Rants

Parody Can't Compete

I was reading a satirical article in the Swift Report about Americans being scared of activist judges. Within the article there was a link to an Agape Press article (which was not so much news as a big plug for a book, but that's nothing new in any news source). Within that delightful piece of "Reliable News from a Christian Source" we read the following quote:

Another part of the strategy the conservative activist recommends is something she calls "starving" the courts; that is, limiting their power by limiting their money. "Now, we can't cut the salaries of the judges," she explains, "but we certainly can cut their budgets and cut off some of these perks, like traveling to foreign conferences where they get a lot of bad ideas about foreign law." [Emphasis mine]

Was there ever a clearer statement of the xenophobic undercurrent of the religious right? The other issues about jurisdiction over "the Pledge of Allegiance, the Ten Commandments, the definition of marriage, and the Boy Scouts" are just more of their program to limit freedom to their own definition of it--freedom for everybody to be Christian and to equate being American with being Christian. One could describe those as an ultra-conservative reluctance to change and an attempt to cling to the perception of a Christian society. It's the open denigration of "foreign" stuff that shows Schlafly's real fear and ignorance. Parody can't compete with these public displays of bigotry. Maybe slapstick would be a better tool.

Geek Interrupted

We must have been close to half way through the movie when it happened. The screen went completely dark; the soundtrack stopped; we waited with bated breath for a resumption. This had to be a silly cinematic mind game, didn't it?

It happened at a tense moment in the plot. I expected to hear Stephen Fry as the Guide telling us that this break in continuity had been inserted in order to reduce nervous tension--to reassure us that Trillian would escape unharmed.

I was wrong.

The movie had stopped. Mutterings arose from the audience. Finally a theatre attendant's voice told us to evacuate the theatre complex and the shopping centre. We could retain our ticket stubs and present them to the box office for a refund later.

I still don't know what happened to cause the evacuation. Apart from police directing crowds and a general quiet exodus of patrons from the theatres and restaurants, I saw nothing unusual. There were no fire engines, no police marksmen in padded vests, no helicopters circling overhead, no news crews, no trembling weeping victims being comforted or carried off on stretchers, no palls of smoke, twisted metal, gas masks, not even a flashing light. In short, it lacked all of the drama one would normally associate with a sudden evacuation of a public building. How tediously suburban!

I thought about going to ask one of the police officers, but immediately realised it would be more responsible to exit the scene quickly and let them do their jobs.

There's nothing on the newspaper sites. Yet.

I guess we'll get to see HHGG some other time. *yawn*

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