A few years ago, it was the I-35 bridge that collapsed (during rush hour!); this year, we get the spectacle of the domed athletic stadium in Minneapolis, the Metrodome, collapsing under the weight of our recent snowstorm.
Maybe we need to start building stuff stronger.
Minnesota State Representative Tom Hackbarth is a Republican. How can you tell? By his deranged behavior.
A security guard at a St. Paul Planned Parenthood clinic called the cops last week after he spotted a Republican state lawmaker with a loaded gun in the parking lot. But the pol says he was only “checking on” his online girlfriend, who he thought may be on a date with another man — a claim police have not been able to corroborate because the man did not have a phone number or address for the woman.
Because that’s how married (but putatively in the midst of a divorce) Republicans look for their girlfriends: by hanging out in Planned Parenthood parking lots with a gun. It’s totally charming that he didn’t know her address and phone number, since they were just “online” friends — I guess he was just bringin’ the real by stalking her with a gun.
I am really amused by his disclaimer.
“I was not a jealous boyfriend,” he said. “I was just trying to check up on her. It’s totally a misunderstanding.”
Yeah. Just checking. With a gun. That’s how we all monitor our wimmin.
Are you surprised that his district overlaps with Michele Bachmann’s?
The student freethought group at UMM is having another meeting this evening at 7 in the Moccasin Flower room. The subject tonight is to pin down exactly what “freethought” means!
We’re off to a late start, but the first meeting of the UMM Freethinkers will be held tomorrow, 25 October, at 7:00pm in the Moccasin Flower Room of the student union. I should add that if you aren’t a student, but are an interested member of the Morris community who would like to get together with fellow infidels on a regular basis, you’re invited, too.
I’m not sure what exactly the meeting will be about, since it’s entirely student run, but I’ll be saying a few words at the event. Come on by and help us plan our imminent takeover of the universe!
At first, it was a distressing slithery whisper, like a krait loosed in the room; then a sensation, an itch, as if an assassin were trickling arsenic into my ear; and then apparently the assassin decided to get sadistic and switch to sulfuric acid. I woke up and blinked at the alarm clock; the glowing red LEDs balefully informed me that it was 4:30am. I creakily rose out of bed, went to the window, and pressed my ear against it. It wasn’t a horrible dream. It was true. It was…hymns. Cheesy hymns, played mechanically on an electronic carillon.
Normally, I can cope. These well-insulated Minnesota houses muffle the outside noises well, but it was a clear morning and the pre-dawn silence carried the sound particularly well that day, enough to disturb my sleep. Normally, it’s enough that I keep the doors and windows closed all day and stay inside to avoid the intrusion of nonstop hymns and patriotic songs every half hour from the Vortex of All Evil a few blocks north of me, which if you think about it, is a bit oppressive right there. It’s summer here in the upper midwest, the weather is good, I wouldn’t mind taking my laptop out on the shady deck to work, except…the hymns. It’s at its worst when the weather is sweetest, but I must admit, at least when the tornadoes are storming, the noise is drowned out. My Minnesota pallor is going completely unchallenged this summer, again.
I’ve mentioned this nightmare before. It’s a seasonal nuisance — when the weather turns pleasant and we step outdoors, we’re quickly driven back in by the noise. There seems to be nothing we can do. The Vortex is a ‘charitable’ donation to the local Catholic cemetary by an obnoxious community pest, and it’s all wrapped up in Christianity, both in purpose, location, and content. That means it is protected and beloved by sanctimonious asses who don’t have to live near it.
Here it is.
It doesn’t look like much, does it? Yet there it stands, a monument to evil, a grim and horrible stake surmounted by horns of chaos. I’m sure that if you pulled it up, if you could, you’d find it rooted deeply in Christian Hell, and that every night demons rise from the ground and dance horribly around it. It’s convenient that it is located in a cemetary, because only the dead can rest unperturbed by its presence. If we had a Minnesota Stephen King, he’d be writing terrifying stories about the ordinary townsfolk of a small town being warped and poisoned by emanations from the mysterious malign artifact; an HP Lovecraft of Morris would be troubled by the unholy sounds, and would be writing “<ding> ph’nglui <dong> mglw’nafh <ding> Cthulhu <DONG> R’lyeh <DONG> wgah’nagl <DONG> fhtagn <ding>”. We’re living on the Plains of Madness.
