Sunday Reads: Standards…for ratf#cks and a$$holes.

Good Housekeeping Cover June 1955

Good Housekeeping Cover June 1955

Good Morning

<——–  Girls. Yes, their cause and cure?

My internet is really slow tonight, so much that I am just going to put up a few of the links that I had saved up for this morning. Hopefully the net will be working faster for me here in Banjoville, and another longer post will be up later in the afternoon.

(It is frustrating as hell.)

Anyway, I thought a few stories highlighting some assholes, and their ridiculous “standards” they hold themselves to.384e62840ab8dfb5165ac0ae3e46838f

For instance…

The PLUB dimwits in my state went and kicked out one of the main pro-life groups evah…because=rape and incest.  National organization boots Georgia Right to Life | Political Insider blog

This just in: National Right to Life has named Georgia Life Alliance as its new state affiliate. That means Georgia Right to Life is out.

The challenge came as a result of GRTL’s fierce opposition to allowing abortion exceptions for rape and incest.

You can read the full press release at the link. I mean…WTF?

Then there are the Jesus freaks, freaking out about the movie Noah. Click the link to see the tweets. I don’t want any crazy’s making their way here.  ‘Noah’: Twitter conservatives outraged that film deviates from Bible’s original English | The Raw Story

Devout Christians are up in arms this morning about Darren Aronofsky’s film Noah, despite the fact that the majority of them haven’t seen it.

[…]

Aronofsky’s script deviates from the biblical account, and many on Twitter are happy to point the curious to the “real” story:

Many churches have encouraged their congregants to retweet the following, line breaks be damned!

‘Noah’- Twitter conservatives outraged that film deviates from Bible’s original English - The Raw Story 2014-03-30 02-39-40

[…]

Kevin McCarthy informs Brian Kilmeade of Fox News viewers’ worst nightmare: “the movie is not a documentary,” meaning the fact checkers will be out in full-force:

‘Noah’- Twitter conservatives outraged that film deviates from Bible’s original English - The Raw Story 2014-03-30 02-40-28

 

74d2108e3bbb8f4ef39c0f61ea309e67These people are crazy.

Conservative film critic Debbie Schlussel — who has actually seen the film — wrote that the film should be called “‘Game of Thrones Noah,’ ‘The Noah-dashians,’ ‘Dysfunctional Family Noah.’ Or just plain, ‘NOT Noah.’”

Erick Erickson at Red State surveyed all of the deviations from scripture, declared “boy howdy!” and then proceeded to remind his readers that he “is not kidding” eleven times.

We are not kidding.

Yup, I’ll say it again. These people are batshit crazy. And I ain’t kidding.5a6845686525c255d8336d8b71711060

But don’t get me wrong, there are those who take their beliefs to another level. A higher level…Fmr. Adult Film Star Kicked Out of Neo-Nazi Political Party for Doing Mixed-Race Porno | Mediaite

It’s an odd leap, going from porn to the Neo-Nazi National Democratic Party of Germany, but German actress Ina Groll managed to do it. And the Neo-Nazis very much embraced her and welcomed her into the movement, knowing full well she used to do porn. But it’s who she did porn with that landed her in warmwasser.

Groll has been very vocal about her disdain for the Islamization of Europe, immigrants, and gypsies, and so she was embraced by a group that mostly consists of burly, bald white dudes.

There’s just one problem: some of these burly, bald white dudes checked out her previous work, and they were none too happy 5dcb58bb0cc71457ba3ca1ac1f4f6468with what they saw.

The fact that she starred in porn movies didn’t seem to bother NPD members very much; what upset them was the fact that in one of those movies, she had sex with a black man…

“Someone who sleeps with a foreign race in front of the camera can’t advance the nationalist ideology,” one activist wrote on a far-right Facebook page. Others, naturally, used blunter language.

As a result, Groll was essentially kicked out of the party and barred from attending any group events.

When I saw this it made me laugh like hell…oh, if only the black man she had sex with was also Jewish. Hmmm…What do you think the ratfucks would have thought about that?

