Thoughtless for the Day

"The Sha Na Na greaser, it turns out, has an unexpected Old World cousin: the Scottish Highlander."

- from Sha Na Na and the Invention of the Fifties

A mere seventeen years after the Dead Milkmen first postulated that Sha Na Na were driving cultural force of the later twentieth century, the rest of the world (or, in this case, most of Columbia University) has finally caught up. Somehow, this recent revelation has resulted in the Milkmen being quoted in the Nation Review Online

And in other news: A woman in a cow suit ran amok!

RATYHTL's World O' Ignorance: Bastards Out of the Carolinas Edition

World O' Ignorance would first like to salute the appropriately named Danny Funderburk, mayor of Fort Mill, South Carolina who circulated the following email:

According to the Book of Revelations [sic] the anti-christ [sic] is: The anti-christ [sic] will be a man, in his 40s, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with persuassive [sic] language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal.... the prophecy says that people will flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace, and when he is in power, will destory [sic] everything. Is it OBAMA??

According to Danny, "I was just curious if there was any validity to it. I was trying to get documentation if there was any scripture to back it up."

I wonder who broke the news to Danny that Islam was founded about five hundred years after the Book of Revelation (not "Revelations") was written.

World O' Ignorance would also like to recognize North Carolina's Joel Fanti: a self-described "chemical engineer" who brought ridicule upon himself and his entire community by not knowing that Creationism is not Science.

Gentlemen, World O' Ignorance congratulates you!

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 07:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

"There is a long history of anti-Islamic polemic that uses sex and violence to attack the Prophet and his faith. This novel follows in that oft-trodden path, one first pioneered in medieval Christian writings." - Professor Denise Spellberg

"Allah decrees that a marriage should be based on give-and-take. That's why, by the age of nine, a girl should be able to give head and take a punch." - Prophet Muhammad

For those of you who might not have been following this story, here's a little bit o' background: An author by the name of Sherry Jones had penned a book called The Jewel of Medina*, which is a fictional account of the life of Aisha, one of the Prophet Muhammad's wives. The book got picked up by Random House (for $100,000: which means I should write a series of books about Muhammad's other wives battling crime in space while clad in bikinis) who sent Denise Spellberg, a professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and an expert on Aisha, a copy of the book and asked her to write a blub for the book's jacket (Spellberg was already under contract to Random House for a booked titled Jefferson's Koran**). To say that Ms. Spellberg was not happy with what she read would be an understatement.

Since this site's stock in trade is ridiculing illiterate Fundie hicks, you might be wondering what transgression a seasoned academic like Professor Spellberg could've committed to land on RATYHTL. First, Spellberg contacted Random House to inform them that, in her opinion, The Jewel of Medina was more than likely to incite radical Muslims to acts of violence. If that's all she had done, we could probably dismiss this whole thing by saying "Hey, maybe she was just trying to warn her publisher. And maybe she forgot to include the words ‘but I think you should still publish the book, piece of crap that it is; just leave my name off of it'". Unfortunately, Spellbergs's next step was to alert Shahed Amanullah, who runs a popular Muslim Web site, that something offensive this way comes (It really didn't improve matters when Spellberg deemed the book to be "soft core pornography"), thus helping to fulfill her own prediction.

Long-story-short: Random House dropped Sherry Jones, so she went with another publisher whose home was firebombed this morning.

Don't get me wrong; I do not feel that Denise Spellberg is in any way was responsible for instigating the firebombing. Fundies are always looking for an excuse to blow things up. I'm just taking this rare opportunity to shine the spotlight on a educated person who did a very stupid thing.

* "O.J. Symposia"????

** Oh, like that's not gonna piss anyone off

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 06:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As most of you know, we here at RATYHL haven't heard anything (no E-Letters, invites to Mom-Time getaways, or thinly-veiled pleas for cash - nothing) from Lisa "Blair" Whelchel in a long, long time. The moment has come when we collectively need to face the cruelest of the Facts of Life: Blair is gone and she's not coming back. It's time to get on with our lives; it's time that we found a new Blair.

But where does one even begin looking for a replacement Blair? Natalie, Tootie (best freakout ever), Joe, and Cousin Geri are all way too sane to meet our criteria and Tony Blair is much too dull...and gullible. What we need is a likable, if misguided, Right Wing loon; and those just don't grow on trees. Well, at least not the likable kind.

At first, the situation seemed hopeless. Then, after the RATYHL staff had spent months searching the globe (Nathan was last seen in Tangier), I stumbled upon this a just few days ago:

Charlie Daniels' Soapbox

And my heart sang out for I knew that my days of wandering through a Blairless wilderness were, at last, over.

