Monthly Archives: December 2013

Book Review: Mercury Rests by Robert Kroese

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 2/5 stars

The Mercury series was a really good idea.  Take heaven, make it a giant bureaucracy run by angels who are as far removed from the idea of god as we are and have them meddle in human affairs.  Robert Kroese should have just kept it one book, though.  The books went from fun and engaging to blah with some good parts to why am I even reading this.  Kroese had one good book in him and he should have stopped there.

“Mercury Rests” has only a few mildly amusing moments in it.  Most of its “comedy” revolves around people named after musicians having the lyrics to their songs thrown at them and characters snickering at other characters using the titles of movies in mundane conversations.  There is nothing clever about it at all.

The lack of humor could be forgiven if the story were at all engaging, but it is not.  We again have the apocalypse about to happen but this time it’s with a capital ‘A’.  Yay.  The story is fairly directionless, which worked in the first one because it was funny.  In this one, it feels more like someone trying to eke out one more book to fulfill a contract.  It might have been somewhat interesting if we hadn’t felt like we’ve been through it all before.  As it is, it’s part freshman philosophy at the end of the world, part Bible study, and part action-adventure movie with various random scenes thrown in to try to tie everything together.  There were times where I felt like I was being preached at more than I was reading a work of fiction.

Still, kudos to Kroese for producing a fascinating fictional character in Mercury with an intriguing view into the mechanisms of heaven even if it’s all only fascinating for one book.  Mercury will stay with me forever despite the fact that the books will not.

All Hail The Flying Spaghetti Monster!

The only good Christmas song, “Carol of the Bells”, gets the FSM treatment.  And it was good.

[youtube http://youtu.be/yiffJfYdZWg]

Mrs. Landingham, What’s Next?

I just finished watching “Angel”.  Anyone who says it is better than “Buffy” likes to kill people with dead puppies and comes from questionable parentage.

“Angel” was mildly entertaining at times but much of it was fairly directionless.  It was very obvious which episodes had Joss Whedon’s writing behind it because those were usually of much better quality.  The biggest problem, I think, was the real lack of strong female characters like they had in “Buffy”.  Things just always sort of happened to the females and that’s a shame.  Giving Amy Acker a strong persona when she changes from Fred to Illyria near the end of the series shows just how wrong they went.  Here they have an incredibly talented actor and they make here a folksy love interest of all of the male leads who does the “I’m just a girl” thing way too often.  When given the chance to flex her kick ass side she really shines.  But then the series was cancelled and needed to be wrapped up quickly.  Despite being a fast wrap up, it was very satisfying.

So now I need to find another series to watch.  What should it be folks?  The only prerequisite is that it must be on Netflix.  Someone was recommending something to me not too long ago but I have since forgotten.  It’s too bad “Justified” isn’t on Netflix because I hear that’s pretty good.

The Times They Are A Changing

What’s this?  Good religious news to report?  I am as shocked as you are.

The Catholic Church as an institution has been a mechanism for propagating or protecting great evil for at least as long as I have been alive.  This repugnant nastiness goes all the way up to the head of the church.  I am sure at the parish level there are some good, caring people trying to make a difference in their community, but at the bishop level and above it becomes impossible to tell the good from the bad because the bad is overwhelmingly visible and active.  I don’t need to repeat the institution’s sins here.  You know what they are.  They are still ever-present.  But there is a ray of light.

That ray of light is Pope Francis.  The man is on a tear since being elected and is pissing off all the right people.  Wait, that should be capitalized.  He is pissing off all the Right people.  Yeah, that’s right, Hippy Jesus has a friend in the Pope.  He’s bashing trickle-down economics.  He’s saying inequality is something that needs to be addressed.  He’s eschewing the material excesses that go with the title.  He’s washing Muslim’s feet.  He’s kissing grossly deformed men he meets on the street.  He’s asking who he is to judge homosexuals.  Think about that.  The Pope.  The man who supposedly has the power to speak for god.  Saying that HE is not in a position to judge.  In other words, the leader of 1.2 billion Catholics for the first time I can remember is actually acting all Jesus-y.

Up to this point, though, he’s still been mostly talking the talk without walking the walk.  The institution itself is still in need of a major teardown and rebuilding and he’s not done much to fix that yet.  There are some signs that is about to change.  It’s small, but the committee that helps find bishop candidates has been restructured and there is a noticeably missing cog.  Cardinal Raymond Burke has been kicked off of that committee.  You may remember him as being the very vocal anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage cardinal that famously called for John Kerry being denied the sacrament of communion during the 2004 election cycle.  He’s also been vocally critical of Francis.  It’s a small step and Burke’s still on other committees, but he is no longer able to wield influence on choosing the next leaders in the church.  That’s not nothing.  Here’s hoping there’s more where that came from.

Oh Noes! The Slippery Slope!

A Federal judge in Utah ruled recently that bigamy is totally legal and everyone can have as many wives or husbands as they want.  That’s been the talk all around the conservative twitterverse.  And, to be fair, some liberals, but guess which one is more santorum-y (look it up on Urban Dictionary).

