class, I would literally crawl under a desk and go to sleep. I am not making that up. He would also wake me up when “class” was over. He never hassled me or my friends, so I never really had anything bad to say about him.

So anyway, a few weeks ago I added him as a friend on Facebook. After I added him, I started noticing that a large majority of his status updates were basically FoxNews talking points. And not halfway normal FoxNews. Steve Doocy and Glenn Beck FoxNews. This concerned me–not because I actually gave a shit about what he thought, but because he had added some of his students as Facebook friends.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll admit that I have quite a few former students as Facebook friends. However, nearly all of them I added after they had finished my classes. Also, I deal with college students that actually need to be bombarded with multiple opposing viewpoints. The students in my former high school are not intellectually mature enough to distinguish between rational arguments and demagoguery. They need to be taught skepticism and rationalism. My former teacher represented an intellectual authority figure, and it irritated me that he would be so cavalier with his radical political and religious positions.

But I kept my mouth shut. I really did.

For a little while.

Then, after the disaster in Haiti, he posted an update that basically stated the disaster was punishment from God, and that we should all prepare for the Heavenly disasters that would surely follow. Then he quoted a couple of lines of nonsense from Revelation.

That shit was the last straw.

I spent several hours writing a response that I hoped would provide everyone that had read his insanity with a rational, fairly neutral view of the Haitian earthquake. I respectfully pointed out the mistake of accepting Revelation as literal truth, and at the end of my post I encouraged everyone to donate $10 via the 90999 cell phone texting option.

Again, I was as conciliatory and respectful as I could be. Leigh couldn’t believe I could even be that nice. My friend Tank concurred, and they both urged me to be much more forceful, yet I resisted the urge.

I would like to provide all my readers with a copy of that post so you can see just how fair I was, but a few hours later, the cowardly motherfucker deleted the whole thing, and I was too stupid not to save a local copy.

At that point, I made it my goal to try and provide his Facebook friends with a counter point to every loony status update he posted. I figured one of three things would happen: 1) He would engage me in debate. This is what I hoped would happen. 2) He would delete every status update I commented on. This is what I figured would happen. 3) He would defriend me. This is what happened.

Yesterday, he posted a snarky status update about Obama’s plan to fund nuclear energy. I really didn’t find his comment that interesting, and I was going to leave it alone because I’d already commented on one of his updates this week (I was planning to go with one a week). But at the aggressive encouraging of a friend who shall remain nameless, I wrote up a comment. What follows is the transcript of that interaction:

Former Teacher: I’m confused … After 30 YEARS of crying horrible against it, why is it all of a sudden OK to build nuke power plants?

One of his Facebook friends: because our pres doesnt care..

Former Teacher: Next they’ll be telling us something like ‘Know what? We need to drill for oil right here in the good ol’ USA. Its good for jobs!

Me: I would have thought that someone who is presumably invested and interested in technology would know a little something about the tech surrounding these subjects.

Guess not.

1. Obama said he would begin funding research into nuclear energy during his campaign, so this isn’t a surprise to anyone that half-way paid attention during the campaign.

2. There are three main reasons why we haven’t explored nuclear energy since the 70s: A. It’s not all that efficient. The power needed to produce a nuclear reaction, which then in turn heats up water, is an enormous amount. The energy derived from the boiling water barely offsets the power needed to create the nuclear reaction. It’s only in the past few years that technology has made nuclear reactors more efficient. B. During the 80s, Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl were still fresh in our minds, scaring us away from Nuclear power. Bush never pursued nuclear because the Bush family has been in bed with the Saudis for at least 30 years, and a nuclear program would cut into the bottom line of Royal Saudi Family.

3. Nuclear power plants take long time to build. It takes at least 10 years to build one, and if current projections hold true, that’s time wasted that we do not have. Also, nuclear power plants are centralized, which anyone who’s ever had a hard drive crash knows, is a bad thing, indeed. It’s safer, in many aspects, to have a decentralized grid. It’s also more energy efficient.

4. I can’t imagine why a well-informed person would advocate more drilling, unless of course that person is simply following a party line. Again, for someone interested in technology, the fact that we’re so reliant on the internal combustion engine and its derivates is embarrassing. The technology for our cars is almost 150 years old. That is utterly pathetic. The only reason for the stagnation of technology is money–vast sums of money acquired by the oil compaines, car manufactuers, and politicians. If a politican is promoting the idea of additional drilling it’s because he or she is benefitting financially from the oil companies.