Sweet, merciful moss-buggerin' Jeebuz, this site has everything you could possibly ever want in an F-list celebrity stream-of-semi-consciousness rant repository. Name a subject (with the possible exception of "Paris in the spring vs. London in the autumn") and Charlie has gotten all introspective about it. Here's Charlie on the economy:

"I know about as much about the stock market as a mule knows about the Theory of Relativity, and probably even less about international finance and such."

And here he is on the ACLU:

They are atheist [sic] in philosophy and political in nature and pick they're [sic] causes accordingly... Although I totally despise the ACLU as an organization I feel sorry for the individual members because a higher court will convene some day where the decisions are final and eternal, where the only person to plead cases will be the Christ the ACLU is so determined to do away with and if He is not your lawyer you're in trouble, real trouble.

Shit Luther, Charlie even weighs in (at about 400 lbs) on the Antichrist (whom he not-so-subtly hints might just be a certain African American who is currently seeking elected office):

The first time I heard about the Book of Revelation and the antichrist I was very young and it was impossible for even the most astute Bible scholar to figure out. But as time has gone by and knowledge and technology have exponentially increased the pieces have fallen in place and the time of the antichrist could happen very soon.

Just about every posting is a goldmine of crazy, ignorant redneckery and curious punctuation.

The only negative note is that the Shitbox is no longer accepting new members, which, for the time being at least, prevents me from being able to post my opinions right alongside Charlie's. In lieu of that tawdry satisfaction, each weekend I'll be dissecting Charlie's latest missives and casting his pearls of wisdom before you lot of snarky, elitist swine.

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 06:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Aid or Invade MMXXVI or whatever has been published/posted.

If you enjoyed that little stroll down the garden path or hastily written journalism, then you'll want to be sure to drop by tomorrow night when RATYHL unveils our new Lisa "Blair" Whelchel!!!

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 06:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Before we move on to the hilarity that is one star reviews of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (scroll down to "Key Phrases" and weep), Slate has a trio of articles today that are truly worth reading:

"The science also shows that corporal punishment is like smoking: It's a rare human being who can refrain from stepping up from a mild, relatively harmless dose to an excessive and harmful one. Three cigarettes a month won't hurt you much, and a little smack on the behind once a month won't harm your child. But who smokes three cigarettes a month?"

- from Why You Shouldn't Hit Your Kids

"Good analogies-not extravagant metaphors-are essential for treatment of tough concepts. Fortunately, there are plenty of good models."

- from Atomic Prose

"Moving as the ensemble is, the overall effect is also oddly unresolved, almost nihilistic.".

- fromThe Pentagon Memorial

I would like to sanction a zero star rating, January 28, 1999

By A Customer

Or maybe -5. This book should have never saw print, much less read and loved by generations of Anerican readers. That goes to show how stupid Americans can be. Nor should it be regarded as the novel that inspired all other American novels. Nor should anybody be impressed by the seven or eight dialects employed within the novel's structure, which the fool author made up to fool us into believing people actually talked like that. The story is a couple of people floating down a river, with a number of utterly unsuccessful scenes meant to enhance and define a theme so obvious its not even worth mentioning. Then there is the structure of scenes themselves. Each uniformly the same in length and what occurs except the last where in the scene drags on and on and on and on. Then to top it all off at the end Hucleberry Fin regresses. This is worthless. Anybody who likes this novel is stupid. They have no linguistic intelligence or even logical intelligence. And yes you all should read Dean Koontz who is a better writer than Samuel Clemens ever dreamed of being. He will be our Shakespeare, never Mark Twain. I will come back from the dead to stop that from occuring. This is the worst, well known, book ever written so far as I know in this language

[You heard it here first, kids. Dean Koonts, author of In Odd We Trust, will be our Shakespeare]

Dragged out and boring!, March 1, 2000

By Tessa (Vermont, USA) - See all my reviews

I really didn't like this book. Maybe it's because you need an imagination to read it, and mine isn't always there. It just seemed too unrealistic, and I just hated it.

Mark Twain can't write a good book., February 19, 1998

By A Customer

Whatever you do do not read this book. It's long, it's really hard to read, and the story just flat out sucks. A lot of people say that this book is packed with meaning, BUT IT'S NOT. Mark Twain wrote a stupid story about a boy and a slave floating down the mississsippi. THAT SOUNDS REALLY INTERESTING!! Yea right. This book is a big waste of time, it should be out-lawed from our schools, because Twain likes to use the "N" word a lot. This book in my opinion, should get the "Turkey of the Century" award. A big book B-B-Q, should be devoted to all the copies in print.

