CHANGE JAR STATS
++ As of February 7, 2005,
the change jar was 41.3% full.
++ I last emptied the change jar
on August 11, 2004.
++ The change jar is projected
to be full on October 21, 2005.
[See change jar photo here]
COSMOPOLITAN PUBLISHES GROUNDBREAKING STUDY: MEN LIKE FELLATIO, VAGINAL INTERCOURSE
NEW YORK CITY -- Cosmopolitan, a New York-based human sexuality think-tank, will publish a startling study in its monthly research journal revealing that men overwhelmingly prefer fellatio (oral stimulation of the penis) and vaginal intercourse (fucking) to other forms of sexual activity.
According to Kate White, the journal's editor-in-chief, Cosmopolitan researchers carefully assembled a group of 200 heterosexual men intended to represent America by race, age, income, and eleven other control factors. They then provided the participants with a list of sex acts and asked them to mark the ones in which they felt a "strong" or "very strong" interest.
Among the sex acts listed:
getting fingertips massaged with scented oils
having fourth chakra stimulated with a mockingbird feather
bathing together while listening to Kenny G
feeding each other pomegranate seeds steeped in a fine Gewürztraminer
shopping for the perfect handbag to go with new pumps
"The researchers added 'fellatio' and 'vaginal intercourse' to give a wide range of choices for participants to pick from," said White. "They expected a response rate of less than 1% for those choices. Boy, were we surprised."
Survey results showed that while a maximum of 2% of men expressed interest in any one of fingertip massage, chakra stimulation, mutual bathing, seed feeding, or handbag shopping; 100% of men expressed interest in fellatio and vaginal intercourse.
"At first, it appeared the response rate was less than 100%," said White. "But when the researchers checked the write-in responses, they found that some of the men didn't understand the terms 'fellatio' or 'vaginal intercourse' and wrote in responses like 'licking and sticking' or 'I like it when a chick blows me and then lets me fuck her.'"
White refused to confirm or deny rumors that the journal had omitted even more controversial material, including data suggesting that most men enjoy watching filmed clips of paid actors engaging in fellatio and vaginal intercourse, or that many men would engage in fellatio and vaginal intercourse with their wife's or girlfriend's hot sister if they thought they could get away with it.
Cosmopolitan will make the journal available in grocery store checkout lines starting Tuesday. The study will be published in an article titled "2 RED-HOT SEX TRICKS YOU NEED TO MASTER -- TONIGHT!"
I was the kind of kid in junior high school who should have hated dodgeball. I weighed ninety-four pounds. I competed on the math team and had the awkward personality to match. Dorky glasses? Check. Bad haircut? You can't imagine.
My parents noticed early that they were raising a bookworm and tried to balance the scales by putting me in every sports program they could think of: T-ball, Little League baseball, hockey, soccer, tennis, and YMCA basketball. They yelled at me to get out of the house when I lounged on the couch with a book on summer afternoons and supported me when I started running road races at age 9.
When I was in fourth grade, the school district ran a program called "Read a Million Minutes." We kids kept track of how many minutes we read each day, and after a couple of weeks we added all the minutes up so the district could brag about how they were making reading cool. At the beginning of the program, all the kids turned in their individual reading goals. Soon after I turned in my reading goal, my teacher -- a bitter-faced woman named Ms. Ruen -- called my mother and asked her to stop by for a conference.
"Mrs. Trout," said Ms. Ruen, "the reason I called you in today is that I'm worried about Kilgore. You see, all of the children turned in their reading goals Monday, and I had expected that Kilgore would set the highest goal. But he didn't. I'm hoping that you can help Kilgore to set a goal more in line with his potential."
My mother normally avoided confrontation, but she would not stand for this.
"Kilgore reads enough," she said. "Kilgore has books in his room, and books in the bathroom, and piles of books on the couch, and more books at the top of the stairs, and he brings more books home from the library every weekend, and it's springtime, and KILGORE HAS TO PLAY BASEBALL."
This strategy worked, sort of. I won some grudging acceptance from the other kids in seventh grade when I set the school record for the mile run (5:24.32, if you care to take a crack at it this weekend). I remember one track practice where the shot-putter told me, "Trout, you'd really be a nerd if you couldn't run." That was the nicest thing anyone ever said to me at John Adams Middle School.
Anyway. Shy, bookish kids like me usually grow up paying thousands of dollars to therapists to exorcise harrowing memories of the big kids hurling red rubber playground balls. But I loved dodgeball. I would stand about twelve feet away from a guy holding a ball -- even Chad Weaver, the biggest guy in school -- and dare him to take me out. I stood stooped over to give a smaller target, arms hanging down, hoping he would throw at my torso so I could bring my hands up and trap it against my chest. This catch had to be timed perfectly lest the ball bounce off my chest and back through my arms, sending me to Jail until the guy who tagged me got tagged himself. Sometimes guys would throw at my feet, but I hopped over those rather than risk the hands-only catch. On a throw to the side, I might try to pop the ball in the air like a volleyball and then make the second-chance catch.
Triumph of the Will (1934)
Starring Adolf Hitler.
Directed by Leni Riefenstahl.
Kilgore rates it: 7 (out of 10)
IMDb rates it: 7.3 (out of 10)
Triumph of the Will records the 1934 National Socialist Party rally in Nuremburg, Germany (yes, that's "National Socialist Party" -- the word "Nazi" does not appear in the film), soon after Hitler ascended to power. Many people consider Triumph of the Will to be not only the greatest propaganda film ever made, but a great film in its own right, regardless of genre. I don't know enough about film to make that judgment, but I can say that director Riefenstahl composes some stunning visuals, especially at the Hitler Youth camp and at the massive rallies with hundreds of thousands in attendance chanting "Seig Heil!" Through Riefenstahl's lens, Hitler appears as a majestic and just yet humble and compassionate leader.
