http://chud.com/articles en-us N/A nicknunziata@gmail.com Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:16:10 EST 20 http://chud.com/articles/blogs/1986/In-Atlanta-for-Labor-Day-You-Should-Be.html Dragon*Con in Atlanta, Georgia the first weekend of September.  Will they argue over who was the most boring starship captain?  I don't know.  Will we finally learn who looks better in Starfleet regulation nightwear?  Of course not.  We already know it's Stewart for the win.  His tits just drape better.

Yes, there will be Star Trek stars at Dragon*Con.  There always are.  There will also be at least one cast member from Twilight, a room full of LARPers, a world record-breaking Thriller dance-off, and I'm sure Lou Ferrigno will be sitting somewhere prominent, threatening fans to pay him the $25 for his autograph.

Will backfat be hanging out?  Most certainly.  Will Stormtroopers grow breath-mold in their plastic helmets?  Absolutely.  Will someone wear a pair of prescription steampunk goggles on his forehead?  You don't even have to ask.

This is a geek convention, and it will attract all the usual kinds.  But for the second year, there will also be a programming track for assholish know-it-alls like myself who enjoy making Jesus cry by not believing in things.  Yes, it's the second annual Skeptrack.

As a part-time debunker of all things woo (via my podcast and blog at AmateurScientist.org -- click, click), this is where I'll be parked.  If you like Mythbusters, Penn & Teller, or just think people who spout a bunch of useless bullshit deserve a nice smack 'round the face and balls, chances are good you'll enjoy the Skeptrack as well.  There will be famous people!  And a lot of unfamous people who you should know.

Unfortunately, the gnomish godfather of skepticism, James "The Amazing" Randi, will not be in attendance this year.  He's busy fighting off some pesky cancer cells.  Don't worry, though.  Instead of praying for a recovery, he'll be receiving proven scientific treatments from trained medical practitioners.  You know, stuff that works.

But the guest list still impresses.  Phil Plait of BadAstronomy.com will be on hand to talk about space and how it could possibly kill you.  Seth Shostak of SETI will be there, willing to take your questions about what it's like to sleep with Matthew McConaughey.  And Adam Savage, the MythBuster himself, has just been added to the guest list.  Something may or may not be exploded.

All these fine (fuckable) faces, plus Steve Novella and Rebecca Watson from The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, monster hunter Ben Radford, and Scully-with-a-dick Joe Nickell.  If you're not already excited, chances are good you're a jackass.

But wait!  There's more!  Sunday, September 6th, there will also be a live recording of my own Amateur Scientist Podcast!  Prizes, tits, jokes, prizes, skepticism, exposed testicles, and prizes!  Plus, a celebrity guest in the Rev. Ivan Stang, founder of the Church of the SubGenius.  Good lord, this is amazing!

So, once again, if you're in the Atlanta area Labor Day weekend, you could do worse than to stop by and say hello.  Maybe sit down and listen to a panel or two.  You might learn something.  And at the very least, you can pick up a drunken Babylon 5 bit player in a hotel bar.  Because really, that's what Dragon*Con is all about.
]]> no@spam.com (Brian Thompson) Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:00:00 EDT http://chud.com/articles/blogs/1986/In-Atlanta-for-Labor-Day-You-Should-Be.html http://chud.com/articles/blogs/1956/In-Defense-of-Teen-Wolf.html
But I hate it when the hipster love of ironically appreciating crap entertainment bleeds over into my actual tastes.  Beardo, your My Little Pony t-shirt isn't funny.  And neither are your fur-lined Teen Wolf Nikes.

Yes, Nike has created a set of Teen Wolf sneakers.  Beavers color scheme, fur lining and everything.  Of course they're expensive.  Ironic hipster appreciation is fractal in its near-infinite diversity.  The 1980s alone provided a Mel's Hole of artless pop culture ephemera to simultaneously mock and financially support.  Ironic appreciation of Teen Wolf is a niche market, and even Micronesian orphans don't work for free.

But what really galls me is that Teen Wolf doesn't deserve this cultural shitcanning.  It's a good movie, and I like it without any kind of irony.  This also some kind of arrested development, emotionally stunted attachment to childhood passions.  I loved G.I. Joe as a youngster, but I don't plan on seeing the movie.  Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me The Mummy Returns, shame on humanity.  Despite Deep Rising, I know better.

At the risk of sounding like a Roger Ebertian critical relativist, Teen Wolf holds up as an example of a movie with very clear goals executed well.  This is no I Was a Teenage Werewolf.  It's not camp.  Everything is played straight, and no one is taking things too seriously to be caught self-unaware.

Teen Wolf is a better movie than The Dark Knight in this way.  No one asked for the comparison, but there you go.  In its Sisyphean flex for serious credibility, Christopher Nolan, nepotism run rampant, and the writer/director of Blade Trinity took great pains to explain every bullshit detail of Batman and never, ever be caught winking at the audience.  Hence, we have Heat.  Only instead of real people, there's a growly man in a rubber bat suit punching a clown.  And this is an "adult" take on the material.  I'll take the Wolfmobile over the fucking Batpod, thanks.

As part of their descent into the sewers of the zeitgeist, MTV recently announced they're developing a new Teen Wolf TV show.  Only this time, they'll play up the "horror" aspects of the premise.  Think: Teenage slasher film gore meets Twilight-style misguided angst.  Fifty bucks says a female character at some point decides it's okay to let her girlfriend maul her if he's hot enough.

