In Memorium on Memorial Day

In memorium on this Memorial Day, I raise a salute to the men and boys from Cowlitz County, Washington, who lost their lives during the War in Vietnam.

You can read all 27 names here, especially the ones who were friends of mine from junior high and high school: Bill Wagner, Dale Kruse, Claude Weiderman and Dennis Silvesan, and Lynley Rash who was the younger brother of a good friend of mine. Also Dave Aasen, Greg Curtis, Dick Gilcher and Mike Ray, who were friends of friends of mine and whom I knew slightly.

R.I.P Guys. You did your duty. Now stand down and rest. We will never forget you.

Special Memorial Day Monday Music Break: Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

Here's a special Memorial Day music break, the moving and haunting Where Have All the Flowers Gone? written (mostly) and performed by the late great Pete Seeger.

Saturday Poetry Slam -- Sailing to Byzantium

Sailing to Byzantium
by William Butler Yeats. 1928

THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

You can read more about Sailing to Byzantium on Wikipedia, Smart readers will note that the the first line formed the basis for the title of 2007's No Country for Old Men I will leave it to you discover what, if any meaning, the title has in relationship to the poem.

Must-See Cinema: Rosewater 2014

This week's must-see cinema is a fairly new one, Rosewater from 2014, directed by The Daily Show's Jon Stewart in his directorial debut.

Trailer:

This is a terrific movie, especially the psychological torture scenes rendered in unbelievable verisimilitude. It concerns the story of an Iranian-Canadian film journalist who goes on a brief trip back to Iran to cover the 1999 presidential election and finds himself caught up in a strange and mysterious web of suspicion that rivals something out of Kafka.

It was filmed in Jordan, with some second-unit shots of events in Tehran. and features the real life story of Maziar Bahari, whose 2011 book describing his nightmare, Then They Came for Me: A Family's Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival , describes the 118 days he was kept in solitary confinement and underwent some brutal psychological torture at the hands of a guy called "Rosewater" -- hence the title.

It is definitely not a comedy -- although there is some humor in it, in the interrogations by Rosewater and Bahari's response to certain questions, and a brief appearance by The Daily Show's Jason Jones, recreating a scene from a location shot in Iran that is used against Bahari. It is a surprising and enjoyable first outing from a director who could have a whole new career ahead of him when he quits The Daily Show later this year.

More reading:
  · Rosewater on the IMDB.
  · Rosewater at Rotten Tomatoes
  · Rosewater at  Metacritic
  · Rosewater for rent on Netflix

Monday Music Break: City of Night

For those of you who think that I don't listen to any music from this century, here's the terrific group Pink Martini with City of Night:

If you ignore the kind of amateurish wipes and transitions, there is some spectacular urban night photography in this video.

This song is from Pink Martini's 2007 third album, Hey Eugene!.

All of their music is available on Amazon -- and if you buy through this blog I get a few pennies back on each purchase.

Poetry Slam Saturday -- Dulce et Decorum Est

Dulce et Decorum Est
by Wilfred Owen., 1893 - 1918

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen was one of a large group of talented literary types who went off to fight World War I and died there. To his death can be added those of H. H. Munro ("Saki"), Rupert Brooke, Edward Thomas, Guillaume Apollinaire and many more. Who is to know whether some future Nobel Prize in Literature would have been awarded to one or more of these people, who instead died in the prime of their creative lives?

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori is a line from the Roman lyrical poet Horace's Odes. The line can be roughly translated into English as: "It is sweet and right to die for your country." Here Owen uses it ironically and calls it "the old Lie".

"Please Judge, I Am an Orphan"

I've used this joke hundred times to illustrate pure chutzpah: A guy murders both of his parents and then pleads for leniency because he is an orphan.

And that's kind of what we have with fulltime Republican moron Luis Lang in South Carolina, who couldn't be bothered to get Obamacare coverage when it was available (i.e., within the three-month open enrollment period) because it was "socialized medicine" and he prided himself on being able to pay his own medical bills.

Yeah, and as the Bible has it, "Pride goeth before destruction and an haughty spirit before a fall." (Yes, that's the real quote, not the oft-quoted and pithier but erroneous, "Pride goeth before a fall.")