In other news, tacky but not Hitleresque: Self Magazine Shames Cancer Survivor For Running Marathon In A ‘Lame’ Tutu

When Monika Allen, a brain cancer survivor, got an email from Self magazine asking if it could feature a photo of her running a marathon, she couldn’t have been more excited. That was until she learned the magazine mocked her frilly costume.

While undergoing chemotherapy last year, Allen decided to run the Los Angeles Marathon and to wear a particularly motivating outfit, NBC 7 reported. The avid exerciser donned a Wonder Woman costume and paired it with a tutu, a product she makes and sells. Her company, Glam Runner, also raises funds for a charity that empowers young girls.

self cancer survivor

So when Allen got the message that Self magazine was interested in printing a photo of her from the race, she enthusiastically agreed.

But when that photo landed in the magazine’s April issue, Allen was “shocked,” according to her company’s Facebook page.

The photo of Allen was featured in the issue’s “BS Meter,” which denigrated the trend of runners racing in tutus, and placed the fad in the “lame” column.

86fedc4cd9fca21dd6c38002b6e86a6a“A racing tutu epidemic has struck NYC’s Central Park, and it’s all because people think these froufrou skirts make you run faster,” the column reads. “Now, if you told us they made people run from you faster, maybe we would believe it.”

Assholes…

Allen told NBC that she had no idea that she was going to be made fun of and never would’ve agreed to releasing the photo if she had known how it was going to be used.

That particular race was personal on a couple of levels: It was her first marathon since getting diagnosed, and it was a way for her to celebrate her charitable efforts.

Since starting Glam Runner in 2011, Allen has produced about 2,000 tutus and has donated $5,600 to Girls on the Run — a nonprofit that has a 12-week training program for girls ages 8-13 to prepare for a 5K race.

When Self learned of the snafu, it expressed regret.

“I am personally mortified,” Lucy Danziger, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, told USA Today. “I had no idea that Monika had been through cancer. It was an error. It was a stupid mistake. We shouldn’t have run the item.”

She also told the outlet that she is personally reaching out to Allen and plans to support her charity.

74cb4b182daf0bf92d9667780e82387c WILD CO-EDS -- Sadie Wendell Mitchell “Wee Sma’ Hours”, 1909 Poster showing three women cooking and eating in a (college dorm) bedroom, displaying “No Smoking” and “Silence” siI don’t know if supporters of Allen are going to forgive Self so easily…this has caused a bit of nastiness all over the webs. But maybe Lucy Danziger needs to pull a politician move. You know the ones that are usually used by the idiots who make idiot remarks, tweets, facebook post, statements, ugh…etc.

Another person who needs to shut the fuck up…and stop writing shit on her GOOP blog, is Gwynyth Paltrow. Honestly, the woman needs to go away…into hiding. Now.  Gwyneth Paltrow’s Post-Split Plans: Actress Reveals She’s Taking a Break From Acting to Focus on Her Kids | E! Online

That latest crapola from Gwyneth was soooo bad that it warranted a response from someone whose letter was published in the New York Post…you need to read in full.

A working mom’s open letter to Gwyneth  By Mackenzie Dawson| New York Post

Dear Gwyneth,

I really enjoyed your recent comments to E! about how easy an office job is for parents, compared to the grueling circumstances of being on a movie set. “I think it’s different when you have an office job, because it’s routine and, you know, you can do all the stuff in the morning and then you come home c6344b1c253cb38ea080ff2f093903a2 Poster by Sadie Wendell Mitchell, 1909.in the evening,” you said. “When you’re shooting a movie, they’re like, ‘We need you to go to Wisconsin for two weeks,’ and then you work 14 hours a day, and that part of it is very difficult. I think to have a regular job and be a mom is not as, of course there are challenges, but it’s not like being on set.”

As a mother of a toddler, I couldn’t agree more!

“Thank God I don’t make millions filming one movie per year” is what I say to myself pretty much every morning as I wait on a windy Metro-North platform, about to begin my 45-minute commute into the city. Whenever things get rough, all I have to do is keep reminding myself of that fact. It is my mantra.

