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Up to the minute notes on the current state of free thinking and free living: Kentucky moonshine - original analysis and reporting from MoreThings, and all round pop culture museum of sight and sound - photo galleries, mp3 and video downloads.
Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
Live free or die!
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August 23, 2003
Satan's Attorney on the Ten Commandments
This is in response to the "Ten Commandments" case, in Alabama.
Posting the Ten Commandments in a government building does indeed amount to an unconstitutional "establishment of religion".
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me" is a commandment to worship and serve only the god Yahweh (Jehovah), the specific god of Judaism and Christianity-and no other. By the context, this commandment is not a bland, "worship the god of your choice". In fact, it's the opposite. This comandment amounts to: "Worship Yahweh, and only Yahweh".
Posting this on government property is thus tantamount to the government favoring the Yahweh-worshipping religions, (Judaism & Christianity), over all other religions.
The commandment against worshipping idols also unconstitutionally favors the Yahweh religions over idol-worshipping religions.
Now, "Thou shalt not take the Lord's name in vain" must go, too. In public government buildings such as courthouses, we have the first amendment free-speech right to "take in vain" the name of the god Yahweh. Posting this commandment in a government building may have a "chilling effect" on free speech of those non-believers who may wish to take Yahweh's name in vain. There is no such "equal protection" extended to the names of other gods: And government cannot favor one religion or one god over any other.
"Remember the Sabbath/Do no work on the Sabbath": Government cannot give approval to Judaism's Holy day, over the Holy days of other religions.
That means you cannot post the "Ten Commandments" on government property. At best, you might be able to edit them down, and maybe post six commandments.
Thank you
posted by johnny at 8/23/2003 03:15:00 AM
August 22, 2003
Colorless Friends you can't get rid of
Blessedly, a final season of Friends. Alright, go already. Be gone. And take your syndicated re-runs with you. What do I have to do to get rid of you? I'm just about ready to put on the Captain Beefheart CD.
I've always hated this show. Not really hated, for that is an active emotional state. More like the Martian hate of Stranger in a Strange Land, the kind of bitter hatred that might best be described as "mild distaste."
I charge Friends primarily with the crime of being colorless. Let me just expound by copying and pasting from dictionary.com: they are characterless, dreary, dull, insipid, lackluster, lifeless, prosaic, tame, unmemorable, unpassioned, vacuous, vapid.
In short, they have the blandest show on television, give or take the insipid Everybody Loves Raymond. These character have no personality. They are the blandest bunch of nothing imaginable. Howard Cunningham had more flavor.
Still others have a perhaps not entirely different argument against Friends being "colorless" on the basis that none of the principal friends is black. It is apparently at least a misdemeanor hate crime to have any show without a major black character. You remember when we all voted on that, right?
I really don't see the merit in this lament about blackness. Keeping the argument all in the family, let's refer this to fellow Blogcritic Dew, and her cleverly titled column "Friends race against time."
"Blacks have a problem with the lack of color as its being referred to here because where do we get to identify?" Apparently black folk can't or shouldn't identify with a caucasian character. Hmm. From my side, I have no trouble at all identifying with, say, Bernie Mac.
Here's a particularly prime bit of NONSENSE from our Dew:
I think you would have to be black to understand
Why is that? Do you have some special superior black people logic that goes over whitey's head? Or do you wish to make an epistemological argument that knowledge is based on emotion, and further that being an American of African heritage in 2003 is uniquely oppressive so that no other kind of human suffering would suffice in giving you the ability to understand the horrible injustice of not seeing any black Friends?
Oy, the suffering! Will this torment ever end? By that I mean the whole show, not any non-existent black characters. Thankfully, yes. Just this ONE more season.
But then again, one of these Friends fools already has a new show for the fall. I bet he'll be up to his ass in black folk, doing penance for the Friends collective hate crimes of exclusion. Watch and see if they don't absolutely literally come up with, in the infamous words of James Watts, a woman, a black, two Jews and a cripple.
But why would a black or any other hue of personhood want to watch this crappy bland show in the first place- much less a sequel, when they could be watching any of The Original Kings of Comedy? See, these guys are actually FUNNY.
You want something to bitch about, Fox has cancelled Cedric the Entertainer Presents. Now THAT sucks.
posted by Al at 8/22/2003 04:51:00 PM
Happy blog-iversary to me
Thanks for lending your ear to my corn at Culpepper Log for a year now. My first post was on 8-22-02. That makes one solid year of my ranting and hate crimes against Geology and Theology.
Thank you. Thankyouverymuch.
posted by Al at 8/22/2003 01:59:00 PM
August 21, 2003
( ) by The Prime-Time Sublime
The obvious point of comparison for composer and "instigator" Paul Minotto and The Prime-Time Sublime Community Orchestra would be Frank Zappa's classical work. Particularly it would compare closer to earlier stuff like Uncle Meat with more the sound of an orchestra, as opposed to the later stuff that Zappa had "executed" on a synthesizer rather than performed by live musicians.
I won't claim much expertise in analyzing classical music styles, but the ( ) album strikes me as fairly listenable, more so than a lot of Zappa's classical work, and specifically more so than his idol Edgar Varese.
