Comic for Friday, February 3rd, 2006

Posted: 7:35 am, Friday, February 3rd

You know how much it sucks to have a song stuck in your head when you only know about the first three lines? That's been me, all week, since I thought of this one. Hopefully it'll go away now that it's committed to the interweb and away from me.

Gonna be slimmer today, just like I more or less predicted. TimeWarner's sucktitude has continued, so we have to call and bust some heads in a bit. In the meantime, this is what I've got. Most of it's thanks to Grafe from yesterday, pointing out some of the Washington Post (or WaPo, as the new Wonketteers call it).

First from the Post, the Evangelicals believe that gays and abortions will bring around the end of the world, but the polar ice caps melting and the ozone layer disappearing - which actually *will* end the fucking world as we know it - is not something they feel like taking a stand on. Probably because if we all have to give up driving, we'd have to mingle with people we may otherwise want to ignore, and that would foster understanding, which is not at all what Jesus wants.

From the other end of the right-wing scale comes this reasonable Christian Republican, who hates what his party's become. It's a long article, but pretty good and worth a read. My favorite part comes in the second paragraph:

As a mainline Episcopal priest, retired U.S. senator and diplomat, Danforth worships a humbler God and considers the right's certainty a sin. Legislating against gay marriage, for instance? "It's just cussedness." As he sees it, many Republican leaders have lost their bearings and, if they don't change, will lose their grip on power. Not to mention make the United States a meaner place.

Back when we were rosy-cheeked freshmen, Reggie Ho had a bunch of quotes printed out and taped to the wall as part of his half of the room's decorations. He also had a horrifying poster of James Hetfield, but that's beside the point. One of the quote he had was "I would never die for my beliefs, because I might be wrong." I could've sworn he had that attributed to Henry Rollins, but google says it's Bertrand Russell, so... One of the things that's always taken me aback by the Religious Right, and Evangelicals in general, is their certainty. It scares me. The mandate of having to accept their way to avoid hell is really only semantically different from something Fred Phelps would say. Tennyson said, "There lies more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds." I don't think anyone who's ever believed in any sort of religion has been without their doubts - probably those who don't believe every once in a while doubt their lack of belief (albeit usually in a cursing the fates sort of way), too. Anyone who acts with such certainty as the right does, handing down cement-solid declarations of the way things Should Be... That all scares the crap out of me.

Oh, the Hetfield picture was like this, except about four by six. And it was probably still not as scary as the other poster Reggie Ho had. Those were good times.

By the way, this came up as a result as a google image search for Henry Rollins. Um, no.

The other two things I have go back to the sports world that I talk about so much - the Morning News had a photographer do some portraits of people who had just finished the New York Marathon back in November, and all of them look wa-a-a-a-a-a-ay better than I did when Mikey dragged me across the finish line. The other thing they had was this awesome crazy Super Bowl prediction. My favorite is the halftime show with the presidents. That's great.

That's all for me. Everyone, enjoy the weekend, root on the Bus in the Super Bowl, and we need the Steelers to end with a final score of 8 and the Seahawks, 1. Ideally, the Steelers open up a 28-21 lead in the first quarter and then the two defenses lock down from there.

bullfrog

I remember having layers of salt crusted on to my face. The people in the portraits seem to have avoided that fate.

What is the song?

After watching "The Aristocrats," I'd be more inclined to believe that Bob Saget is actually Satan.

D'oh! Should've said that - Notorious B.I.G.'s "Juicy". Unfortunately, it's pretty far in, or we could've heard Pete rap, "Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis/back when we was broke, couldn't imagine this" or something like that. Nothing dates a song like an electronics reference.

Just found this awesome article on Retrocrush about the top 100 dogs of pop culture (because it's the Chinese Year of the Dog).

http://retrocrush.com/archive2006/dogs/index.h tml

The dogs from Where the Red Fern Grows come in at #32, making this the most I've thought about Where the Red Fern Grows in a week since seventh grade.

Two interesting op-ed pieces in the NYTimes this morning about Benedict's new encyclical and why he chose love as the subject when it's not something from his previous work. I think they both relate to your above questioning of the certainty of religious fundamentalists.

My two cents is that many fundamentalists believe in the one-shot baptisim/forgiveness/washing away of all sins and claiming Jesus Christ as your personal lord and savior. Once that's happened, you cannot go wrong because anything you do, you are doing for God (or something along those lines). Catholics generally understand that we are human and fallible, and are going to mess up again, and again, and again. The only certainty there is that you'r e going to mess up again, so stop being so superior. I think humbleness is the word for that.

The op-eds ad references aren't part of the Times Select thing and can be read here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/03/opinion/03al bacete.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/03/opinion/03da cey.html

I more or less agree with your two cents, ad. All the examples I could think of of that behavior in my more fundy friends are decades old and hopefully (though I doubt it) products of an immature sense of theology. I agree on the part about Catholics generally understanding that we're human and fallible, although I'd expand that to be mostly just any .. what's the word, modern Christian, I guess? Modern person of faith? Anyone who takes into account events occurring outside of the Bible when formulating their sense of religion? I'd say anyone who does that probably realizes we all screw up again and again..

And then, of course, there's trying to all get on the same page about what is actually screwing up or not.

Again, anyone googling "Drink Like a Champion Today" t-shirts, the Big Ben model is being eBayed here.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Drink-Like-a-Champion-XLar ge-Navy-Blue-T-Shirt-funny_W0QQitemZ8380281035QQcategoryZ280 22QQssPageNameZWD1VQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

He's got all sizes. The photos are in the archive at deadspin.com. Just trying to help.

Hey, MNP, the guys that write Blue-Gray Sky, probably the best ND sports blog on the web, have spun off an Irish basketball-only blog:

http://thefieldhouse.blogspot.com/

yay, new daily reading! thanks!

Pittsburgh's taking this one! Thanks for the props--Here We Go, Steelers!

I'm sorry, but I can't seem to say anything other than that in the past two days.

For Grafe:

On this day, in 1948, the first Cadillac with tailfins was produced, signaling the dawn of the tailfin era. General Motors increased the size of the Cadillac's "tailfeathers" every year throughout the 1950s.

What's the problem with GM?

They got rid of the tailfins. Direct correlation. I guarantee.

Religion, football, Bob Saget, tailfins, we've got it all here at Five Bucks to Friday.

Someone got directed here by Yahoo-ing my name just now - who are you? Are you gunning for me? Is this going to be trouble?

Wait, wait, wait - a TWENTY YEAR WAR PLAN? Fucking fuck squirrel!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/a rticle/2006/02/02/AR2006020202296_pf.html

Hi there. This is so cool!!! Change your copyrigt to 2006 though. Do you mind if I write to you sometimes? I'll need a good alias, I'll have to think about that for awhile.

The copyright's only screwed up because I had to update from work the past two days thanks to TimeWarner's awesomeness. And since I don't personally have an aunt JoAnne, I think you'll be OK. Your sister uses the uncrackable code of "2.0's mom," so it's not like these aliases are going to outwit anyone (except for our esteemed commander-in-chief, but he's been brought to his knees by a pretzel, so that's not saying much).

MNP - holy crap, you have to be kidding me.