In Which I Offend People Again Right Before Christmas

Stephan Pastis gets it, and just this week released the above gem that perfectly describes how I feel sometimes, except that I don't share Rat's charming and amiable personality. Of the twenty or so "friends" that I've sent varying editions of my book to over the last three years, the same number of people have made the time to read it from start to finish. But all three of them loved it. That's a great track record, isn't it? The latest one may have loved it most of all. She apologized for taking a few weeks to read it and she wants to print a hard copy of all 400+ pages. I told her that it's going to be published in hard copies someday anyway, but she still wants to print it herself. And that's a pretty shrewd move because after it becomes a bestseller, her printed earlier version will become a collector's item and enable her to retire comfortably. I said sure. She also loved it enough to post about it on Facebook even though nobody would know what she's talking about:

​Looking at this now, I have no idea how she ostensibly wrote her comment nearly two hours before the post. And I'm also realizing, as I didn't when I wrote that quote, how much Jane is channeling the spirit of Captain Moroni. She would be mortified to realize that. Anyway, this one quote just by itself doesn't really give a feel for Jane's personality. She follows it up for good measure with "This - is - Sparta!" Then Lillis compliments her on her impromptu rallying speech and she admits, "I practice sometimes when no one is looking."

My own favorite quote from the book is much shorter and simpler:
Jane: Ladies first.
Lillis: And you are?
​Jane: A slob. Not ladylike at all.

​I've also sent it out to a bunch of random famous people, and believe it or not, many of them took time out of their busy schedules to do so and give me feedback. For example, the next President of the United States had this to say: "This book - and it's a really great book, it really is. The words, make no mistake, we've got the best people and they all say the words are absolutely top-notch. The other people wish they were reading these words because, you know, I know words. I read. I'm a reader. You can rely on these words because they're great words. They're impressive."

"Deceptively Edited"

For anyone who is tuning into this blog for the first time, I did not vote for Drumpf and his flattering words are not enough to make me like him or support him . However, since I detest Hillary slightly more, I'm grateful that the electoral college didn't rebel and pick her instead this week like many were hoping. A lot of people are scared of a Drumpf presidency, especially Muslims, Latinos, black people, women, LGBT people, and environmentalists. I would share many of their fears if I hadn't resigned myself to this country's irreversible journey down the toilet regardless of who gets elected. There is one group, however, whose fears I relish like a child relishing presents at Christmastime - Planned Parenthood. They're terrified right now, their fears are completely justified, and I love it. Of course that's because I hate women and want them to shrivel up and die without the healthcare that only Planned Parenthood can provide. Actually, no, that's not it at all, but if you're going to assume that my real reasons are invalid because I'm male then the least I can do is offer an alternative, albeit a delusional one.

Remember just over a year ago now when the Center for Medical Progress released undercover videos of Planned Parenthood illegally trafficking fetal parts? Remember when PP's defenders kept repeating a barefaced lie about the videos being "deceptively edited" (as if there were any conceivable context that would make its recorded statements acceptable), when even PP's own fact-checking team was forced to conclude (notwithstanding how hard they tried to obfuscate it) that they were not? Remember how a bunch of states defunded it and a bunch of businesses and hospitals cut ties? That was great. The momentum of public opinion is very much against this damnable organization and that damage to its finances is likely to be irreversible. Remember how the scandal just kind of faded away and people just assumed it was over and Planned Parenthood would continue on with business as usual because it hadn't done anything wrong this time? (As opposed to, say, when one of its managers expressed a policy of helping to cover up underage prostitution, but that's another story.)

Yeah, well, the 500+ page report recently released by the Senate at conclusion of their investigation says otherwise. They have recommended Planned Parenthood and several of the organizations it does business with for FBI investigation for their flouting of the law. This may have something to do with the Senate being controlled by Republicans - or possibly with some of the documents they subpoenaed including thousands of invoices for the baby, I mean fetal parts that Planned Parenthood definitely was not selling. In fairness, Planned Parenthood had guidelines in place against that sort of thing, and when it realized after ten years that its clinics were ignoring those guidelines, it took swift action and deleted them. The guidelines, I mean, in case that wasn't clear. Oh, and you know who isn't talking about this? The same mainstream media outlets who didn't talk about Kermit Gosnell until the backlash forced them to. I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you. I wonder how much longer it will take them to catch on that this isn't 1977 anymore and refusing to cover something doesn't keep people from finding out about it.

Planned Parenthood is scared, and for good reason. Merry Christmas to me.