Particularly, I hear more pattern, or actual composition and development in ( ) than what I've ever been able to make out of Varese in particular.
The first couple of compositions here especially pleased me. "Holy War in Your Pants" has a particularly cool title, though I don't know how much it reflects the actual musical content, which has basic themes sounding like a purposefully flat high school orchestra.
My favorite track, "A Day at the Mall" offers some nice plucky 50s strings, stuff to gently pump you up as you ascend the escalator. It's fairly compelling.
Two compositions gives you over 20 minutes of outstanding material, so there's at least a good half album already. I didn't find the other pieces quite as interesting, though "Felini's pickup truck" had some nice Americana colors, bits of banjo and such in this dry lineup. Somehow I picture this going with a scene of a pickup truck tearing through a desert with surreality dust kicking up behind.
If you're interested in modern orchestral styles, ( ) rates a listen, even if they are a bunch of clowns.
posted by Al at 8/21/2003 03:35:00 PM
August 20, 2003
Be generous with your OWN money.
"We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money." --Davy Crockett
posted by Al at 8/20/2003 03:48:00 PM
August 19, 2003
Goats- man's best friends
Sure they're hot, but goats can serve many useful functions. For example, this goat guards a business:
Did you ever have a goat look at you like this, like you were just another rusty tin can?
posted by Al at 8/19/2003 05:01:00 PM
First person account of attack on UN
Salam has personal reporting on the ground from the site of today's bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad.
posted by Al at 8/19/2003 04:02:00 PM
August 18, 2003
Greatest figures of the 20th century
The Right-Wing News website just polled some "right wing" bloggers, coming up with THIS LIST of the two dozen "greatest figures of the 20th century."
A couple of names jumped out at me as ODD choices for any form of a conservative, notably FDR and MLK. [Mikhail Gorbachev? Really, Dawn.] I could have done without all the generals. And what exactly has Billy Graham accomplished to rate as a top figure of the century?
I was glad to see the Beatles on the list. Artists, builders, inventors and writers have something clear to show for what they've done. A millenium from now, the artistic achievement of Miles Davis and Motown will be more significant than the US Civil War. The Beatles and the Stones will rank much more important in the long run than JFK or Nixon.
Subject to further thought, here would be my alternate
TOP 10 FIGURES OF THE 20TH CENTURY
1) Henry Ford
2) Ayn Rand
3) John Rockfeller
4) Bill Gates
5) The Beatles
6) Robert Heinlein
7) Prince
8) Elvis Costello
9) Miles Davis
10) Thomas Edison
10) Linus Pauling
10) Billy Wilder
10) Elvis Presley
10) Berry Gordy
Note the lack of politicians on my list. FDR would maybe qualify if managing to drag the depression out an extra ten years or concentration camps for Japanese-Americans count as great achievments. If you have to have an Allied political leader, let's just settle on enshrining Churchill.
posted by Al at 8/18/2003 02:10:00 AM
August 17, 2003
California big top personnel listing
Democracy promises bread and circuses. I don't know about the bread, but we're definitely getting the circus.
Here is the official California election division CERTIFIED LIST of 135 candidates for governor. Note the interesting "ballot designations" of career for some of these folks, such as "gay rights attorney" and "middleweight sumo wrestler." And that's not even mentioning Gallagher.
posted by Al at 8/17/2003 11:47:00 PM
De Niro turns 60
Born August 17, 1943, Robert De Niro turns 60 today. Happy birthday, and please don't hurt me.
Not only is De Niro an outstanding actor, but more importantly he's been in some great, landmark movies, such as The Godfather. He's most noted for playing heavy dramatic roles, gangsters and killers, but he has proven himself in recent years as a worthy comic actor, most notably in Meet the Parents.
Perhaps his most noteworthy one performance has been as Travis Bickle, the unhinged Vietnam vet Taxi Driver.
I want to give special praise, however, to his somewhat less noted performance in Wag the Dog. His fixer for the powerful character Conrad Brean is a considerably more frightening character than the taxi driver. Bickle is more of a master thespian turn, with the overwhelming angst and agitation versus Brean's calm, unflappable demeanor.
Brean, however, is much more dangerous. Bickle might go off the deep end in a weak moment and end up killing one or two people. Brean, however, might carefully and consciously- with regret and a sad sigh- have any number of people killed. Starting a real war might be the unavoidable price of taking care of the personal political problems of his employer. The quietly cold calculations going on under the rumpled and friendly professional comportment should be more chilling than the personal anxieties of Bickle.
posted by Al at 8/17/2003 06:31:00 PM
Mae West's birthday
Mae West was born 110 years ago today, August 17, 1893.
She brought her marginally legal vaudeville hooker act to the big screen. Besides being a buxom physical specimen, she had a very strong force of personality and a sharp wit. Her playfully sarcastic purr would have to melt any straight man, for starters. She was the platonic ideal, the "eiday" of hookers, the nietzchean uber-hooker.
That force of personality came out also as a writer. She wrote plays, and co-wrote numerous of the screenplays she was in, including My Little Chickadee with WC Fields.
My favorite Mae West dialogue-
Judge: You are showing contempt for this court!
Mae: Oh, NO sir. I'm doing my best to hide it.
posted by Al at 8/17/2003 06:30:00 PM
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