The people that populate your facebook feed

We all do facebook. Even if we don't want to we do it for fear of being branded witches if we abstain. And that means we all have that news feed. And within that feed are a distinct population of individuals. These are those people.

My Pet Is So Interesting
Yes, pets are nice. But this person decides that everything their pet does is worthy of documentation and sharing. Is Bobo drinking out of the toilet bowl again? Well get a pic of that and get it on your timeline like right now!

Every Excruciating Detail Of Normal Activity

Have you ever put together a new book shelf? Or moved your couch to the other side of the room? Of course. But this person documents the entire process with pictures and then posts them creating the kind of blow by blow narrative normally reserved for NASA missions to Mars.

The best level of friend

There is an old saying that you find out who your real friends are when you need to move. Because there will always be those people that filter in and out of your life grazing the leftover meatloaf out of your fridge even though you are pretty sure it might have the kind of mold growing on it that should have a crack research team from the CDC storming the house in HAZMAT suits. And those dropping off three movies they "borrowed" four months ago including one that clearly belonged to someone else. And the ones keen on hanging out to bitch about how their newly purchased awesome bit of technological insanity just isn't performing all the mind blowing whiz bang stuff they want while you can only think of how poor you are.

But it takes a special friend to come over and say "yes, I will totally break my back today hauling that damned hutch thing no one ever liked and is way too heavy to be built of any wood not harvested on that planet from Avatar down a flight of stairs and into a truck that clearly has no space for it."

Yes, at the end of the day you reward them with some pizza but the moving test has always been the real acid test as far as I was concerned. If I ever needed to be bailed out of jail  while wearing only a clown suit above the waist and tattoo of regret below the friends that show up to help me move would be the ones that I would call.

However I propose a new level of friend: the helps the paraplegic with his archaic audio/video cable nightmare friend. And I nominate myself as the first in this prestigious club.

The day started as many might. Out in front of my house there was a young woman dressed up in nice black pants, knee high high heeled boots and a stylish blouse wrestling with an extended pole mounted chainsaw. The woman is my neighbor (we'll call her Sue) and she desperately wanted to know how to cut down this damned apple tree in her front yard.

Alternate "Desolation Of Smaug" Prologue

INT: THE PRANCING PONY
The pub looks just like it will sixty years later. Only strangely clearer. Like there is somehow more visual information. This might be sorcery. Also that black cat with green eyes is there.

GANDALF: Hey, Thorin, you need to unite the Dwarf armies to fight this growing dark power in Mirkwood.

THORIN: Shouldn't the elves be on top of that?

GANDALF: Nah, they are too busy admiring their pretty faces and lamenting the loss of Gondolin. They can be really needy sometimes. Also racist.

THORIN: Well it matters not. The dwarves will not unite their forces unless someone has this very particular shiny stone.

GANDALF: Why? Are dwarves like cats or something?

THORIN: We just.....really like that Arkenstone. I mean we had a Mithril backed economic system which also wasn't too smart when we ran out of places to mine it. Stupid Durin's Bane.

GANDALF: What if we could get the Arkenstone?

THORIN: Why is this so important to you?

GANDALF: It is vital the dwarves reunite into a vast army so that when the growing dark power in Dol Guldur is revealed to be Sauron they can sit around not doing a whole lot while a giant war wages during which loads of men and elves die.

THORIN: That.....sounds like terrible strategic level thinking.

GANDALF: Also you'll be rich again.

THORIN: That I can get behind. I hate being poor. Do you have any idea how much shampoo and conditioner I go through?

GANDALF: Good. So here is what I have in mind. We go and find a hobbit. He won't want to come along. But we'll convince him. He'll do a lot of whining the whole time. Then when we get to Erebor we send him in alone to wake up Smaug, antagonize him, then run out of there without the Arkenstone. At that point the dwarf party we put together rushes in to ineffectively try to kill Smaug which only pisses him off. Then Smaug goes off and kills lots of people in the town of Esgaroth before one of the town's inhabitants kills him by piercing a tiny hole in his armored scales (a bit of information we don't actually have at this point) with the only black arrow still around (which we also don't know exists yet).