It boggles the mind why this is even a political issue. We need to be the best there is at what we do, and right now, the way we produce energy is abysmal. But I guess chants of “Drill Baby Drill” are more compelling than facts and data. Better to look cute and make money than to do what’s efficient and logical.

Former Teacher: Hmm…. I guess no one has told the French how dangerous their nuke plants are. As someone who is presumably invested and interested in technology, I note that the French rely almost entirely on their nuclear power plants. Instead of spending zillions on research, maybe we should simply buy the needed technology from the them.

Me: I’d be fine with that. If you notice, I never mentioned anything about their safety. I only mentioned that after the accidents experienced previously, we, as a nation, were a bit gun-shy about nuclear energy.

Former Teacher: Or better yet, maybe ignorant, ill-informed fools like me that only know what they hear from right-wing talk show hosts should just shut up and let people that only know what they hear from left-wing media sources do all the talking.

Me: This shouldn’t be a left-wing or right-wing issue. And I never resorted to ad hominem; although, I do think that talk show hosts, on both sides of the spectrum, are directly and indirectly damaging our country for ratings and money.

One of his Facebook friends: See I didnt vote for Obama any ways so it doesnt help me much…

Another one of his Facebook friends: There ought to be a less dangerous, more effective way to get energy !!

Me: For a engaging argument on the pros and cons of nuclear energy see : http://www.reddit.com/r/environment/comments/b3535/im_pronuclear_because_these_are_the_only/

Former Teacher: Unfortunately, what Prez BO is proposing has very little more behind it than politics.

Me: I totally agree. It’s a ploy to try to get the neo-cons to sign off on an energy bill. The mistake Obama is making is assuming the neo-cons would in any way be willing to work with him. They won’t, and they never will because party is more important to the neo-cons than the state of our country.

Unfortunately, Obama’s past as a community organizer and an academic are actually hurting him. He’s engaging the neo-cons as if logical discourse means anything to them. It doesn’t. He should ram this stuff through while he has the political power, but instead, he’s treating them like rational adults, which means nothing is getting done.

Former Teacher: I have to admit at this point that I’ve been deliberately baiting you, Mark, to get an idea of just how far left your social and political persuasions lie. It’s only fair then that I reciprocate. My political and social beliefs in most areas are very conservative, especially on economic issues. I want the government to do what the Constitution specifically allows/instructs it to do and, after that, stay the heck out of everything else.

I believe firmly that our country is in the hands of a rogue government that is dangerous and is interested only in advancing its leftist-socialist agenda and in solidifying its power base. I am also firmly convinced that the main-stream media is its willing partner, patsy, and accomplice.
It appears, Mark, that I have little to share with you in the arena of ideas that we could any semblance of agreement on. Apparently, the reverse is true as well.

Me: I think you’re making too bold of an assumption about how “left” I actually am. I’m actually greatly upset the GOP has been hijacked by the looniest bunch of people in our country. We need rational discourse on policy and not catchphrases meant to get airtime on MSNBC and FOXnews.

And I’m talking less to you than to the students you’ve added as friends. To be quite honest, I couldn’t care less about what you believe, but in the small town of Aquilla, you’re an authority figure. Those students need to know that your point of view is a radical, and exclusionary one. They need to hear the opposing viewpoint.

Former Teacher: Let us agree to have no further discussions between us two about social or political issues. If I understand you correctly, that means we will have very little at all to say to each other henceforth. Goodbye. Good luck.

So finally, after all that, he simply deleted the post and defriended me. Luckily, I had a feeling he would do that, so I made sure to save transcripts.

I want to reemphasize that I don’t give a shit what that guy thinks. At the end, he ended up admitting to buying into conspiracy theories, and I know that there’s no reason to even engage a fanatic in rational discourse. It just grinds my gears that he was so cowardly and insecure about his own rhetorical position that he immediately deleted the post.

What an absolute fucking coward.

But other days can be quite interesting. Those are the days that make teaching fun. Exhausting, but fun.

Take yesterday, for example.

Yesterday we were reading the beginning chapter of Carl Sagan’s book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. It’s the book Sagan finished right before he died, and it’s all about skepticism and the dangers of anti-intellectualism and pseudoscience. Today I had two extreme reactions to the reading.