Now he's sick with diabetes-related blindness issues and is whining because he doesn't have coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

The Daily Kos has the whole story, and it's not a pretty one:

All seemed good until this February when a series of headaches led him to the doctor. Tests revealed that Lang had suffered a series of mini-strokes tied to diabetes. (It's not clear to me from the piece whether Lang knew he had diabetes earlier or whether that was the diabetes diagnosis as well.) He also has a partially detached retina and eye bleeding tied to his diabetes. The initial medical care for the mini-strokes ran to almost $10,000 and burned through his savings. And now he can't work because of his eye issue and can't afford the surgery that would save his eyesight and also allowing him to continue working.
I don't mean to sound like an asshole, but this is exactly why people buy insurance in the first place. The whole concept is that you shell out several hundred dollars per month when you're not sick or injured so that you'll have your medical bills covered in the event that you become sick/injured. He made a gamble that he'd never become so sick/injured badly enough that he wouldn't be able to afford 100% of the cost...and it finally caught up with him.

In fact, this is exactly the hypothetical scenario which Ron Paul was asked about during one of the GOP primary debates back in 2012 (the infamous "Let Him Die!!" moment).

Now the dickhead has the gall to blame Obama and the Democrats because he made some stupid -- no some idiotic -- choices and finds himself holding the shitty end of the stick.

Instead of blaming the real culprits, the Republicans in South Carolina who "don't want none o' that god damned soshulazzed med'cin", he's flailing out at the very people who, had their advice been followed, would have alleviated his situation.

Because, again, if the ACA hadn't been passed, their situation would be...well, exactly the same as it is now.
In fact, it would be worse because without the ACA, even if his income does pick back up again, pre-ACA insurance companies would still refuse to touch him with a 10-foot pole, whereas under the ACA he at least has a shot at getting covered if he can stick it out for another 8 months.
This, of course, leads to the most jaw-droppingly honest look at the conservative mindset I've seen in months:
 “(My husband) should be at the front of the line because he doesn’t work and because he has medical issues,” Mary Lang said last week. “We call it the Not Fair Health Care Act.”
Astonishing.
"Screw you, everyone else!! We spent years helping enact policies which shaft the poor, and even deliberately blew off taking steps to help ourselves if we ever fell on hard times, but now that we need help, everyone else should get the hell out of the way and move us to the front of the line."

So much for the Party of Personal Responsibility. I guess we couldn't really expect anything else.

Except this: He's started an illiterately-written GoFundMe page (no, I won't link to it, thank you) begging for money to help with the medical bills. And it is likely that many bleeding-heart liberals will donate to it, because by and large we don't want even assholes like this to suffer.

And the final kicker will be when he thanks all of his Republican friends for their donations that show up Obamacare for the nightmare that it is.

You can fix ignorant, but you can't fix stupid. At this point I'm leaning towards the Tea Party "Let Him Die" Solution. I know that sounds cold and hard-hearted, but come on...

Okay, not really. Even assholes deserve to live. Even Republican assholes.

A Jam of Tarts? An Assay of Trollope's? A Flourish of Strumpets?

It's a concept that is almost gone from common English, but there used to be nouns in our vocabulary that described collections or groups of birds, animals, even humans. Some of them were pretty descriptive -- a parliament of rooks, a murder of crows -- and some had a delightful flourish -- a spring of teals, an exaltation of larks.

Naturally something like that couldn't remain unsullied for long. Wags came up with such things as an addition of mathematicians, a clutch of mechanics, a tedium of golfers, an intrigue of politicians.

For a while during the 19th and early 20th Century even the hallowed halls of Oxford were not immune. Three dons discussing the concept were walking home one night from the pub when they saw a group of "ladies of the evening" going by.

"Okay. What would you call that particular group?" one of them asked the others.

"Obviously that is a jam of tarts," the first one said.

"No, that's an assay of Trollope's," the second one insisted.

"You're both wrong," the third disclaimed. "That is a flourish of strumpets."

A voice came up next to them from a gap in the hedge. "No, gentlemen," the voice said. "What we have here is an anthology of pro's."

That voice allegedly belonged to the poet Conrad Aiken.

Still it's a fun little story of language at play, showing the sheer pleasure that can be had with a little knowledge of the English language, and that anecdote became one of the cobblestones that formed the path of my steadily advancing intent to study English in college and work with words the rest of my life.

More reading:
See Precision of Lexicographers on the World Wide Words website

Rise of the Nones

I note that the latest Pew Research poll holds that "56 million Americans now identify themselves as agnostic, atheist or 'nothing in particular.'” We are called "nones", for "religious preference: None". That’s more than 22 percent of the population.