I watched about 30 minutes of Triumph of the Will before stopping the DVD, turning on the historical commentary track, and watching the entire thing again. That was a good move. I recommend you do the same unless you're well-versed in pre-WWII German history.
Super Size Me (2004)
Starring Morgan Spurlock.
Directed by Morgan Spurlock.
Kilgore rates it: 9 (out of 10)
IMDb rates it: 8.0 (out of 10)
Doubtless you've already heard of this documentary about a man who eats nothing but McDonald's food for 30 days and changes from a fit, energetic man to a puffy-faced, depressed, semi-impotent sluggard with a fat-clogged liver. Filmmaker Spurlock's documentary style is more playful and less polemic than, say, Michael Moore's -- he comes across more as a guy executing a wacky stunt than an anti-fast-food zealot. Super Size Me does, however, make a strong case for the food industry's culpability in America's obesity epidemic, which may soon replace smoking as the country's leading cause of preventable death.
I ate a bacon, egg, & cheese McGriddles the morning after I saw Super Size Me. Jesus, those things are tasty.
Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)
Starring Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Marina Sirtis, Gates McFadden, and Tom Hardy.
Directed by Stuart Baird.
Kilgore rates it: 4 (out of 10)
IMDb rates it: 6.5 (out of 10)
Star Trek: Nemesis is a perfectly serviceable movie if you need something to look at while gnawing through a bag of Fritos. The cast is the familiar Next Generation crew. Patrick Stewart is the only real actor in the bunch, which has always made the Next Generation TV episodes and movies seem like Shaquille O'Neal playing rec league hoops at the YMCA in Charles City, Iowa.
Nemesis is built from such revered Star Trek building blocks as: the captain deciding to stop off at an interesting planet en route to another destination because "what could go wrong?", the captain defying his crew's orders and beaming down for an away mission on said planet, Something Going Wrong on said planet, introduction to an alien species that are obviously humans in makeup and rubber masks, and tepid pontificating on the nature of man. Nemesis also delivers a heapin' helping of wince-worthy one-liners and a battle scene where Data and Picard take on a slew of Reman troops that mimicks almost exactly the Star Wars battle scenes where Luke and Han fight off dozens of hapless storm troopers. Does anyone out there know the screenwriter? Did he write that into the script, or what?
Drinks. Kilgore Trout is buying drinks. For everyone. To celebrate, you know? (Suggestive nod toward the sidebar.)
Oh, never mind.
UPDATE! Thanks to those who were concerned about my taking time from my job to halt the Involuntary Celibacy Watch. My bosses went to Switzerland this week, so I was able to sneak away for, erm, a long lunch. I came back later and worked till 9:00. Worth it? Oh yeah.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to run up the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum and throw my fists in the air.
People like to bring notepads and pens to meetings. They get to the meeting a few minutes early, and then they open their notepads to a blank page. Sometimes they write the date at the top of the page. When the meeting starts, they poise their pens above the page, ready to record vital information for future reference. But they almost never write anything down. As the meeting wears on, they start twiddling their pens, playing with them, tapping them on the page. Eventually they put their pens down completely. When the meeting ends, they close their notepads and take them back to their offices. I think they must feel foolish when later they open their notepads to that blank page with only "MEETING 1/22/04" written at the top.
People don't change. Well, sometimes they do, but you're a fool to bet on it. Want to know how someone will behave tomorrow? Examine how he's behaved in the past. If someone drinks too much, chances are he'll be drinking too much in six months, no matter how sincere his promises to sober up. If someone is overweight, forget about that new diet plan she started -- she'll likely still be fat a year from now. The same goes for people who are chronically late, can't handle money, can't hold a job, or can't keep their genitals out of restricted areas. (This principle applies to positive traits as well, but we don't discuss such things at Chaotic Not Random.) Real change takes real effort, and most people don't have the necessary whatever-it-is to overcome the inertia and make the changes stick.
People sometimes fall in love and stay that way for the rest of their lives. I went to a Unitarian church meeting a little while ago, and we took turns talking about ourselves and our spiritual journeys. One elderly man spoke, and as he talked, I noticed his wife looking at him with total devotion, like a teenage girl with a crush on a cute boy. I don't mean slavish, self-immolating devotion -- I mean that genuine affection radiated between that man and that woman, and even though I knew them not at all, I suddenly could not imagine either one of them being with anyone else. I thought it was sweet and nice. I hadn't felt that lonely in a long time.
How much longer before corporations have purchased naming rights to everything in America? Before you answer, consider that when you call ahead to purchase tickets at Pepsi Center here in Denver, you won't pick them up at the plain old will-call booth, but at the Will-Call Lobby sponsored by Frontier Airlines. I realize that no publicity is bad publicity, but does Frontier Airlines really want their name associated with the frustration of fidgeting in line and worrying about making the opening faceoff?
Last week, MSN.com ran a teaser link for an item reading "Get relief from killer work hours." A small image accompanied the link showing a haggard man with a clock in the background to indicate the killer hours he's been working. Here's the thing: the clock is set to 5:40. Whoa! Don't work too late there, pal. We wouldn't want you to work until 6:00 and keel over from exhaustion!
My company does business with a company called Gay Construction. I keep picturing a bunch of sweating, shirtless construction workers wearing their GAY CONSTRUCTION hard hats and listening to the Village People on a boom box.
