Twinkies, Cockroaches and Evangelists

Three things that will survive no matter what:

Ted Haggard returns to the pulpit in Colorado
The disgraced former pastor is back in Colorado Springs, and his home prayer meetings have drawn an unexpected audience. 'I love a good redemption story,' a supporter says.
By DeeDee Correll
December 7, 2009
Reporting from
Colorado Springs, Colo. - Ted Haggard climbed onto a bale of hay, Bible balanced in his palm."Welcome to my barn," he called out."Does anybody need a blanket?" his wife, Gayle, inquired as men and women in down coats shivered in the frigid November air. Some huddled underneath a space heater.Then the blue-jeans-clad preacher began chanting: "God is good, God is good, God is good."

This musty barn next to the Haggard home is barely two miles -- but a universe away -- from the massive stage the former evangelical star once occupied at New Life Church. There, he would appear every Sunday before microphones, giant television screens and a congregation so large that services had to be held in shifts.But in late 2006 came what Haggard, now 53, refers to as "the crisis," the revelation that he'd had a sexual relationship with a male escort. Haggard resigned from the church he had started in his basement 25 years ago and left Colorado Springs.

I guess what Roy Zimmerman says really is true, that or he has found a congregation of hardcore born again true believers who don't care where he puts his weiner, just as long as he does a good job being a cheerleader for Jesus.

Just to be clear, I don't care where he puts his weiner. The less I know about what Ted Haggard does when he feels the need to get his freak on, the better. But one does not get to live in the glass house while telling everyone who will hold still long enough to listen to get out there and throw rocks at everyone else's crystal palace. He got caught doing what he has spent his career condemning, that is why he has become a punchline. It's like catching Jenny Craig with her head in a trough of ice cream, or Ralph Nader selling used Pintos.

I don't care that Ted Haggard is gay, I care that he has spent his entire career telling people to hate gays and applying political pressure - including through his regular private chats with the last president of the United States - to deny homosexuals civil rights. If he were straight, this would be bad enough - it's wrong to deny someone equal rights on the basis of who they like to do the horizontal hula with assuming everyone involved is a consenting adult - but he was condemning homosexuality as evil, while hiding the fact that he was shacking up with a male prostitute. That is what makes him an uber douchebag.

je me souviens

Geneviève Bergeron (1968-1989)
Hélène Colgan (1966-1989)
Nathalie Croteau (1966-1989)
Barbara Daigneault (1967-1989)
Anne-Marie Edward (1968-1989)
Maud Haviernick (1960-1989)
Maryse Laganière (1964-1989)
Maryse Leclair (1966-1989)
Anne-Marie Lemay (1967-1989)
Sonia Pelletier (1961-1989)
Michèle Richard (1968-1989)
Annie St-Arneault (1966-1989)
Annie Turcotte (1969-1989)
Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz (1958-1989)

Never, never forget.

sunday songs and cinema

I've been remiss in posting the week's presentation by the Second Life Marxist-Lennonist Party's Glorious People's Cinema Project for quite some time, but this week's offering is a true "don't miss" film.

Even if you've never been a big fan of Bob Dylan, "I'm Not There" is still an amazing film and the truest biography ever to take poetic licence. It's so good, I even liked Richard Gere in it, and I usually hate Richard Gere. Cate Blanchett doesn't so much play the late 60s Dylan as absolutely channel the man. She was robbed at the Oscars.

You can find us all at the Red Zeppelin in Second Life (you can join for free) or just listen along to the premovie show on Radio Woodshed off to your right and then watch along on YouTube. Would you believe we've been doing this for more than a year and a half now?

The music starts at 5 PST/ 8 EST, and the movie starts at 7 PST/10 EST.

the Rules - dance mix edition

just because -- part II

Friday Uke - all originals edition

the stupendous Shelly O'Brien

the marvellous Molly Lewis

It's that time of year again!

Subway etiquette is important in Tokyo. No matter what happens, no matter how crazy the situation you must not react. A stoic countenance must be maintained. You must not complain or you will be the nail that sticks up. As a result, some people get away with murder on the trains. Molesting women is not as common as it once was, but it is still such a problem that some train lines in Tokyo have "Women Only" carriages during morning rush hour. And almost no one ever gives up their seat for the elderly or the heavily pregnant.

Poor subway etiquette and people's reluctance to complain has lead to the development of a series of monthly posters in Tokyo train station reminding people about how to behave on the train.

Every year, Japanese companies pay their salarymen a pair of bonuses - one at the start of summer and one at the end of the year. Traditionally, the end-of-year bonus is celebrated with massive drinking parties at which dour, serious-minded captains of industry drink like university frosh frat boys on Spring Break who have just gotten out of jail and are vacationing with the heir to a brewing empire after crossing the Sahara on foot. Leading to posters like this one.

This year's spring bonus was reckoned to be a very small one at most companies due to the worldwide financial crash and no one is optimistic about the year-end either. Which I guess explains the cans in the latest poster, what with convenience store or vending machine beers being the poor man's alternative to the local izakaya.

hat-tip to Shibuya 246

I know, you think I'm exaggerating. Think again. This was taken last night by one of my workmates.

hat tip to the Bald Avenger

footloose

A shoe for a shoe for a shoe leaves Iraq barefoot