Thoughtless for the Day

"...Alton Verm will stare at a title like that the way a chipmunk stares at an electron microscope."

- That guy over at You Are Dumb

OK. OK. I know that just about every wiseass with a computer and ten free minutes has posted about Alton Verm's one-'tard campaign to rid the world of Fahrenheit 451. So, under normal circumstances, I'd just mention the story in passing and move right along to speculating on the "scratchy" qualities of Lisa "Blair" Whelchel's undergarments. However, the Verm affair (as future generations will undoubtedly refer to it) revolves around two things at the heart of RATYHTL: Irony and Books.

The ironic part isn't very hard to miss. What is somewhat difficult is keeping a running total of all of the elements of irony involved. Sure, there's the obvious: Alton Verm (William Faulkner is kicking himself in his grave for not coming up with that name) got it into his uncluttered head to have, Fahrenheit 451, a book about book burning, banned during Banned Books Week Add to this the fact that A) Verm has never read the book in question and that B) one of Verm's chief complaints is that one of the books burned in Fahrenheit 451 is the Bible. Multiple that by one of Verm's other complaints about the book "talking about our firemen" (I've never been to Conroe, TX but you're going to have a hard time convincing me that the book-burning firemen of Ray Bradbury's tome on the firemen of Mr. Verm's hometown).

Now, take all of the above and raise it to the exponent of the following quote:

"With God's name in vain being in there, that's the number one reason,"
- Altom Verm (Internet Comedy Staple)

Among a myriad of other things, Alton seems unaware of the original meaning of "taking the Lord's name in vain" (Again, I've never been to Conroe, TX but I'm getting the feeling that Jews are about as plentiful there as shaved twats at a Sarah McLaughlin concert). Among the Hebrews "taking the Lord's name in vain" meant invoking Yahweh's help in trivial matters. Have you ever seen a football team pray to God for a victory? Sure you have. Well, according to Jewish Law (and as everyone knows, all lawyers are Jewish) that entire team along with their coach, water boy, cheerleaders, booster club, hookers, and bookies are taking the Lord's name in vain. That's why football is played with a "pig's skin" in order to keep Jews from ruining the game.

Of course, some might be so crass as to point out that if Mr. Verm is interested in protecting his daughter from offensive literature, he should be made aware of that fact that on the library shelves of nearly every school in the country can be found a book which contains a particularly brutal passage in which a group of men attempt to rape a man as he visits a city. Not wanting to have his ass-cherry burst, the man gives his concubine to the horny crowd who spend the entire night raping the poor woman. In the morning, the man loads the woman onto the back of his donkey and takes her home: where he promptly dismembers her

Tune in tomorrow for part two of the Alton Verm saga.