The Colorado Mammoth played the Toronto Rock in the semifinals of the 2003 National Lacrosse League playoffs. The game took place in Toronto and was not televised in the US, so we went to the Blue Sky Grill at Pepsi Center to watch a television feed from Canada. We saw the same telecast as Canadian viewers, with one important difference: during commerical breaks, while Canadian viewers watched ads for Molson beer or whatever, we Blue Sky Grill patrons got to eavesdrop on the lacrosse announcers' conversation without their knowledge. The announcers cleared their throats, exchanged small talk about the weather, and discussed dinner plans while we listened and laughed.
During one commercial break, we heard someone -- presumably a cameraman -- say, "Hey guys, you gotta check this out." The camera zoomed in on a morbidly obese man eating a hot dog in the middle of an otherwise empty section. To our delight, the announcers began ridiculing the fat man. "Thank you for buying the whole section, sir," one announcer giggled, oblivious that a packed sports bar in Denver could hear his every word.
If I had a time machine, I would cash in my 401k and my IRA, buy the best guitar I could afford, and warp back to 1987...
KILGORE TROUT: Hello, 13-year-old Kilgore. Quit playing Lode Runner for a minute and take this. You're going to learn to play guitar.
YOUNG KILGORE: But I have to finish my trigonometry homework.
KT: Never mind that. You're going to flunk out of college anyway, so you might as well learn something that will enable me... erm, you... well, us... to soak my/your/our sorrows in empty sex with drunk college chicks. You think the Law of Cosines is going to get you laid?
YK: I'm not going to have sex with any drunk college chicks. I'm going to wait until marriage.
KT: Christ, I forgot about that. I should have come back before Mom gave you Preparing for Adolescence by Dr. James C. Dobson. (Grabs Young Kilgore by shirt front.) Now, you listen to me, goddammit! Everything you read in that book was lies, you got it? Lies, I tell you! Do you know how much sex that book cost us?
YK: No.
KT: You know that cute girl in English class you keep staring at? With the flat chest and the hook nose and the long skirts? She's going to beg you to fuck her when you're 17, but you're going to put it off till you're 20. Twenty!
YK: (Dumbfounded)
KT: Three years of hot sex we threw away. (Clenches fists, raises eyes to the heavens.) Curse you, Dr. James C. Dobson!
YK: If we're going to be with her, why do we need the guitar and the drunk college chicks?
KT: Well, it's not going to work out. And then there's going to be a Sahara-sized dry spell, and believe me, you'll be happy to fill your bed with drunk college chicks.
YK: I don't know...
KT: Listen. Do you want to be thirty years old, sitting alone in your apartment on a Saturday night, posting bitter essays to the Internet about your sexual frustrations? Or do you want to be playing lead guitar for a band called Monkey Cunt and having three-ways in the ladies' rooms of back-alley clubs?
YK: What's the Internet?
KT: It's a place where you're going to be spending way too much time if you don't pick up that guitar.
[Feel free to write your own ending. I'm going to bed.]
Everybody has got to stop reading The Da Vinci Code. I get on the train and half the riders have their noses stuck in this book. I took a plane to North Carolina and the people behind me held up the beverage cart to talk about The Da Vinci Code with the flight attendant. My aunt keeps pestering me to read it. I went to a poker game and the hostess dragged out a paint-by-numbers The Last Supper to show us how one of the disciples is actually a woman. Enough, goddammit!
Because, you know, if everyone keeps buying The Da Vinci Code, it won't come out in paperback, and I can't afford the hardcover.
People who don't know anything about sports, but they spout off about sports anyway. I went to Coors Field last Saturday, and not only did I have to watch the Rockies get clobbered by the Phillies 16-5, but I had to listen to the guy next to me dispensing these wise and considered thoughts:
"The Mammoth won't win next year unless they get rid of Nash." Actually, Gee Nash led the National Lacrosse League in save percentage, finished third in goals-against average, and was named NLL Goaltender of the Year. True, Calgary's Curtis Palidwor outplayed Nash in the playoff semifinals, but the Mammoth would be fools to trade the league's best goalie because of one subpar game.
"Todd Helton's having a bad year because he doesn't listen to his coaches." Actually, Todd Helton had already jacked a home run in the first inning, and has compiled another solid year in 2004 so far -- as of Saturday, his 1020 OPS ranked 11th in the National League. (That's 1029 at home and 1007 away, for all you Coors Field h8ers.)
"The Rockies need to score some points here." Actually, baseball teams score runs, not points. Also, hockey and lacrosse teams score goals, not points, although football and basketball teams do in fact score points. Can we all get this straight, please?
"They should limit the number of fouls before you strike out." Actually, they shouldn't. Skilled hitters foul off pitches with two strikes to coax the pitcher into throwing a pitch they like, or to draw a walk, or to wear down the pitcher and give their teammates a look at his stuff. It's a vital part of the batter-pitcher duel that anchors the sport of baseball. Should we change such an important rule just so lukewarm baseball fans can get home eight minutes earlier?
Things that need to go away... the phrase "some people..." followed by what one person has said held up to represent a much larger segment of society than it really does. This is usually done for the sheer pleasure of the author; so that they can go about the easy work of slicing apart the nonsense that some non-representative person has said. It's sloppy and it's insincere. It's become standard practice on many political websites. Arrrrggghhhhh!!!!
Good catch, bruce. Here's an example. This seems to be a variation on the Straw Man logical fallacy.
The following humor devices have been banned due to overuse, by decree of Kilgore Trout:
Any japery including the phrase "yellow snow." How original is "yellow snow"? It gets 32,900 results on Google.
