Gee, I wonder why?
The theater manager refused to tell KOMO why the movie was suddenly pulled after days of advertising and ticket presales… One person pointed to a sign in Regal’s parking lot that revealed the theater rents out the building to a local church for Sunday service.
Okay, this is just fucking nuts.
Insisting that God “certainly needs to be involved” in the Supreme Court confirmation process, three Christian ministers today blessed the doors of the hearing room where Senate Judiciary Committee members will begin considering the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito on Monday.Capitol Hill police barred them from entering the room to continue what they called a consecration service. But in a bit of one-upsmanship, the three announced that they had let themselves in a day earlier, touching holy oil to the seats where Judge Alito, the senators, witnesses, Senate staffers and the press will sit, and praying for each of the 13 committee members by name.
“We did adequately apply oil to all the seats,” said the Rev. Rob Schenck, who identified himself as an evangelical Christian and as president of the National Clergy Council in Washington.
Via Americablog.
One of the comments on my first Smobriety post went something like “…be a man and quit cold turkey…” I’m fascinated by this little nugget from the comment for two reasons:
1) If being a man means that I have to experience as much pain as I possibly can without any kind of pain reliever, I’m ready to be fitted for my vagina any day now.
2) Isn’t “Be a man” one of those things that people just don’t say anymore? Not because it’s politically incorrect or anything like that, but just because it’s fallen out of use? It reminds me of this time last summer when a friend of mine was complaining about a homeless man who sings part of the song “My Girl” over and over again. She asked if there was anything we can do about him, and I shrugged and said “It’s a free country.” My friend just stared at me, and we realized that nobody says that anymore. In fact, I don’t think I’ve heard it since the late nineties…or at least definitely since you-know-who.
Are there any other phrases that are teetering, Edsel-like, on the edge of extinction?
Most of the comments that were posted under my first SLOG, this past Friday, were very supportive of the quitting smoking, thankyewverymuch, but there were a couple concerns that should probably be addressed: why I’m taking The Happy Pills and why I’m trying to lose weight at the same time. After the jump is probably more than you’ve ever wanted to know about both the mind of a smoker and the reasoning behind a man-diet.
Continue reading "My Smobriety: Drugged and Dreaming of Weight Loss" »
You’re kidding right?
We say what we’re for all the time.
Let me see if I can remember: density, rapid mass transit, district elections, all-ages shows, the People’s Waterfront Coalition’s no highway option, gay marriage, the gay civil rights bill, porn, legalizing drugs, free speech, Nick Licata, smoking pot, smoking pot and watching movies, smoking pot and watching theater, smoking pot and watching porn, getting drunk, threesomes, strap-ons, local bands, Dwight Pelz, saying ‘Fuck’ in print, Democrats, the Urban Archipelago, and more density…
Everybody already knows what we’re for because we make the case for this stuff all the time.
I’m for all of it. But here’s what else I’m for: A little less preaching.
I’m reminded of a funny story: I tried Wellbutrin, not to quit smoking (I used the patch for that), but to help combat the constant feeling that the world and I would both be better off if I killed myself. After a day or two, the effects were unbelievably positive; for the first time in 20+years of active, chronic depression, I felt I could see a way through the miasma. And it had a nice buzz, to boot. Plus: no sexual side effects, and no weight gain (again, unlike quitting smoking, which cost me 30 pounds). Everybody wins!
Then, exactly three weeks into my treatment, I awoke to find myself vigorously scratching my shin. My leg and hand were wet with my own blood, which was now flowing onto the sheets. I was scratching so hard in my sleep that the skin was tearing away. When I woke more fully, i discovered that my entire body was covered in big red hives, and these mammoth super-hives known as angioedema. The look and feel of these super-sized welts made it seem as though someone had subcutaneously inserted upside-down saucers into random parts of my anatomy. The pain, itching, and embarrassment were as bad as any I’d ever felt. I quit the Wellbutrin, got some shots, and began the course of steroids that got the swelling down within a week or two.
Then, a few months of severe depression later, my doctor and I decided it was ok to try Wellbutrin again, this time with the name brand version, and in conjunction with no other medication. Turns out the allergic reaction I suffered is the number one side effect of Wellbutrin’s generic brand, but only in the top 5 of the name brand. Despite my trepidation, the drug got to work immediately. It wasn’t that I stopped experiencing highs and lows, but rather that the path toward unprovoked despair suddenly seemed like a path, something I could more or less choose to avoid. It was a choice I relished, a life-altering shift in consciousness (a bit like quitting smoking, actually, only a million times more edifying). I relished it for exactly 21 days, whereupon the hives and angioedema returned, just like nothing had ever happened. I went back to the shots and steroids and threw the glorious pills away.
Anyway, good luck, Paul!
Smobriety Charticle # 1Weight: 180 pounds
Blood Pressure: 117/78
Song Stuck in Head: “Goody Two-Shoes” - Adam Ant
U.S. President Who Most Resembles Current Mood: William Henry Harrison
Withdrawal Symptoms: Extreme fucking grumpiness, pain in neck and back, insomnia
Re: the title: I entirely lost the previous version of this post when my rickety old computer decided not to publish it to the SLOG but rather to simply stare at me, one-eyed, until I finally had to Ctrl-Alt-Delete. I really liked the last version of this post. It even had a witty reference to Kazaam. But anyway.