That's a lot of people for the Christianists and their Christian Reconstruction army to round up and make disappear. It's not just a paltry six million Jews and a few Gypsies and communists to deal with this time around. And that 56 million doesn't even include American Jews,  Muslims, Buddhists, etc., all of whom will have to be swept up as well.

That's a whole lot of people. If the average train car would hold 100 people, that's 560,000 train cars to haul us away. I don't think there's that much rolling stock in the world, let alone the USA.

Face it Religious Right, you are losing ground.

Which makes them all the more dangerous. Like a cornered animal. I think I may have to stock up on a few more 2nd-Amendment-Solution^TM "protection devices" myself.

And BTW, it's long past time for someone in the Congress other than Pete Stark to come out of the theological closet. I know you're in there. Show some guts and show your faces.

Besides, Pete Stark isn't actually in Congress any longer. He;s retired, but not before he was reelected several times even after he admitted he was an atheist. Atheism is no longer the moral equavalent being a child-molesting communist pederast to the American voters -- those who are not still in the Moron-American Voting Bloc, anyway.

Must-See Cinema: American Chain Gang 1999

Although it didn't originate in the United States, the chain gang became an almost uniquely American feature of "justice" after the Civil War. When it was finally clear that The South didn't have slaves any more to do all the shit work, they created a "new slavery" in the form of shackled-together black men (mostly), convicted of "crimes" and forced to "pay their debt to society" by working on farms, roadways, public lands, etc. It had been phased out by 1955, but in 1995 it was revived.

In 1999 filmmaker Xackery Irving made an award-winning documentary on the revival of the chain gang in America, both in Alabama and in Maricopa County, Arizona (home of the notorious Sheriff Joe Arpaio) which features the first all-female chain gang.
Trailer:

This is a chilling look at the revival of the chain gang system of punishment and retribution -- there's no other way to describe it, since it certainly doesn't qualify as rehabilitation of any kind.

We get to know a few prisoners and guards during the course of the film. The guards seem to think that the prisoners under their supervision are being "rehabilitated", and even the prisoners agree in general, saying that they don't want to come back to prison when they get out, that they are "cured". But as we learn at the end of the film, a depressingly high number of the inmates, who were followed up by the filmmakers after filming stopped, were back in the system in one way or another. Or dead.

This is a depressing look at a slice of the prison system in this country, and it's not a pretty sight. There's no violence on screen, but it is talked about a lot, both by the inmates and the guards, and the guards seem perfectly willing to kill a prisoner who tries to walk away. It's not clearly stated, but a couple of the guards seem a little too eager to do it if they get the chance.

Not an uplifting film, but one that is definitely worth watching.

More reading:

• American Chain Gang on the IMDB.
• American Chain Gang available on Netflix
• Chaingang Pictures, the company that produced American Chain Gang
• My 12-11-14 tribute to Sam Cooke singing "Chain Gang" and featuring footage from this film.

A Perfectly Good Threat, Wasted

Now that Liberia has its Worst Disease in the History of the World, i.e., ebola, under control, what will the fuckers at Faux News find to worry about?

What, no Obamapocalypse?

It wasn't that long ago when they were telling us to BE AFRAID BE VERY AFRAID of those smelly foreigners who were sneaking across our southern border, leaving a visible-from-space trail of ebola slime behind them like an invasive flood of foreign-language-speaking toxic slugs, when Bill Orally publicly and stridently called for the public execution of the head of the CDC, when they wanted to issue a travel ban to anyone who ever even thought about going to West Africa (which, it may come as a surprise to the talking dicks heads at Faux News, is not a country).

As much as they tried to spruce up their Fear Menu^TM with delicious specials like parboiled ebola and ebola flambé, it just didn't pan out for them. It was a perfectly good fear and it all went for naught. Wasted.

But I'm not worried about them running dry. There's always gonna be more, especially now that Obama has nailed them in public, by name, for their bullshit on "the poors", they'll be going after him with both guns blazing. Or, as we in the reality-based community call it, Wednesday...

So what's next on The Fear Menu? Stay tuned...

Exploitation Movies: Maniac (1934)

The 1930s produced a cornucopia of grindhouse exploitation films (aka "sexploitation" movies), usually disguised as "educational" movies that were ostensible cautionary tales about one social problem or another.

