Do you think it will help?

Cryptic text message from Drew last night:

Had a too many drinks...stuck at a gay family feud.

Awaiting details.

Lascia tutti andare alle Olimpiadi

Some Olympic events just don't translate well on television. I am thinking specifically of Luge at the moment because it is what happens to be in the background. Its hard to capture a continuous image of a sled barreling down a chute at more than 80 mph. The shots are all blurry, the curves go by so quickly that often the sledder is left to right in one cut, while in the next he/she is miraculously moving right to left, and no shot lasts more then a couple of seconds. If it's that hard to watch, think how much more difficult it would be to direct.

Also, I noticed earlier today while watching the speed skating competitions that the cameraman was swaying back and forth with the skater's leg motions. Once you noticed the camera was moving around like this it became nauseating.

Overall though, I think the Olympics are pretty great. I'm not one for the dramatic stories, and hyperbolic excesses of the announcers. But the pure sport of it is fun to watch, especially since most Olympic sports are not all that popular in the US. It's fun to see what the rest of the world is into every once in a while you know.

We Should Have a Subway

Cupcake has been writing about chance meetings and bizarre happenings in or around the subway quite a bit recently. I'm sentimental for a city that is large enough to actually need a subway, but really what city logically needs underground transportation more urgently than Minneapolis? If you're thinking Toronto, they've already got it.

Hear me out:

We live in the coldest city in the United States.

The combined cities of Mpls/St Paul ranked 23 in the US in terms of land area in 1990, and that figure doesn't include the entire metro which I would unofficially label as the biggest urban sprawl disaster since Los Angeles. Seriously, almost 6000 square miles of Minnesota is wasted on places like Anoka & Woodbury.

Plus, riding on Subways is a lot of fun. Way more fun than taking a bus. Ever see a mime at a bus stop? Ever witness a suicide by bus? Does anyone ever have sex on an empty M22? Nah. But these things happen with subways.

Granted, one could argue that a subway plan would never get funding; seeing as how we are too cheap for light rail. But we have a reputation as a progressive kind of city. Can you think of a more progressive policy for the Mid-west? Really, it makes tons of sense.

Who's with me?

Robbers!

The building in which I live recently purchased two expensive flat screen televisions. (Does it bother anyone else that I instinctively wanted to capitalize "television?"). One was for the game room, and the other was put in the fitness room. Last night both televisions were stolen.

What had happened was, a couple of guys followed someone into the building late last night, waited for them to disappear, and then removed both TV's from the wall and walked out the front door with them. And that's what had happened.

I will now lock my door any time I leave my apartment for any reason, even if just to walk down the hallway to the trash chute.

Shameful.

Lazy

Can't be bothered to come up with something of my own today, so try this for a simple diversion.

And now for Something Completely Different

My eurotrash friend Tom "Ox-Tail Soup" H., daughter of Roseanne, has recently threatened to post a rather humiliating story about me in the comments section of this here blog. Of course, that presumes he will ever actually admit to reading this drivel. Anyway, here's the actual threat:

Otherwise I will just carry on pretending I don't read your blog and
tempt myself to tell America the reason why the communal dustpan and brush suddenly became unusable one wintry evening in Swansea.

I post this here not to pre-empt any attack Tom may attempt on my character, but rather to challenge him to post his full version of the events of that wintry night. (Also, I remember approximately 10% of the evening in question). I think there may be a Goth bar involved. At such time as Tom decides to recollect the evening within these pages, I will defend my honour. But not a second before.

Terms of Endearment

The homo v. jesus debate has heated up recently over on Eleventh Ave South. I'm staying out of it because I generally prefer to only argue semantics. That is, I enjoy arguing with folk who have similar, nuanced views from my own. I get into one of those "opposing moral vales" debates and my head starts spinning.

There are some subjects upon which I cannot escape putting in a word or two. This is a n excerpt from a comment in the article above. To be fair, you should read the whole post to get the correct context, but in an effort to conserve space (and your interest) I'll just extract the part I take issue with most severely:

The difference between true fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam is that no fundamentalist Christian would take his words "we probably shouldn't firebomb their offices," as anything but hyperbole. He has publicly published his views on the immorality of resulting to violence on his weblog.

I believe this comment to be grossly inaccurate. One does not have to look outside our own country to find evidence to the contrary. Timothy McVeigh comes to mind, as well as countless people who have carried out attacks on Planned Parenthood locations across the US. And really, Pat Robertson's praying for the deaths of Supreme Court justices could be interpreted as a call to action by some fundamentalists. It's not that far from the kind of inciteful speech that allows prosecutors to go after KKK members and Neo-Nazis.

Look outside the US and there is even more evidence. The countless people who have killed in the name of catholicism or protestantism in Ireland as just one example. In actuality, any perceived difference between religious fundamentalists is probably an expression of two distinct differences: 1) The difference in education levels between alleged fundamentalist groups and 2) The difference in capability of action. That is to say, a fundamentalist in the US is more likely to be constrained in his actions by both the government and societal laws in general than a fundamentalist in a developing nation-state.

As a hypothetical, would people like Pat Robertson call for more violence if they knew the consequence would be something less than outrage? Would their followers be more inclined to act if they thought they could get away with it? Or if they felt their situation was so unfair as to warrant any consequence the government/society could impose?