Last night I went to a bar with two of my friends who are also quitting today. Because they are using the patch and the nicotine gum, they were able to drink. Because I am taking Wellbutrin a.k.a. Bubropion a.k.a. Zyban (I call them my Happy Pills,) which has been known to cause seizures when combined with alcohol, I was unable to drink. But I still had a fine time, discussing our respective methods of quitting and also what our Hobo Names would be (for the record, mine is Paulie Big-Britches.) Then I had my last cigarette, which was incredibly anticlimactic. I think that every smoker wishes it would be a wistful, or even eventful thing, but there were no fireworks or prophetic statements or the like. I tossed my last pack into a dumpster, came home, and spent most of last night staring at the ceiling. And then I woke up and tossed two hours of writing into the ether. So I’m going to post this up and then, a little later today, when I’m not ready to toss my laptop into the dumpster to chase the cigarettes, I’ll continue.
If it sounds too good to be truetruck-stop prostitute who had escaped rural West Virginia for the dismal life of a homeless San Francisco drug addictit probably is.
If you’d like to get a glimpse of the candidates running to replace Paul Berendt as the Democratic Party State Chair, there’s a candidates forum today at 2pm in Renton.
It’s at the Carpenters’ Hall/Local 1797 at 231 Burnett Ave. N.
There’ll be a meet and greet reception at 3:30 with the candidates (Jean Brooks, Bill Harrington, Mark Hintz, Dwight Pelz, and Laura Ruderman) following the forum.
For directions, call Luis Moscoso @ 425-776-9061
Is Rupert Murdoch destroying MySpace? Depends on whether you think censorship and dirty tricks will help or hurt MySpace’s cred.
Angry members of MySpace, the personal file-sharing website for young adults, are accusing Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation of censoring their postings and blocking their access to rival sites. The 38 million subscribers to MySpace, which News Corp bought for $629m (£355m) last July, discovered that when they wrote to each other about rival video-swapping site YouTube, the words were automatically deleted, and attempts to download video images from YouTube led to blank screens.
Via Atrios.
A Danish newspaper is under fire—death threats, protests, international condemnation—for publishing a series of cartoons that mocked the Prophet Muhammad. The NYT reports…
When the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published 12 cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, including one in which he is shown wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse, it expected a strong reaction in this country of 5.4 million people.Muslims gathered at city hall in Copenhagen in October to protest cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad published in a newspaper, Jyllands-Posten.
But the paper was unprepared for the global furor that ensued, including demonstrations in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir, death threats against the artists, condemnation from 11 Muslim countries and a rebuke from the United Nations.
“The cartoons did nothing that transcends the cultural norms of secular Denmark, and this was not a provocation to insult Muslims,” said Flemming Rose, cultural editor of Jyllands-Posten, Denmark’s largest newspaper, which has declined to apologize for the drawings.
The piece goes on to talk about whether Denmark’s “famously liberal laws on free speech have gone too far.”
Yeah, that free speech stuffhow much of it can one country stand?
The xenophobe in me reacted harshly to that idiotic statement. Can we all agree to stick up for free speech? You would think that a newspaper that is currently under assault from the Feds for publishing stories that annoyed the president would fall squarely on the side of free speech. For Muslim immigrants to the liberal democracies, I would say this: if you can’t stand the free speech, stay the hell out of the West. (And, yes, I’m opposed to idiotic “speech codes” that seek to protect sensitive homos from hate speech.) Seriouslyfree speech, and the occasional offense it causes, is part of the price of admission. One Danish Muslim calls the cartoons “mental torture.” That’s bullshit. It’s a cartoon. Oh, you’ve got every right to be offended, of course, and to fight speech you regard as bigoted with more speech (even protests), but death threats and insisting that it shouldn’t be legal for a paper to mock your prophet because it hurts your feelings? Sorry, no.
And how can one possibly argue with this:
Soren Krarup, a retired priest and leading voice in the party, said the Muslim response to the cartoons showed that Islam was not compatible with Danish customs. He said Jesus had been satirized in Danish literature and popular culture for centuries - including a recent much-publicized Danish painting of Jesus with an erection - so why not Muhammad?
Damn straight: Why not Muhammad? Why not L. Ron Hubbard? Why not Jesus Christ? Why not Nazi Popes? Why not Joseph Smith? Freedom of thought, freedom of speechit means, amongst other things, people have a right to think your religious beliefs are utterly ridiculous and the right to say so.
Unfortunately Krarup goes on to say this…
“Muslim immigration is a way for Muslims to conquer us, just as they have done for the past 1,400 years.”
That’s crap, of course. Xenophobic crap. Pointing out that immigrating to a country with liberal tradition of free speech means tolerating the occasional swipe at your sacred cows is not xenophobic, however. It’s necessary, it’s crucial. Liberal democracies won’t surviveto say nothing of liberal newspapersif they shy away from making that point aggressively.