In case you’re wondering exactly where this hellish place is, here’s a map. You can probably guess where I am and where the Pillar of Pandemonium is located.
I show you this for two reasons: as a warning, first of all. Shun this place if you value your sanity. Tourists, there’s a nice little campground several miles away on the Pomme de Terre river; stay there, you’ll be out of range of the malefic sonic curse. Beware, beware the throbbing heart of evil in Morris.
The second reason is hope: if a reader out there is in the Air Force Reserve in the region, and is ever out flying around in an A-10, please save us. A volley of Hellfire missiles followed by some napalm to make sure would be delightful.
Otherwise, I’m converting to Islam just so I can build a minaret somewhere central to where city council members live, and send a muezzin up to howl through a loudspeaker five times a day. Surely they won’t mind, especially since it would be less frequent than our damnable Catholic alternative.
Let’s hope Tarryl Clark can pull it off: she’s the Democratic candidate running against Michele Bachmann. She has a fairly sensible, centrist agenda so maybe it will work…but then, they could pull a mangy muskrat out of the Mississippi and run it against Bachmann, and it would be an improvement.
She doesn’t have a catchy campaign slogan yet, though. May I suggest “Tarryl Clark: Not Crazy” as a possibility?
It’s also loud and rude. Don’t crank up the volume if you’re at work.
I’m home again from Iowa, but there was a moment where I just about turned around. Coming up into Minnesota, there is a nice big billboard with the following message on it.
I did a double-take and thought about going back around to get a photo of it, but decided it wasn’t worth it, as there really wasn’t any place to pull over safely. That was a rather vile message, but then, this is Christianity we’re talking about, and this was on I-35, which seems to be a focus for religious insanity.
Yeesh. This is not how we want our university to be known. One of our former students, Joe Basel, is accused of being an accomplice in a break-in to wiretap a senator’s office. I knew him slightly, but he never took a course from me. He claims he was “pushed” into conservative activism by our liberal campus, which is complete nonsense: the campus isn’t that liberal at all, as most of our students are from rural communities, and in my few encounters with Basel I found him to be a conservative lout from the very beginning. I know he wrote about me a few times in the awful conservative rag he founded on our campus (I briefly mentioned a few of my encounters, but since the paper is now dead and its online archives gone, I can’t find the specific stuff he wrote anymore).
He has set a fine example for conservative Republican students everywhere, though. I expect he’ll be lauded by Fox News.
THIS. IS. MINNESOTA. We like our Christmases white around here, and it’s not enough just to have a few decorative snowflakes tumble down — we need a blizzard, and that’s what we’re going to get. I was out there in the frigid whiteness earlier today, clearing the driveway and sidewalks, and now I’m all worn out, ready for a good night’s rest. I expect I’ll get up tomorrow to find even more snow piled up everywhere.
Another traditional way to spend the day before the blizzard is to scurry about stocking the larder, and I did a bit of that too…which led to the nicest, sweetest, most heart-warming occurrence. I was listening to the radio, and the announcer came on to mention the coming major snowstorm, and then — O Christmas Joy — began to read off a long, long list of church closures, religious programs cancelled, and Christian events shut down. It was like the Atheist Rapture had come. I felt my heart grow two sizes, and it wasn’t just congestive heart failure brought on by over-exertion.
One more traditional affair to take care of: when I was a young’un in Seattle, on Christmas eve we’d watch the television clown, J.P. Patches, who would always have a little conversation with Santa. It’s not quite Santa, but they’re pretty much the same thing: tonight, from 9-11 Central time, you can tune in to Pacifica radio 90.1 in Houston, Texas, and listen to Scooter chatting with Jesus! Oh, that will make the conservatives so happy, that liberal radio jettisons the secular icon of Santa Claus and goes straight to the founder of their faith. It’s going to be a great Christmas program, and it should be unperturbed by our upper Midwestern blizzard.
Now you may be thinking, “But I’m not in Texas!” This, of course, is yet another reason to praise Jesus. You’re also in luck, because Jesus will be streaming over the interwebs. You can also call in to 713 526 5738 and speak to Jesus — maybe you can tell him what toys you want.
I understood there will also be a Hell Pope of the Subgenius on, so all theological issues will be thoroughly covered.
