Author: gala5931

Went to a show the other night and everybody but me was dressed like Elliott Smith. I was dressed in my work clothes, looking more than a little like a put-upon divorced father on his night with the kids. I think I’m going to go buy a black t-shirt and one of those Fidel Castro hats to keep in storage for just such an occasion, one in which I need to dress like I’m acting out in order to blend in.

Jess: How do I save this?

Alex: Just hit the button that looks like one of those old floppy disks.

Now that’s what I am discussing. And to think, I didn’t bring my DS to the hospital out of respect. How long before young Maeve gets a chance to blue shell the old man? Should Unkie Alex’s christening gift be a Noble Pink DS lite?
Girls like pink, right? Do you buy gifts for christenings? I really have no idea how this all works.

As a teenager, I got into a fight with the Religious Right. The Merrimack school board went God on us, and started doing crazy stuff. Things got messy. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say on the topic:

In recent years, Merrimack has also been a battleground of sorts for the Gay Rights and school prayer movements in New Hampshire and nationwide. In the mid-1990’s, led by a conservative majority, the Merrimack School Board passed a series of school regulations banning what they called “Homosexual Acts and Homosexual Materials” in the school district and mandating a district-wide daily “Moment of silence“. Banned actions included same-sex hand holding and hugging. Banned materials included any literature written by purported homosexuals. Merrimack erupted into a firestorm of political debate, bringing the town into the forefront of the growing debate over homosexuality in the U.S. The scandal culminated in months of dramatic regionally televised school board meetings, student-led walkouts, and a national news special. Today, the district still observes a daily moment of silence, but the bans on homosexuality have been all but forgotten.[3]

As you can imagine, the ‘live free or die’ types didn’t like this very much. Our parents held large meetings in their homes to discuss how to fight the board or support it. Any public event became polarized, with knots of people looking askance at one another. Whose hand did you shake? Who did you ignore? Were you with side A or side B?

I was into it. I argued the topics all the time. I coughed or dropped things during the moment of silence. I interviewed the school board members on their opinions on a variety of sensitive topics, and published their responses verbatim in the school newspaper right before an election, trying to give the jerks the rope required to hang themselves. I imagine I alienated a lot of people without realizing it, but hey. It really bugged me.

Why do I bring this up? I ran across the issue today as I read this page on banned books. Good old Merrimack.

The concept of book banning was one of the many that pissed me off back then. The very term got my blood boiling. What I realize now is that is a high school strikes a book from its curriculum because it contains a swear word or a sex scene, it’s not that big of a deal. We can always go to the public library and get it, or the book store.

Now, if a book is removed from the curriculum because it was written by a homosexual? That’s a real problem.

Overall, I’m glad I ran across this reminded of my hometown’s past (and present) today. While my juvenile fervor may have subsided a little, topics of public school literature curricula and school prayer still get a rise out of me.

Just in case B A Start comes before Royal Toybox on your daily read list Les Garvois have had their baby. Thanks mucho to Esther for keeping us all posted. I have to confess to being on serious tenterhooks after a call involving some kind of broken water.

But you didn’t come to B A Start for baby talk. Instead, I offer you my personal review of Ultraviolet.

Imagine a movie based on a comic book. I don’t mean ‘based on a comic-book character’, I mean written and filmed as if taken directly from the pulpy pages of an illustrated periodical. All of the super-cheesy lines kept. Lots and lots of action which, while good-looking, doesn’t have any purpose. Yick.

Maybe if the fighting was better I would have enjoyed it more, or if I had seen the effects on the big screen… no. No no no. It was just awful.

Ever been so angry you can’t see? It’s awesome.

Happy Independence Day everyone. I love America.

In the spirit of this celebration, I have a recommendation for you: start watching the History Channel’s mini-series The Revolution. It’s one of the best documentary series I have watched, particularly due to the variety of POV’s brought to the table by the experts they interviewed. That West Point dude is hardcore.

Also here are some hi-res images of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution etc. They’re JPEG, which is weak sauce, but still. Patriots delight.

Patriotism in a time as frustrating as ours can be dangerous. People think you’re crazy or stupid or evil. Here’s my deal: my love America is for the ideals, not necessarily all current practices. Inalienable human rights. The self-evident truths. A more perfect union. Above all, liberty.

When our elected leaders do things in accord with our ideals, I applaud them. When they do not, I malign them, and as I do I take comfort in the fact that they can be voted out of office. We don’t have to wake up each morning and hope that the dictator dies soon, and that his son will be better to us than he is.

A difficulty comes when the will of the people is wrong, by which I mean it does not live up to the aforementioned ideals. Thus a republic can be better than a democracy, but only when the leaders are virtuous. A healthy mix of both seems to be working out fairly well.

Thus, I urge you to celebrate our freedoms and liberties today. Wave a flag and love the nation that should be, and mostly is. If this were a speech, I believe I would have the audacity to recite the preamble to the Constitution right now, but instead I’ll just link to it.

At the end of Superman Returns, Jason is wearing Aquaman pajamas. Are we to assume, then, that Singer’s next movie will be Aquaman? Or at least the costumer’s?

Please enjoy this wild rumor.

Once upon a time, an official NHL website had pictures of the redesigned Sabres jersey, something for which the people of the hamlet of Buffalo had been pining. A silly boy posted the pictures accidentally.

“O, no,” the boy said. “I will surely be whipped until my skin is in tatters and fed to the boars!”

He leapt up and removed the pictures, but it was too late. They had been stolen.

“Joy!” shouted the people. “A new logo!”

“The blue and the gold are there,” they said.

“It looks like Barney Rubble’s hair,” they said.

“It is both old and new,” they said.

“It looks like poo,” they said.

What the people did not know is that the new logo was enchanted, drawn by a wise old man who lived alone in a mountain cave. Men who wore the sign became faster and stronger, and their weapons would not break. They beat devils and lightning, hurricanes and maple leaves, panthers and finally flames to steal the silver chalice and return with it to the little hamlet. And the people of the hamlet were happy.

Aside from the Geek Day status that a comic-book movie opening receives, today marks the end of Ordinary Time. After tonight’s festival a new season begins, a season of rebirth.

Yes, going to see the new Superman movie is going to be roughly equivalent to a deeply religious experience, whether I like the film or not. The only son of a benevolent creator sent to Earth to save us from ourselves? The most powerful force in the universe walking among us, as one of us? How doesn’t everyone feel this way?