Pro-Lifers make me wish I could have an abortion. Especially Michelle Bachmann.

So another charismatic faith healer is dead. And, if the Christian mythos is reality (HA HA, FAT CHANCE), burning in the lake of eternal fire for using his god's message to make himself extremely rich. Used as the devil's own toilet. It makes me smile just to imagine it.

I'll say this for Christology, it can be very poetic at times.

When, WHEN will people stop believing in these arch-conmen?

Faith in a god is one thing. Gods are perfect. Usually. They're extradimensional. Orders of magnitude more powerful than we. Eternal, depending on who you ask. It's a child's fucking bedtime story, sure, but it's logically self-consistent within its own obvious inconsistency with reality.

But faith in some sweaty, shouting asshole who claims he has a closed-circuit to that god? Who asks for donations (famously, in Oral Roberts' case; he once used his show to ask for eight million dollars or "the Lord would call him home." Yes, Virginia, it was an evangelical version of "buy this magazine or we'll shoot this dog.") Who rides around not on donkeys (as their messiah Jesus supposedly did) but STRETCHED FUCKING LIMOUSINES.

I just don't fucking get it. More to the point, it makes me want to get into that racket.

Go around, shouting "ME SO HOLY ME SO HOLY, ME BLESS YOU LONG TIME" into the cameras of my very own hour long "ministry," and sleep on a fucking heap of money. God, that's the dream right there. Run around palm-striking the foreheads of diabetic old grandmothers while they sign their SSI checks over to me. They're soon reduced to eating dog food and I'm plucking squid rolls off the labia of a five-figure-a-night Thai prostitute with gold-inlaid elephant ivory chopsticks.

And all because these unlettered troglodytes never actually fucking READ their OWN FUCKING HOLY BOOKS. No, they trust some smoothe-talking used car salesman-looking guy to tell them what it says, and to explain that Jesus WANTS them to help them remodel their fucking palace.

Honestly, I don't really blame the unfortunately-named Oral for doing what he did. No, I blame the simpletons who enabled him. They're the ones who deserve to die. If only to make it easier to pick out the people who have interesting minds.

I've been meaning to write this entry for a while, but it has taken me a while to get around to it. Episode 137 ("The Book That Changed Your Life") of This American Life, one of my all time favorite podcasts, was rebroadcasted on October 5th this year. Part one was called "Act One" and was about Alexa Junge, and how Moss Hart's autobiography changed her life. Apparently, it was also one of her grandfather's favorite books and she was moved by all the notes he wrote in the margins. However, the part of the podcast that really affected me was a letter that her grandfather wrote in 1969, when he was very ill:

Dear friends,

I've asked Donald Davis [a coworker of his] to read this to you. It's intended to tell you as much as I know about my present situation and thereby of course, to let you know what the prospects are for the future of the work that we've begun together. In planning this letter in my mind, I've been pulled this way and that by very conflicting impulses. I prefer to consider any of my own sickness, any deep trouble, as a very personal matter; possibly to be shared with close members our family, but never to be inflicted on anyone else.

At the same time, I detest mysteries, and those of you who have called, have, I hope, been told the truth as far as we knew it. But the truth has been shifting; sometimes very swiftly, and what you may have heard a few weeks back is now untrue.

Besides, there are some of you who are relatively recent friends; some of our common ties go years back. And old friends or new, the depth of my feeling for you obliges me to be entirely honest with you. And so I'm going to put the next several paragraphs in parentheses, and I'm asking Donald not to read them aloud. Each of you who wishes to can read it for himself. Anyone who dislikes the semi-clinical tales can avoid them.

()

Doubtless, all of that sounds very gloomy. I do admit I could think of happier matters. For one thing, I don't at all approve of my own extinction. I don't like the idea of it one bit. Though reason assures me that the world can get along very nicely without me, I can't quite believe that it will. Still, there few small compensations. For one thing, I had always hoped that I could face my own death with some equanimity, but it's a bit of a satisfaction to find that I can...

...And that's really what I'm wanting finally to say. I think you're a great bunch. And, in case there isn't a chance to say it again, thanks for your concern, your calls, your note, but, above all, for your love. You've had my love, and I've had yours, and I'm a damn fortunate man.

I just thought the bolded paragraph above is so eloquently put. "I don't approve of my own extinction." If you notice the date that I heard this, then you'll understand why this really spoke to me.

I don't really have anything else to say about this. I just wanted it written down so I didn't forget it.

The resource the BAD HUMANS and killing the GOOD, INNOCENT, BEAUTIFUL ALIENS for is ACTUALLY CALLED "UNOBTAINIUM."

Anyone remember "The Core?" Remember the scene where the zany scientist is talking about his nonsense machine? And he calls the metal comprising the hull "unobtainium" because the real name for it had, like, 23 syllables AND because doing so was a somewhat clever physics in-joke? And we all chuckled a bit, because it instantly proved that "The Core" wasn't seriously trying to be a terrible movie? (And it wasn't, dammit, it did a hell of a lot of things right for all its hilariously bungled science and shitty acting)

And now this nutso fuck is trying to play it straight. Additionally I love how his crew waxes emotional about how "original" the story is. When it's basically "Pocahontas" with a bit of "The Last of the Mohicans" thrown in.

(He also stole the gunship design from "Halo 3" and the walker design from "The Matrix: Revolutions.")

"Glee's" horror has one marginally positive side-effect: I seem to have gotten into "Wicked." I really need to see this musical.

God, I'm turning into somebody's aunt.