Category Archives: Pop culture

Finding a restaurant

At dinner time yesterday, Carol and I were in San Francisco near Chinatown. We started looking for a restaurant. We did not go into the one that had the touts out on the street corner passing out coupons. We did not go into the expensive one on the main tourist street, the one filled with obvious tourists. We had to dodge out of the way as a block-long cavalcade of German tourists came down the sidewalk photographing everything in sight. We ducked down a side street. “Let’s go to that bakery place with a restaurant in the back,” I said. Carol was willing, and we circled around. The tables had formica tops. The prices were reasonable, and our waitress was pleasant. They had congee for me and pea sprouts for Carol. There was a dad with a toddler and a little girl dressed in pink, a man in a coat and tie sitting alone, a big table surrounded by people in their twenties, some other middle aged couples. It was pleasantly noisy from people talking, mostly not in English. It was not fancy food. What more could I want from a restaurant? .

Altered Barbie, Episcopal style

Out here in the Bay area, we are used to people who alter Barbie in various ways. After all, San Francisco is the home of the Altered Barbie art show and artist community. But now even the Washington Post has picked up on the altered Barbie trend.

Astute reader E sent along a link to a Post article about Episcopal priest Barbie. The article links to Rev. Ms. Barbie’s Facebook page, which is priceless not just for the beautiful fashion photos showing Ms. Barbie with surplice, cassock, thurible, etc., but also for the many comments, some of which are admiring and some of which are entirely disapproving. The Post also links to an earlier Religion News Online article, which had the headline “Barbie gets ordained and has the smells-and-bells wardrobe to match.” Excuse me, bub, that’s Rev. Ms. Barbie to you. And there’s a link to Unitarian Universalist blogger Peacebang’s “Beauty Tips for Ministers,” who has already posted on Episcopal Priest Barbie.

I note that Rev. Ms. Julie Blake Fisher, the maker of Episcopal Priest Barbie, lives in the midwest, proving yet again that the midwest, not the coasts, is the home of the most subversive craftspeople in the U.S. There are rumors that a midwestern craftsperson is even now working on a similar project for Unitarian Universalist ministers: Rev. Mr. Sock Monkey.

Update: Blogging at Blag Hag, Jen McCreight, a “a liberal, geeky, nerdy, scientific, perverted atheist feminist trapped in Indiana,” has created Atheist Barbie, who wears a Flying Spaghetti Monster necklace. Apparently BoingBoing even picked up on McCreight’s post, which means she probably exceeded her bandwidth limitations this month. I just want to say that from my point of view, a Flying Spaghetti Monster necklace does much more for an outfit than a thurible; accessories really do make the outfit. Did I mention McCreight was from the midwest?

What do you call your children’s librarian?

In a comment, children’s librarian Abs notes that parents “insist on calling the children’s librarian ‘Miss Abby’.” Abs lives in New England, so this form of address is not sanctioned by any cultural norms. Furthermore, Abs is married and calls herself “Abs,” making this completely nonsensical. What’s going on here? Why do people use such icky, stilted, obviously incorrect forms of address?

Mr. Crankypants believes he knows what is going on. Many adults today feel that they don’t want their children to refer to other adults with such formal forms of address as “Mr. Soandso” or Ms. Soandso.” Yet these adults also feel that they don’t want their children to get too chummy with other adults, and therefore refuse to tell the child to address another adult by first name only. Therefore, these adults make up icky stilted forms of address like “Miss Abby” for married middleaged women.

Mr. Crankypants can solve this problem. If you are an adult trying to figure out what your child should call another adult, don’t just make something up; have the decency to ask that other adult. Like this: “How should my child address you?” Isn’t that easy?

And if some other adult tells their child to refer to you using some icky stilted form of address, it is perfectly correct to say, “Please tell your child to refer to me as Ms. (or Mr.) Lastname,” or “Please tell your child that s/he may refer to me as Firstname.”

If an adult persists in telling their child to refer to you with an improper form of address, Mr. Crankypants gives you permission to slap them with a fresh wet trout.

iPad mania in Silicon Valley

Carol took this picture of the line outside the Apple store last night. Yes, it was raining. Yes, someone brought a tent.

Right after she took this photo, Carol saw Steve Jobs getting into a silver Mercedes without a license plate. She turned to some people near here, and said, “Was that really Steve Jobs?” “Yes,” they said. “His car didn’t have a license plate,” she said. “Steve Jobs doesn’t need a license plate,” one of them said, “he has the iPad.” “We need a life,” one of the others muttered.

