May the force be with you . . . nerds!

Wil Wheaton recounts the epic struggle of some LA-area Star Wars nerds against reality. Read. Laugh.

Don't send them over here!

Apparently the Chicken Littles over at The Power Hour are conducting a UN Blue Watch: encouraging listeners to submit sightings of the use of Blue and orange in such places as government Web sites, corporate logos, and so forth. This, supposedly, is proof that the UN wants to take over the world, or has really poor colour sense, or something. Even when it's on a hockey rink.

Coincidentally (or perhaps not [wink, wink]), UN blue and orange look suspiciously like this blue and this orange, which are the official livery of this blog. Please don't tell them; you'll jeopardize our plans!

Recent searches

I haven't really been reading the blogosphere heavily enough over the last week or two to do my regular "Friday in the Wild" thing, but I have at least been keeping track of what has been bringing other people over to the Crusty Curmudgeon. Here are the more amusing searches:

• I have been lashed with dozens of searches for reasons why "arizona doesn't care how I stand on public issues". I think people are trying to find out who said this. In fact, I'm the only source of this quotation, for one reason only: people keep looking for it. I DON'T KNOW. GO AWAY. That is all.
• Believe it or not, out of almost a million hits, I'm actually the third most relevant site for the word hahahahaha.
• Only slightly weirder than Camilla's cleavage, it's . . . emma watson's thong. Get lost, pedophiles.
• Finally, a search on nostradamus wojtyla just goes to show that with a major event like the death of the pope, the woo-woos start searching for "confirmation" of something or other, in the bad poetry of Nostradamus.

Mushy-headed Christianity all over the place

Various mutterings from the regnant follies (to borrow a clever turn of phrase from Douglas Wilson:

1. Certain general managers of certain "Christian" radio stations are moral cowards.
2. Shutting down your own blog because someone reads it, says something you don't like, and hurts your tender feelings, does not make you into a martyr. It's the online equivalent of a hunger strike.
3. Some people really, really, really need to get a life and move on.

That is all.

Notorious Aryan bonehead goes to be with Hitler

A white supremacist who once led the neo-Nazi Heritage Front has reportedly been shot dead in a suburban Toronto apartment.

Reports say Wolfgang Droege was found dead after police responded to complaints of gunshots at a Scarborough apartment building Wednesday afternoon. . . .

He joined the Ku Klux Klan in 1976 and tried to start a branch of the group in Toronto.

In 1981, he helped organize a failed attempt to invade the Caribbean country of Dominica and overthrow its government. He was given a three-year prison sentence.

Droege was arrested in Alabama in 1985 and charged with cocaine possession and a weapons offence. The U.S. deported him to Canada in April 1989 after he served a U.S. prison sentence for those charges.

[Full Story]

I shouldn't show any pleasure at the death of the wicked, but at the same time it's hard to feel any pity when Providence dispenses justice to human debris who made himself famous by demonizing the image of God (through his "white power" hatemongering) and destroying it (through cocaine trafficking).

Wolfgang Droege has joined the race to putrefaction and, having departed the white race, leaves it purer. I hope he appreciates the irony, if he isn't too busy enduring the flames.

The quill . . . the page . . . lyric . . . rampage! Word up?

It's a beautiful day when even Strong Bad [Flash] cites the MLA Handbook.

And so it begins . . .

Maverick MP David Kilgour has quit the Liberal Party and will sit in the House of Commons as an independent.

One of only two Liberal MPs from Alberta, he had long been at odds with the government's plans to legalize same-sex marriages.

"There are a whole lot of issues where I am increasingly out of sync with the government," Kilgour told the Ottawa Citizen.

He also expressed disappointment in his party after revelations from the sponsorship testimony came to light, which he said made Canada look like a "northern banana republic."

[Full Story]

For my American friends, who may be unaware of the details of the sponsorship scandal, or "AdScam": This is an ongoing scandal for the current Liberal government. It is alleged that over $100 million dollars went to various advertising and communication firms in Québec, ostensibly to promote the cause of Canadian unity; however, the Auditor General of Canada reported in February 2004 that Canadians had received virtually no work in return for the money. It is alleged that AdScam was really an elaborate scheme to reward loyal Liberals with cash. It's arguably the most significant political scandal in Canadian history since the Pacific scandal, which brought down the Conservative government of John A. Macdonald in 1874 when it was discovered they were taking bribes from the Canadian Pacific Railway Company in return for contracts to build the national railway.