This week's feature is Maniac from 1934:

Full movie:

This is another huge hot mess from Dwain Esper, the "King of the Celluloid Gypsies".

While it's kind of hard to tell what's going on in any given scene, the whole thing is a forced march through the many manifestations of 1930s ideas of insanity, with explanatory titles popping up periodically to tell us about things like Dementia Praecox, Manic-Depressives, and Paranoia.

Briefly, it's about a mad doctor, his crazy assistant and a large variety of sex-infused craziness. We're thrown a lot of wacked out stuff in a short period of time, including the weird goon of a neighbor who raises cats and rats. He has a thousand of each -- cats for the fur, rats for the cats to eat, and the rats in turn eat the corpses of the cats after they've been skinned, a nifty self-contained backyard entrepreneur operation.

There's a lot of emphasis on cats in this movie, including cats fighting in a funeral home(?), a cat that gets his eye gouged out and eaten(!) by the crazy assistant -- who has killed the mad doctor and assumed his persona -- and two women in a hypodermic-syringe-weapon "cat fight" in the cellar.

Wikipedia says that the plot is loosely based on "The Black Cat" by Edgar Allen Poe. Okay.

Along the way there's a lot of scenery-chewing hyper-thespianism by pretty much everyone involved, especially the mad doctor in the opening scenes. It's been heralded by several sources as the "worst movie ever made". I can believe it.

The money shot: Several of them, all of them completely gratuitous, including the simulated rape of a nude zombie girl, several "examinations" of women in various stages of undress by the mad doctor/crazy assistant, and a "meanwhile back at the ranch" scene with the crazy assistant's ex-wife and her skeezy female roommates in which everyone prances around in their briefest skivvies. I told you it was a hot mess...

Lessons learned: Beats me.

Directed by: Dwain Esper, whom we have seen before on this blog.

Taglines:  He menaced women with weird desires! A Subject Seldom Discussed, True and Authentic/Nothing Withheld, Strange Loves Exposed, What Are the Dangers of Desire? What Wrecks Romances? The Truth About Love Fearlessly Told

Also known as Sex Maniac

More reading:

• Maniac on the IMDB.
• Dwain Esper: King of the Celluloid Gypsies -- short documentary about Esper on YouTube.
• A Collection of 22 Exploitation Movie Trailers on YouTube.
• "Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!": A History of Exploitation Films, 1919-1959 by Eric Schaefer, the OPOVet Book of the Month for May 2015.

People Killed in the Name of Atheism: Ø

My buddy-blogger BadTux the Snarky Penguin had a post the other day in which he identifies the number of atheists who have killed "defending" their "religion" is exactly zero:

The same, alas, is not true of organized religion. A bunch of right wing Christianists (when Atlas Juggs blogger Pam Geller [I LOVE that] is involved, you know it’s batshit crazy Christianists) chummed for Islamist extremist in Garland, Texas. They got their wish — a couple of ISIS wanna-bes tried to crash their party, and got shot down for their trouble by the cops waiting in ambush.
At this point I’m completely puzzled as to why atheism has a bad name in America. The number of atheists who’ve blown themselves (and others) up in defense of their faith is… uhm…. zero. The number of atheists who’ve engaged in or attempted mass shootings in defense of their faith remains… uhm… zero. The number of atheists who’ve used their faith as an excuse to conquer other nations remains… erm… zero. The number of atheist pedophiles who’ve had their crimes covered up by their faith remains… erm… zero. The same cannot be said of virtually every organized religion on this planet, almost all of which have been used as excuses for conquests, bombings, shootings, pedophilia, slavery, genocide, or worse at some point in time.

So why is it that the religious wackos get their panties wadded up more about atheists than pretty much anyone else? I think that it's because they feel, deep down in their heart of hearts, that they know we are right, and if they give in to their natural inclinations in that direction, they won't feel the impulse to kill someone in the name of God any more. Can't have that shit.

Of course there are people who argue the point of God's existence who imply (I've heard them say it) that only the fear of hellfire and damnation is what is keeping them from opening up with an AK-47 on a bunch of... well, gays, or Democrats, or Socialists or Liberals -- maybe even atheists, I'd guess. Yeah, that's one fine loving and forgiving Supreme Being you've got there, guys. Who wants to believe in a fucked up God that would judge all that killing so harshly when one of his disciples is doing it, but who is extremely fine with it when He wants to slaughter a bunch of innocents himself? How can you even trust, let alone "love", that kind of God? As I've said before, that guy is actually a bit of a dick.