New Year's Resolutions for White Guys

​Deleting things doesn't keep people from finding out about them, either. This week, as you may have heard, MTV released what I thought was going to be a music video, given that MTV stands for "Music Television", but actually turned out to be just a bunch of people talking. It was a video about New Year's Resolutions for White Guys. Since I fall into that target demographic on both counts to one degree or another, I started watching it, but after about thirty seconds I became discouraged and quit. They were asking me to make these changes that I would love but just can't, because I can't help that I automatically hold every single one of the viewpoints they were criticizing as a result of my sex (is that the right word? I'm not allowed to call it "gender" anymore, right? Or do I have that backwards?) and skin color. So I'm afraid it just added insult to injury for me.

Enough people took it more seriously and got royally cheesed off, though, that in less than two days MTV removed the video from every platform they had posted it on - but there are at least two copies on YouTube from folks who had the foresight to grab it. Interestingly, the one that went with the original title still has about 59 times as many downvotes as upvotes, while the one titled "DUMBEST MOST RACIST VIDEO EVER" has about 138 times as many upvotes as downvotes (not to mention nearly twice as many views). It's all about marketing, people. So anyway, I guess MTV was as startled as I was to learn that the "it's okay to be racist against white people and especially if they're male" thing can be taken too far. I thought you could criticize us and blame us for all the world's problems with total impunity, but it turns out that after a certain point the majority of this country will rise up and tell you where you can stick it. Is there still significant racism against non-whites in this country? Yes. Is it dwarfed by whining social justice warriors' leg-humping obsession with skin color? Also yes. Are most people sick of their crap? Apparently also yes.

Drumpf, among his many other flaws, is a racist. But when progressives have spent the last several years inventing racism where it didn't exist and accusing everyone and their dog of imaginary racism on the most absurd pretenses in an effort to stifle free speech and cop out of intelligent debate, it doesn't take a genius to figure out why their legitimate accusations of Drumpf being a racist fell on deaf ears. There's an absurdly stupid tweet by David Yankovich (I don't know who he is either, but in fairness, he would say the same about me) saying, "We hate Donald Trump like you hated President Obama. However, we hate Trump because he is racist, you hated Obama because you are racist." Because you see, prior to 2008, conservatives always adored left-wing presidents. And the liberal hatred of George Bush was completely different because he's white. Anyway, I've written more about this than I intended to so I'll leave it at that, except to also point out that his tweet should have had a semicolon, not a comma, because here the punctuation is taking the place of a conjunction.

MormonWikiLeaks

I'm giving this thing more publicity than it deserves, but only to demonstrate how totally unfazed by it I am. Ryan McKnight, the guy who leaked several behind-the-scenes briefing videos of top Mormon leaders that caused a stir on the internet for almost two whole days, has now set up a website to do more of the same with confidential documents. The YouTube channel with the videos is called "Mormon Leaks", but for this site he inexplicably went with the far less catchy and obviously derivative "MormonWikiLeaks". Ryan isn't stupid. He knows this won't bring down the LDS Church. He just wants to force it to be more transparent and let everyone see how the bureacracy operates. Frankly, I looked at some of the documents and they ranged from "stuff that no normal person would bother to read in their spare time" to "BOR-ING". And he acknowledges that too. He knows most of it's boring. So, you know, I would say let the bueacracy do its thing and be grateful we don't have to see how it operates.

Ryan says he has thorough vetting processes in place to avoid publishing faked documents from anti-Mormons to make the Church look bad, or from Mormons to make his site's credibility look bad. He also says that if he gets documents showing the Church "engaged in some surprisingly ethical activity", he'll publish those too. So he's a man of honesty and integrity, other than the trifling matter of encouraging people to violate their nondisclosure and confidentiality agreements. I don't understand why that's even legal, but I guess I'm glad it is since it allows the real WikiLeaks to knock our richly deserving government down a few pegs. Anyway, somebody just wake me up when they find a document indicating that the LDS Church is a deliberate fraud and its leaders don't sincerely believe in it in private as well as public. Oh wait, that isn't going to happen, ever.

Scott Andersen - Chewbacca Sings Silent Night

Some years ago I downloaded a big batch of Star Wars songs from a site that had a bunch of Star Wars songs. And some of them had no attribution and had apparently just drifted around the internet since the mysterious distant past of the late nineties, and one of those was Chewbacca singing "Silent Night". I thought it would be a cute little thing to share this time around. Imagine my surprise when I checked to see if it was on YouTube and discovered that "How it Should Have Ended" just did a remake and it went viral. They also attributed the original, solving that mystery that I probably could have solved earlier on my own if I'd been sufficiently curious. Even though this new one sounds superior and has the actual movie clips to go with it, the original has a certain campy charm that you just don't get with modern technology. Take 45 seconds of your life to enjoy it.