Well, maybe I should say “most entertaining.” But come on – let’s be honest. We watch reality TV to feel better about ourselves; to look at those poor souls on the screen and think, “at least I’m not them.” And nothing has provided the heroin-like hit of that emotion with more of a punch than “Tool Academy.”
It starts with the idea that the “tools,” the muscley, gelled-up, inked-over manwhores who star in the show, thought they were taking part in a program called “Mr. Awesome.” Little did they know that they would be joined by their skanky girlfriends on a show actually called “Tool Academy,” where they would have to work on their relationships through group therapy and reality-TV-style challenges. But they stayed, because hey, 1) they’re still on TV, and 2) they could win $100,000.
So begins the parade of male chauvinism, shirtless posing, endless cries of “bro” and “man,” and acres of tattoos, gelled hair and fake nails.
“I knew I was in serious trouble,” said Shawn, the bulked-up blonde with the fauxhawk and giant sideburns who had just been exposed in therapy as two-timing the girl he started the show with, “because this challenge is about infidelity. And I’m the biggest infidel here.”
Tonight’s contest was dancing the tango – won by Jenna and Ryan, an apparent refugee from Japanese anime who calls himself “Matsuflex” and compulsively refers to his underwear as “man panties.” (I am not making this up.) The couple, who has not yet had sex (although he is a constant “infidel” and she has had three previous boyfriends, all black men), won as their prize in the tango competition: a conjugal visit.
“How did they take over VT? They moved there. They voted. They outnumbered the natives. I bet a lot of them are teachers. One thing—Most of them do not have kids, so they ruin yours. Who is having a lot of children? Latinos and Muslims. Take your pick America. That is the result of Choice. There should be no choice and we all know it.”
-Freeper commenter huldah1776 on a story about New England being at the forefront of gay rights
The hot chocolate at Seattle’s Best Coffee, in Borders Books. Most hot chocolates you get in coffee places are sad affairs – gritty and tasting of not much anything, especially milk or chocolate. But the Cocoa Trio is fantastic – gorgeous hot chocolate, topped with whipped cream, white chocolate sprinkles and a drizzle of chocolate syrup, stirred with a chocolate stirring stick.
Bush dead-enders like Dean Esmay are glowing about the just-for-another-month-or-so President’s “victory tour” of his great “success,” Iraq. Which is sort of like throwing a party for the exterminator you called to get rid of your termites who proceeded to burn down your house.
Termite problem? Fixed. Yay!
Oh, and you didn’t really call him. He just showed up, in the middle of the night, while you were sleeping, and poured kerosene on your house’s foundation and lit a match. Still, those termite bastards are dead, right? (Oh, and he’s not exactly an exterminator. He just loves looking at pictures of bugs, and imagining how they will die.)
Also, Dean – using “Mission Accomplished” as the post title – really? Really?
Can you see it? Can you see the black pip just on the right side of the point-spread of the bright dot? The dot is the evening star and planet Uranus, pronounced “your anus.” (Some humorless science teachers tired of hearing the joke about the starship Enterprise being like toilet paper because it flew around Uranus looking for Klingons, and these dull sorts now try to teach kids to mispronounce Uranus as “urine us,” which is still pretty funny.)
In all the brouhaha over the passage of Proposition 8 in California, which enshrines discrimination in the state’s Constitution by denying gay people the ability to marry, it’s easy to forget that the liberal hero Barack Obama has been able to quietly assert that he’s against gay marriage because of his Christian faith.
Hmmm. As the Church Lady would say, “conveeeeenient.” And ironic to boot.
But the fact remains that even liberal stalwarts can’t seem to find the words to defend something that for their “base” seems so easy to defend. So I’m going to repeat something I wrote for Hillary Clinton in 2003, when she was having some problems explaining exactly why she didn’t support gay people getting married. If anything it’s more relevant today, now that Californians haven’t let the futures of thousands of happily-married gay people stop them from voting discrimination into their state’s founding document.
Why can’t Democratic politicians just say:
I think what’s important here is to understand the difference between civil and religious marriage. Religious marriage is a sacrament, and I don’t believe the government has any business telling any religion who they can and cannot marry. If the government ever made any kind of move to force any church to marry anyone they did not want to, I would be on the front lines protesting that.
But civil marriage is not a sacrament. It is simply a legal contract that’s enforced by the state that confers rights on the citizens who enter into that contract. I believe Americans are a fundamentally fair people. And this is about fairness – allowing people who want to enter into committed relationships, relationships that strengthen the society, to get the rights conferred by civil marriage.
There’s a lot of talk about civil unions these days – trying to create a system alongside civil marriage that would involve the same rights. But why create a new system, a new bureaucracy, to try to simulate something already in place? Is that fair? I don’t think it is. “Separate but equal” didn’t work in the civil rights era, and it doesn’t work here. I know there are a lot of Americans who are uncomfortable with homosexuality. But that unease shouldn’t be enough reason to deny basic rights to citizens of the United States of America.