Monday Music Break: MacArthur Park

Here from 1968 is the  Richard Harris version of the much-reviled MacArthur Park, which according to Dave Barry is "the worst song in modern history".

Okay, come on, it's not all that bad -- in fact, I actually kind of like it. But when you combine some tortured-metaphor lyrics with the overwrought performance of a stage-trained Shakespearean actor, I can see where some might consider it a "bit much". As one comedian said a number of years ago, "Lighten up, Richard. It's just a cake."

Interesting job with the accompanying video of the real MacArthur Park itself, more recent obviously than 1968. It's by a Finnish guy named Seppo Korpipaa (who has his own channel on YouTube) and I'm impressed that he traveled halfway around the world, apparently just to shoot this footage and edit it to the song.

Here Is What's Really Going on in Texas

This is from the Christians for Michelle Bachmann ("True Christians dedicated to supporting and electing Michele Bachmann for POTUS in 2016 just as God has instructed") page on the Facebook:

Wake up, America!!!

Saturday Poetry Slam -- Two Villanelles

Today we have two poems that capture the essence of the Villanelle. Because of the constricted artificiality of its demanding structure, the Villanelle is a form of poetry that is very difficult to pull off successfully. It is of great credit to a poet who can do it, and these two poems represent what I consider among the best of the form.

Villanelle Of Change
 by Edwin Arlington Robinson

Since Persia fell at Marathon,
The yellow years have gathered fast:
Long centuries have come and gone.

And yet (they say) the place will don
A phantom fury of the past,
Since Persia fell at Marathon;

And as of old, when Helicon
Trembled and swayed with rapture vast
(Long centuries have come and gone),

This ancient plain, when night comes on,
Shakes to a ghostly battle-blast,
Since Persia fell at Marathon.

But into soundless Acheron
The glory of Greek shame was cast:
Long centuries have come and gone,

The suns of Hellas have all shone,
The first has fallen to the last: --
Since Persia fell at Marathon,
Long centuries have come and gone.


Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
by Dylan Thomas, to his dying father

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Further Reading:
   · See Poem Hunter for 97 more Villanelles.
   · Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night on Wikipedia

The Garland Shooting? It's Obama's Fault

Of course, Ted Cruz is going to say that it's Obama's fault that two wannabe jihadiboys shot up Pam Geller's "celebration of free speech" in Garland, Texas.

Well, that makes sense. After all, who else's fault could it be? Certainly not Pam Geller, the foaming-at-the-mouth-rabid Islamophobe wackjob who set up the phony "contest" to draw cartoons of the prophet Mohammed. She was only exercising her god-given rights to "free speech".

And it's not really the fault of the two Islamists who shot the place up and ended up dead themselves. No, they were just innocent-ish pawns, unwitting foot soldiers in the Long Con that Obama, the Islamist-in-Chief, is running on the Amurrican People. Is it a mere coincidence that this shooting happened in Texas, which it now appears is Ground Zero in the Obama Muslim Secret Plan to take over America (aka the military training exercise dubbed "Jade Helm 15")? I don't think so.

We should listen to the sage advice of such wise men of politics as Chuck Norris, aided and abetted by that brilliant geopolitical genius of South Texas, Louie Gohmert, and -- wait for it -- none other than ... Ted Cruz. Oh, and be afraid! Be very afraid!!!!

As we all know, thanks to Faux News, ISIS/ISIL has, literally, battalions, brigades, divisions, even regiments of jihadis camped out on secret bases in the Mexican desert, right across the river from ... Texas!!! From El Paso you can see the flickering flames of their camel-dung cooking fires at night! Need I say more? Wake up, America!

Just as an aside, does anyone besides me find it odd that the takeover is starting with Texas? This begs the obvious question: What the fuck do ISIS/ISIL and the Islamic Jihadists even want with Texas? Have they ever even been there?

Anyway, back to professional anti-Islam wingnut nutjob Pam Geller, who can protest all she wants that it was only a "free speech" issue, when we all know -- and she knows -- that it was the moral equivalent of falsely shouting "fire" in a crowded theater. Of seeing a small fire and throwing gasoline on it to try to put it out. Or even the guy who killed both of his parents and pleaded with the judge for leniency because he was an orphan.