Comparisons between Miami Heat coach Stan Van Gundy and porn star Ron Jeremy. If you thought of it first, congratulations. Otherwise, think of something else.
Voicemail greetings that end, "Have a blessed day." I appreciate the sentiment, but that's not really up to me, is it?
When I lived in San Francisco, I worked at The Cheese Steak Shop. We sold Philly cheesesteak sandwiches. Quit turning up your nose if you're from Philadelphia -- the owner of the joint hailed from City of Brotherly Love, and he knew his cheesesteaks. Rolls shipped in from Amoroso's Bakery and warmed on the grill before serving. Onions fried with the meat and hot or sweet peppers if you wanted them. White American cheese melted on the grill, and don't pester me with that Cheez Whiz nonsense. Tastykakes. Birch beer. I hated the job. It was greasy and sweaty and hot. I smelled like onions after I left each night. But I loved the cheesesteaks, and I took pride in preparing them well.
People loved The Cheese Steak Shop. Lines from the counter to the door reliably formed on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Ex-Philadelphians swarmed the place. Robin Williams stopped by sometimes. People stood by the pickup counter to watch us perspire and clang our spatulas against the grill as we shredded and turned the meat. "Is that one mine?" they would ask. We knew what came next.
"A little salt and pepper on mine, please."
"Can I get an extra slice of cheese? Maybe two slices? Yeah, dog."
"Can you make mine really crispy? Go ahead and burn that shit."
"Extra mayo and mustard on my roll. I said extra. There you go."
One night, just after closing, I was mopping the dining area when a thirtysomething-or-other lady started banging on the door. I ignored her. The guy cleaning the grill ignored her. Dail, the shift manager, ignored her. If you wanted to buy a sandwich at The Cheese Steak Shop, you needed to break the plane of the doorway by 8:59:59 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, and we were not shy about going to the instant replay. Anyway, she kept banging on the glass, and we kept ignoring her, and finally she yelled:
"I need a cheesesteak sandwich!"
Dail, pissed off, looked up from counting money. "We're closed!" he yelled back.
The lady kept pounding. "I'm from Philadelphia, and I've had a really bad day, and I need a cheesesteak sandwich!"
Dail shrugged and pointed at the clock, which read 9:08, maybe even 9:09. What could he do? The grill probably didn't even work after 9:00.
The lady looked ready to burst into tears. She pulled something out of her purse, took a deep breath, smacked two twenty-dollar bills up against the glass, and yelled, "I'LL GIVE YOU FORTY DOLLARS FOR TWO CHEESESTEAKS!"
The grill did work after 9:00, as it turned out, and ten minutes later a very happy thirtysomething-or-other lady went on her way home to drown her sorrows in fried animal flesh, and I had resumed mopping with 13.33 illicit dollars in my pocket.
And that is the best story I know involving cheesesteak sandwiches.
(N.B. to Hubs and any other Denver readers: I've tried all of the cheesesteak places in Denver, and for my cash you can't do better than Taste of Philly at 2432 S. Colorado. You're welcome. And put a dollar bill in the tip jar, for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.)
Capturing the Friedmans (2003)
Starring the Friedmans.
Directed by Andrew Jarecki.
Kilgore rates it: 6 (out of 10)
IMDb rates it: 8.3 (out of 10)
This film documents the struggle of the Friedmans -- a nice, middle-class, Jewish family living on Long Island -- when local children accuse Arnold, the father, and Jesse, the oldest son, of dozens of counts of sodomy and molestation. Did they do it or not? You'll think they did when you learn that Arnold is an admitted pedophile and that police found kiddie porn stashed in his home. You'll think they didn't when you learn about the ridiculous nature of the charges and the leading questions the cops asked the child "victims."
Capturing the Friedmans includes lots of remarkably honest video footage shot by the three Friedman brothers, giving us a wrenching look at the bizarre antics of a family tearing itself to pieces.
Crash (1996)
Starring James Spader, Holly Hunter, Elias Koteas, and Deborah Kara Unger.
Directed by David Cronenberg.
Kilgore rates it: 6 (out of 10)
IMDb rates it: 5.7 (out of 10)
Crash is about car-crash fetishists. I don't know if these people exist in real life, but car-crash fetishism doesn't seem any more bizarre a fixation than a balloon fetish or the desire to amputate a healthy limb. The best I can say about Crash -- besides that it displays to tasty effect the flesh of Holly Hunter and Deborah Kara Unger -- is that it makes the car-crash fetish seem plausible. The fetishists, all of whom have been scarred, injured, or crippled in previous wrecks, chase each other on the freeway, rear-ending and sideswiping each other as foreplay before pulling off the road for rough sex. They take photos of car crashes, reenact the scenes of celebrity wrecks (such as James Dean's), and watch automobile crash test tapes as pornography. Crash is disturbing. The final scene shows Unger's character running off the road, being thrown free of her car, and waking up, disappointed to still be alive. "It's all right," croons her husband (Spader), running his hand up her skirt and climbing on top of her. "Maybe next time."
American Psycho (2000)
Starring Christian Bale.
Directed by Mary Harron.
Kilgore rates it: 8 (out of 10)
IMDb rates it: 6.7 (out of 10)
Christian Bale dominates this film as Patrick Bateman, a 1980s Wall Street yuppie turned brutal serial killer. American Psycho isn't a horror film, however, but a sketch of the spiritual emptiness wrought by stupid pursuit of wealth and status. Bale plays Bateman perfectly as a hollow man trying to build a soul from spare parts: a classy Manhattan apartment, kinky sex with hookers, expensive clothes, a spacious office complete with pretty secretary, custom-printed business cards, consumer electronics, fine wines, pop music, faux social consciousness, dining at exclusive restaurants, stomach crunches, and hair and skin products. And, of course, slaughtering people with knives, axes, guns, and chainsaws.