And I know all my fellow working-mom friends feel the same. Am I right, ladies?

We’re always gabbing about how easy it is to balance work and home life. Whenever I meet with them at one of our weekly get-togethers — a breeze to schedule, because reliable baby sitters often roam my neighborhood in packs, holding up signs peddling their services — we have a competition to see who has it easier. Is it the female breadwinners who work around 93a4321ef9a623e66b20c0649b2fbcb9the clock to make sure their mortgages get paid, lying awake at night, wracked with anxiety over the idea of losing their jobs? Or is it the mothers who get mommy-tracked and denied promotions? What about the moms with “regular” 9-to-5 jobs, who are penalized when their kids are sick and they don’t have backup child care?

Those women are living the dream, I tell you!

The letter gets better, so go read the damn thing…perfect is what it is, and puts Paltrow in her place.

Finally, did y’all see the picture of Ratzilla, the 16-Inch “Rat From Hell,” Finally Captured in Sweden

 

Ratzilla, the big ass rat that terrorized a Swedish family for weeks, is finally dead.

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Erik Korsas and his family first realized they had a problem when their pet cat refused to enter their kitchen. “We thought it could be a little mouse, but after a while we figured it couldn’t be because it was making too much noise,” Korsas’ wife, Signe Bengtsson, told The Local.

Several days later she spotted a giant rat eating from her garbage can.

“It was right there in our rubbish bin, a mighty monster. I was petrified. I couldn’t believe such a big rat could exist,” she said. “I couldn’t help but do the old classic and jump on the kitchen table and scream.”

She called her husband, who was away on a business trip. “When my wife called I said ‘Yeah, sure, take it easy, I’ll be home on Sunday. But by then it had jumped into the waste bin and had a Swedish smörgåsbord with all the leftovers,” he said.

For days, the family lived in horror, stomping loudly when they entered the kitchen to scare the hell rodent away.tkhvzdjseaqxgu6nkqfj

“By the time I got home, the rat was so domesticated that it just sat under the kitchen table,” Korsas said.

How big was Ratzilla?

Korsas measured its body at 39 cm, or nearly 16 inches, not including the tail. He believes it reached the kitchen by gnawing through the wood and cement floor.

 

“It was quite a shocking experience,” Bengtsson said in summary. “No one wanted to go into the kitchen after, and the cat was terrified for a week. The pest controllers said they’d never seen such a big rat before.”

 

Damn….that is one huge mutthafukkin rat….

(Oh, I had another link that connected to ratzilla vis-à-vis Godzilla…I will post it here guess this post is not finished after all.)

And now, our last “reads” of the day, from the TCM blog moviemorlocks.com – Shinichi Sekizawa: the guy behind the man in the suit

SeaMonsterGodzilla

One of the things about being known as “the guy that wrote that book about Godzilla,” is that when something like this new Godzilla movie comes along, everyone assumes that’s what you want to talk about.  The fact is, I’ve written more words and spoken on more total audio commentary tracks regarding silent and early talkie comedy, but Godzilla made my name.  And with TCM’s screening of the 1954 original today, and the Bryan Cranston version on its way, I guess I have to live up to that name.

Well, the new film certainly looks well-made and serious, and I expect it will be as dramatic and intense as the trailer suggests.  It certainly strains no one’s credulity to claim that the original 1954 Godzilla movie is also serious and intense, an allegory about Japan’s experience with nuclear horror.  It is not subtext, it is plainly text, with nothing sub– about it.  Thinly disguised images of and openly direct references to the firebombings of Tokyo, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Lucky Dragon incident are spread liberally throughout the film.

But… that isn’t Godzilla, not my Godzilla.  Godzilla may have originated in austere political metaphor, but he was popularized as a rubber-suited superhero.  He dances happy jigs, imitates rock stars, acts like a wrestler, talks with his pals, sometimes even flies—all while saving the Earth from such menaces as a monster made of living pollution, a ginormous bionic cockroach, or even a giant killer rose.

