Something Inspired Someone Else Said

"Then, knees touching, neck muscles relaxing, brow drying in the cold dry air, we should drink. Certain things were put upon this earth for our enjoyment, and it’s wasteful and wicked to condemn them," -Barbara Holland, "in praise of the happy hour, the darkened bar, and the winding down of the day".

The New Yorker article I took the quote from begins thusly:

A few weeks ago, the headline of an obituary in the Times caught my eye: “Barbara Holland, Defender of Small Vices, Dies at 77.” A “defender of small vices”—what a fine title by which to be remembered, the kind of informal, appointed job that you didn’t know exists but then seems essential once you do.

I never knew Ms. Holland, nor did I even know of her before today, and although we were divided by forty years and a vast swath of the United States I already consider her a kindred spirit. In Endangered Pleasures I think I may have just found the next submission for my book club.

(via)

Drunken Safety Dance At The Palms, Las Vegas

No, not everything that happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. We didn't know this kid but he was quite entertaining:

Home Again, Home Again...

I flew back in from Vegas late Sunday night and then spent most of Monday nursing one of the most dehydrating hangovers I've ever endured. One of the problems with getting together with my buddies from college is that we always drink and party as if we're still twenty years old, and I certainly felt it this time. On the plus side however I actually broke even at the tables, which is quite a rarity for me as I totally stink at cards (plus the Texas/Texas Tech game was easy money).

I had a couple of revelations as it concerns my blogging on this trip that I'll go more into later but for now I'm just going to get myself some Gatorade. So, what'd I miss while I was gone?

Vegas, Baby!

That's right: when Sin City calls you have to accept the charges. I'll be back in a few days. Be careful of the Sasquatch traps I've set throughout the blog, they usually only snare idiots but better safe than sorry. I'm out.

Fried Frito Pie Wins At State Fair Of Texas

This is an inspired idea:

Some compared it to a rookie winning the Super Bowl MVP when three culinary novices swept the Best Taste award at the sixth annual Big Tex Choice Awards yesterday.

The creators of Texas Fried Frito Pie beat out the competition to take the prize at the Texas State Fair, the Dallas Morning News reported.

The team was made up of Michael Thomas, the originator, Richard Roznowski, the motivator and Jeffrey Lovel, the facilitator, all of whom had a hand in creating the Texas Fried Frito Pie -- balls of cheese and chili rolled in corn chips and then battered and deep friend -- and getting it to the fair.

"We're all big time fair-goers. I probably go six or seven times a year, which for a 3 week fair is a lot. We'd been looking for a classic fair food that hadn't been done fried, and Frito pie just made sense," Lovell told Slashfood.

The trio tried many brands of chili, chips and cheese before settling on Texas Chili Company's chili and a "basic" cheese and chip, Lovell said. "We combine and the chili and the cheese and then we surround it in chips and then we freeze it and then we batter it and fry it."

They spent about six months on the recipe, the Morning News reported. "We had to increase our exercise considerably," Roznowski told the paper.

Since moving to California nobody I've met has ever heard of Frito pie, a staple of Texas cuisine, except for one chick who grew up in Arkansas. The Creativity Award was won by deep fried beer, essentially beer inside ravioli shells. I can't say that I particularly relish the thought of hot beer exploding in my mouth but I'm definitely pining for that basket of deliciousness pictured above.

(via, hat tip: Doug"E")

This Post Now Has A Title

Apologies for the lack of posting lately, a lot of things have been piling up. I'm happy to say that my NFL fantasy draft went fairly well this morning (even got a few Dallas Cowboys on my team) and my book club meeting earlier this evening was all fundamentalist Mormonism, sushi and martinis; good times and a great combination. Regular posting will resume tomorrow.

Something Wise Someone Else Said

"Write drunk, edit sober," -Ernest Hemingway.

I do enjoy writing much more than I do editing. Salut, Papa.