This is the opposite direction Teen Wolf takes as a movie.  Scott Howard freaks the fuck out when he's transforming for the first time in his bathroom.  The subtext here is a little bit brilliant.  The first indication something's amiss comes when he finds a suspiciously long chest hair protruding from his barely post-pubescent sternum.  He's hit full-on by his animal nature while sweating into the medicine cabinet mirror.  When he lifts up his furry, clawed paws and stares at them in horror, I half expected them to be covered in jizz.  It's a great scene.

And a scene made even better by the reaction of his wolfed out father.  (The great character actor James Hampton, who should play the cuddly authority figure in everything.)  And the breakfast conversation afterward.  Here you go:



Teen Wolf is filled with scenes like this.  When Scott turns into the Wolf for the first time in public, during a basketball game, there's an initial silent shock through the crowd.  Then he pulls off some Globetrotter tricks, and everyone's just glad the team can finally win something.  Plus, werewolves are cool.  And sexy.  Why turn this into a horror film?  What's the point?

Teen Wolf is built on an obvious metaphor, sure, but the writers (Jeph Loeb, Scott M. Rosenfelt, and George W. Perkins take the credit) play out that metaphor with a kind of fun and heart Stephanie Meyer and the brothers Nolan don't seem interested in touching.  It's the same kind of fun and heart on display in this year's Star Trek revamp.

Teen Wolf and Star Trek have a lot in common.  They're both filled with otherwise laughable decisions that would be any other movie's cinematic downfall.  Why would Starfleet give their flagship to a crew of hot coeds?  Why does every teenager at Beacon Town High look like he's a week away from qualifying for Medicaid?  Whose idea was it to craft a science fiction plot so dependent on coincidence that it offers more evidence for an interventionist God than the Battlestar Galactica finale?  Do we really need three musical montages showing us the state of the Teen Wolf's emotions?

Fuck it.  J.J. Abrams and Rod Daniel (who went on to direct Beethoven's 2nd, so maybe this was just a fluke) know what matters to their story, their characters, and their tone.  Without the epic space battles, Star Trek might have felt as light and insubstantial as Teen Wolf feels to people who can't reconcile fun and fulfillment.

And sweet Christmas, Michael J. Fox was great, wasn't he?  No one has ever been better at playing twitchy and dorky and eager without being annoying. Proof:

]]> no@spam.com (Brian Thompson) Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT http://chud.com/articles/blogs/1956/In-Defense-of-Teen-Wolf.html http://chud.com/articles/blogs/1946/Man-Beasts.html
And by "human dignity", these people don't mean "the right for two consenting adults to marry each other".  Of course the fuck not.  But I'm not sure what they do mean.  How would grafting a cheetah's hindquarters onto a baby's torso affect the rest of humanity?  Other than creating a new reality show star, obviously.

There's a strange fear among morons that messing around with our genetics is somehow an invitation to disaster.  They see this kind of scientific God playing as equivalent to the biblical Tower of Babel.  They think we might be overstepping our bounds.  But if I learned anything from the Tower of Babel story, it's that God has a problem with skyscrapers.  Yet as Chicago's majestic Willis Tower proves, skyscrapers are still around.  What are you gonna do now, God?

I also learned that the authors of the Old Testament knew fuck all about the history of humanity and the development of language.  And that something really suspicious must be going on in Heaven if God doesn't want anyone close enough to peek inside.  What's he building in there...?

I guess I learned a lot of things from the Tower of Babel story.  But none of these lessons has anything to do with creating a test tube centaur.  In fact, I can't help but think "human dignity" is some kind of code for "genetic purity", which seems a little too eugenicsy for comfort.  It's not like any laboratory mothman is that genetically different from, say, the naturally birthed Elephant Man.  Sure, we shouldn't strive to create genetic freaks doomed to a life of ridicule and pain, but the key difference between the Elephant Man and this hypothetical mothman is the fact that the mothman would have kickass wings.  And if scientists were clever enough to create him with those wings, they'd also be clever enough to fiddle with his genes so that he doesn't die when he sleeps horizontally.  You sure did fuck up with the Elephant Man, nature.

But I can't say I'm 100% pro-man-beast.  There is one key concern, though it has nothing to do with "human digntiy".  There's a question of ownership.  If a private research institute creates a human/animal hybrid, to whom does that creature belong?  To a corporation?  They'd probably just use it to poison third world crops.  And if it was made in a state-run institution--a university biology department, for example--would it belong to the government?  They'd probably just use it to pave roads or collect taxes or whatever the hell.

Which is why I believe there should be federal guidelines for the creation of man-beasts.  Only private individuals should be allowed.  With modern chemistry sets, this isn't too difficult.  Bill Nye the Science Guy showed me how to test for herpes by swobbing the inside of my cheek with a Q-tip, and all my future girlfriends should thank him for it.  Like the World Wide Web, science has gone from the jurisdiction of the haves to the jurisdiction of the wants.  If I can tumble my own rocks, I should be able to create my own rhinoperson.  Though I'd probably just use it to dig out my garden, that's no worse than the slave labor my parents used me for.