One thing is sure: We can look forward to more of these irresponsible and dangerous provocations from Geller. If "looking forward" is the correct term. I'm sure she won't be satisfied until she's dragged us into WWIII.

Seventh Day Adventists and the Separation of Church and State

Now that noted Republican "house Negro" and Faux News darling Ben Carson has climbed into the Republican clown car, I think it is interesting that the official house organ of his church, the Seventh Day Adventists, has reiterated its stance on the separation of church and state.

They're for it. Which kind of puts them out of the mainstream when it comes to evangelical churches in this country:

The Adventist Church has a longstanding position of not supporting or opposing any candidate for elected office. This position is based both on our historical position of separation of church and state and the applicable federal law relating to the church’s tax-exempt status.
While individual church members are free to support or oppose any candidate for office as they see fit, it is crucial that the church as an institution remain neutral on all candidates for office. Care should be taken that the pulpit and all church property remain a neutral space when it comes to elections.Church employees must also exercise extreme care not to express views in their denominational capacity about any candidate for office, including Dr. Carson.
We also want to remind our church members, pastors, and administrators of the church’s official position on the separation of church and state. The church has worked diligently to protect the religious rights of all people of faith, no matter what their denominational affiliation.

Yes, that seems to me to be surprisingly reasonable and cogent, especially for a religion that holds that anybody who "breaks the Sabbath" -- works on a Saturday (the 7th day, get it?), for example -- is bound straight for hell. Well, not "hell" exactly, since they don't really believe in a literal hell. Just in the total annihilation of the spirit.

But naturally, as it so often happens, the real treats in this story are found in the comments section:

"This is almost uncalled for, this is common sense and to say it makes it sound like a majority of the church doesn't trust Ben Carson, which couldn't be further from the truth. He is a strong supporter of church/state separation." [oh really?]
"Did the church issue this warning when Mr. Obama was running for office? Didn't it apply then as well? Who is this statement for? Every SDA already knows this? Speculative and disappointing. They should have kept as silent on this as they did when Mr. Obama was running." [Obama was not a member of this church, so why should they have anything to say about his candidacy?]
"It's funny to me the churches stand on this. Isn't this being political in its self? Trying to sway the church members by intimidation. Although it's ok tho go against the bible and ordain women as pastors? I'm confused? Do we pick and choose which point we want to follow? As long as it is justified by the church?" [I think that's how religions work...]

And what about Ben Carson signing books on a Saturday? Is he going to hell annihilation for working on the Sabbath, or has God made a special dispensation for him so he can make money and become president?

The man's candidacy is a fucking joke. And, despite them coming out strongly for church-state separation, so is his culty church.

Must-See Cinema: Freaks 1932

In 1931 director Todd Browning, fresh off his successful screen adaptation of Dracula, who had previously bought the rights to a short story by Tod Robbins called Spurs, started filming what has been called a "subgenre of one" semi-horror film, now considered a cult classic, entitled Freaks.

Trailer:

Browning went out of his way to cast actual circus sideshow performers with real deformities in this movie, including the famous conjoined (aka "Siamese") twins, the Hilton Sisters, legless Johnny Eck, the "Human Torso" Prince Randian and many others. In an unusual move, Browning did not try to exploit the performers. Instead they are presented as fully human, with all the wants and needs and fears of the fully functional. It's the "normals" who come off as monsters here.

The film was incredibly controversial, not only for its subject matter but also for the shocking display of so many "freaks" on the screen. After an initial screening, MGM demanded many cuts before it would okay its distribution. And this was in pre-code Hollywood, even before the Hays Office and  the Motion Picture Code.

In all the studio demanded -- and got -- nearly half an hour of scenes deemed too "shocking" deleted from the movie, including the fate of strongman Hercules (in the cut scenes he is castrated by the angry "freaks" in the climactic scene from the movie and we later see him singing ... as a soprano!). The final version, which is all we can watch now, is a kind of choppy and awkward affair that would have benefited from the more detailed exposition. The cut scenes are considered to be lost forever. The studio also tagged on a new happy-ish ending.

Browning's career never quite recovered from Freaks. The movie was banned outright in England, and was hardly shown in the United States until the rediscovery of the "cult film" by the counterculture in the late 1960s. It was shown extensively as a "midnight movie" throughout the 70s and 80s, and those of us who had read about it for years finally got to see it.