(via)

Homemade Caprese

I've never made one of these myself before but a friend recently gave me some tomatoes from his garden so I decided to give it a shot. Man, so tasty and so easy. I paired it with a rather light Pinot Grigio, they really went well together. This is going to become a regular staple at my house.

Picture Of The Day

For the record, both of these countries have now been eliminated from the World Cup:

President Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron kept their word Saturday and fulfilled a recent bet made on the World Cup match between the United States and England.

The wager, made two weeks earlier, had the leader of the losing country owing beer to the leader of the winning country. But the two teams tied so both men brought beers to the summit and exchanged the items during their bilateral meeting.

Obama presented Cameron with Goose Island 312 beer from Chicago while Cameron gave the President 5.2 percent Hobb Goblin beer.

I think Obama got the better end of that beer swap. It's nice to see our president acting like an actual everyday person rather than some weird joyless teetotaler, isn't it?

Disposable Single Serving Wine Glasses

Call me a wine snob if you will (and you should because I totally am) but I have a feeling that this may not be the best glass of wine I've ever tasted:

According to our old friend Matt over at Crave, the inventor of this disposable stemware actually took it on a show dedicated to finding cool new products, and it was rejected. The joke’s on them; they’re blowing up over in the UK. At £2.25 a glass (~$3.40) they’re not exactly cost effective, but neither is buying a Rainier for $4 at a bar downtown — why do I do that?

And cost aside, the real advantage is in the simple fact that it’s sealed and good to go. The foil top is like a yogurt container’s, keeping your wine fresh and your legal status legit. No need for unsightly paper bags! Just wait till the fuzz goes by, pop the top, and enjoy a nice glass of… Le Froglet?! What kind of name for a wine is that?

Now I'm all about convenience, recycling and drinking vino but I can say with almost total certainty that I'll never partake of this product. Why? Because wine already comes in a disposable single serving size: it's called a bottle. Don't open it if you're not gonna finish it.

(via)

Matrix Reloaded Chateau Fight Scene

Posted merely because it's 2:00 in the morning, I'm eating crab-stuffed salmon whilst drinking a second bottle of very nice Chardonnay and I wanted to watch one of the most gorgeous, bad-ass fight scenes ever digitized (it's not fully letter boxed but just try to deal):


At this point I can't imagine a time in my life when this scene will ever seem old or boring.

Drunken Introspection

I just had a Texan moment of clarity in my kitchen: what are the odds that I'm the only person in California drinking Shiner Bock and eating fried catfish at this exact moment in time? A crisp new Benjamin says I am. Life is good. Yee haw, yo.

Transgenic Spider-Goats

Just imagine the scientific and commercial applications of this:

ON a farm in Wyoming, USA, goats are being milked for their spider webs.

And if that sounds bizarre, molecular biologist Randy Lewis claims that within two years, spider silk milked from goats could replace your body's tired or strained tendons and ligaments - maybe even bones.

Professor Lewis and his team at the University of Wyoming have successfully implanted the silk-making genes from a golden orb spider into a herd of goats and are now, finally, producing one of nature's strongest products in useable quantities.

Here's the longer video explanation:


Science has been lagging a bit in providing me with the self-driving cars and jet-packs I was promised in its fiction as a lad so I always get excited about surreal advances like this one. I can only hope that a genetically-modified, vodka-lactating cow is on the scientific horizon. Think of the steaks...

Picture Of The Day

England is trying to choose a new Prime Minister today. This is how you vote:

Voters arrive at the Hare and Hounds pub which is being used as a polling station on May 6, 2010 in Corsham, England. Vote early. Vote often. Vote drunk!

So we fought for and won our independence from these guys a couple hundred years ago so I could vote in a Catholic church while they get to vote in their pubs. Somehow it lessens the victory.

[Update: Andrew Sullivan adds the following about Britain's electoral rules:

Yes, you can vote drunk and you can bring your dog with you into the polling booth. You are also fully entitled to scrawl on your ballot terms like "Fuck The System!" What a civilized place.

