Archive for March, 2009

Dude, surfing is so totally mundane and tedious. If I didn’t guzzle a can or two of this speed-laced cough syrup every couple of hours, I’d probably fall asleep in the middle of a pipeline.

My life totally blows. I don’t know why I didn’t choose an interesting career, like quality control at an underwear plant, or accounting. Triple-checking the data on some enormous spreadsheet — now that’s a rush, my man. I bet those folks don’t have to worry about staying alert on the job. The sheer excitement of their work is enough to keep them totally pumped 24/7.

Totally.

I admit it. I used to watch professional wrestling on the eye of hell. But this was some twenty or twenty-five years ago, back when the WWE still had an F, when Hulk Hogan was a “real American,” who’d “fight for the right of every man,” when George the Animal Steele fell deep into puppy love with Miss Elizabeth, the “manager” of Macho Man Randy Savage. He loved her even more than he loved eating the foam inside turnbuckles.

At the time, I watched for the same reason I watched a couple of soap operas: for the sheer theatricality of it. I used to try to impress people with my theories about the connections between professional wrestling and Kabuki theatre. Did you know that Kabuki was created for the masses, who weren’t considered sophisticated enough to comprehend Noh drama? Did you know that the stage in wrestling is actually built over another stage with a space between them, so that when a character slams his foot down it reverberates, just like in Kabuki?

I lost interest when I felt that things had gone too far over the top. Even I have my limits. Similarly, I gave up on Days of Our Lives after Dr. Marlena Evans became demonically possessed and had to be exorcised by John Black, her lover who may have also been her former husband Roman Brady, but who apparently had at one time also been a Catholic priest.

So why, after all these years, am I writing about professional wrestling again? Well, I’ve seen the adverts for the upcoming Wrestlemania XXV on the eye of hell, and it seems the WWE is in dire need of a math and vocabulary lesson. Watch:

Here’s the text of the voice-over announcer:

In March of 1985, it began.

And every year thereafter, we celebrated the action, the amazement, the thrills.

Now, after 24 years, it all leads here.

On Sunday, April 5th, experience the 25th anniversary of Wrestlemania.

Live, Sunday, April 5th, on pay-per-view.

Assuming they’re correct in stating that Wrestlemania has taken place once each year since March 31, 1985, this is indeed the 25th annual event, and the moniker “Wrestlemania XXV” is perfectly fine.

But that doesn’t make this the 25th anniversary of Wrestlemania. Dictionary.com defines “anniversary” as the yearly recurrence of the date of a past event. And if you’re interested in the source of the word, the Online Etymology Dictionary provides this information:

anniversary
c.1230, from L. anniversarius “returning annually,” from annus “year” (see annual) + versus, pp. of vertere “to turn” (see versus). The adj. came to be used as a noun in Church L. as anniversaria (dies) in ref. to saints’ days.

Your wedding day is not your first anniversary. That comes a year later. Similarly, you’re not popped out of the womb on your first birthday. You’re born on your date of birth. Your first birthday is the first anniversary of your date of birth, one year later.

So Wrestlemania XXV, the 25th annual Wrestlemania, is not Wrestlemania’s 25th anniversary. That will occur on March 31, 2010, 25 years after the first event. And that means this isn’t even going to be the 24th anniversary. That’s six days from today.

Give Leapin’ Lanny Poffo a buzz. If he’s still in his “the Genius” persona, I’m sure he can answer any questions about this.

You’ve just got to love Representative Michele Bachmann from Minnesota. She’s easily one of the most entertaining members of Congress I can think of. Remember when, right before the election she suggested that Obama is “un-American,” then denied saying it a day or two later?

Crooks and Liars has some video of Bachmann questioning Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner today. They note her insistence that the two of them renounce any support of a “global currency,” which wasn’t difficult for either of them to do, since neither has ever expressed any support for the idea.

We know where she’s coming from, of course. A global currency is a big step along the path to a single global government, and a world government is a sure sign that we’re in the End of Days. Electing the anti-christ to the presidency isn’t helping, either.

But I thought her other big question was even more telling. She asked both men:

What provision in the Constitution could you point to to give authority to the Treasury for the extraordinary actions that have been taken?

They both tell her that they’re authorized to do what they’re doing because Congress passed legislation telling them to do it, and that doesn’t seem to satisfy her. Maybe she thinks that everything the government can do is spelled out in the Constitution — that every law we’ve got was written into the original document, so Geithner and Bernanke should have been able to recite the precise article and section that includes the bailout of AIG.

I think she needs to have a look at Article 1, Section 1, which should be pretty easy to locate:

All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

Seems pretty straightforward to me.