Straight Edge for our time

A couple of days ago, I happened to be looking up Rev. Hank Peirce, and stumbled on a 2008 interview with Hank in Double Cross, a hardcore fanzine. The interviewer asked Hank about his straight-edge reputation:

[Doublecross:] When did you become Hank Straight Edge and not just Hank? Were you straight edge the second you heard of the concept?… Are you still proudly straight edge?

…You are right on with the description of how I became Straight Edge, as soon as I heard the concept I was sold. I already wasn’t doing drugs or drinking and was so psyched that there was a name for it and bands who were singing about it…. I just looked at how all of the idealism of the 60s shit the bed once drugs were introduced. Fuck, the kids getting high and drunk in [my home]town were the ones who I was getting into fights with every day, so why the fuck would I want to be like them in any way?

Continue reading →

More bad religious jokes

First joke. Heard this one from Philip, who made it sound far funnier than it will sound here:

There’s this militant atheist. He’s such an atheist that the word “god” never escapes his lips, except to prove the impossibility of such a concept. One day, he goes out for a walk in the woods. He’s admiring the beauty surrounding him, and thinking how amazing the natural world is. Suddenly he realizes that a bear is following him. He starts walking a little faster. The bear starts walking faster. The atheist starts to run. The bear starts to run. The atheist starts running really fast. The bear surges forward, leaps on the atheist, draws back one big paw to deliver the coup de grace — and without thinking about it, the atheist shouts, “Oh my god.”

Time freezes. All sound stops, the leaves are no longer waving in the breeze, the bear’s paw stops just short of the guy’s head. A big resonant voice comes out of nowhere. “So at last you call on me.”

The atheist is astounded. “Well, I guess I can’t disbelieve my senses,” he says. “All these years I’ve said there’s no god, and now I see there is. I guess it’s too much for me to ask you to make me a Christian at this point.”

“That would be too much to ask,” the voice says.

“Then could you make the bear a Christian?”

“Sure,” says the voice. Time starts again. The bear draws back his paw, looks at it speculatively. The bear rears back on its haunches, puts its paws together in prayer, and starts to speak. “Thank you, dear God, for this feast thou hast laid out before me.”

Second joke, worse than the first:

A man is lying in bed in a hospital, tubes coming out of him, machines beeping ominously. He’s dying. And as he dies, he’s talking to the hospital chaplain: “Could it be? Naw. But what if? I mean, who knows?” The hospital chaplain is sitting there saying nothing, just listening and nodding.

A doctor walking by hears the man, and she pulls the chaplain aside. “What’s going on?” says the doc.

“This man’s dying, and he’s getting some things off his chest before he dies,” says the chaplain.

“Oh,” says the doc. “Deathbed confession?”

“No, he’s a Unitarian Universalist. Deathbed confusion.”

Told you they were bad jokes.

Coincidence? Or conspiracy?

At last night’s Sacred Harp singing, Hal told us that as of February 19, the International Union for Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) has officially recognized the name “copernicium” for chemical element number 112, an element which was first synthesized in 1996 at the Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, Germany. The song numbered 112 in the 1991 Denson edition of The Scared Harp is a song titled “The Last Words of Copernicus.”

Coincidence, or conspiracy? For those of you who think this is mere coincidence, IUPAC made this new name official on February 19, which was the 537th birthday of Copernicus. Now take 537, divide it by the atomic weight of the synthesized atom of copernicium (Cn-277), and you come up with 1.94. This is extraordinarily close to 1.87, which is the height of Barack Obama in meters. The difference between 1.94 and 1.87 is 0.07, and there is no Sacred Harp song numbered 7! (And the half-life of 277Cn is 0.7 ms!) Clearly, IUPAC is telling us that Barack Obama is not American, but instead is a Polish citizen, like Copernicus! No wonder no one can find Obama’s birth certificate — it was “lost” when the Soviets ruled Poland, because Obama is really a Soviet!

Mere coincidence? Or part of a world-wide conspiracy of scientists and politicians who want to do away with our American Christian democratic lifestyle by cramming global warming and same-sex marriage down our throats? You wimpy liberals probably think this is coincidence, but if this blog disappears in the next few days, you’ll know it’s really a conspiracy!