Have I mentioned that they get to vote in their pubs? Civilized, indeed.]

[Update II: One of his readers responds:

So those lucky bastards in Merry Ole England can vote drunk? At a pub, no less? While we poor unlucky bastards here in Indiana (who voted on Tuesday) can’t even BUY alcohol on election day

Alcohol is served in restaurants and bars on Monday through Saturday from 7 a.m. to 3 a.m. and from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 a.m. on Sundays.

Alcoholic beverages can be purchased from private retail package stores, and beer and wine can be bought in grocery stores, convenience stores, and drug stores. No alcohol is sold on Christmas Day and Election Day.”

If you don't need a drink on both Christmas Day and Election Day you obviously haven't been living in America lately.]

Lowering The Drinking Age To 18

I've long been a fan of doing this even after I turned twenty-one. Under my plan every American who is both eighteen-years-old and a high school graduate would automatically be of legal drinking age and able to purchase and consume alcohol. Just being eighteen wouldn't work because we would experience the same outcome we do in colleges: students who are old enough to drink would constantly be buying alcohol for those who are not. It would also be a great incentive for kids to stay in school and get their degree or pass a high school equivalency exam (all of those who do not do so would have to wait until they turn twenty-one to drink lawfully). We allow eighteen-year-olds to be tried as adults, vote, own guns and serve in the military yet when it comes to consuming alcohol they are treated as second-class citizens. I say that if someone can risk their life for their country they should be able to enjoy a beer after work. What do you think?

American Power And Husky Chest Thumping

I'll admit that one of my guilty little pleasures when fucking with my portly conservative counterpart Donald Douglas of American Power is watching him insist that he has consistently gotten the best of me in our rhetorical online back and forths. Actually, I'm probably understating his insistence: apparently he constantly destroys me, decimating my arguments with infallible logic such as calling me an idiot and then yelling from the rooftops about how badly he's beaten me, and then yelling even louder when others don't agree that he's as super cool as he insists (you'll notice that both of his recent posts about me preclude anyone from commenting; Don just loves the First Amendment and the free exchange of ideas). As I've said before, real bad asses don't need to tell other people how bad ass they are because everyone already knows. Now I'm not saying that I'm a bad ass (although I totally am) but the converse to the above is also true: someone who is constantly bragging about what a bad ass they are is more than likely merely a douche nozzle instead, and this is also usually pretty apparent to everyone else as well.

With that in mind join me, won't you, as I fisk Don's latest screed about yours truly, "JBW Polling 'Analysis': NEW. MORE. DESPERATE. FAIL." Don't worry, I have plenty of wine for this, and please forgive me if my typing becomes a bit slurred by the end but if I didn't intoxicate myself in the process it wouldn't be fair to Chubs Mackenzie here:

ROTLMFAO!!

It worked! My post this morning caused JBW to shoot his twaddle-wad like the adolescent dork he is. See, "I Don't Think Donald Douglas Likes Me..."

It worked? What, is Don implying that his last post about me was just the first chess move in a grand Machiavellian plan to get me to... write a response to a post attacking me? Damn! He's always so many moves ahead of me (and so many pounds heavier).

Actually, I don't even know JBW, although I don't particularly care for atheist online-troll sex-predators who harass attractive women across the web. And besides, what I really don't like is noodle-headed analysis like this ... JBW misspecifies my essay as predicated on polling data, and then he even gets that wrong:

He ... quotes two polls concerning Obama's approval ratings that seem to definitively prove that the president is also subject to this bout of "epic fail", except of course that they don't. The most recent RealClearPolitics accumulation of polling data shows the Rasmussen poll to be a statistical outlier (there is a consistent right-leaning bias in Rasmussen's methodology; pay attention to how often the right points solely to this organization's polling data to back up their talking points) while every other major polling firm shows Obama's approval rating to be either positive or within the margin of error (he's +2 overall)

Actually, RCP's "accumulated" polling averages have been dismissed by experts as wildly inappropriate indicators of public opinion. I wrote about that here, "Mixed Poll Averages Risky as Handicapping Tool" (in political science lingo, the pooled findings are flawed due to "incommensurability"). Moreover, leftists call Rasmussen an "outlier" not because of methodological errors, but because they disagree with the results. Or, as JBW puts it, "pay attention to how often the right points solely to this organization's polling data to back up their talking points) ..."

