In the course of doing his job being an ignorant religious bigot, Mike Huckabee said the following:

“You don’t go ahead and accommodate every behavioral pattern that is against the ideal,” he said of same-sex marriage. “That would be like saying, well, there are a lot of people who like to use drugs, so let’s go ahead and accommodate those who want who use drugs. There are some people who believe in incest, so we should accommodate them. There are people who believe in polygamy, so we should accommodate them.”

Oh, right! Because that would be like saying: “There are some people who believe in evangelical Christianity, so we should accommodate them.” But that would be ridiculous! Since evangelicals are

• more likely to have their teens get pregnant
• more likely to be racist
• more likely to support torture
• less likely to be educated

That can hardly be considered to be “the ideal” behavioral pattern. Perhaps it should be illegal, Mike?

Or maybe we could just practice tolerance toward consenting adults who make different decisions than we do.

You know what makes me totally incensed? A good movie playing on cable TV, in which they replace the “bad” words with baby talk (I’ve been watching 25th Hour on FX). It ruins the experience, and for no good reason.

I completely reject the idea that we should infantilize and sanitize everything that kids might be exposed to. For one, that’s impossible. You can’t insulate them from everything. There is still HBO and DVD and the internet and the real world. Censoring the dialog on FX is hardly going to do the job; it’s just a meaningless and ineffectual gesture.

Furthermore, I think we seriously underestimate what kids can be safely be exposed to. At the very least, our priorities are misaligned. I am not at all convinced that so-called course language is harmful to children. But even if we assume it is, so is violence on TV (a minor, but documented effect). Tonight, the commercials alone were packed with dead, bloody bodies advertising World War II miniseries The Pacific. And yet, I didn’t see any guns replaced by their Nerf equivalents.

I’m not arguing that fictional violence is something to worry about, either. The whole issue is just a distraction from what really makes a difference in raising healthy, well-adjusted people: parents that take responsibility for their offspring, that are aware of what they’re exposed to, and that help them clearly delineate fantasy from reality. That interaction is way more essential than papering over “offensive” content and pretending it doesn’t exist. But maybe that would be asking too much.

New Hampshire state representative Nancy Elliott just realized something. Gay marriage is bad, and needs to be repealed in NH right away:

This is why I can’t take gay marriage opponents the least bit seriously: they assume everyone else is a homophobic moron too. Let’s just examine the tip of the iceberg that is Nancy Elliott’s ignorance:

1. Can anyone point out the part in the gay marriage bill that mentions mandatory anal sex? I didn’t think so.
2. Surely Nancy would realize, if she had spent as much time thinking about it as she did thinking about penises in rectums, that there are way more heterosexuals having anal sex than homosexuals. Should we ban all buttfuckers from marriage, or just the gay ones?
3. I assume this means Nancy has no issue with two women getting married. They are, after all, completely innocent of this abomination Nancy is concerned about.

Oh and Nancy? Just FYI: if there is wiggling and excrement involved in your anal sex, you are doing it wrong.

Dear people guilty of the following behavior,

Stop doing this.

Scenario: You and I are next to each other in a packed subway that’s making its way down the tracks. You’re standing somewhere not directly in front of the doors and need to get off at the next stop. You’re extremely concerned about not being able to make your way past people in time to get out (even though I have yet to see this actually happen to anyone). At this point, you feel the need to say “excuse me” or otherwise point out that you’d like me to move before the train stops moving.

That last point is essential. Once the doors are open and I’m in your way, feel free to ask me to move, or tap my shoulder, or shove me to the side; I’ll understand.

What I don’t understand is what you expect me to do about your imminent departure while the train is in motion. The goddamn car is full of people! Where do you want me to move to? Not only that, but half the time when you do this to me, I’m also getting out at the next stop. Dare to imagine a world where you’re not the only person who has to maneuver their way out of the car soon. I know it looks like it’s impossible for you to get out, but that’s because it is. The doors are closed. The train is moving. Try to understand that when those conditions change, people will get out, and you can be one of them.

I’m not ignoring you because I don’t see your premature gesturing towards the door. I’m ignoring you because you’re stupid.

I’m generally ok with people playing music, or generally performing, in public for money. Most of them are fairly talented, or at least not terribly annoying, even the guys who are just drumming on empty buckets. But seriously, there is a limit.

Lately I’ve been encountering this guy who plays guitar and sings at the 50th Street uptown 1 station around 6 or 7 o’clock. Now, I’m on the downtown side going home from work, so I’ve never actually been up close to him. And this is probably the only thing that’s kept me from beating him to death with his own guitar. This guy has absolutely no talent for singing. That doesn’t stop him though; he just yells the songs. I say songs because there are, after all, two of them. He starts with the worst rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody ever defecated into the air, and then transitions into an equally bad version of House of the Rising Sun. And then he starts all over again. I wish I was making this up.

This has been going on for weeks now. Learn a new fucking song. Or actually, don’t. No need for you to defile another piece of music. Just quit. Sell your fucking guitar, never open your mouth in an attempt to sing again. Maybe take up bucket drumming. Because, seriously, I will come over there.

While the movietickets.com website itself may be respectable enough, they rent their preconfirmation page to a bunch of jerks at a company called Reservation Rewards. They’re very much from the school of thought that says the customer is a transient beast, and should be as thoroughly fleeced as possible before they inevitably figure out what a terrible company you run.

After you submit your ticket order, you’re greeted to some over-happy and irritating woman’s voice telling you “Congratulations!” This is a good time to have your speakers up real loud (developers who create such things should lose their interweb privileges). But she’s not congratulating you on going to the movies, she’s just excited that you now have the opportunity to get $10 off your next movie ticket!

All you have to do is sign up for their shitty discount service, which offers discounts “up to 50%” at businesses they won’t actually name until you’re signed up. This is free! ..For 30 days, and then it costs $12 a month. What was that crazy website voice so excited about? You can’t even claim your $10 bucks off at the movietickets website; Reservation Rewards sends you your money (a process which I can only imagine takes six to eight weeks) after you make another purchase.

Best of all, you don’t have to give them any credit card information: they’ll just bill the card you gave movietickets.com. How nice of them! I imagine the vast majority of their customer base consists of helpless old ladies who entered their email addresses because they thought they won a prize, and now can’t figure out where 12 bucks goes every month.

Not cool.

The SciFi channel is rebranding itself as the SyFy channel starting this summer. My first thought when I heard this: “Why, that’s both silly and pointless!” But that’s why I’m a programmer and not a super marketing genius. I just don’t have the writing chops to take something that’s fundamentally trivial and unimportant, and write about it like it’s the greatest goddamn thing to ever happen in the world.

…the new brand broadens perceptions and embraces a wider and more diverse range of imagination-based entertainment…

Wow, imagination-based. Very impressive.

Syfy — unlike the generic entertainment category “sci-fi” – firmly establishes a uniquely ownable trademark that is portable across all non-linear digital platforms and beyond…

Non-linear digital platforms? Yeah.. because that’s a thing.

Syfy ushers in a new era of unlimited imagination, exceptional experiences and greater entertainment that paves the way for us to truly become a global lifestyle brand.

Finally, we live in an era where formerly imposed limits on imagination are eliminated. Thank you SciFi SyFy!