To pretend that Godzilla movies did not veer into absurdity and rampant silliness is futile.  The filmmakers admitted it themselves—with screenwriter Shinichi Sekizawa a chief architect of this change in direction.

Please enjoy that little history lesson on Godzilla, and hopefully I can get another post up later this afternoon. Doesn’t Godzilla look like he is smelling his finger ala Beavis?

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Otherwise, have a wonderful day and please share your thoughts and links in the comments below.


30 Comments on “Sunday Reads: Standards…for ratf#cks and a$$holes.”

  1. Hey, the net is still slow. Maybe it is the weather? Who knows.

    I want to put up a series of links on walmart, check them out. My brain is not working yet, and is working about as slow as my internet.

    Walmart Just Revealed How Poor U.S. Shoppers Are – Forbes

    Why We Love To Hate Walmart – Forbes

    Thank Goodness We Have Walmart If American Shoppers Are This Poor – Forbes

    That last one has some economics words in it…like I said, I am not sparking on all cylinders.

    😉

    • Mary Luke says:

      So Walmart and Forbes have just discovered that more and more Americans are getting too poor to shop even at Walmart and Dollar Stores? That 80% of Americans shop at these retailers at least once a year, often by necessity rather than choice? Oh, and my favorite: $20.00 a week makes a huge difference in the average person’s budget! When are the Forbes reporters going to beam down to earth? Thanks, JJ, that was a good set of links.

      • RalphB says:

        You would think they would realize destroying the middle class and driving everyone into poverty would effect their bottom line. However, it would appear they’re utterly clueless to the consequences of their own actions.

        JJ, Indeed a very good set of links.

      • I will put the other links I had on poverty and people Getting By here…it was supposed to go with those Walmart links…like I said, my damn internet is still running so slow.

        How A Government Computer Glitch Forced Thousands Of Families To Go Hungry

        44-year-old single mother often skips dinner herself. She hides Ramen noodle packets in her closet to ration food. She tells her two youngest kids to play outside “so they ain’t thinking about eating.”

        “That’s what I have to worry about,” she says. “I gotta look at these kids with their sad faces and no food.”

        On the 13th of every month, she has counted on seeing a $600 payment on her food-stamp debit card. But now, that payment is a month late.

        Simon and thousands like her in North Carolina had enough to worry about before a computer glitch began to fray this basic part of the social safety net.

        Last July, government computers across the state repeatedly crashed, preventing caseworkers from processing food stamp applications and recertifications for weeks. Eight months later, North Carolina officials are still scrambling to clear the resulting backlog.

        The food stamp delays can be traced to troubles with a computer system designed by Accenture, one of the world’s largest consulting firms. The company is among a small group of politically connected technology contractors that receive government business across the country despite previous criticism of their work.

        Accenture won the North Carolina contract after spending thousands of dollars on political contributions and lobbying in the state. North Carolina hired Accenture even though at least six other states — Colorado, Florida, Wyoming, Kansas, Wisconsin and Texas — have canceled contracts with the company in the past decade over problems with its computer systems.

        Debunking the Attempted Debunking of Our 10 Poverty Myths, Debunked | Mother Jones

        Earlier this week, Mother Jones published a piece I wrote, in which I listed 10 commonly held notions about poor people and debunked them. The piece aimed to take down misconceptions about the poor—they’re leeches, they’re lazy, etc.—that end up shaping policy. Kevin Williamson at National Review Online, a conservative news site, took issue with the story.

        Williamson responded to each item from my original piece, in an attempt to prove that the myths were true. Here are his responses to my original post, plus reasons why he’s wrong:

        Getting By | Al Jazeera America

        Some 50 million Americans live below the official poverty line, and millions more are barely making ends meet. This photo series and community project explores how people try to survive.

      • dakinikat says:

        http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/03/26-6

        Walmart Admits: ‘Our Profits’ Depend on ‘Their Poverty’
        Critics cite irony of annual report filing: ‘This is a company that everywhere it goes it creates poverty’

        According to Stacy Mitchell, senior researcher with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, the irony of their admission is that Walmart “is the company that has done, perhaps, more than any other corporation to push people into poverty.”

