Watch Me Commit Professional Suicide

I tried real hard to just shut up and look away, but I can’t—some of you will not be surprised. I am about to tick off a whole bunch of family, friends, neighbors, and fellow Roman Catholics.

According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal,

…a group of fellow Catholics from his home state of Wisconsin, including some Franciscan Friars are calling for the vice presidential hopeful’s “conversion.” The group launched a website, PrayforPaulsChangeofHeart.org, that asks visitors to

“Please pray for Paul Ryan, a devout Catholic, to have a change of heart on the federal budget.” It includes a special Rosary prayer to St. Paul, “the great convert,” to bring about a transformation in the anti-deficit Republican.

For the record, I am a parishioner of SS Peter & Paul Catholic Church in Naperville, Illinois, a Benedictine Oblate, and a Knight of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, so you could say I am also a practicing Roman Catholic. With all due respect to my brothers and sisters in Christ, you are dead wrong.

The Horror!

OMG! Look at those drapes!

Yeah, I’m linking another video. Get over it. In this particularly ghastly piece, we see a popular celebrity–so I’m told–carving up some books to make…a box.

At least the Nazi’s threw ’em on a bonfire. But this isn’t about a hatred of the ideas found in books, this is about the complete and utter apathy toward the ideas found in books.

And before you say it, yes I know, books are just things. You own a book, you can read it, use it to prop up a table leg, make a box, or fry it up with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. Whatever you do, remember that book represents someone’s work. Good book, bad book, it doesn’t matter, someone labored over that manuscript to give it what life it has. But it seems that in our day and age, people would rather watch than read. Ideas are too much trouble. They might change me. Best not to care.

I don’t think that bodes well for civilization.

Here’s the link to BuzzFeed

Warning: this video contains disturbing images of vacuous people.

Back to School

“Join us”

When we were kids, most of us used to dread this time of year. I remember well, it was the late summer of ’75. Steve, Cheese, and I were sitting around bemoaning the impending return to school. We had recently seen that summer’s blockbuster, Jaws. I think it was Steve who said, “It’s just like when Quint slips down the deck into the shark’s mouth. School’s coming and there’s nothing you can do about it. It just sucks you in and bites you in half!”

Continue reading “Back to School”

AUNTM

I used to have many magazine subscriptions, but since traditional print media is inexorably migrating content to the web, I now only keep one: Car & Driver. I have subscribed uninterruptedly to CD since I was a kid. Why? Because I’m a car nut and of all the auto mags, CD is in my opinion the best of the bunch. However, this isn’t an advertisement for CD, I actually have a point.

In the September ‘12 issue, Technical Editor Aaron Robinson decries the idea of the autonomous (read self-driving) automobile in his column “Google is my co-pilot. What can go wrong?” It seems Google has teamed with scientists at Stanford University to conduct research into the concept and have actually created self-driving test vehicles. Sebastian Thrun, former director of the Artificial Intelligence Lab at Stanford, wrote in a blog post on Google’s website back in 2010 that autonomous vehicles would cut road fatalities and reduce traffic congestion while freeing the driver for other activities. Like what? Like maybe crochet or Sudoku?

Continue reading “AUNTM”

Speaking of Bears

Here’s a new film by one of my favorite bears, Misery Bear!

Ted Dawn

Really? Seriously?

I’m not going to link it. You can go read it if you want. From the MailOnline August 8:

A diplomatic row between Belarus and Sweden over teddy bears escalated today when the eastern European country withdrew its embassy staff from Stockholm.

Belarus also told Sweden to take similar action with its diplomats in Minsk.

It all stems from a stunt by a Swedish PR which parachuted 800 teddy bears into Belarus last month.

The company chartered a light aircraft which invaded Belarussian airspace to drop the bears, all of which highlighted the lack of human rights in the former Soviet state.

A furious Belarus president, Alexander Lukashenko, has sacked senior members of his staff over the incident and is now taking his fury out on Sweden.

Belarus expelled Sweden’s ambassador on August 3. The Belarussian ambassador to Stockholm was also withdrawn.

The foreign ministry said Minsk was now pulling out its remaining embassy staff because Sweden had aggravated the situation by expelling two more diplomats and had refused to allow a new Belarussian ambassador to take up his post.

‘In this connection, the Belarussian side has been forced to take the decision to withdraw its embassy in Sweden and bring back all its (embassy) staff to Belarus,’ the statement said.