And for the sake of human dignity, can we please not hassle gay couples who want to create their own human/animal hybrids?  As long as we're embracing science, we should also acknowledge the fact that gay people have been proven to make just as good parents as straights no matter where the baby comes from.  Whether it be a surrogate, an adoption agency, a dusty African village, or a giant glass tube of artificial fluids in the middle of a garage.
]]> no@spam.com (Brian Thompson) Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT http://chud.com/articles/blogs/1946/Man-Beasts.html http://chud.com/articles/blogs/1939/Abstinence-App.html the new purity ring app unique is its ability to help you not do something.  Fuck people, that is.

Of course, it's arguable whether it even does that.  For just short of a buck, you can download the app, which lets you promise never to stick your dick in things or allow dicks into your thing until you've signed a legal contract with another person.  If you're ever feeling pre-maritally horny, you can turn the app on and watch a ring spin around.  That ring represents your purity.  And by "purity", the makers of this app mean "non-exposure to cum".

Weirdly, the app was created by Wall Entertainment without the support of the official purity ring pushers at the Silver Ring Thing, a group started in 1996 by people who've never had an orgasm and would prefer you shared in their misery.  Sure, the Jonas Brothers may be sporting purity rings on the public stage while they gyrate their cocks in your daughters' faces, but SRT are the brains behind the operation.  Wall Entertainment is seeking their endorsement, but this is probably just to leech a few advertising dollars.  The purity ring app is a strictly for-profit enterprise.  Which is sort of genius, since one of the best ways to blow off sexual tension (other than getting down on your knees and burying your tongue in your partner's asshole) is getting rid of disposable income.

Critics might say that abstinence pledges and purity rings don't work.  Even after the government spent millions pushing the stuff, kids are still fingering one another and ski poling at Bat Mitvahs.  But the real problem here isn't that this stuff doesn't work.  It's that it shouldn't work.

I was a lonely preteen, and I have the Magic cards to prove it.  Or rather, I had the magic cards before I decided to throw them out and replace them with a stack of Trojan ENZ.  I'm not one to poo-poo geekdom in favor of fucking as many skanks as I can find.  But I'm glad I was eventually able to 69 with my latchkey girlfriend before settling in for a night playing Final Fantasy III.  It did wonders for my self esteem.  Before I convinced another person to swallow my ejaculate, I'm not even sure I had self esteem.

We shouldn't be encouraging kids not to have sex.  Quite the opposite.  If more teenagers were fucking, fewer of them would have the time to mess up my lawn.  And nothing can get you through weeks, months, and years of mind-crunching high school agony like the promise of an occasional cunnilingus session.  Woe unto those teenage boys whose fingers don't stink of pussy, for they are the douchy ones.  Douches can get laid, too, obviously, but why should they have a monopoly on happiness?

Worst of all, these people who want to rope off our children's genitals are almost always acting on their twisted religion.  They honestly believe an invisible man in the sky wastes time being irritated that Sally Crestmore is double-stuffing herself with dick and vibrator instead of studying for her geometry test.  But why would God care?  For one thing, there's no reason to believe He exists.  And even if He does, Sally's probably calling out His name.  If the other guy's getting the job done, that is.

These people have the right idea.  An orgasm a day keeps the doctor away.  And if you eat the cucumber with which you've been reaming your ass, that's a double health bonus.  If only there were an app for that.

(Thanks to Holly for the original link.)
]]> no@spam.com (Brian Thompson) Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT http://chud.com/articles/blogs/1939/Abstinence-App.html http://chud.com/articles/blogs/1921/Penitents-Compete.html
Most recently, I watched a show called How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?, in which a bevvy of beautiful singers and performers vie for the lead role in a production of The Sound of Music.  And I don't mean "beautiful" in the "well, pretty for a British chick" sense.  These women are actually attractive.  Symmetrical and everything. 

They sing and dance for the judges, and that makes sense.  But they also have to take part in the standard reality competition show bullshit like boot camp and whatnot.  Pity the poor host who has to pretend scaling a muddy brick wall in army fatigues has something to do with pulling off a matinee performance of Into the Woods.

The panel of judges includes John Barrowman of Doctor Who, Torchwood, and awful pop songs fame.  I watch Doctor Who, so I know who he is.  He's also American, which helps.  The other judges aren't as familiar to me, since they speak in this weird, effeminate, vowely accent.  Oh, and Andrew Lloyd Webber himself is the final arbiter.  A sort of skeezy, pedo-looking executioner of dreams.  The girls he banishes to the scrap heap have to sing So Long, Farewell before their betters.  It's like a live-action Abu Ghraib photo.

And terrible reality television seems to have spread through the rest of the world as well.  Sure, we're all familiar with the things that happen in front of Japanese TV cameras.  But since their screaming, scatological game shows aren't much different than the rest of their entertainments, I don't think they count.

Turkey's Penitents Compete, however, does.  It's a new game show wherein a Muslim imam, a Catholic priest, a rabbi, and a Buddhist monk all compete to win the hearts and minds of atheists.  If one of these religious figures succeeds in converting a non-believer, the former atheist "wins" a trip to the pilgrimage sight most revered by his or her new religion.  It's sort of like The Gong Show, except that giant cane doesn't drag you off stage so much as drag you to hell.

