A Repost

I posted this a while ago. Time for a repost, as she died Tuesday. It's unjust of course, she was a very happy and sunny person, and the numbers would say she was owed another few decades of life. Her other half got to stay with her for the last two weeks. He's a great guy who set a whole lot aside in order to both be with her and help her, but he couldn't have done any of that if there weren't some humane laws and policies in place. He and I will drink soon, and perhaps he will clarify where any excess methadone might be. Demerol also accepted.
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Now that is an awfully mean way to make an argument, and follow-up comments from Walt (who I like a lot as a commenter) take Wiley to task as it can be extended into this or that absurdity, and if you complain about the president you're killing grandma and so on. But look at this:



Yesterday I was out drinking with two friends, one of whom has been told by some doctors that she's gonna die. Those are nachos and pills, including, apparently, some methadone. Shoulda begged to try one: she's gonna get more! Anyway, it was a nice Sunday drink, and those pills are mostly paid for, not just through sociamalist Canadian government programs, but through extended health benefits at a union shop (though I don't know if she was union or exempt). Her partner, in the union at the same employer, has leave. She and he get to spend as much time as they like together in relative comfort, though not at full pay. And that is a pretty important thing.

People - myself included - can be as disappointed with Obama as they like, but a plan passed under him will provide more people with those pills. It falls short of what I take for granted here, but I am fortunate enough to live in a civilized nation where I can go out with my dying friends for a drink instead of despairing that I have to figure out how to hold a benefit for them. For a lot of people that health plan is gonna be a very practical matter with quick impact despite its piecemeal nature, and it's a step that you'd be insane to think would happen under a Republican. [Important caveat: getting money for autism treatment is a fucking bitch here.] There are of course other issues, but a step is a step.

Also we played some trivia:

I Blame Unions!

PISA results are out, and everyone leaps to condemn whatever they can condemn:

Canada has dropped out of the top 10 in international math education standings, a decline that is raising alarms about the country’s future prosperity.

...

“This is on the scale of a national emergency,” said John Manley, CEO and president of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, which has sounded the alarm on the shortfalls in our education system. “We’ve got the natural resource sector to pay the rent, but that just keeps us in the house. We need skills, we need knowledge-workers to really improve our prosperity and build our society … Having the skills becomes a very important element to attracting investment and creating jobs.”

John Manley can suck my ass:



Education is a provincial and not a federal responsibility, and some provinces are doing quite nicely. That, however, doesn't serve the propaganda interests of idiots and assholes.

I might agree to an emergency in PEI.

Canada did not fare too well in reading or science, either. Only one country outperformed Canada in reading in 2000, and now five do. In science, two countries outperformed Canada in 2006, and that number rose to seven.

Two of those "countries" being Hong Kong-China and Shanghai-China, no doubt the most representative classes the Chinese could muster.

Sorry Americans, you have slipped beneath the Newfies in all areas.

Leftovers

At the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery:



It's about four feet off the ground, you can bend down and stand up in the bottom hole and imagine the corset's owner before the security guards hurry you away. Nifty.



That's a form of art I like, which is convenient because I am limited to it: figure out a process and the process makes the art, in this case smushing a deposit of charcoal upwards. Excellent idea! Have you ever thought of smushing the charcoal DOWNWARDS? Further process-as-art ideas involve the delightful errors introduced by the tiny fingers of child laborers.

In Disneyland, an untitled steampunk shrubbery. What fantastical creature might have a use for these things?

Delayed

News:

'Fast and Furious 7' delayed after Paul Walker's death

Obviously a valuable part of the franchise that should get off my lawn.

UPDATE

Sadly, I must turn off anonymous comments for a while. Wait, I think moderation will be better. Comment away. That way I get to put them in my "forward to the police" folder. Fun!

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.

Carousel

Or

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.