THORIN: Um.....what?

GANDALF: Then, of course, everyone will fight over the spoils. There will be lots of orcs.

THORIN: This is why wizards don't get to be generals.

The Tea Party Review Of "It's A Wonderful Life"

It's A Wonderful Life is the ironically titled tragedy film directed by Frank Capra. In the film all efforts fail to dissuade the villain, George Bailey, from renouncing a life of coddling the week, empowering the lazy and subsidizing the parasite class.

The film tries to make us sympathize with the villain by showing us his upbringing. It hints that just because he stopped a pharmacist from poisoning a child and pulled his brother out of a frozen pond that we shouldn't see his communist lies for what they are.

The film reveals the true hero about half way in. His name is Potter and he understands what true values are: make money, keep the money, make sure no one else has any of the money. He rightly argues against George Bailey and his notions that the poor deserve low interest loans so they can open businesses or buy homes. Potter knows how the undeserving underclass are put in their place to be used and abused by those gifted by chance of birth with untold riches. And he understands how it is the duty of the accidentally wealthy to use their power to ruthlessly acquire what little money the poor do have.

But this film presents the lie that God would actually side with George. That a Christian God would definitely want to help someone that isn't using all their efforts to appropriate the property of their neighbors and townsfolk. This blatantly ignores Bible verses like.....um......it's somewhere in Leviticus I think.

Oh, that is that part of the Bible supposed to just be for Jews? But that is also the book that tells me to hate homosexuals! And that women are chattel....I may have gotten off point here.

Anyways in my corner are the esteemed minds of the FBI. In a memo from May 26, 1947 the FBI correctly notes:

the film represented rather obvious attempts to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a 'scrooge-type' so that he would be the most hated man in the picture. This, according to these sources, is a common trick used by Communists.

See! Even they sort of get it. They don't totally get it because they seem to malign Ebeneezer Scrooge was also an awesome character that stood up to the "taker" class until his ghost visions drove him to madness and started helping other people. As if there were any lessons n Christian mythology that implore us to help those in need.

So don't fall for the Hollywood lies! Boo this film. Repeal Obamacare. Merry Christmas.

Does The Right Wing Hate Catholicism But Love Their Embassy?

A long time ago I was given some good advice by a wandering gypsy...or a very hirsute postal worker...it was one of the two. Look, the important thing was this person existed...maybe, and did talk to me...perhaps.

Anyways this perhaps not real person of unknown providence imparted to me the following:

1) Get rick quick schemes involving yak fur are scams
2) Never shoot off a gun while inside an air lock
3) Blood covered clowns who speak with the voice of screaming children are terrible cat sitters
4) Detergent can effectively neutralize the Ebola virus
5) Never try to convince selfish people into parting with their money

The EDNA and the wacky religious right

Recently the US Senate passed the Employment Non Discrimination Act; a landmark bill that would create new federal laws to protect the LGBT community from workplace discrimination. And, of course, this means the religious right hates it. Also this means they are bringing up positively ridiculous reasons to oppose it.

18 Quotes From People That Think Obama Is A Marxist

Liberty Council: "Yet given that Barack Obama is a shadowy figure with a penchant for hiding his past (college records, etc.); that he has had avowed communists in his administration (Van Jones, Anita Dunn); that he seemed to belong to Chicago's socialist New Party in the 1990s; and that, according to former Occidental College acquaintance and ex-Marxist John Drew, Obama was a flat-out "Marxist Leninist" who believed in old-style communist revolution, well, one's imagination can conjure up some interesting scenarios."

Larry Pratt (Director of Gun Owners of America): "But it’s apparently not the misunderstanding that a communist has. And that’s really the way the president thinks. He was educated that way. He is a full-bore Marxist."

Bryan Fischer: "President Obama hates this country as founded. That's why he's trying to transform it and make it into some kind of socialist, Marxist utopia."

Jerry Boykin: "I will tell you that America is becoming a Marxist nation - I don't care what you say, I'm tired of being called a bigot because I don't like the Marxist policies of Barack Obama."