Atheist? Of course I am and quite proud of it, although I hardly see how it's relevant to this discussion unless Don is using it as a pejorative insult like "adolescent dork", which of course he is. Hey Don, how's all that Jesusy Christy stuff working out for ya? Magic lover. Online-troll? Debatable and highly subjective, although it was I who had to scold Don on several occasions about link-whoring back to himself on my site. Sex-predator who harasses attractive women across the web? What would he have me do, harass ugly chicks? Life's too short for such nonsense.

And my citation of the RealClearPolitics aggregate poll wasn't to use it as an indicator of public opinion but rather to illustrate how much of an outlier Rasmussen is, and I'm pretty sure I said just that. And I disagree with the results because of methodological errors. Which do you think is more likely: that Rasmussen leans rightward because they give more weight to likely Republican voters in their polls or that every other polling outfit is wrong, consistently so and all in the exact same way? Whether one agrees with the results or not, a statistical outlier is still a statistical outlier. Could someone please translate that into political science lingo for Butterball?

I hate to be hard on the boy, but JBW's proven badly wrong by this morning's CBS poll, "Obama's Approval Rating Hits New Low." (hardly a "wingnut" outlet):

Last week, President Obama signed historic health care reform legislation into law -- but his legislative success doesn't seem to have helped his image with the American public.

The latest CBS News Poll, conducted between March 29 and April 1, found Americans unhappier than ever with Mr. Obama's handling of health care - and still worried about the state of the economy.

That's after ObamaCare passed. So yes, JBW. EPIC. FAIL.

Don's point in discussing the two polls he cited was to illustrate so-called "Obama fail" i.e. "Overall, 47% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. Fifty-three percent (53%) disapprove ..." and "last week at CNN: "Majority Disapprove of Obama for First Time." In other words, he was claiming that Obama's disapproval ratings were higher than his approval numbers. I disputed this assessment by stating and showing that Obama's current approval numbers are in fact higher than his disapproval numbers, and Don's masterful rebuttal was to post the above graph. Notice anything similar to what I just said? Yes, his approval numbers are down but they're still more positive than negative. Hell, Don's political jerk-off fantasy boy Ronald Reagan had approval numbers just like this in April of 1982. How that translates to "EPIC. FAIL." is something only Don can explain.

Not only that, I actually added this poll to my previous JBW decimation, so the only reason he would have omitted it from his entry is denialism, especially since JBW sits lapping his tongue across the keyboard all day waiting for blog updates at American Power so he can create yet another photoshop that's somehow supposed to convince people that he's got skills (although to his credit the latest iteration isn't racist).

Oh, the decimation! I can't convey to you how traumatic it is to be so decimationified. And I cut and pasted Don's last post vilifying me in full, minus the previously farmed out Photoshop of myself he commissioned and some video apparently likewise vilifying Obama that I never watched. If the poll he speaks of here was in that video then I guess my denialism is also precognitive because I somehow knew not to watch it. And if Photoshopping a paunchy neoconservative as Jabba the Hut doesn't convince people that I have skills (what the hell does that even mean?), what would? For the record I make the Photoshops to amuse myself, and I thought that Glenn Beck came out looking the best in this one. And don't you just love the whiny minority victim race card Don plays, and many on the political right decry, every time he yells "RAAACIST!"? Although to his credit none of his latest insults were homophobic.