There’s only one problem.  The judge didn’t rule any such thing.  The only thing that was struck down was a tiny provision of the anti-bigamy law that said co-habitation was also illegal.  So, basically, Jack Tripper is no longer breaking the law in Utah.  Yeah, that’s it.  If you are a married couple, you can now legally have someone else who is not your family live with you and not be breaking the law.  What that extra person is doing there is none of the government’s business.

There are all sorts of complaints, mostly from Christians, of the slippery slope being in full effect and this is the logical next step after gay marriage gets legalized.  It doesn’t matter to them that bigamy is actually still illegal.  Of course, they may not even realize that bigamy is still illegal because they don’t know how to read past crappy headlines.

If anyone you know ever uses the slippery slope argument, just laugh in their face.  If you have every used the slippery slope argument, you should stop immediately.  Why?  Because the slippery slope argument is horrible and reflects more on your own sloppy thinking than it does whatever argument you are actually trying to make.  You may be on the right side of an argument and still look like an idiot if you use the slippery slope argument.

Here is why you should laugh in the face of anyone who uses the slippery slope argument.  If you are unable to articulate how going from A to B can lead you to eventually going C, let alone all the way to Z, you should just stop there and try to articulate to the best of your abilities why going from A to B is good or bad.  If every argument that you can make about going from A to B is shot down, you should really consider changing your mind about that particular topic.

Movie Review: The Desolation Of Smaug

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 2/5 stars

Bottom Line: You’ll go see it because it’s “The Hobbit”.  And while you won’t necessarily regret it, you will still continue to curse Peter Jackson for taking a two to three hour book and stretching it into three ridiculousy long three hour movies.

“The Hobbit” is the price we are all paying for Peter Jackson’s hubris.  Only he could take three monumental books and condense them into the all around enjoyable “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and then think it’s a great idea to take the most straight forward book J.R.R. Tolkien has ever written and expand it into three plodding movies.  And yes, after the first two, I think I can safely say that the third will be plodding as well.

“The Desolation of Smaug” suffers from the same problems as “An Unexpected Journey” did.  See dwarves run.  See dwarves get captured.  Save them, Bilbo, save them.  See dwarves run.  And that’s not so bad, really.  The problem lies in how they get from predicament to predicament.  The part where they are captured by the spiders is sufficiently creepy and well done.  And that’s it.  Nothing else is really at all entertaining.  And not only is it not entertaining, it’s frustratingly ridiculous.  I challenge anyone to not roll their eyes less than one hundred times at the great barrel escape.  It is just a bunch of crap thrown in to pad time in an already too long movie.  Though, I will admit the camera work is pretty darn awesome in it.

And then there’s Legolas.  We can ignore the fact that Legolas doesn’t appear in the original book.  That’s fine.  Creative license and all that.  But he is so freaking useless in this book.  The biggest crime, though, is not only is he useless, he’s freaking annoying.  His sole purpose is to look pretty and engage in stupidly planned and, at times, horribly choreographed battle scenes.  It was easy to tell which scenes were CGI and which were live by how well done they were.  Hint: the clunky ones are live.  I was actively wishing for Legolas’ death throughout.

Contained within this three hours of claptrap is a decent movie.  It just gets smothered by Peter Jackson’s need to make nothing but three hour movies.  I will just have to slough through one more of these movies and then the suffering will be over.  It is funny that I was so excited to see all of the bonus material from the three “Lord of the Rings” movies, but I will be looking forward to the non-Director’s Cut of “The Hobbit” where a fan shrinks this abomination of a trilogy back down to the three or four hours that it should be.

Buffy Giving Birth To The Antichrist

Every once in a while, I will fall asleep and start dreaming almost immediately.  These dreams are inevitably very short nightmares that wake me up with a start.  I do not generally remember these nightmares the next morning but I have the vague sense that they are all generally similar in nature.  Yesterday’s was anything but.  I think I remember it because I was soon thereafter awakened by a phone call which helped cement it into my memory.

The dream featured Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  She walks in through the back door of the home I grew up in and announces that she’s pregnant and about to give birth.  Despite this claim, she didn’t look at all pregnant.  Others were there with us, but I don’t remember who.  We do what any sane person would do in that situation and lay her down on top of the stove.  Because where else would you want to give birth to the antichrist?  Her stomach starts doing that creepy horror movie cliché something moving underneath the skin thing and someone exclaims, “Well, that can’t be good.”  I’m just going to go ahead and say that it was Zander because it sounds like a Zander thing to say.  Then Buffy’s face changes to that of an old lady who looks incredibly good for her age.  This causes all of us to step back from the stove startled.  Then, old woman Buffy walks off of the stove without getting up.  By this, I mean her feet are on the ground, but her legs are still bent at 90 degrees and the rest of her body is still horizontal.  Her walking around like that freaks me out so much that I wake up.

This may explain why my brain was trying to come up with serial killer words of wisdom later on in the night.

Serial Killer Words Of Wisdom

I was paged for work in the wee hours of the morning.  As I was trying to fall back to sleep, my brain decided to think of words of wisdom with a serial killer twist.  I really don’t know about you, brain.  Here’s a few, add your own!