Taglines:  Can a full grown woman truly love a MIDGET? "We'll Make Her One of Us!" from the gibbering mouths of these weird creatures came this frenzied cry... no wonder she cringed in horror... this beautiful woman who dared toy with the love of one of them! The Strangest... The Most Startling Human Story Ever Screened... Are You Afraid To Believe What Your Eyes See? The Love Story of a SIREN, a GIANT, and a DWARF! (As you can see, the taglines were far more exploitative than the film itself.)

More reading:

• Freaks on the IMDB.
• Freaks on Rotten Tomatoes
• Freaks on Netflix

The Food Stamp Challenge

Every so often someone will issue a challenge to politicians to try to live on Food Stamps (It's called SNAP now and distributed via an EBT card) for one month. To their credit, several of them have taken that challenge and, for varying lengths of time, have spent on food the cash equivalent of a SNAP grant for the size of their family. Usually for a very limited amount of time, a week or so generally.

For reference, the average per-person SNAP food allowance in the US is $133.00 per month. But SNAP is handled by the states, and the state benefits range from a paltry $115 in New Hampshire to a "lavish" $217 in Hawaii (where BTW everything is more expensive).

The people who talk about the "Food Stamp Challenge" are of two stripes: One (the well-meaning Democrat) says that it's difficult to live on the food allowance of a typical welfare recipient but it can be done, and the other (the cynical Republican) says that all the welfare abusers buy is chips and soda and ice cream, so they get fat, and it's not our fault that fat people are "hungry" or malnourished because it's their fault they are not getting the right amount/kind of food.

I think that the Food Stamp Challenge a good idea, but it needs to be taken to a "real world" level. For example: Try it for a longer period of time -- at least a month -- and don't cheat by supplementing it with the supplies of food you already had before the challenge started.

People in the inner cities don't have cars, or don't have reliable cars, or don't have cars that are totally street-legal (chancing an expensive ticket for a broken brake light for example), so you can't just cruise it on out to the suburban WalMart and trot out that "magic card" to buy your food.

You can, however, if you have the inclination, take public transportation to get to one of those suburban supermarkets to get the best deals in food, but you will likely have to make at least one, and likely several, transfers. But then you have to struggle back home on those same buses carrying some large bags of groceries. In the real world, your food choices are limited to what's on the shelves of your local 7-11, your Kwik-E-Mart, your bodega, your "little store".

Now let's take a look at what you can reasonably buy with that SNAP windfall.

You can't buy a lot of frozen food, since you likely live in a scroungy slumlord apartment with a refrigerator that is ridiculously small, barely functional, certainly not capable of keeping those frozen chicken breasts from thawing out. You likely will have to take a walk of several blocks while carrying your groceries, so you can't take advantage of buying in scale to get lower prices. You likely won't buy much fresh produce since the delivery of it mostly doesn't make it as far as your inner-city mom-and-pop. And organics? Forget about it. Even if they come from a small farm just outside of town, even they don't deliver inside a certain urban line, either.

Instead you'll find yourself picking up a lot of empty starches, pre-packaged lunch meats, balloon bread made from bleached and "enriched" flour, and that nasty plasticky "American Cheese Product", since that's all that your local market carries. Oh, but you will be able to load up on chips and sodas and ice cream, since your EBT card will buy a lot of that. It's easy to make a filling if not nutritious meal out of a bag of chips and a liter of soda. Then watch your waistline expand and your health decline. You will gain weight without really intending to, and then you will earn the scornful wrath of Republicans who deny that we have a problem feeding our people since so many of the poor ones are fat -- "living high off the hog" on our tax money.

No, I don't think that welfare recipients and other users of SNAP are living high off the hog on their meager allowance of Food Stamps. But they make easy targets for the abusers of the poor in the Right Wing. They are a ready-made demographic that "proves" that we are being too generous in our assistance to "lazy" people who "ought to be working". At jobs that no longer exist, but never mind that...

Sure, there are some cases of people abusing the system. This a natural part of any system where something people want and need is given away for free. But the way to fight it is not on the backs of the honest people who need it and are getting it. The best way to deal with it is to educate the people who are receiving SNAP on the most efficient ways to buy and prepare the foods that are available to them.

I couldn't give a shit if people using SNAP's EBT cards are buying steak and lobster. At least they are eating real food that is nutritiously good for them.