And one more thing: JBW, being the small-penis prick he is, tries to act big nevertheless, by throwing down some kind of challenge that's supposed to, er, put me in my place on predictive analysis? Too bad I've never predicted that the GOP will take control of Congress in November:

If however Don is so certain about Obama's dismal approval ratings translating into epic failure then I'll offer him this meager yet serious wager: $100 says that the Republicans fail to gain a majority in either house of congress this November. I'm making the offer publicly so that every one reading this will be privy to it. I think Obama's a chess master of the highest caliber Don, and he's moved his pieces into position to retain his party's majorities through the remainder of his first term. Care to put your money where your mouth is, Fat Boy Slim?

No, I don't want that bet, JBW FAIL. Simply because it's still way too early to predict what will happen in November. But also because congressional elections aren't generally national referendums. The president almost always loses seats in the midterms. And this year will be no different. But we're talking individual House and Senate races around the country, and the GOP's defending even more open seats than the Dems. It's a tough political environment for both parties, which is something the tea parties frequently remind stupid RINOs.

You know, for a homophobe Don sure does love to engage in a fair amount of cock-talk. And yeah, it's early; that's why it would be a fun wager. If you could predict what will happen in November then there would be no point in betting on it. And although Don has indeed never predicted GOP victory for this fall I don't blame him for pussing out: if I were him I wouldn't want to take that bet either.

Anyway, Obama's epic fail no matter what. He and the Pelosi-Reid Dems rammed through an unpopular bill while ignoring the economic crisis. The reckoning will come in November, and I hope it'll be the 40 or so seats needed in the House and the 8 or so in the Senate. But it'd be foolhardy to put money on something like that so soon, and without enough critical indicators. That said, Stanley Greenberg, who was President Bill Clinton's pollster in the 1990s, suggests that 2010 is shaping up to be a 1994-style election. See, "Clinton Pollster: If Election Were Today, It Would Be Like '94."

If JBW wasn't so stupid, he'd at least catch up on the latest analysis before throwing down the gauntlet.

Typical though.

EPIC. JBW. FAIL.

"Obama's epic fail no matter what"? What the hell does that even mean, other than that Don just repeats the phrase "epic fail" as some kind of mantra to keep himself warm and safe at night? To date, Obama has passed the biggest reform of our health care system in decades, including near universal coverage; for all the criticism he took about the length of his Afghanistan deliberation, including that he was projecting a lack of resolve that would undermine the cause, we now have an undeniable momentum; the Administration's efforts in Pakistan have resulted in some very positive trends, including an increased willingness to take on the Taliban; the reset with Russia has resulted in a new nuclear arms treaty, along with moving the Russians far closer in line with us in terms of sanctions on Iran; the economy is poised to start creating jobs and oh yes, hardly a week goes by in which we don't kill a substantial number of terrorists and/or pirates. "Epic fail" never looked so good.

And I never tire of hearing right wing talking points about how Obama "rammed health care reform down people's throats". I seem to recall a certain recent president waging an incredibly unpopular war in Iraq that was antithetical to the polled desires of most Americans and he was lauded by the right for ignoring polls and doing what he believed, yet when Obama does anything that hasn't been signed off on by the majority of Americans (ignoring the painfully obvious fact that a similar majority elected him president on a platform of promising to reform the health care system, exactly what he's done thus far) the right constantly squeals about how he's ignoring the will of the people.

And if my election bet gauntlet is too heavy for Don to lift then he's perfectly within his rights to continue to effeminately mince about and complain that taking me up on my wager is too risky for a soft, suburbanite community college prof with a wife, kids and a bloated mortgage. Most men I know don't need to lean on excuses of comprehensive analysis before they'll take up a simple bet but I understand: long gone are the youthful days of washboard abs and skateboarding punkitude for domesticated wage slaves like Don Douglas. I guess I'll just have to content myself with my own life of alcohol binges, illegal mind-expanding drugs and casual sex. It's my own cross to bear to be sure but who am I to dispute God's plan? Oh that's right, I'm an atheist. Sweet...