This is the dumbest book I've ever picked up, October 2, 2000

By A Customer

This book is so poorly written, and out of context, it's not even funny. Samuel Clemens should be smacked, and every copy of this stupid book should be burned.

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 03:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Palinmania got ya' down? Worried about foreign policy blunders, economic collapse and an impending theocracy? One way to turn that frown upside-down is to take a step back and think of the Palin's as a unique Anthropological discovery.

Yes, the Palin family become much more palatable ("The Palatable Palin's"???) when you nurture your inner armchair anthropologist apply the "Cows, Pigs with Lipstick, Wars and Witches Principle" (especially the Witches part) to the entire Palin clan. Forget for a minute that the Palin's live in a demon-haunted, 6,000-year-old world, wherein they hunt their own food, and just focus on the impending shotgun wedding of Bristol Palin to Levi Johnson (the poster child for why you should always wear your helmet when playing hockey).

To the casual observer, it might seem that young Mr. Johnson was pushed unto the national stage in an effort to mitigate any political damage that would naturally result from a candidate's announcement that their teenage daughter is pregnant out-of-wedlock. And that's partially correct. Dig a little deeper and you might find a more primordial reason for the hurried "Levi, you are the baby's daddy" announcement: a deep-seated need to prove that child had not been fathered by someone outside of the tribe.

If you think that people are xenophobic now, keep in mind that our early ancestors not only feared people from distant lands, but also from the other side of the hill. Knowing who had fathered whose baby was one of the few ways the Bear Clan had of holding the Hamster Clan in check. Later, when trading between tribes began to take place, female offspring would be tossed into the deal ala "I'll let your son mate with my daughter if you my tribe fish on that little spot of beach over there." Now being bargaining chips, a young woman who unexpectedly turned up pregnant could have disasters consequences for the entire tribe.

This might be why so many early civilizations (and not just the Abrahamic religions) but such an emphasis on virginity. It might also explain why so many deities (Jesus, Dionysus, Mithras, Horus, Attis, etc.) were fathered by "Gods" .If Levi Johnson were smart (and the evidence seems to point to the contrary), he'd start pointing a finger in Zeus' direction.

Break it down James David Manning...

"So, so...there you have it."

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 06:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hey there, Hittites, Canaanites and anybody else who has been smote by the Hand O' Gawd,

I've been busy rehearsing with Dead Milkmen for our upcoming show(s) (I really wish people would stop using the word "reunion", as it is highly unlikely that Dave Blood will turn up), which I hope will explain the lack of recent posts. See what a nice guy I am? I just gave you an explanation for why I haven't been posting, even though I don't really owe you one: after all, it's not like I'm charging you for these pearls of wisdom I drop at random intervals.

The rest of my waking hours have, of course, been occupied with another futile attempt to come up with a winning caption for the BAR Caption Contest.

Here are the captions that I've rejected:

"Congratulations, asswipe; you've invented Roman numerals."

"'I. He who smelt it, dealt it.'? 'II: Shake it more than three times and you're playing with it'? Did the Chi Omegas help you with this?"

"You'll need more than those two tablets to cure your Erectile Dysfunction."

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 06:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I take a few days off to celebrate Caligumas (remind me to tell you what I got for days 10, 11, and 12) and the whole world turns into Gary Busey on a steady diet of Pixy Stix. Shit Luther, Amy Goodman is in the slammer for inciting a riot; Hurricane Gustav targeted RNC speakers, and Sara Palin's teenage daughter ...

No. It would be wrong to comment on the tragic problems of a candidate's family member. That's why I'm going to avoid the temptation to say "See what happens when Fundies give their kids stripper names, teach them that the earth is forty-six years old, and mix in a heaping spoonful of abstinence-only education? Do you see, Warriors? Do you see what you get when you mess with The Orphans?"

Instead of an endless stream of tasteless Maury Povich "You are the father!" jokes, the large, well-paid staff of RATYHTL would like to wish young Bristol Palin the best of luck in her upcoming nuptials to Levi "I don't want kids" Johnston and offer the follow helpful tip: at the reception, you'll want to make sure that you have enough food to feed an army: Joel's Army, to be specific.

In case you haven't heard, Joel's Army is a disturbing "'End Times' cult" that Governor Palin's church may, or may not, be linked to. Look; I could care less about Palin's daughter screwed up – honestly, I feel bad for the kid - but if a candidate for any office above gong scourer has ties, not matter how remote, to a group quasi-military religious fanatics who want to put the ‘k' back in Waco, I think that's something I have a right to know about; and if Amy Goodman ever gets sprung from the Big House, I plan to ask her to look into it.

Posted by Rodney Anonymous at 06:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)