At present, Kilgour's departure reduces the Liberal minority government's tenuous grip on power to a scant 132 seats. Meanwhile, another Liberal MP, Pat O'Brien, continues to waffle on whether to cross the floor or not, and another four or five Liberals have also threatened to quit.

Is there anything you can't buy on eBay?

The auction is over now, but just think: for a mere $2,000, it could have been you buying a consecrated host from a papal mass held in 1998.

Naturally, Catholics all over the Net are livid and blaming everyone from eBay to ignorant Protestants to Satanists looking for hosts to use in black Mass to the practice of taking the Eucharist in the hand. Some are even complaining that it violates eBay's policy forbidding the sale of body parts. It only underscores the sheer superstition of the Catholic system that someone might actually think owning an overpriced cracker that some priest has mumbled Latin over, might be holding Jesus hostage.

The pope's funeral, a worm's-eye view

A good friend of mine, who was married at Christmas and has since been living and travelling in Europe, is currently in Rome, having arrived in Italy just in time to find out that the pope had died. He and his wife were two out of the millions who invaded the Vatican to see the pope's funeral. In an email, he wrote:

We arrived last night and attempted to get into the viewing at the Vatican, but we couldn't get in. Instead we got up this morning at 5am and made our way to the square . . . the funeral started at 10am and were one of the first thousands to get in . . . the crowds were unbelievable!!! The only thing you can hope to do is stay on your feet. The funeral ended at 2pm so we were standing in a crowd for over 9 hours by the time we got back to our hotel . . . It was a neat experience seeing a part of history unfold firsthand. (edited slightly for spelling)

Meanwhile, from a little higher off the ground, this was the view on Friday morning, captured from CITY-TV's live coverage:

Is St. Peter's Square shaped like a keyhole on purpose, or is it just a weird coincidence? (Cf. Matt. 16:16-20, esp. v. 19.)

ScientologyTM homophobic? No!

Uh-oh. Looks like the Cult of Self is forced into damage-management mode again (H/T: Religion News Blog):

John Travolta and Tom Cruise have forcefully denied allegations that they turned to Scientology to "cure" them of their supposedly gay urges. But critics continue to claim the religion is rife with homophobia.

Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard wrote in his 1950 best seller, "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health," that gays were "sexual perverts" and "very ill physically." . . .

Scientology spokeswoman Gaetane Asselin scoffed at the suggestion that celebrities such as twice-married Cruise, Lisa Marie Presley, Kirstie Alley and Isaac Hayes embrace a theology that sees gays as weak or demented.

"Mr. Hubbard abhorred discrimination in all its forms," Asselin told us. "In today's liberal society," she argued, the church encourages any relationship that is "ethical."

[Full Story]

I never believed the claims that Travolta or Cruise were gay or that the Scientologists^TM held their supposed homosexuality over their heads as blackmail material in case they blew the cult. But when cult spokesmen tell you that Hubbard "abhorred discrimination" or that Scientology^TM does not disdain homosexuality as aberrant, they are simply whitewashing the truth.

For example, the article quotes Hubbard's book Dianetics, the foundation of Scientology^TM "therapy," as saying:

The sexual pervert (and by this term Dianetics, to be brief, includes all forms of deviation in dynamic two such as homosexuality, lesbianism, sexual sadism, etc. . . .) is actually quite ill physically. . . . (Dianetics 140)

On the very next page, Hubbard writes of perverts:

Hence the pervert, containing hundreds and hundreds of vicious engrams, has had little choice between being dead and being a pervert. But with an effective science to handle the problem, a society which would continue to endure perversion and all its sad and sordid effects doesn't deserve to survive. (141)

In other words, Hubbard's argument can be summed up like this:

1. Homosexuality is a perversion.
2. Perversion is caused by engrams.
3. Therefore, homosexuality is caused by engrams.

Of course, the very purpose of Dianetics "auditing" is to create a "Clear" by removing all the engrams from the person's mind, giving the "Clear" perfect memory and vision, immunity from disease, even bigger breasts. Hubbard's argument is unmistakeable: Since Dianetics removes engrams, Dianetics cures homosexuality.

Now, I'm no big fan of homosexuality to begin with, but that doesn't stop me from recognizing junk science and phony "therapy" when I see it. What is really alarming, however, is that these people, through one of their front groups, is currently attempting to influence Florida's mental health policy. While we're at it, let's appoint the moon-hoax conspiracy theorists to head up NASA.