Of course, Turkey's religious blowhards are all upset.  I mean seriously, it's like these people would get bent out of shape over a political cartoon or something.  Turkey is a secular country in that there probably isn't an imam pulling strings attached to the prime minister's joints, but with a 99% Muslim population, you'd better believe the Islamic clergy has a say in what goes down within its borders.  They say Penitents Compete is a slap in the face of religion.  That it cheapens faith.  That God shouldn't be used as entertainment.

I'll give them a pass on the entertainment thing, since I'm sure they've never seen Jesus Christ Superstar.  I would suggest they might be swayed by a production of Muhammad Superstar, but aside from having a shitty title, it's really difficult to launch an entertaining show when the lead actor's face has to be blurred.

But I agree with the producers of Penitents Compete that their show doesn't cheapen religion at all.  In fact, it deepens respect for religion by making sure no one will live without it.  See, they hate atheists, and they believe this show will offer contestants the greatest prize of all: belief in God.

Now, a cynic might say that no one can really make such a life-altering shift in his basic beliefs within the confines of an hour-long game show, but I've seen otherwise rational people go apeshit after a semi-successful game of Plinko.  Miracles happen.

You might also say that the inclusion of a Buddhist monk has nothing to do with God, as Buddhism isn't an Abrahamic religion and doesn't require a belief in any kind of deity.  But I'd argue that a belief in karma is just as idiotic as a belief in an invisible sky god who cries when you masturbate.  Even worse, since if you believe in karma, you also necessarily believe that all cripples deserve it.

So maybe it's not belief in God that Penitents Compete is championing.  It's just belief in something.  Anything.  And it doesn't take some kind of primitive, sun-worshiping cannibal to know belief in something is better than belief in nothing.
]]> no@spam.com (Brian Thompson) Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT http://chud.com/articles/blogs/1921/Penitents-Compete.html http://chud.com/articles/blogs/1909/Ask-a-Sorcerer.html
Perhaps my trip would have been more enjoyable if I'd taken the advice of morons and did as the Romans do, but I'm no fan of selling overpriced ice cream and sleeping on a cot outside my mother's bedroom well into my 30s. (I understand this is a tired stereotype, but as a non-expert on Italian culture, I can tell you it's true. Those men love their mothers. Which might even be understandable in an Oedipal, underground Russian pornography kind of way. But this love is more like codependency, which is neither healthy nor erotic.)

As I've recently learned from the Italian anti-Berlusconi watchdog group Telefono Antiplagio, doing as the Romans do might also include consulting with sorcerers. Now, I can't speak to the efficacy of this group, as Google's website translation service has a hard time picking out political nuance, but I'm all for anti-Berlusconiism. If you didn't already know, Silvio Berlusconi is a former media mogul and current Italian prime minister.  While his flagrant criminal activity, whoring, and hosting of sex parties for geriatric former Eastern Bloc governmental officials is fairly wonderful in a general sense, he's probably not the best choice for a head of state. His public comments also give the impression that he sees women as little more than furniture you can put your dick inside. He also hates gypsies.

As part of their anti-Berlusconi campaign, Telefono Antiplagio looks into the negative influences of Italian media, which is largely controlled by the prime minister's companies. They believe Berlusconian misinformation has led to the dumbing down of Italian society. I can't find the Italian box office returns for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, so I can't speak to the current health of their national intelligence. But T.A. has discovered that 18% of Italians consult with sorcerers for help with personal and professional problems.

The good news here is that there's at least one part of the world where sorcery is still a viable occupation. Sure, you'll occasionally run into the odd American or Canadian sorcerer, but these people often work pro bono and are usually on some kind of government assistance. Which is a shame, since sorcery is important work, especially in these times of greater ecological awareness. Rather than tossing your old eyes of newt and locks of freshly scrubbed virgin's hair into a landfill, better to recycle them through donations to your local sorcerer.

The bad news is that sorcery isn't real. Or at least, it isn't real in the sense that it actually works to accomplish any sort of goal. Yank on a sorcerer's beard, and there's a 60/30 chance it's genuine, with a 10% chance he or she has no beard at all. But yank on a sorcerer's staff, and you won't be struck by lightning or even transformed into an animated broom forced to joyfully clean someone's cottage.

Furthermore, belief in sorcery indicates a stunning lack of education. I'm not talking book learning here, though reading a book never hurts unless it's about teenage vampires or something. No, I'm talking about education through experience. The school of hard knocks, Chinatown, and the like. Who among us hasn't bought a remainder copy of the Necronomicon from Books-a-Million and tried to summon a Were-creature to rip out the entrails of our enemies and bed the objects of our desires as we mentally see through their eyes, Beastmaster-like? And have any of us ever succeeded? Of course not. While we're sitting crosslegged in our salt circles causing irreversible damage to our Pixies posters, our enemies are being eviscerated and our paramours are being bedded by Benicio del Toro, who is a creature of science, not magic.

T.A. seems to include astrologers and simple fortune tellers among the sorcerers mentioned in their study. This is taxonomically nonsensical, but that doesn't mean astrology and fortune telling are any less bullshitty. Still, it rubs me the wrong way, since every velvet-clad astrologer or palm reader working your local ren fair would fucking kill to be called a sorcerer. Seriously, they are fully capable of murder.