        Citing a Penn State study, Mitchell told Common Dreams that research has proven that “when Walmart opens a store, poverty rates are negatively impacted” and that the more stores that have opened in a particular county, the worse it is. “This is a company that everywhere it goes it creates poverty.”

        In addition to their own worker’s low wages, Mitchell explains that Walmart, because of their enormous size and market power, have “held down wages for the whole sector.”

        As a retailer that specifically targets a low-income demographic, Mitchell adds that the “insidious genius” of their business model is that “they have so squeezed American workers […] many feel that their only choice is to shop at Walmart.”

    • NW Luna says:

      aka Thank Goodness We Rich People are so Clever We Can Lie Bald-faced About the Evil That is WalMart.

      What a trough of hogwash, as my father would have said.

  2. Guinea battles to contain Ebola as Senegal closes its border (via AFP)

    Guinea is racing to contain a deadly Ebola epidemic spreading from its southern forests to the capital Conakry, as neighbouring Senegal closes its border. The European Union pledged 500,000 euros ($690,000) to fight the contagion, while the Senegalese…

  3. MH370 plane search stepped up as relatives demand answers (via AFP)

    Family members of Chinese passengers on board a missing Malaysian airliner arrived Sunday in Kuala Lumpur — some angrily seeking answers and others seeking closure — as the search for the plane intensified. Eight ships — the largest number so far…

  4. janicen says:

    Self Magazine should go fuck itSelf. If you’ve ever run in a race or participated in fun runs/walks, people wear all kinds of costumes and outifts. That’s what makes it fun. I remember one dude was dressed as a lion in one of the runs I was in. What a disgusting thing to do to that athlete. I can’t run anymore, but I want to get one of her tutus and start wearing it to the gym or when I ride my bike.

    And Gwyneth just needs to shut up. Clueless idiot.

    • RalphB says:

      Hopefully Self is already fucked! And Gwyneth with them!

    • Beata says:

      So it is Self’s magazine’s editorial policy to ask people if they can print their photos without telling them they will be mocked? How “empowering” they are of women! Self magazine is so full of BS, their meter broke under the weight of it.

      I can’t tell you how upset it makes me that Self magazine did this to a brain cancer survivor. I hope Ms. Allen’s company, Glam Runner, soars in sales while Self magazine goes out-of-print.

      • NW Luna says:

        Why the hell would a magazine purportedly supportive of healthy habits make fun of someone running? Not that it would be any better if the photographed person did not have cancer… This is going to backfire big-time on Self.

        Anyone having fun running, walking, whatever, in a good way should be encouraged and celebrated!

    • NW Luna says:

      Tutus for all!

  5. RalphB says:

    balloon-juice: Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing

    You have to have a little pity on Chris Christie. There he was, in Las Vegas, standing in front of Sheldon Adelson and a bunch of his cronies in the Republican Jewish Coalition, trying to ingratiate himself with a little sniveling and bootlicking, and then he says this:

    Invoking a 2012 trip he and his family took to Israel, Christie recalled in the speech: “I took a helicopter ride from the occupied territories across and just felt personally how extraordinary that was to understand, the military risk that Israel faces every day.”

    In case you missed it, and be assured that the crowd didn’t, calling places like the West Bank “occupied territories” in front Adelson’s crew is like calling RU-486 “birth control” at a right-to-life convention. So, more genuflecting and ass-kissing ensued: …

    Christie just can’t hire good help. 🙂

  6. dakinikat says:

    I put this up on my facebook yesterday.. It deserves a rating of five facepalms.

    http://aattp.org/two-christian-sc-senators-block-third-graders-state-fossil-proposal-because-jesus/

    Sometimes, you begin reading about something and think, “Aww, how cute!” Other times, what should be a touching story of a child’s proposal to make the Woolly Mammoth South Carolina’s official state fossil passing the state House and Senate with overwhelming support, going to the Governor’s desk, and being signed into law becomes something entirely different because of a couple of Christofascists in suits who feel the need to inject God into everything.