“Home is where the heart is.  In a jar.  In my basement.  Next to the head.”

“Revenge is a dish best served never.  Because revenge requires emotion.  And I have none.”

“The quickest way to a man’s heart is through his chest cavity.”

“What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.” – This one, I decided, is creepy just because a serial killer is saying it.

“Look both ways before dragging your victim into your van.”

“The only thing standing in your way is that window.  And it’s open.”

“To err is human; to carve out a man’s spleen while he’s still alive, divine.”

“There are two types of people in this world, doers and screamers.”

“Always take time to appreciate the gurggling noises coming from your victim’s slashed throat.”

“Fool me once, find yourself hanging upside-down by your toe nails.  Fool me twice, oh, you can’t because you’re dead.”

 

Use The Revolving Doors, Dammit!

The world is filled with horrible people.  Rapists, murders, pedophiles, people who don’t use revolving doors.

Yes, I get it, some people have to use the standard doors.  Those people have wheelchairs.  And sure, I will cut some slack to people who have big things of luggage they are rolling around.  The rest of you eschewing the revolving doors?  Pure evil.

Revolving doors aren’t some wacky invention dreamed up by some mad-eyed engineer.  They server a very important utilitarian purpose.  That purpose is to save a shit-ton on energy bills.  Each section of a revolving door only allows a certain amount of cubic meters of air per revolution.  In the summer, only a little cold air escapes the building and only a little warm air gets in.  In the winter, the reverse.  The standard door, on the other hand, is completely variable.  With a decent wind or an air pressure variance between the inside and outside, the amount of heat exchange is exponentially larger.  So not only are you committing a quality of life crime by throwing away money when you use the standard door, you are also causing more gas and electricity to be used which leads to global warming.  You are a horrible person.

Hitler was once heard to say, “Sure, I may have caused the deaths of millions upon millions of people, but not using a revolving door is too evil even for me.”  True story.

Corporations Are People, My Friend

That titular comment was made by the silver-spooned Mitt Romney during the run-up to his being trounced by Barack Obama in the 2012 Presidential race.  It, and many other silly comments like it, are a lot of the reason why he lost so handily.  Sadly, in this instance, he was kind of right.  The law of the United States is that any use of the words “person” or “whoever” in laws automatically includes corporations.

Much of the precedent has to do with the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.  I don’t mind laws protecting corporations from governmental interference.  A lot of the Fourteenth Amendment arguments make fairly good sense.  Where I draw the line is the Constitutional protections afforded corporations.  I don’t think it should be the Fourteenth Amendment that protects corporations.  I think it should be law.  What I find especially funny is the most vocal proponents of Constitutional protections for corporations tend to be the same people who also advocate Constitutional Originalism.  Corporations existed back in 1776.  It would have been really easy for the founders to include corporations in the Constitution if they thought it should be applied to them, but the Constitution doesn’t mention corporations.  Funny, that.  Of course, I also find Originalism to be an intellectually bankrupt idea and the personhood dichotomy is just one reason why.

We now have another attempt to expand corporate personhood coming up at the Supreme Court.  The case is Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby.  The issue is the Obamacare mandate that requires health insurance policies to cover birth control.  The argument is that the mandate violates Hobby Lobby’s right to religious expression under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).  All because the owners of Hobby Lobby have a misguided bug up their ass about emergency contraception and how it works.  The RFRA was written in response to a Supreme Court decision that ruled the government is able to pass generally acceptable neutral regulatory laws that happened to curtail a person’s religious expression.  And since corporations are people, the RFRA also applies to corporations.

Think about that for a moment.  The argument is that a for-profit entity that only exists as a piece of paper filed in some clerk’s office can now have a religion and must be allowed to freely express that religion.  If this doesn’t show the perversity of corporate personhood, I don’t know what does.

Keep in mind, Hobby Lobby is not being forced to give emergency contraception to its employees, it is just required to provide insurance that makes it available as part of the insurance policy that they offer.  The moral decision to use emergency contraception rests squarely with the employee.  Hobby Lobby is no more culpable morally than they would be if someone stabbed another person with the crafting scissors they bought at Hobby Lobby.  They could easily just hire people who swear they won’t use emergency contraception.

The biggest issue is where does it stop?  Hobby Lobby’s argument is pretty narrow.  They are only against the emergency contraception birth control options.  The Catholic Church’s is not.  They are against ALL birth control.  Should the mandate not apply to companies run by Catholics?  What about those backwards religions that are against all medical care?  Should all of Obamacare not apply to them?  If Hobby Lobby is successful, the answer is almost assuredly yes.

This is one of those cases that is hard to predict given the current makeup of the Supreme Court.  Normally, I’d say this is an easy 9-0 victory for the Obama administration.  There’s no way that happens with this court.  I still think a fairly easy win is inevitable, though.  Your religious expression forbids you from using emergency contraception.  Your religious expression demands you proclaim the evils of emergency contraception.  Your religious expression gives you no rights to prevent others from making up their own minds.