So these numbers may be a tad diluted, but they're no less alarming. 46% of sorcery enthusiasts consult professional liars over matters of the heart. No, not Michael Jackson/Billy Mays matters of the heart.  The Righteous Brothers kind. Meanwhile, a quarter are interested in health problems, 22% are seeking guidance in matters of violence (the specifics are unclear, but I believe this means they're looking to hire magic-wielding hitmen, which is a Dimension Films pitch waiting to happen), and 7% look to the criminally deluded for help with problems at work.

So, what can we do as rationalists to help the Italian people break the bonds of superstition and enter the Age of Enlightenment? How can we encourage them to give up on useless magic and instead turn to the scientific wonders of emotionally crippling antidepressants and non-magic-wielding hitmen?

Well, why not go straight to the top?  You may write to Italian prime minister and media gatekeeper Silvio Berlusconi at this address:

Silvio Berlusconi
Premier's Office
Palazzo Chigi
Piazza Colonna
Rome 00187
Italy

I've already done so and have received this response:

Dear Mr. Thompson,

You-a so beautiful! I want to rub-a my body against your juicy thighs! Be with me, and let me spread-a my cock butter all over your-a face!

Sincerely,
Silvio Berlusconi
Prime Minister of Italy

Granted, I included a doctored photo of myself with my face pasted on what I've been told is Miley Cyrus' naked body. I did this for the sake of expediency. I don't know if it really is Miley Cyrus' naked body, but I do know one thing: Italy is a strange place.
]]> no@spam.com (Brian Thompson) Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:00:00 EDT http://chud.com/articles/blogs/1909/Ask-a-Sorcerer.html http://chud.com/articles/blogs/1630/A-Human-Masterpiece-In-Defense-of-Battlestar-Galactica039s-Ending.html There seems to be a pretty violent backlash against Battlestar Galactica's series finale, so here's another essay of support.  It's cross-posted at the excellent geektainment website Pink Raygun, so you'll have to click over there to read the second half.

When all the guns stopped blazing and the nukes started flying, Battlestar Galactica's final episode lost its grip on reality.  It also found a human peace it had been lumbering toward over the last four years--one we all knew was coming but none of us expected.  There's been a lot of criticism of the last ten or so hours of TV's greatest science fiction show.  The pace was too slow.  The tone was too dark.  The finale punctuated an epic story with a literal deus ex machina, as the last remains of humanity were saved only by divine intervention.  It's a testament to the emotional investment BSG earned from its viewers over the years that so many hearts could be broken at the end.  To be so violently disappointed, one has to have been violently committed at some point.  It's understandable to be upset with the finale, but it's also indefensible.  Battlestar Galactica ended with a planetload of mysticism and gobbledygook, but in the process, it earned its status as a storytelling masterpiece.

There are two kinds of Galactica fans: the "who"s and the "why"s.  And there's no better way to demonstrate the distinction than with one of the show's many central mysteries.  Once the final four Cylons were revealed at the end of season three, the identity of the fifth became the driving question of season four.  Many couldn't stop debating who the final Cylon would be.  My money was on Hotdog, if only because I figured no one would expect it.  And when I found out John Hodgman would be guest starring in the last half of the season, I hoped like hell he'd be the fifth.  Especially if it turned out he really was a PC.  But, of course, Ellen Tigh got the gig, and the disappointment started to roll in.  Apparently people wanted the final Cylon to be a more central character like Roslin or Adama or Starbuck.  These were the "who" fans.  Personally, I was much more interested in why there even was a final Cylon.  It didn't matter to me who that character was, but why she existed in the first place.  What role do the final Cylons play, and why are they different from the others?

Every mystery posed by BSG created another two sets of questions.  How did Starbuck come back to life, and why did she come back to life?  How is Baltar seeing this ghostly Six, and why is he seeing this ghostly Six?  Who built that ancient temple, and why did the temple point to the eye of Jupiter?  I'll admit that the answers to the "who" and "how" questions offered at the end of the series aren't particularly satisfying for those invested in them.  Basically, "God" and "because God can do some crazy magic" are what we're left with, and that's infuriating to many people.  But the answers to the "why"s are so intriguing and sublime and hold such an uncomfortable mirror to humanity that I can't help but be overjoyed with the finale--mumbo jumbo and all.

Battlestar Galactica is not Star Trek.  When Star Trek dealt with religion and spirituality at all, it was always in scientific terms.  The gods of Bajor turned out to be aliens living in a wormhole.  God himself was just a mean old man on a barren planet at the center of the galaxy.  (And just what does he need with a starship?)  But in the universe of BSG, God is real.  And not only is He real, he's also a seemingly omnipotent being able to guide humans over generations with subtle signs and wonders.  For a show so focused on humanity that there are no aliens in sight and even our robot enemies look exactly like us, throwing God into the mix might seem to lift BSG off the gritty ground it's been firmly footed upon for so long.  It might feel like a dash of fantasy in a world seemingly built to be the opposite of fantasy.

