Other People Have Horrible Taste But NOT ME

Harlan Ellison, Super Genius:

An Illustration Picture

Compare and contrast:

Wednesday Skull Blogging

M. Bouffant led us to Wacko, an Archie McPhee with pretensions. And there was this:



Not St. Valerius:



Not St. Coronatus:



Not St. Felix:



Not St. Valentine:



More and better pictures here.

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Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Misanthropes

Can the apocalypse be willed upon us? Some try. Also they walk me around LA to look for evidence of its coming.

Note to the Riddled crew: the "DREAM SHOP" is already equipped with bicycles.



Yes, Fashion of Echo #1 is just a little too fancy for YOU.



Boy, they don't make houses like they used to before Frank Lloyd Wright made houses.






As Sergeant O'Malley loads up his gun,
He wonders who kneecapped Lady No.1.
A Gentleman lacking the requisite digit?
Perhaps Lady No.2's hireling did it.



Note that the gate was locked:







Constant complaints from yours truly about the diminishing fun of crossing the border for candy ignore contributions from our Mexican friends, who are determined to overpackage new and distressing forms of poison. Honestly, individually wrapped cakelets stuffed in a plastic tray and then rewrapped? What, we're MADE of plastic? Submarinos and Gansitos are both awful AND planet-destroying. Eat up, apocalypsoists!

Dumbo

More Psychedelia

Teacups

Jeebus I want acid. Doesn't Guest Relations give that stuff out?

Teeth

Quote of the Day

BONUS QUOTE:

"THE CHURRO SOLUTION DOESN'T WORK!"

—The Lovely Daughter

A Tale Sold By An Idiot

A bio:

Todd Starnes is the host of Fox News & Commentary – heard daily on 250+ radio stations. He’s also the author of “Dispatches From Bitter America.” To check out all of his work you can visit his website or follow him on Twitter @toddstarnes.

What outrage can this media giant address?

What do the Bible, "The Hunger Games" and "Fifty Shades of Grey" have in common? All three are works of fiction, according to the booksellers at Costco.

Oh won't so—



Yes exactly!

So: was this a press release? Did the Board of Directors issue an edict?

Pastor Caleb Kaltenbach made that shocking discovery last Friday as he was shopping for a present for his wife at a Costco in Simi Valley, Calif.

“All the Bibles were labeled as fiction,” the pastor told me. “It seemed bizarre to me.”

Said the guy descended from the lady who got tricked by a talking snake. (Softball for commenters!)

Kaltenbach is the lead pastor at Discovery Church, a non-denominational Christian congregation in southern California.

He thought there must be some sort of mistake so he scoured the shelf for other Bibles. Every copy was plastered with a sticker that read, “$14.99 Fiction.”

The pastor knew something must be amiss so he set off in search of a Costco employee hoping for an answer. Unfortunately, he couldn’t find anyone willing to answer his question (which is not all that surprising if you’ve shopped at Costco).

Dear God, something else happened that is NOT ALL THAT SURPRISING! What next? INCEST FANTASIES IN THE RELIGION SECTION?

Since no one in the store was willing to offer assistance, the good shepherd of Discovery Church snapped a photograph of the Bible and tweeted it to his flock.

“People are pretty shocked and upset,” he told me. “We are supposed to be living in an era of tolerance, but what Costco did doesn’t seem too tolerant.”

...so I notified my flock of hayseeds and they got INTOLERANT AS SHIT!

I doubt they would label the Koran as fiction, Pastor Kaltenbach said. Heaven help us if they did.

“If they don’t believe in the Bible, that’s fine – but at least label it as ‘religion’ as some bookstores do, or ‘inspiration’,” he said.

How about "doorstop" and they could get it out of that nasty book section entirely?

So does the warehouse store that sells laundry detergent by the gallon have a problem with the Word of God?

And you KNOW people who buy detergent by the gallon have a stinking problem...

I called Costco headquarters in Issaquah, Wash. hoping to get answers. The nice lady who answered the phone told me she was aware of the issue and chalked it up to a “human error at a warehouse.”

Ah yes, human error of the sort that had me slip little notes in Cowboy Junkies albums advising purchasers to buy pills instead.

“It’s all fixed,” she said.

But actually, it’s not fixed – because there’s a boatload of Bibles in the Simi Valley store still marked as fiction.

And with that, quarterly sales figures for the Bible tanked. Also God destroyed Simi Valley.