American Psycho is best when it wallows in absurdity, such as when Bateman and his colleagues try to one-up each other's business cards ("I can't believe Bryce likes Van Patten's card better than mine"); or when Bateman, banging a hooker doggy-style, stares at himself in the mirror and flexes his biceps; or when Bateman delivers pompous lectures on the music of Phil Collins, Whitney Houston, and Huey Louis & The News. My favorite monologue came early in the movie, when Bateman explains his morning workout routine and hair- and skin-care regimen.
Those of you who read Chaotic Not Random while not drinking heavily will remember that on April 21 I posted about receiving a wonderful letter from St. Matthew's Church in Tulsa, which included a colorful prayer rug with Jesus' face on it. The letter instructed me to place the rug over my knees, pray for whatever I needed, and then mail the prayer rug back with a "seed gift." Not only would God answer my prayers, the letter promised, but St. Matthew's would send me a "A WONDERFUL, FREE, SPIRITUAL GIFT THAT WILL BE A BLESSING TO [ME] FOR A LIFETIME." (Click the links to see the first and second pages of the letter. Click here (link via Bruce) to see the prayer rug.)
So I mailed the prayer rug back along with my "seed gift" (one penny) and requests for $1,000,000,000.00 plus prayers for bloggers on my blogroll and regular commenters. Because I had followed all of the instructions, I sat back and waited for the blessings to roll in. I am disappointed to report that I still haven't received the $1,000,000,000.00, although on April 30 a nice lady at my company came around and handed me a check for... substantially less. Maybe I should have sent a shinier penny.
Imagine my exitement, however, when last Friday I received my wonderful, free, spiritual gift -- a 224-page "book" addressed to "Allgore Trout" titled The Seed Principle: God's Divine Seed Principle That Governs Our Success and Prosperity. Those of you with skulls filled with something other than leftover turkey dressing will not be surprised to learn that "God's Divine Seed Principle" is -- remember, I am condensing 224 pages of complex biblical exegesis here -- "Get rich by sending money to St. Matthew's Church." St. Matthew's Church is not going to invest your money for you, of course; they need the money to help the poor and stuff. God will provide you with riches as a reward for sowing your seed gift in the fertile soil of St. Matthew's Church. Thus you should worship God not as Creator, not as Father, not as Savior, but as Guaranteed Investment Plan.
I do not have the wit or words to describe how fully wrong The Seed Principle is. I can say it is less a book than a maddening jumble of articles randomly strewn with boldface type and Bible verses either willfully mistranslated or taken wildly out of context; photos of haystacks, farmers tilling their fields, farmers gathering the harvest, Barry Bonds, happy married people, and famous philanthropists; bad drawings of people praying; fabricated testimonials from nonexistent people who received miraculous gifts of money, businesses, cars and trucks, homes, and healing after sending money to St. Matthew's; and constant reminders to return the postcard on the back to receive a "Biblical Seed Harvest Plan." One page shows a cartoon of a man sowing seeds while the rows already sown sprout dollar signs. Another page reads, "God is blessing people with with Jobs, Raises in Pay, Savings Accounts, Lines of Credit, Credit Cards, More Money in Their Pockets, and other benefits as they faithfully sow seeds of faith."
I looked very carefully, but I could not find the verse where Paul warns, "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil" (1 Timothy 6:10a). I also could not find the story in which Jesus says, "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."
Thanks to Bruce, who found this fascinating article, I recently learned that St. Matthew's Church is not actually based in Tulsa, except in the sense that they maintain a post office box there. According to the article, St. Matthew's Church is actually located in the Los Angeles mansion of the Rev. James Eugene Ewing, a one-time traveling tent-revival preacher. The most hair-raising passage in the article:
The [direct mail] approach reaped Ewing and his organization a gross income of more than $100 million since 1993, including $26 million in 1999, the last year Saint Matthew's made its tax records public. And while much of the money is spent on postage and salaries, Ewing's company receives nonprofit status and pays no federal taxes.
One. Hundred. Million. Dollars. Well, nobody ever went broke betting on gullibility. Read the full article and learn about Ewing's targeting of the poor and desperate, his struggles with the IRS, his association with Oral Roberts and other evangelists, his "$2.2 million, 6400-square-foot home above Beverly Hills," and his exotic and classic car collection.
Anyway, I sent back the postcard, for which I will receive a Biblical Seed Harvest Plan (read: coupon book for monthly contributions to subsidize James Ewing's Indonesian hooker habit) and a beautiful prayer coin. St. Matthew's also promished to "stand by [me] with encouraging testimonies, prayer and a letter to [me], three times each month, to help [me] each step of the way." I've reasoned that all of this crap costs these guys money, and it's a good thing to take even small bits of money out of the pockets of people like this. Want to help out? Write to St. Matthew's Churches, c/o Biblical Seed Harvest Plan, PO Box 22148, Tulsa OK 74121, and ask for a Harvest Plan.
I saw this commercial where a man rode around on his John Deere riding lawnmower. The man seemed happy. He had a beautiful lawn -- a lush acre or three of thick #009E00 grass ringed with regal trees and flowerbeds up by his big house. The lawn looked so good that it didn't look like it needed mowing, but that's none of my business.
At one point the man mowed along his fence and waved to his neighbor, who was mowing his beautiful lawn with his John Deere riding lawnmower. The neighbor nodded and waved back. Both men had excellent posture and a little gray hair around the temples. I imagined them finishing their yard work and having beers by the fence and talking about baseball. Maybe later they would grill some steaks on the deck and tell jokes (clean ones, of course). I think that's nice when neighbors spend time together.