But the thing is, there is no humanity without God.  No, that's not some endorsement of creationism.  I don't believe in God at all--not even in some kind of wishy-washy "he's whatever we want him to be" or "he is all things" kind of way.  I believe we are all biological processes loosely held together by electrical attractions, and when we die there's nothing more for us.  And it's exactly because of this lack of faith that I think there's nothing more human than the concept of God.  If you trace humanity's religious history, you discover a timeline of our own self-awareness.  In the beginning, the gods were the answers to scientific questions we couldn't otherwise fathom.  Why does the sun rise?  Why do the crops grow?  In time, the gods became our lawbringers.  They were harsh and wise, but also sometimes petty and cruel.  They were a reflection of a society based only around survival.  When we advanced, we had the luxury of self-reflection, and we didn't like what we saw.  Our God became an ideal.  A warrior king who helped us conquer, and then a benevolent dictator.  And then a source of unending love.  God became both a reflection of our better natures and a prediction of our potential.

And so it was on Battlestar Galactica.  The desperate humans clinging to their pantheon, trying to survive.  The calm and certain Cylons and their One True God, who is the way and the light and doesn't suffer imperfect pagans gladly.  Then, there were the Cylon rebels--the ones who examined themselves and turned their God into a loving inclusionist, just like they wanted to be themselves.  But in the end, neither humans or Cylons were right about God.

Read the rest here.
]]> no@spam.com (Brian Thompson) Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT http://chud.com/articles/blogs/1630/A-Human-Masterpiece-In-Defense-of-Battlestar-Galactica039s-Ending.html http://chud.com/articles/blogs/1542/Racist-Nipples.html
And yes, I know they're actually Chinese.  I'm not just calling them Chinese because they look Asian.  And I don't describe every soft drink as Coke.

I do, however, call all teenagers dipshits.  Accurate?  Maybe not.  But it rings true.

Anyway, I don't mind them mostly.  The coworkers, that is.  Mine is the kind of office that's mostly staffed by women.  My job is usually done by girls.

No, I don't run the popcorn machine down at the miniature golf course.

I get along with women.  We get each other on a deep spiritual level, which usually means they won't sleep with me.  But that's cool, because Facebook pictures are getting skankier and skankier.

Yes, I masturbate a lot.  And once I fingered a coworker in the back of a Subaru.  Different job at the time.  I'd never do it again, since there wasn't much to our connection beyond the fingering, and that's a weird sense memory to have during an office meeting.

So I'm fine with most of my coworkers.  Other than the dipshit teenagers who work part-time making copies and running mail, these are the kind of people I wouldn't mind waving to in the grocery store parking lot.  I won't talk to them, but I'll smile at least.

But there's one coworker I hate.  She's just a horrible woman.  Her skin is stretched and cracked and weathered like the Sphinx.  She glows orange, and I don't know if it's because of her permanently tattooed makeup or the seething hatred that bubbles just under her leathery surface.

She's racist like nobody's business.  Which really shouldn't be anybody's business except she's one of those racists who assumes that because you're white too, you must be in on the joke.  She told me the other day that it's no wonder the inauguration was so crowded, since black people don't have jobs.  Unbelievable.

Of course, she did have the propriety to say "black people" that time, so that's not nothing, I suppose.

She's big into Jesus.  Always talking about her church.  Loved Sarah Palin.  One of her friends, she told me, had turned against the Republican party because Sarah Palin shoots animals from aerial vehicles.  "That's just wrong," my coworker's friend said.  Which seems a little off-point, but if hunting ethics are a gateway drug to rational thinking, who am I to criticize?  My coworker, though, she wasn't too surprised.  Her friend is also "for abortion", so who can take her opinion seriously?

Just a horrible person, my coworker.  Should I tell you her name?  Probably not, but I don't think she reads CHUD.  I don't think she reads, really.

And no, that's not some kind of elitist liberal jab.  At an office lunch one time, she was like, "I don't get books."

That's an exact quote.  I wrote it on my napkin in tartar sauce, which I had to let dry before I could read.

So I decided today to do without the Mexican or the Chinese or the Chinese Mexican and go to the all-you-can-eat pizza buffet.

Technically, it's an "all-you-care-to-eat" buffet, but who am I kidding? 

Anyway, I'm sitting next to the window, and I think there's a jalapeno on my slice of pan supreme.  Shouldn't be jalapenos on the pan supreme, I'm thinking, so I go to pick it off.  But it's not a jalapeno.  It's like a dried waterbug thing.

So I'm ready to puke because I suddenly catch a whiff of the pizza slice, which in addition to smelling like delicious cheese and peppers also has the undercurrent of sour dead bug smell.  This is the worst.

Then I look up and see my coworker walking across the parking lot.  Dammit, I'm thinking, I can't escape these people!  But there's her fucking lizard foot face.  It's cold today, so she's wearing this hideous leopard fur parka thing.  But it's also windy, so her hideous parka is flapping open.

And because Cindy's a disgusting skank, she's wearing this tissue-thin shoulderless top.  Yeah, her name is Cindy, so there you go.  And her meth-hewn clavicles are protruding from her flesh like some sort of parasite.  And because it's drizzly outside, she's covered in a fine, moist sheen that soaked through her top, turning it translucent so that I can see her pitch-black racist nipples right there in public.