At that point, the nice lady on the phone became not-so-nice and promptly informed me that Costco doesn’t talk to the press.

“Nothing to report,” she said curtly.

With all due respect, perhaps they should leave the reporting to the professionals and we’ll leave the bulk purchases of toilet paper to Costco.

Todd Starnes remembers that fateful day in 1938 when Edward R. Murrow reported from Vienna that hooligans were drinking in the cemetery and being disrespectful.

Pastor Kaltenbach said he’s not one to speak out on such slights

OMG THIS STORY DID NOT HAPPEN!

but seeing the Good Book labeled as fiction was bit too much to take.

Oh wait, there it is happening just like before.

“On the one hand Christians should not yell out ‘persecution’,” he said. “We aren’t living in Iraq or Iran. But on the other hand, I believe that we do need to stand up for our faith and we need to be vocal about our concerns.”
That’s a message that resonates with pastor and author Robert Jeffress.

“Let’s hope Costco’s explanation is true and not the result of having been caught attempting to marginalize the very foundation of Christian beliefs, the Bible,” Pastor Jeffress told me. “Christians need to call out organizations like Costco whose actions undermine Christianity – regardless of whether those actions are accidental or intentional.”

Mote and beam moment!

Steven Smith, of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, said the fiction label identifies the thinking of the labeler more than the content of the book.

“To label the Bible fiction is a practical front for an ideological foundation that assumes things spiritual are unreal,” he told me. “What is odd about this choice is the glut of books in the "religion and spirituality" sections in mainstream book stores. However, as large as "spirituality" sections are, there must not be any room for Christianity. Modern thinking on spirituality is too exclusive to allow for the Bible.”

THAT is why Costco wasn't selling Bibles and this story didn't happen in the first place.

Of course, this entire episode could have been cleared up had a Costco employee simply answered Pastor Kaltenbach’s question.

And that’s the Gospel Truth.

Yeah, people like Pastor Kaltenbach wouldn't find anything else to complain about. After all, he's not one to speak out on such slights.

Polishing the Hammer

It's Not So Bad

For the Art Lovers

Small Business

Via LGM, news from the Breitbart former empire:

“We are pleased to add Senator [Rand] Paul to our lineup of fearless, original thought leaders,” said Breitbart News CEO Larry Solov. “Most of all, we think the fighting spirit he has become known for is a perfect fit for Breitbart News Network and reflects that of our founder, Andrew Breitbart.”

Originality being in short supply, I suppose it's worth looking at Breitbart's current list of original thought leaders:



Okay then.

I Agree With Hugh Hewitt

Hugh Hewitt:

Needless to say, I was glad to hear that. But as the father of two sons, I readily admit that if they became leftists, while I would, of course, always love them, I would be deeply saddened. Parents, on the left or the right, religious or secular, want to pass on their core values to their children.

As a father, my purpose is not to pass on my seed, but to pass on my values.

Passing on your seed to your children is rightly illegal, EVEN IF YOUR CHILDREN ARE LEFTISTS. Unless you're, like, in the bible and stuff.

Dumping iTunes for Nightingale

It turns out that my system using Mac OS X 10.9 doesn't much like old versions of iTunes - the ones with iTunes DJ - and as a result the means of updating Apple's stuff, the awful App Store, doesn't even work on third party software I want updated. Oh well, I'll replace some files and that'll be that.

It turns out that Nightingale plays my library in the way that iTunes used to before Apple's management downgraded it, although what's required is an add-on for it called Party Ruffle. Nightingale scoops up my iTunes library pretty handily and it works fine.

Goodbye iTunes.

A Thousand Buzzwords of Light

On Linkedin, a website that everyone should abandon immediately, there is an article using the word "disruption" in conjunction with "education" so you know it's bullshit. It's by James Maeda, president of the Rhode Island School of Design:

I think Reid is right. I can see a future when all of a person's skills, gained from college and beyond, get aggregated; much like a Coinstar machine collects all the change you pour in and spits out a total sum, we will some day pour all of our various skills, experiences, and milestones into a Degreestar machine, and out will pop a degree equivalent, be it an MIT CS degree, or a Stanford MBA. In this brave new world, many college professors will become free agents, doling out individual course credits to be collected by a trusted aggregator--be it a Harvard, or maybe even LinkedIn.

I see a future for trusted aggregator Fox University™, and finally real employment for Professor Jeff Goldstein.

Bonus twaddle:

In some ways, TED is the Harvard of our times.

Which way is that?