Alternate Title: Pope-phylactic

Alternate Alternate Title: Habemus Scumbag

So, our pal Pope B-B-B-B-B-Benedict XVI made his first visit to Africa since becoming the Big Catholic Cheese recently (note to Governor Palin: that’s Africa the continent, not the country). While he was in Cameroon, he made a statement about the use of condoms in the effort to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS. From an AP article:

Condoms are not the answer to Africa’s fight against HIV, Pope Benedict XVI said Tuesday as he began a weeklong trip to the continent. It was the pope’s first explicit statement on an issue that has divided even clergy working with AIDS patients.

Benedict arrived in Yaounde, Cameroon’s capital, and was greeted by a crowd of flag-waving faithful and snapping cameras. The visit is his first pilgrimage as pontiff to Africa.

In his four years as pope, Benedict had never directly addressed condom use, although his stance is not new. His predecessor, Pope John Paul II, often said that sexual abstinence was the best way to prevent the spread of the disease.

Benedict also said the Roman Catholic Church was at the forefront of the battle against AIDS.

“You can’t resolve it with the distribution of condoms,” the pope said en route to Yaounde. “On the contrary, it increases the problem.”

Huh? Wha? Let’s start off with a look at the first, and arguably lesser, of the two utterly nutso statements at the end: the claim that the church is “at the forefront of the battle against AIDS.” Just what it is it the church does in the battle against AIDS? As far as I know, it insists that people refrain from sex outside marriage. It’s abstinence training.

And how well does abstinence training work?

The number of teenagers having babies rose for the second straight year in 2007, at a slower pace than the previous 12 months, a U.S. government report showed.

The birth rate for teens increased about 1 percent in 2007 from 2006, following a 2.8 percent rise in 2006, according to the report from the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention. The number of unmarried women having babies also rose, accounting for almost 40 percent of all births in 2007, the report said.

Babies born to teenage mothers are more likely to be premature and less healthy, according to the March of Dimes. Government and nonprofit programs work to provide education on contraception, encourage youth to postpone sexual relationships and promote abstinence to reduce the rate of teen births, which had declined for 14 years until 2006.

“It is clear here that one of the jobs at hand is to get back on track to where we were, and that is convincing more young people of the value of delaying sexual activity and convincing sexually active teens to use contraception consistently and carefully,” said Bill Albert, a spokesman for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy in Washington.

The reasons behind the increase in teen births are unclear. Some policy experts attributed the rising pregnancies to a lack of education about contraception as the U.S. government focused on abstinence-only programs under former President George W. Bush. Others cited an ill-advised confidence after years of progress.

Or how about this article from late last year:

Teens who take virginity pledges are just as likely to have sex as teens who don’t make such promises — and they’re less likely to practice safe sex to prevent disease or pregnancy, a new study finds.

“Previous studies found that pledgers were more likely to delay having sex than non-pledgers,” said study author Janet E. Rosenbaum, a post doctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “I used the same data as previous studies but a different statistical method.”

This method allowed Rosenbaum to compare those who had taken a virginity pledge with similar teens who hadn’t taken a pledge but were likely to delay having sex, she said. She added that she didn’t include teens who were unlikely to take a pledge.

“Virginity pledgers and similar non-pledgers don’t differ in the rates of vaginal, oral or anal sex or any other sexual behavior,” Rosenbaum said. “Strikingly, pledgers are less likely than similar non-pledgers to use condoms and also less likely to use any form of birth control.”

OK, so abstinence is clearly the answer.

And what can we say about Bennie’s claim that condom distribution “increases the problem” of HIV? I’m at a loss to respond with anything more than a simple “what the fuck.”

By the way, while we’re on the subject of wacky papal pronouncements, I don’t want to leave out this gem:

Benedict said that while the Catholic church in Africa is the fastest growing in the world, it faces competition from increasingly popular evangelical movements and “the growing influence of superstitious forms of religion.”

Superstitious forms of religion. As opposed to the religions that are based on the scientific method. Yeah, we’ve really got to watch out for that stuff.

Dear Chrysler,

Your current ads on the eye of hell feature the following proclamation:

We don’t want to be just any car company,
We want to be your car company.

That’s a lovely sentiment. It really is. But I have to tell you, you’re not going to be my car company. I haven’t owned a car since I gave my thirteen-year-old VW (“das Spiff”) to charity in the spring of 2000. I’d just paid about $500 for some repairs, brought it in for its annual inspection, and was told that it would need another $600 or so in repairs to pass. That was the end of the road for das Spiff. Since then, I’ve weaned myself from the need and I wouldn’t want a car now — not from you or anyone else. I’ve got no use for one.

True, if I were interested in buying a car, it probably wouldn’t be one of yours, but that’s hardly the point.

Personally, I’d advise just a little patience on your part, Chrysler.

Six months from now, the idea of being just any car company is probably going to seem like a real prize to you.