Long story short, sometimes I don't think my erections know a goddamn thing about me.
]]> no@spam.com (Brian Thompson) Mon, 26 Jan 2009 00:00:00 EST http://chud.com/articles/blogs/1542/Racist-Nipples.html http://chud.com/articles/blogs/1528/Just-Something-About-Donut-Holes-and-Jesus.html
First of all, I shouldn’t have been surprised when the gentleman called me a faggot.  I didn’t stare at him like that.  I didn’t cock my hip and adopt that half-melted posture I use for seduction.  But, yes, I wore my purple Pooh sweater with the neckline cut off.  Why was the neckline cut off?  Because of mustard, that’s why.  I’m a terrible eater.  After consuming an overstuffed frozen taco one time, I wiped my mouth on my pants.  With my legs crossed, it’s surprisingly easy.

Yes, it was laundry day, so I should have understood.  And plus, there was no hate in his voice.  Just a dumb kind of certainty, like he was pointing out the make and model of a particularly interesting truck.
  
“Hey, faggot,” the gentleman said.
  
I nodded at him like, “Uh huh.  Yes.”, and stepped closer to the register.  A secretary in worn-out flats carried six or seven boxes of donuts from the counter.  Unless she had eyes in her hair, I couldn’t tell you how she navigated.
  
Yes, my sweater was cinched with a belt.  That may or may not be relevant.
  
And so, when the time came, I ordered my little white sack of one half dozen glazed donut holes and took them to my usual corner booth to read the headlines in USA Today.  I moved to toss the sports section, but an article about hockey caught my eye.  There’s still professional hockey going on, which I find unbelievable.
  
“Sir, if you’re not going to order, I’m gonna have to ask you to please step out of line,” the little fat redheaded girl with the freckles said to the gentleman.
  
He hitched up his dirtied chinos and rubbed up and down on his breasts.  His t-shirt sounded like sandpaper.  He lifted his baseball cap and brought it back down on his greasy mop again, like he was airing it out.  “Well,” he said, “I don’t reckon I’m in the donut market today.”
  
And I went back to my USA Today, because how was I supposed to know he’d sit down at my table?  Who’d expect that?
  
“Hey, faggot,” he said, “Let me get one of them donut holes.”
  
I just had the sack open on the table there, so there was nothing stopping him from reaching in and grabbing himself one of my holes, which is exactly what he did.  I watched him chew and noticed he was what my high school friends and I would have called a dirtlip.  Meaning, he had this wispy, prepubescent dusting of mustache along his upper lip.  I was so grossed out, I didn’t even look at the hand that just contaminated my donut hole sack.  I can only handle so much at a time.
  
“Mmm.  They make a damn good hole here.”
  
The gentleman pulled a napkin from its chrome prison and wiped his dirtlip of sugar glaze.
  
“So what are you doing today?” he said.  Like we were friends!
  
“Well, I’ve got some laundry to do.”  I looked at my sleeve, noticed an old mustard stain I’d missed, and clandestinely covered it with my hand.
  
“I’m thinking of seeing a movie,” the gentleman said.  He grabbed the lifestyle section of my USA Today, licked the tip of his index finger, and began flipping pages.  “What’s playing, do you know?”
  
USA Today is a national paper, so there aren’t any local listings.  But even after I told him that, he still flipped through the paper like he didn’t care.
  
He slapped the table, and I got a look at his hand.  I twisted the donut hole sack closed.  “I know!” he said.  “Let’s go see that Christ movie.  You know, the Christ?  Let’s go see that Christ movie.”
  
“The Passion of the Christ?” I offered.  The local Tinseltown was showing a Christmas revival.
  
“What do you say, faggot?  What’re you doing today?  Wanna see a movie with me?”

And though I never saw him buy one of those soft plastic bottles of chocolate milk they sold at the donut place, he obviously hid one somewhere on his person, because he poured a little milk onto the floor every time Jesus was whipped, which was a bunch.  Every now and then he’d laugh at something—I don’t know what, because that movie was terrifying—but then I’d turn to him, and he looked like he was crying.  I saw a tear, I swear, catch in his dirtlip before he wiped it off with the back of his contaminated hand.  But it could have been chocolate milk.
  
He offered me one of my donut holes towards the end, but I turned him down.

I should have been surprised when we were back at my apartment making out with Mythbusters on the TV.  Out the corner of my eye, I saw that guy with the walrus mustache, so there was no way I couldn’t think about that dirtlip the whole time.  Plus, the gentleman’s tongue tasted like chocolate milk and donut holes.
  
Anyway, that’s not what I should have been surprised about.  I should have been surprised because I barely knew this gentleman.  Also, I wasn’t gay.  But he made assumptions based on my sweater, and I’m not really good at asserting myself.  For instance, when he didn’t wash his hands after using my bathroom, I couldn’t muster the balls to say a word.
  
Not only should I have been surprised, but I was surprised when the gentleman pushed me away, reached behind his neck, and unzipped what I suddenly realized was a skin suit.  He wriggled out of his dirtlip skin like a surfer on the beach and stood there in front of the Discovery Channel looking like an entirely different gentleman.  Thanks to the movie, I understood that he was Jesus the Christ.
  
“And so now you understand,” he said.
  
“Yes,” I said.  This was shocking!
  
“You understand why I couldn’t appear to you before.  We have important work to do, you and I.  This is just the beginning of something that will last through the ages.”
  
I looked at his forehead and shoulders for scars, but because of miracles, he was smooth as a puppy’s tummy.
  
“I have good news for you,” the Gentleman said.  “An exciting opportunity you can’t turn down.”
  