Then the man mowed along the flowerbeds, and a tall woman with brown hair and matching brown eyes turned and smiled at him. The people who made the commercial had taken care not to make her too beautiful, but I thought she was awfully pretty. I think if a tall pretty lady smiled at me like that, I would put my John Deere lawnmower away and take here inside and mess up her brown hair a little, but the man just smiled back and kept mowing. Maybe he had already messed up her hair that morning, or maybe he and the tall lady were the kind of people who only do that sort of thing on Tuesday and Friday nights at 10:00 pm with the lights off, or maybe the man hadn't talked to his doctor yet about Levitra. I suppose I should shut my mouth until I get a tall wife of my own.
The man had purchased a very nice John Deere lawnmower. It was green with gold accents and a bright yellow seat. It had a big bag attachment so the man wouldn't have to get blisters on his hands or burn any calories raking the lawn. The man looked like he would spray the lawnmower with the hose after he finished mowing to keep it from getting caked with dead grass. He also looked like the sort of responsible owner who would drain all the oil before putting the lawnmower away for the winter, and would take it to the John Deere dealer at the first sign of trouble. The commercial announcer said that the lawnmower came with a 24-month limited warranty, so the man wouldn't have to worry if it broke down. And the man would be selling the lawnmower and buying a bigger and better one within 24 months anyway. That's how things work in America: people with big houses and tall wives buy shiny new things and then sell them to people like me after they've tired of them. I think that's right Christian of them.
Last Sunday, I took my Bible to Pablo's on 6th, where I drank a strawberry Italian soda and pored over the Resurrection accounts according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, looking for contradictions. I did this for you, you ungrateful bastard, so that the next time you debate the inerrancy of the Bible with some fundamentalist, you'll be able to point out errors in the story that lies at the heart of the Christian faith.
I followed these two principles while searching for contradictions:
Fundamentalists always say you should read the Bible for its plain meaning ("Obviously homosexuality is a perversion -- just read Romans 1:27.") So I read plainly. Back atcha, fundies.
I did not expect the Gospel writers to match each other detail for detail. For example, Matthew says that "Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome" went to Jesus' tomb, while John only mentions Mary Magdalene. I did not count this sort of thing as contradictory -- Matthew adds detail to John's account but does not contradict it. I looked for details that could not be true simultaneously.
I found three ironclad contradictions. That doesn't seem like many, I suppose, but keep in mind that I did this in an hour at a coffee shop while using my peripheral vision to study a very attractive girl at the next table. Certainly others have found more and more egregious errors. You should also remember that one contradiction suffices to sink the fundamentalist claim for Biblical inerrancy. Anyway, here they are:
John states that when Jesus first appeared to Mary Magdalene, she was standing at the tomb crying. But Matthew says she (and the other women) were running away from the tomb when Jesus stopped them.
Luke states that the angels appeared to the women before the disciples ran to the tomb. But John records that the angels appeared to the women after the disciples had seen the empty tomb.
Matthew says Jesus first appeared to the disciples on a mountain in Galilee. We know this was his first appearance because a plain reading of Matthew leaves no room for other appearances: Jesus appeared to the women, instructed them to tell the disciples to meet him in Galilee, and then appeared to them in Galilee. We also know Jesus did not previously appear to the disciples because some of them doubted. If Jesus had appeared to them before, why would any of them doubt?
But Luke says Jesus first appeared to the disciples in Jerusalem. We know this was his first appearance because "they were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost," and "they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement." Again, if they had seen Jesus before, why did they doubt?
BONUS CONTRADICTION!
When was the Last Supper? Matthew, Mark, and Luke plainly agree that the Last Supper was a Passover meal. In John's account, however, the Jews arrest Jesus after the Last Supper and take him before Pilate, where, we are told, "to avoid ceremonial uncleanness the Jews did not enter the palace; they wanted to be able to eat the Passover." (Emphasis mine.) According to John, then, the Last Supper took place before the Passover, contradicting the other Gospels.
Christians have known about this contradiction for a long time and have proposed many solutions to resolve it. These solutions all violate a plain reading of the text, which makes me wonder why biblical fundamentalists, so blindly dedicated to the truths plainly revealed in their holy book, can become so deeply concerned with historical trivia, cultural context, and linguistic subtleties when a plain reading challenges their notions of what they want the Bible to say.
LOCAL MAN BECOMES GREAT LOVER BY READING MAXIM MAGAZINE
SACRAMENTO -- Jerry Burns, a 24-year-old accountant, used to spend Saturday nights watching "Girls Gone Wild" videos and eating Fritos with onion dip. All of that changed when he bought the January 2004 issue of Maxim magazine.
"I was stocking up on onion dip at Safeway when I walked past the magazine stand and the Maxim cover said, '7 Ways to Meet More Women -- Tonight!'" Burns recalled. I thought, "Heck, that's just what I need."
Burns took the magazine home and studied the articles, which taught him how to pick out a pool cue and mix the perfect martini, as well as how to talk to and seduce women. That night, he went to a local bar to test his new skills.
"It was easy!" he said. "I'm a little shy, so I've never been able to pick up women in bars, but right away I struck up a conversation with a stunning redhead. Two hours later, I was driving her back to my place."
But Burns could only claim partial victory. "I hadn't had sex in a while," he admitted, "so it was over pretty fast. And I couldn't, um, satisfy her. Obviously I needed more help."
