July Quotes: "Leftist Propaganda About the Evils of Mankind"

Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers? There's no way I can personally get them — my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I'm sure — but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I'll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. I won't be tempted to hold it hostage (no, not even if I have a choice between returning the Eucharist and watching Bill Donohue kick the pope in the balls, which would apparently be a more humane act than desecrating a goddamned cracker), but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web. I shall do so joyfully and with laughter in my heart.

-PZ Meyers, Pharyngula, 8 July 2008


A pro basketball player named Micheal (yes, that’s the way he spells it) Ray Richardson once famously said of the New York Knicks franchise: “The ship be sinking.” When a reporter asked him how far it could sink, Richardson reportedly replied: “Sky’s the limit.”

-Bob Herbert, The New York Times, 12 July 2008


For those of you who don't know, I was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease a couple of weeks ago. Which sucks. Because I hate baseball. I'd really much rather have been diagnosed with a basketball disease. Maybe Wilt Chamberlain disease. That's the one where you have sex 20,000 times and then you die.

- singer Carla Zilbersmith, updating fans at a concert

Wall-E…supposes that the human race of the future will become a flabby mass of peabrained idiots who are literally too fat to walk. Instead they zip around in flying wheelchairs surfing the Web, chatting on phone lines and stuffing their faces with food meant to be sucked down like milkshakes while unquestioningly taking orders from the master corporation that controls all aspects of their existence. I’m trying to think of a major Disney cartoon feature that was anywhere near as dark or cynical as this. I’m coming up blank. I’m also not sure I’ve ever seen a major corporation spend so much money to issue an insult to its customers.

-Kyle Smith, "Disney’s “Wall-E”: A $170 Million Art Film"


The real tragedy of these callous conservative critics (say that three times fast) is that they are missing the real lessons of the movie [WALL-E], ones I found immediately attractive to a traditional conservative. In the film, it becomes clear that mass consumerism is not just the product of big business, but of big business wedded with big government. In fact, the two are indistinguishable in WALL-E’s future. The government unilaterally provided its citizens with everything they needed, and this lack of variety led to Earth’s downfall.

Another lesson missed is portrayed perfectly in Coffin’s claim that WALL-E points out the “evils of mankind.” The only evils of mankind portrayed are those that come about from losing touch with our own humanity. Staples of small-town conservative life such as the small farm, the “atomic family,” and old-fashioned and wholesome entertainment like “Hello, Dolly” are looked upon by the suddenly awakened humans as beautiful and desirable. By steering conservative families away from WALL-E, these commentators are doing their readers a great disservice.

-Patrick J. Ford, The America Conservative, 30 June 2008


Those who restrain their desires do so because theirs are weak enough to be restrained.

-William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven & Hell, "Proverbs of Hell"

Speaking of transubstantiation, this video failed to load on my post a month ago, I was trying to upload it at 4 AM before my flight to England. It shows myself - currently sitting the archpapal seat for the Mimosas Witnesses, an evangelical organization which drinks champagne & orange juice on Sunday Mornings, among other times - in a rare video from 1983, drinking a beverage which I would spend a significant portion of my adult life campaigning in behalf of.