I picked a piece of donut hole from my molars with the tip of my tongue and waited.
  
“Have you ever heard of Amway?” he said.
 
I rolled my eyes like, “Oh, one of these.”
  
The gentleman laughed.  “Just kidding,” he said.
  
And then we did it.

True story.
]]> no@spam.com (Brian Thompson) Mon, 19 Jan 2009 00:00:00 EST http://chud.com/articles/blogs/1528/Just-Something-About-Donut-Holes-and-Jesus.html http://chud.com/articles/blogs/1418/I-Love-Doctor-Who.html It’s probably too strong to say I grew up hating Doctor Who.  I’d only seen bits and pieces in the wee hours of the night on PBS.  Not nearly enough to form an opinion other than “this looks cheap” or “plungers aren’t scary”.  I’m no snob.  Or, I should say, I wasn’t back then.  Now I only dress myself in the finest silks and drink nothing but coffee brewed from beans that have passed through the colons of the world’s most dangerous endangered species.  But as a kid, I’d just as soon soak in the big budget spectacle of Star Wars or David Lynch’s Dune as reruns of the ‘70s Spider-Man show, with its spandex and wires and everything.

More than anything, I was frightened of Doctor Who.  Intimidated, you might say.  My second home was in the mall, in the back corner of Waldenbooks where I’d thumb through Star Trek novels and use the lead-based sword tip of an elven mage figurine to scratch the days of my virginity into the laminate floor.  I was always turned off by the shelves and shelves of books with the same logo repeated on all their spines—those huge series that had been published continually since the time of Gutenberg.  (Steve Gutenberg, that is.  Which translates roughly to 1983 or so.)  Like today’s target demographics, I preferred trilogies.  I liked my epics to be manageable.  And the mountain of Doctor Who books weren’t so much an invitation as a threat for anyone thinking about picking one up.  Because I’m slightly autistic (i.e. a dork), I would have had to start at the beginning and finish them all.  There’s just no way.  I only had the summer, and I needed to beat Shadowgate before I had to return it to National Video.

Even if I’d wanted to look beyond the tin foil sets and hazy videotape look of any BBC TV production, the decades of Doctor Who backlog seemed like too much of a burden.  Even as a geek in a Highlander t-shirt, this is probably why I felt I could look down on Doctor Who fans.  These people had too much time.  They were all old and pudgy and tended to be permanent students in the history department of the local university.  They all wore tiny backpacks and rode bicycles with corrective saddles.  They were full of faulty, useless trivia and had mustaches flecked with food.  Just gross.

So when my friend Bill (hi, Bill) first told me I needed to check out the latest Doctor Who reboot—the one that ditches the tin foil and amazing Technicolor scarves—I just ignored him.  Our tastes usually overlap.  Mostly.  We both love Goodbye, Uncle Tom.  I could take or leave Cannibal Holocaust.  But I knew he’d been a Doctor Who fan since he was a kid.  He’d put in the time.  He’d sipped the Kool-Aid and couldn’t be trusted.

But it’s funny how you can call in sick to work fully intending to spend your day masturbating to porn from pay sites to which you’ve stolen passwords from message boards, and you end up with a lot of free time on your hands.  Browsing through torrent sites for more free illegal porn (we all have our edgy fetishes), I came across a package deal of the first three seasons of the new and improved Doctor Who.  What did I have to lose?

It’s a good thing my neighbor’s unprotected wifi network is to fast, or I wouldn’t have been able to fire up the first episode before my surprisingly hot girlfriend came home from work.  When you don’t have to constantly suspend your disbelief in the foam rubber monster suits and soundstage-y clop clops whenever anyone walks across the screen—when you’re forced to mainline the core quirks of Doctor Who without much of an external cheese filter—damned if the thing doesn’t have a great hook.  A goofy Brit, his cute female sidekick, and a space/time machine that’s bigger on the inside than out.  Sure, that first episode is fairly clunky (the Doctor fights walking mannequins), but the show ambles by with a swagger and a grin.  As a kid, I’d watch Robocop and walk around the house for days with stiff limbs and a humorless scowl.  I’d watch Moonraker and pretend I was a pompous, skydiving pre-geriatric.  Back then, I pretended the broomstick I didn’t ask my mom if I could saw off was a lightsaber, and now every slightly cylindrical object I hold in my hand momentarily becomes a sonic screwdriver.  It annoys my surprisingly hot girlfriend when I’m waving a ballpoint pen at the lock on our back door while she’s stumbling behind me with two armloads of groceries, but it’s worth the scowls to feel like an uncritical kid again.

Doctor Who isn’t the best show, and it’s not even my favorite.  The stories run the gamut from pure goofball cheese to heart tugging pathos, but it never really takes itself seriously.  There are other shows that work my adult love muscles (Buffy, Northern Exposure, Arrested Development, The Real Housewives of Orange County), but there’s nothing else on the air right now that can burrow through all the silk-clad, gourmet coffee-infused cynicism of my ever-rotting flesh to find the neglected childish joy inside.

I want a ride in the TARDIS.  I wouldn’t mind a robot dog.  And I’d fucking kill to snog Madame de Pompadour.

]]> no@spam.com (Brian Thompson) Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EST http://chud.com/articles/blogs/1418/I-Love-Doctor-Who.html