Help arrived two weeks later in the form of the February 2004 Maxim issue and its feature article, "15 Ways to Satisfy Her -- Tonight!" Burns read this article first, which gave tips on delaying ejaculation and stimulating a woman's clitoris and G-spot. Other articles taught him how to pick up a 7-10 split and to wear turtlenecks and spread-collar dress shirts to conceal his thin neck.
"I went to the bar that night and convinced this gorgeous brunette to come home with me," Burns said. "Well, I made love to her all night until we collapsed from exhaustion. She was amazed -- no one had ever given her ten orgasms before. I couldn't wait for my next issue of Maxim!"
In the following months, Burns learned how to achieve multiple male orgasm, how to perform cunnilingus, how to give an erotic massage, how to talk women into joining a ménage à trois, where to find the hottest fashions for spring, how to make a Caesar salad, the names of the 10 greatest guy movies ever, and how to build hard abs -- the easy way!
As Burns has developed his skills, word of his sexual prowess has spread. "Beautiful women approach me on the street and beg me to sleep with them," he said, "I've had to get my phone number unlisted. I'm banging a different hot chick every night, moving from one bed to the next, spreading damp pleasure wherever I go. Thank you, Maxim!"
Thank you, Major League Baseball, for deciding to "scale back" your joint promotion with Columbia Pictures, which was to have placed Spider-Man 2logos on the bases used during interleague games played June 11-13.
Don't think I didn't notice, though, that ads will still appear in the on-deck circles during these games. In fact, the most cynical part of me believes you never intended to use those Spider-Man 2 bases. You knew the fans would rebel against ads on bases, so you floated the idea with the intent of retracting it and saying, "Okay, we'll only put ads in the on-deck circles." That way you could claim sensitivity to the fans' needs while still selling off part of the field for your crummy advertising.
Well, I'm drawing a line, Major League Baseball. You can keep your public-address ads, and your Jumbotron ads, and your outfield signs, and your virtual ads behind home plate, and your stadiums named after bankrupt corporations and pet-food stores. But I will never watch, either in person or on television, a baseball game where advertising appears on the field, even if it's only in the on-deck circles.
I know where you're heading with this, which is why it needs to stop now. You won't rest until you can sell advertising on the players' uniforms, will you? You already did so this season, when the Yankees and Devil Rays wore advertising patches and helmet decals for the season opener in Japan. All of this other fuss just serves to foster a creeping tolerance in us weary fans until the day our favorite teams take the field looking like NASCAR drivers. But I promise you this: the day you place ads on the uniforms will be the day I stop being a baseball fan.
Let me help you understand something, Major League Baseball. Many of us watch baseball to escape our daily lives. Some things in our daily lives we like to escape are pop-up ads, spam, TV commercials, radio ads, newspaper ads, junk mail, telemarketers, billboards, and the rest of the relentless advertising that saturates our lives. So we like to eat hot dogs and drink light beer and yell at men throwing a ball around a large lawn, and for a few hours celebrate that germ of something pure and noble at the heart of baseball. Oh, I know this sounds precious and naive to people like you, for whom baseball is a money-making venture. But when you place advertising on the field and on the uniforms, you make baseball seem less like an escape and more like ordinary life, which we can live for free at home.
I propose a deal, Major League Baseball. You can continue to have our money as long as you allow us to maintain our illusions about the game we've entrusted to you. That's a marketing strategy that's worked for over a century. Don't screw it up now.
Last week, a woman I know asked if I could put her in touch with E!, a girl I dated for a few months late last year. I hadn't talked to E! since the breakup, but I still had her email address, so I sent this brief message: Hello E!, So-and-so wants to get in touch with you so here's her email address, hope all is well, take it easy, Kilgore.
On Friday I got this reply: Hi Kilgore, I'll drop So-and-so a line, blah blah blah, things here are good, I'm moving in with my boyfriend in June, blah blah, take good care, E!
"Well, that's nice," I said to my Run Lola Run poster. Then I checked my other email and found a message from Wild Side, an ex-girlfriend I hadn't spoken to since she moved to Washington, DC three years ago. She wrote: Hey Kilgore, blah blah blah, I am in Seattle and have been living here now a little more than a year, I met a great guy out here 3 years ago while I was visiting from DC for a meeting, we did the long distance thing for a year and then I made the move, we are happy and life is good, blah blah, cheers, Wild Side.
I'm not complaining here. My relationships with E! and Wild Side ended amicably, and they are both good women who deserve to be happy and/or impregnated. I just found it strange to get two life-is-wonderful-sans-Kilgore emails on the same day. To celebrate this cosmic coincidence, I now declare a new annual holiday: National Day for Ex-Girlfriends of Kilgore to Email Him With News of How Great They're Doing Without Him.
National Day for Ex-Girlfriends of Kilgore to Email Him With News of How Great They're Doing Without Him will be observed three days before the fifth full moon of each year. So, Joanna, Holli Jo, Heidi, Jill, Margaret, Carrie, and Tara, you're going to have to wait until Wednesday, May 18, 2005 to tell me all about your boyfriend who plays hockey for the New York Rangers, or who just had a brain-surgery technique named after him, or who doesn't pick wax out of his ears and wipe it on his pants. Mark your calendars!
In other news: I've been working for several months to increase my tolerance for spicy food, and I'm proud to announce that tonight I ate a Burrito Ultimo from Baja Fresh and slathered it with the hottest salsa they could muster. I'm starting to like the burn.