In my classes, I have students keep a reading journal. For each reading we have, I ask them to write a journal entry over the reading as a way to develop their thoughts. I really don’t care what they write, just as long as they write about the reading. It’s simply a completion grade, and I don’t really even read them.

Today a young man brought me his journal, and I almost began crying as I was reading it. He had written nearly two pages, and the gist of his entry was that he came from a highly religious, fundamentalist family and, he felt ashamed and embarrassed that he no longer believed the religion of his upbringing. He spent the entire entry writing about how much it meant to him to discover that there were other people out there, brilliant people no less, that had the same problems with religion as he did. He kept writing how glad he was to have been in the class and how much better he felt about his life.

It was extremely moving, and I felt privileged that he had felt comfortable enough in my class to share that with me. I’m serious when I say I had to consciously keep myself from tearing up.

That was in the morning.

In the afternoon, I managed to completely enrage about ten people, all in different classes, almost to the point of violence. If we had been in a bar, I would have been in a fist-fight. As I wrote earlier, we were reading Sagan’s book about skepticism, and during the discussion we addressed pseudoscience. I asked the students what they thought about the Thomas Gray quote “Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise,” in regards to things like homeopathy and acupuncture.

I had no idea so many people were taken in with nonsense-bullshit like homeopathy and acupuncture. Good lord. I spent the majority of three classes–I’ll repeat that: THREE CLASSES–trying to understand how these students could buy into something that’s been proven time and again to be utter flim-flam.

One student said, “My parents spend about $300 dollars a month on homeopathic medicine. Are you calling them stupid?”

Calm down–I didn’t say “yes.” I didn’t tell him that I thought his parents were dumber than dirt. I thought it. But I didn’t say it.

Yesterday was fun, but the emotional wave and trough of the day was exhausting, and after work I felt like I had ran a marathon. Hopefully on Wednesday I can turn the auto-pilot back on.

I try not to call people “fuckwits” or “idiotic shitheads.” Well, at least not to their faces. It’s hard sometimes, but I try to keep my mouth shut.

For one thing, I have ulcers, so getting all worked up isn’t really that good for my health. I also have jaw problems, so getting all annoyed and grinding my teeth isn’t that smart, either. For another, most of the time there’s not a lot I can do about things that piss me off, so I spin my wheels for nothing.

But then I read something like the 2004 poll by Gallup that demonstrates that nearly a full third of American’s don’t understand the theory of evolution and that 45% of Americans are Creationists, and I have to find a piece of leather to bite down on so I don’t shatter my TMJ like the T-1000 at the end of T2. What’s that? You say you disagree with the methodology used by Gallup in that poll? You claim their wording of the questions pushes people to choose science over religion, which is intellectually dishonest? Fine. Fair enough, although the polls conducted by Pew really aren’t any more encouraging.

No matter what poll you read, it goes without saying that the level of misinformation and ignorance about evolution and the distrust in science in our country is sad, pathetic, and, ultimately, enraging.

And I really don’t understand the distrust part because science is pretty damn exciting. Take this article, for instance. A group of paleontologists are on the verge of not only definitely proving that the dinosaur Sinosauropteryx had feathers, but revealing the colors of the feathers as well. That’s pretty damn sweet. We’ll not only have one of the first fossilized examples of how and when the divergence between dinosaurs and birds began, but we’ll know if Sinosauropteryx had beautiful plumage, too! Bonus.

Of course, 45% of Americans believe that God created the Earth in its present form about 6,500 years ago, so they think this kind of discovery is simply another example of the scientific community have a laugh.

Don’t worry…this post isn’t about “proving” evolution. It’s already been proven above and beyond any reasonable doubt by folks much, much smarter than me. Evolution is so foundational to things like chemistry, biology, archeology, physics, germ theory, embryology, and so on, that they would simply fall apart without it. The question “do you believe in evolution” is a false dichotomy because belief infers a certain amount of uncertainty of existence. Either you understand evolution or you don’t–much like understanding the theory of gravity or the theory of relativity or the theory of thermodynamics. Evolution exists and has occurred, and consequently, it’s still occurring, and it damn sure doesn’t need your or my approval.