American Power And Verboten Cut And Pasting

Apparently my conservative counterpart Donald Douglas of American Power has some issues with my lack of condemnation of Alan Colmes:

Geez, I'm getting linked by lefty media folks all over the place this week. But I wonder if idiots like JBW are gonna hammer Alan Colmes for his verboten cut-and-paste hack job, "Why Are Some Right-Wingers Defending Terror Suspects?"

It seems that Colmes cut and pasted a compilation by Fire Dog Lake about how right-wingers are ignoring/excusing the recent revelation that a right-wing militia group has been plotting the deaths of American police officers and this has apparently upset Don because a) I noted a while back that Colmes had linked to me in a post about Sarah Palin's callous exploitation of her handicapped son and/or b) I routinely chastise Don for being a serial cut and paster rather than composing posts taken from his own grey matter.

Quite right Don, and it's an error that I'll correct here and now: Mr. Colmes, how dare you merely cut and paste someone else's thoughts as if you were a tubby, middle-aged neoconservative with an established history of victimology and a pathetic persecution complex to boot. Don't you know that there are people like Don Douglas, PhD. out there on the Internets keeping track of hack writers like yourself, using their own lack of rhetorical skills as a comparison to vilify you in between their frequent Twinkie binges and Ronald Reagan jerk-off fantasies?

Happy, Don? Now, try and convince yourself that it's better to be a fat, greying community college prof on the downward slope of a career than an "idiot" who doesn't have the free time to police every liberal blog that's ever linked to himself and can still see his own dick without the assistance of a strategically placed set of mirrors. Too harsh? Yeah, well too bad; it's the middle of the night and I'm very, very drunk, Tubs. Cheers.

Camping Trip Cut Short On Account Of Rain

The camping trip to Salt Point started out really great. My buddies and I took a long hike out to the cliffs overlooking the Pacific ocean, saw some beautiful nature along with some sea lions and whales in their natural habitat and much meat (no, not sea lion or whale) and alcohol was consumed by all. Then yesterday evening God decided that I was having just about enough fun for an atheist so he took a massive piss on our campsite. Even though we had a strong fire going at this point we decided that we wouldn't be able to cook dinner or hang out and drink so rather than spending the rest of the trip huddled alone and hungry in our respective tents we broke camp hurriedly in the dark and drove home late last night. Still, I'm glad we went. It's always nice getting away from everything that stresses me out every day and I really should make an effort to do it more often. So, what'd I miss?

A Camping We Will Go...

All right Ragers, I am out of here. I'll be spending the next several days at Salt Point State Park about 90 miles north of San Francisco, camping out, eating roasted animal flesh and drinking copious amounts of alcohol with regular commenters Doug"e" and Intrepid Californio. I've queued up a few fluff posts to entertain you while I'm gone but nothing too substantial so just go ahead and lower those expectations right now. Talk amongst yourselves and try to keep it clean. Back in a few.

Lady Gaga's "Telephone" Video Controversy

At my book club meeting yesterday some of my friends were discussing Lady Gaga's newest controversial video "Telephone" featuring Beyoncé, which has apparently been banned on MTV and has been widely discussed in the media lately. Check it out (fair warning, it's rather longish):


Yeah, it's somewhat racy and overtly sexual but I honestly can't say that it's all that shocking or even anything I haven't seen many times before in other venues. In fact, in addition to the obvious Tarantino and Ritchie directorial influences it borrows quite heavily from already established pop culture (MTV's site has a handy guide), whilst also including some not too subtle capitalistic product placement. Now I don't claim to be a Lady Gaga expert (truth be told, I might not even know who she was if not for Internet memes) so I honestly don't know if this is typical of her videos or a radical and tangentially newsworthy departure but regardless, anything deemed controversial by those who know better than you what you should be watching/reading/ingesting/inserting must of course be rightfully decried and destroyed for your own good.