    8 year old girl gets a lesson in the politics of science vs. mythology and US law.

  7. NW Luna says:

    The number of people believed missing in last weekend’s deadly mudslide has dropped dramatically from 90 to 30.

    Jason Biermann, program manager for the Snohomish County Department of Emergency Management, said the number could drop even lower in the coming days as investigators continue to verify the exact total of people who were in the mudslide’s path. ….

    Biermann also revealed for the first time that in some cases only partial remains are being recovered, a stark indication of the force of the March 22 mudslide that buried a community along the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River. The condition of some of the bodies has added to the difficulty of making identifications, he said. ….

    The dramatically reduced number of missing brought some relief in a week of grim updates from emergency-management officials, who at times struggled to provide consistent figures of the toll. …. firefighters and rescuers initially wanted to know about every person who might have been in the area of the mudslide, but many of the names submitted at the beginning have since been accounted for or crossed off the list. “We found one guy living right next to the post office,” De Luca said. “He was quite surprised to find he’d been listed as missing or dead.”

    The difficult work of sifting through the mud by machine, shovel and hand came to a brief halt at precisely 10:37 a.m. to honor the mudslide’s victims. Gov. Jay Inslee had urged people across the state to pause in a moment of silence at the exact time the mudslide hit on March 22 to pay tribute to the dead.

    • NW Luna says:

      Helicopter rescue team could disappear after big funding cut

      As horrific as last Saturday was, the residents along Highway 530 did benefit from a remarkable stroke of luck: at the moment the mudslide hit, one of the Pacific Northwest’s only helicopter rescue teams was training just 25 miles away.

      The team arrived less than an hour later and quickly saved several residents, including 4-year-old Jacob Spillers, whose rescue captured on video has gone viral.

      But if tragedy strikes again next year, the team may not be around to help.

      Jacob’s mother was fortunately away at work at time of slide, but remainder of family are dead or missing.

  8. NW Luna says:

    [Obamacare] has made a big dent in the state’s uninsured population of 1 million — reducing it possibly 25 percent or more, already.

    One of the uninsured was Scotty Robertson, a 57-year-old cabinet maker from Bothell who has bladder cancer. Two years ago he lost his workplace insurance. Treatments put him $12,000 in debt, and the cancer also made it tough to buy new insurance — he had a pre-existing condition. “I was plain stuck,” he says.

    Not anymore. On Jan. 1, one of those countless Obamacare rules went into effect. It says insurance companies can no longer refuse adult customers, of any age, due to a pre-existing condition. Nor can they use a sickness to jack up the price.

    Call it the Scotty Robertson rule. For the first time in years, he could get health insurance. It’s costing him $178 a month for a bronze plan that is about half-subsidized by the government. “It’s not the greatest, and they sure didn’t make it easy to sign up,” he said. “But man, I’m glad I got it. I wish I’d had it a year ago.”

    http://seattletimes.com/text/2023258743.html

  9. NW Luna says:

    Native Canadians demand stake in energy superpower play

    Back in the spring of 2012, while walking in the deep woods of northern Ontario, Sonny Gagnon stumbled across a collection of surveying equipment among the towering spruce trees. Gagnon is chief of the Aroland aboriginal tribe, a band of 450 people living in a village of ramshackle houses surrounded by swampy muskeg. He tracks everything that goes on in his community. And the surveying tools weren’t supposed to be there.

    “I was ticked off,” he says, after learning that the equipment belonged to a subcontractor of Cliffs Natural Resources. It turned out Cliffs had plans to mine for chromite to the north of the Aroland reserve and to build a road through the territory to transport truckloads of the mineral to a railhead. ….

    Canadian resource companies say they’re eager to accommodate the First Nations — so long as they don’t make unreasonable demands.

    Guess “unreasonable” means wanting not to be ripped off and have your lands fouled.

  10. RalphB says:

    Justice in America is a sick joke!