Fun With Play-Dough

This gets prettier all the time. We were probably all wondering, after hearing about the FLDS compound, how many more of these idiots live amongst us. Here’s another one: Police in Albuquerque, New Mexico, paid a visit to the aptly named Lord of Our Righteousness Church, whose leader claims to be the Messiah. Three underage children were taken into custody; leader Wayne Bent a.k.a. Michael Travesser says God anointed him as the Messiah in 2000.

“He acknowledged having sex with three women - the wives of two of his followers and his daughter in law. He said it was at the direction of God and the instigation of the women. In a lengthy discussion dated Sept. 11, 2007, Bent said his work is finished and he does not expect to be “in the earthly sphere” much longer”. (Source: AP)

Ah, it was because God wanted it. Funny. That last part sounds like a goodbye note to me; somebody better put this man on suicide watch.

Meantime, 41 of the 464 FLDS children (all boys) that remain in custody show signs of multiple fractures. That answers the question of what they do to the kids they can’t marry off to middle aged guys. But, of course, nothing is going on; the FLDS members “just love their children and want them back”.

And people think we Jews are weird because we don’t eat pork. 

In spite of the header “We have good news!” the people at the Baptist Press website are so not happy. Apparently, the abstinence hearings didn’t go as well as they’d hoped:

Rep. Henry Waxman, who is pro-choice, apparently used his position as chairman of a House committee to organize a one-sided panel of experts to attack the effectiveness of abstinence programs ahead of important funding appropriations discussions. (Source: BP website)

Well, they must pray harder then. Or…they could pull their heads out of that certain dark place, and think for a change. Teenagers want sex; it’s an undeniable fact, and they get in trouble because sex causes pregnancy and STD’s, and your solution is what? Tell them not to have it? That’s it? Wow, that’s brilliant. Why didn’t I think of that?

The one sided reporting of the Baptist Press aside, they did hit the nail on the head when they started bitching about how panelists admitted they wouldn’t fund abstinence education even if it proved effective. That’s right, suckers: that type of message is a private matter, and up to the parents. If you want to tell your own kids abstinence is a good idea, more power to you. But the taxpayers aren’t funding it; we’ve got issues with your ideology-driven solutions. Like the fact that abstinence-only education ignores comprehensive sex-ed. That’s right; we want our teenagers to be informed, not beaten into submission only to grow up thinking sex is filthy and evil, and a source of embarrassment.

Sex-ed. as the Baptists see it:

“How do you get pregnant?”

“Don’t worry about it, just don’t have sex.”

“But how do I get pregnant once I’m married?”

“Don’t worry about it, just don’t have sex.”

“What about STD’s?”

“Don’t worry about it, just don’t have sex.”

“But…”

“DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT, JUST DON’T HAVE SEX!”

Sadness in the Obama camp, endless looping of Reverend Wright’s comments: it’s time for a distracting news update:

When Kasey Kazee from Catlettsburg, Kentucky decided to rob a liquor store, he, of course, needed to conceal his face. What better way to do that than by wrapping your head in duct tape? Except for the fact that employees tackled him in the parking lot, and handed him over to police. Total missing from the cash register: $15.

I’m imagining the cops ripping the duct tape off his face.

Here comes the Bride, and there she goes…to jail. Dentist David W. Wielechowski, 32, of Shaler, and Christa Vattimo, 25, had married a month earlier in the Bahamas but repeated their vows in Pittsburgh Saturday at a reception for 150 guests. Apparently, this was not a good idea, as they got into a fight afterwards, during which the groom karate kicked his wife. She then somehow attacked two guests from another party who attempted to help her. True love is a beautiful thing.

An inmate in Bentonville, Arkansas, who is on trial for murder, has filed a complaint because the jail menu isn’t to his liking. He went in weighing 413 pounds, but has lost 100 over the past eight months. Broderick Laswell is practically wasting away; whenever he tries to exercise, his vision goes blurry and he feels faint. Inmates are only being fed 3,000 calories a day. It’s a travesty; what is the world coming to, if all you did was stab someone to death, set his house on fire, and you can’t even eat what you want?

Meanwhile, Iran’s cultural integrity is going straight to pot. The culprit: Barbie. Prosecutor General Ghorban Ali Dori Najafabadi agrees with me; he wrote a letter to the Vice President of Iran to draw attention to the terrible Western influences of Barbie, Superman, Batman, and so forth and so on. They are calling it “Westoxication”, and it needs to be stopped. Incidentally, Iran is the world’s third biggest importer of these toys. Many toys are smuggled into the country, because the demand outweighs the respect for Iran’s cultural heritage. Apparently, many people care more about making money than about their integrity. Seems there’s hope for Iran after all. However; what does it tell us that this cleric seems to feel more threatened by a plastic doll than by our government?

I read an interesting article in the current Newsweek, titled: Only in America. I recommend a thorough reading, but here’s an excerpt:

Obama has had the misfortune to run for the presidency in an age when reporters are watching, it seems, every time that candidate picks up a fork, or orders a meal. Here is the New York Times’s Maureen Dowd on Obama’s efforts to appear to be a regular guy through carbohydrate consumption: “In the final days in Pennsylvania, he dutifully logged time at diners and force-fed himself waffles, pancakes, sausage, and a Philly cheesesteak. He split the pancakes with Michelle, left some of the waffle and sausage behind, and gave away the French fries that came with the cheesesteak. But this is clearly a man who can’t wait to get back to his organic scrambled egg whites…”

Jesus Christ, people are stupid. He can lose the race now because he didn’t finish his waffle? And what the hell is wrong with organic egg whites? Why would we care what he puts in his mouth? It’s his own business! For god’s sake! I don’t care if he shops at Whole Foods, or eats refried dog turds and calls it chocolate pudding. I just want somebody in the White House with a working brain.

But: there’s the rub.

Elitism is the new four-letter-word in politics; and for some inexplicable reason, it’s Obama who is paying the price. In reality, there’s nothing new under the sun; this is plain old-fashioned anti-intellectualism. It has nothing to do with the actual food, it’s what the food represents: if you can’t live of diner fare, you must be too uppity. I guess people still secretly want a President who screwed around in school, and who they can have a beer with. A President who always eats the whole waffle. 

What is this, Jimmy Carter is suddenly the expert on everything from Foreign Policy to gas prices? Wow, just what we were waiting for. The candidates must be shaking their head, confronted with so much wasted airtime. Now, fair is fair; everybody is allowed their fifteen minutes in the spot light, and ex-Presidents even more so; just think about it, one decade you’re famous, the next nobody gives a crap. Fine. However, there is a limit to my patience. Carter, go away. We have sex scandals and the lack of lapel pins to discuss.

While I’m on the topic of things that annoy me: why is it that every other commercial these days has a guy with a fake British accent? Do the ad agencies think we’ll be more likely to buy their product if an Englishman tells us? What does that do to our self-esteem? It never ceases to amaze me that all these commercials that irritate the bejesus (sorry, always wanted to use that word) out of us are actually the end product of a lot of work. Someone has to think of it, write it down, undoubtedly has to ‘sell’ it in a meeting, cast it, shoot it, and nowhere along the line does anybody say: this commercial sucks! What are we doing here? But no, on TV it goes, and all I can think when I see it is somebody got paid to make that.