One of my favorite (and I'm assuming somewhat typical of many on the political and social right in this country) reactions comes from Sandy Rios, a FOX News contributor and the president of Culture Campaign, an Illinois-based organization whose mission is "to engage Christians in actively living out and declaring biblical truth in a secular, humanistic American culture" commenting on Megyn Kelly's "news" program America Live today (transcribed by me):

It's the kind of thing we shouldn't even be discussing, much less thinking about from my perspective.

Quite right. Who am I as a rational adult to decide for myself what I should be discussing or even thinking when there are religious folks like Sandy Rios around to tell me what to think? And I'm sure you all remember the clause in the First Amendment to the American Constitution that mentions how free speech that anyone else finds objectionable should be censored for everyone's protection by our nanny state government, right? Oh wait, that clause doesn't exist because that line of thought is total bullshit and just this side of fascist totalitarianism.

But Sandy Rios and her conservative Christian ilk think that it definitely should exist (apparently governmental overreach into the lives of American citizens only exists when it comes to taxes and health care). Here's her reaction to Megyn's incredibly obvious and frankly very patriotic statement that this is art and if you don't like it you should just change the channel and not watch it rather than trying to get it banned for everyone:

You know I'll tell you, I'll give a real simple answer to that: you know that our world is filled with sexual predators. You talk about this every day in the news, these girls that are molested and killed and I don't know if you know this or not Megyn but they've done surveys to find out the men who do these kinds of things to these young girls, something like 85% of them, are involved in some sort of porn. So you may not watch it, your kids may not watch it, but I'm telling you the man next door who's a sexual predator probably does watch it and it has an effect on all of us. This should be outlawed, it should be banned.

What is the phrase "involved in some sort of porn" supposed to mean? Since it seems pretty unlikely that 85% of sexual predators have actually appeared in pornos (not a smart move if you're trying not to get arrested for molestation or rape) I'll assume that she means that 85% of those guys have merely used or seen pornography at some point. Now I have neither research nor polling numbers to back this up but I'd be pretty surprised if someone told me that less than 85% of all men had used or seen porn of some sort or another, much less those who are sexual predators. What kind of sheltered, wishful thinking version of reality is this woman living in where she's this ignorant of the fundamental underlying aspects of human nature and sexuality?

And I think I've heard this argument for why adults shouldn't be allowed to participate in adult behaviour and commit victimless "crimes" with other consenting adults somewhere before. Oh, yeah:


Be it tobacco, alcohol, drugs, gambling or sex I'm sick and tired of hearing the excuse that these things must be forever expunged from every facet of our society because someone else can't or won't be a responsible parent and teach their kids the difference between what's appropriate for children and what's appropriate for adults. Say it with me, soccer moms: "That's only for grown ups!" The problem of course is that for people like Sandy Rios that distinction just isn't enough; adults must also be protected from all things adult because we're just bigger children with the same intellectual and moral deficiencies as our smaller versions.

On that note, one of my favorite quotes/rants ever is by Denis Leary's character Edgar Friendly from the movie Demolition Man:

You see, according to Cocteau's plan, I'm the enemy, 'cause I like to think; I like to read. I'm into freedom of speech and freedom of choice. I'm the kind of guy who likes to sit in a greasy spoon and wonder, "Gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the jumbo rack of barbecued ribs with the side order of gravy fries?" I WANT high cholesterol. I wanna eat bacon and butter and BUCKETS of cheese, okay? I want to smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinnati in the non-smoking section. I want to run through the streets naked with green Jell-o all over my body reading Playboy magazine. Why? Because I suddenly might feel the need to, okay, pal? I've SEEN the future. Do you know what it is? It's a 47-year-old virgin sitting around in his beige pajamas, drinking a banana-broccoli shake, singing "I'm an Oscar Meyer Wiener.

Word. Keep your goddamn government hands off my Medicare and just do your job: telling me and other free adults what thoughts we can have in our heads and what substances/objects we can put into our bodies. That's the American way.

[Update: You can watch an edited clip of the FOX News interview here. And it appears that the reports of MTV banning the music video were false. Good on them for supporting free speech rights.]