Please, no cutting comments from you fire-breathers out there who eat habañero peppers like M&M's. I grew up in Iowa, where people consider cream of mushroom soup "a bit spicy," and cayenne pepper is a controlled substance. For most of my life, I used ketchup sparingly and ordered everything mild. After leaving Iowa five years ago, I started eating Vietnamese food and Thai barbecue and Mexican food not made by Taco Bell and increased my tolerance to medium. Now I'm ordering the hot stuff. Give me credit for moving from coed slo-pitch to A ball, at least.
I don't know why I feel the need to crank the Scovilles. I could say that eating spicier food enables me to experience a wider range of flavors from a greater number of ethnic cuisines, but really I think I'm competing with myself for no good reason. Again.
People who ridicule biblical fundamentalists because the Bible allegedly sets 3 as the value for pi. The relevant passage is 1 Kings 7:23:
[Huram] made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it. (NIV)
For those of you who spent your time in Geometry class sticking your hand up Michelle Lundegaard's skirt: pi is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. Pi stays the same for all circles, no matter the size, and approximately equals 3.1416. A circle with a diameter of exactly 100 feet (that is, measuring 100 feet across), would measure about 314.16 feet around.
The Bible states that the Sea (a huge bronze basin used for ceremonial washing) had a circumference of thirty cubits and a diameter of ten cubits. The ratio of the circumference to the diameter of the Sea is thirty divided by ten, which sets pi equal to 3.
Skeptics love this. "You see?" they say, snickering, "Every high school freshman without his hand up Michelle Lundegaard's skirt knows that pi equals 3.1416 or whatever, so the Bible is bullshit."
But pi does not exactly equal 3.1416 or any other number expressible in a finite number of digits. A better approximation of pi than 3.1416 would be:
pi = 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510...
but even this value only approximates pi because pi is a transcendental number that never terminates (like 1/2 = 0.5000) or repeats (like 1/3 = 0.33333...).
How do we handle ugly numbers that refuse to terminate or repeat? We round them. Many people use 3.14 as a convenient value for pi, while others needing more precision might use 3.14159265. An ancient Hebrew, unaccustomed to decimals, might round to 3 without error.
Right now you are saying, "Okay, but the Bible passage doesn't say anything about measuring the diameter and then multiplying by 3 to get the circumference. It only refers to separate measurements of ten cubits and thirty cubits. Even if we only expect the ancient Hebrews to use integers, the correct measurements should have been ten cubits and thirty-one cubits."
Not necessarily. The Hebrews often used round numbers instead of exact numbers -- see Numbers 1:20-46 -- and nobody should reckon this as an error. The writer of 1 Kings might have rounded from thirty-one cubits to thirty cubits. More likely, the actual measurements were, say, 9.6 cubits and 30.16 cubits, and the writer rounded to ten cubits and thirty cubits.
I'm all for ridiculing fundamentalists and their blind belief in biblical inerrancy. But let's be smarter about this than they are. If you want real ammunition for debating fundamentalists, use the inconsistencies in the four Gospel accounts of Easter morning, which I'll blog about some other time.
Inappropriate use of the word "approximately." I saw a sign in downtown Denver that read: "For Sale: Approximately 50,832 sq. ft." Hey, that looks like an exact value to me, guys. Thanks for the correction, Hubs. (See Comments.)
My crippling phobia of getting ridiculed by George Carlin. I can't stop entertaining irrational fantasies of being out in public, and suddenly George Carlin pops around a corner and starts mocking me for picking my nose when I don't think anyone's looking, or for wearing my cap backwards, or for using my debit card to buy a box of Tic Tacs. I always imagine the lovely Patricia Clarkson with him, laughing and saying, "Oh, leave the young man alone, George, and let's go have sex." But George would keep insulting me, and dozens of people would stop to point and laugh, and I would have to stand there and take it, because I'd have better luck trading punches with Roy Jones Jr. than trading taunts with George Carlin. I guess I could rush the guy, but even at 66 I'm pretty sure he could take me.
Jessica Simpson. She's nowhere near hot enough for me to tolerate the shit she's pulling: the "Newlyweds" show, the asinine "Nick & Jessica Variety Hour," the self-effacing Pizza Hut commercial, and the remake of Berlin's "Take My Breath Away." Attention Jessica Simpson: I'm already coming to California to hunt down the inventor of White Merlot, and I have room in the trunk for one more body.
Women who wear low-rider jeans, T-back thongs, and tight belly shirts, and then keep pulling the shirts down to cover their exposed flesh. This never works because the shirts are too short, which is what makes them belly shirts. Hey ladies: if you don't want men gawking at your midriff and the tattoo in the small of your back, try buying clothes that fit.
A variation on this theme is the young men who wear pants that are too large by two or three orders of magnitude. This makes them look very cool and stylish until they have to walk, an operation that requires them to gather up four square yards of crotch fabric in one hand and shuffle forward with their knees pressed together like a nervous virgin on her wedding night.
Every writer should read The Elements of Style, by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White, at least once a year. If you care about writing and decide to spend $7.95 on a copy, however, brace yourself -- The Elements of Style will kick your ass. I recently completed my annual reading and was embarrassed and dismayed by how much I had forgotten in only twelve months, how much deadwood had crept into my writing, and how much vigor and clarity had drained out.
The Elements of Style is only 92 pages long. And a bar of gold weighs only 2.2 pounds. Pages 15 through 33 contain eleven Elementary Principles of Composition that will transform your writing, if you will let them. Among these Principles is the exhortation to "Omit needless words," advice exceptional not only for its value but for the force and economy with which Professor Strunk explains it:
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.
I photocopied those sixty-three words and taped them to the front on my monitor, where they stand guard, reminding me to write simply and with precision. Good writers seek to communicate, bad writers seek to impress.
){kind=link}