No, this post is about the idiotic shitheads and fuckwits who refuse to even attempt to understand evolution because of some religious belief. And yes, I’m mainly attacking Christians here–not because I dislike Christains but mostly because I understand Christianity. In the U.K. the fuckwits and idiotic shitheads are mostly Muslim. I’d attack the Muslims too, but I simply haven’t found the time to learn Arabic so that I can read their holy book. I’m not so invested in being disgusted with a group of people that I’m willing to learn another language to demonstrate my disgust. I got video games to play, people.

First off, to the people who think the world is only 6,500 years old: Would you all mind moving somewhere else? Preferably an island closed off and out of reach from any other landmass? And one the rest of can monitor closely but without your knowledge? (I’m into ironic imprisonment)

Or if you don’t want to move, how about trying to understand your holy book a little bit better? You might start with the historicity surrounding Genesis. Any grade school student with half a brain can see that God creates the world twice at the beginning of the book. He does so first in seven days and then he does it again all in one go. Sounds like poor story-telling, doesn’t it? Wanna know why there are two creations? It’s because Genesis is a hodgepodge of at least three independently written books that early Jews combined into its current for sometime around 500 B.C. There are two accounts of creation in the book, and each account has a separate author. Talk to any Jewish person and they’ll tell you that Genesis is an extended metaphor of creation not to be taken literally.

They’ve had a lot more time with the book, so you fundamentalists might wanna listen.

So you have a choice: Choose to believe in an account of human history that is based on an old Jewish mixtape, or have a listen to peer-reviewed scientists ranging from physicists to chemists.

Personally, I’m going with the good folks that brought us pasteurization, the heliocentric theory of our universe, the vaccine for polio, the light bulb, streaming internet pornography, the theory of genetics, and the MRI machine. If you want to go with the people that brought you Jonah and the whale and Angels raping humans then go right ahead, but keep your ridiculous fucking beliefs out of our schools and politics.

In hindsight, I’ve probably possessed this deficiency for quite some time, but the release of Bay’s “movie,” “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” has made my lack of testosterone blatantly obvious.

I feel I should elaborate:

I thought the first “Transformers” movie (no, not this one. I love that one) was an egregious piece of shit. Story-wise the movie was an illogical mess, the performances were absolute rubbish, and because Bay is an ADHD sufferer who self-medicates with methamphetamine, the film direction and editing was so manic that during the fight scenes I couldn’t tell the Transformers apart. The single, solitary saving grace of the first film was Peter Cullen, but since Bay obviously doesn’t understand: 1) Prime shouldn’t be painted like a fucking 1960s dragster; 2) Other than combiner Transformers, Prime is one of the most powerful and combat savvy Cybertronian warriors around, and thus, he shouldn’t get his ASS KICKED every time he fights; I was unable to even enjoy Cullen’s performance.

Fast-forward to this summer. “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” (henceforth will be referred to as “Tranny Revenge”), is premiering in the theaters. People ask me if I’m going to go see it. I unequivocally say “no.” They look surprised and ask “why.” I say: “Because the first film made me want to use the Ultimate Nullifer to erase my childhood so that I don’t even remember the original Transformers cartoon.” The inevitable reply: “Yeah, the story might have sucked, but Megan Fox is sooo hawt!”

The assumption here, I suspect, is that I should be so manly that I would want to go see a film because the woman in it is so damn attractive that I’ll forget the awfulness occurring on the screen around her. Don’t get me wrong, Megan Fox is hot in a pornstar-going-mainstream kinda way, but if she can’t do anything interesting besides stand around and look hot, well, I’m going to stop kidding myself and just get a porno flick. That whole “WOW SHE’S SO GORGEOUS” thing only lasts for about a minute. Then the actress needs to start acting.

There’s a whole list of movies besides “Tranny Revenge” my lack of manliness caused me to dislike: “Tomb Raider.” “Fantastic Four.” “Catwoman.” Anything with Lindsay Lohan. “The Deep.” “Into the Blue.” Those are just off the top of my head. I’m sure there are a lot more.

I guess story-driven action films like the Harry Potter series, “The Dark Knight,” “The Matrix,” “Iron Man,” and others, have emasculated me to the degree that stripper boobies and silicone lip injections no longer lull me into complacency. More’s the pity.

Do youself a favor and skip Bay’s “film.” Sure, you’ll miss stellar performances, like this, from Shia. And you won’t see Megan Fox. But with that time and money you save you’ll be able to buy a six-pack of beer and enjoy a decent “Transformers” movie. You can always download porn afterwards if that’s what you’re after.