This New-Fangled Halloween

Halloween is coming - and you know what that means. It's the time of year for book burnings. So, what's going up in flames this year? Harry Potter? Porn? The Ultimate Sudoku Challenge? Nope - this year, it's Bibles.

Come to our Halloween book burning. We are burning Satan's bibles like the NIV, RSV, NKJV, TLB, NASB, NEV, NRSV, ASV, NWT, Good News for Modern Man, The Evidence Bible, The Message Bible, The Green Bible, ect.

These are perversions of God's Word, the King James Bible...

We will also be burning Satan's popular books written by heretics like Westcott & Hort, Bruce Metzger, Billy Graham Rick Warren Bill Hybels , John McArthur, James Dobson, Charles Swindoll John Piper, Chuck Colson, Tony Evans, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swagart, Mark Driskol, Franklin Graham, Bill Bright, Tim Lahaye, Paula White, T.D. Jakes, Benny Hinn, Joyce Myers, Brian McLaren, Robert Schuller, Mother Teresa, The Pope...

Man. It sure is confusing, trying to keep up with the book-burners these days. But that's not all - if you want to see a true Halloween horror, check out this ministry's website, via this page (scroll down for the link - I'm not linking directly to these nuts). It looks like they licked a piece of candy-corn and wrote it on a puddle of melted crayons.

Since the author freely admits that he cannot read Hebrew, Greek, or Latin, how does he know that the King James Version is the only faithful English rendering of the Bible? Easy! The KJV tells him so! Wow. Such logic makes me weak in the knees.

Speaking of weak knees, apparently they don't make ghosts like they used to.

Ouch! That's awkward. I can see this Halloween shaping up to be just peachy. Therefore, I thought I'd rent The Shining again just to revisit a classic piece of horror by my favorite director. Wow! Was I disappointed!



Give me a break. This movie wasn't really that scary at all! What a rip-off. I don't remember it being so...so heartwarming. So now how is one supposed to have a scary Halloween?



Good old Mary Poppins! Yes, as I recall, it was this movie (and not Alien) that made me jump high enough to stand straight up on my theatre seat backrest.

But seriously folks, you can have a great and spooky Halloween without any television. Just go to hulu.com and check out their huluween specials, or my favorite classic shows: "Night Gallery," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," and "Outer Limits." (They also have "Dark Shadows," but it's the 1990s remake, not the original series, which I love - but I have parts of that on DVD.)

When I was very small, I saw part of a TV show that scared the living crap out of me so badly that I had to leave the room - it was worse than the famous third story from "Trilogy of Terror," which I actually could sit through. ("Trilogy of Terror" is not at Hulu, but you can watch it on YouTube.)



This particular program, I remember, had something to do with red, glowing eyes following a man on the street in the dark before attacking him. Then, there was a scene in which a man trapped in a basement watches in helpless terror as a creature with two glowing red eyes reaches its hairy paws into the window to pull the bars open and come in. I remember that, knowing that the show was about to end, I waited outside the room until all the scary noises had died down, then ran in to see the very last scene: a dark puddle of something on the floor, out of which, suddenly, two red eyes opened and glowed.

Not having any idea what the title of this show was, or if it was a TV movie or part of a series, I searched IMDb and Google and YouTube for this show that had terrified me, without any luck, until a few weeks ago I stumbled upon it by pure chance at Hulu! I could not believe that I had finally found that silly show that had made me scream bloody murder! (And no, it didn't have the same effect on me now.)



It was a "Night Gallery" episode, "There Aren't Any More MacBanes," starring a very young and weird Joel Gray, and (coincidence upon coincidence) including a walk-on role by a young Mark Hamill, who was later to cause me so much adolescent-girl-puppy-love-trauma as Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. Too funny! It's a small Hollywoorld!

This year, the ghosts are not on the television - the ghost is our television! Television is dead. We can rebuild it; we have the technology. The average ghoul who wants more control over her Halloween viewing now has more choices than ever before. Between Netflix, Hulu, and LikeTelevision, along with all the online world news/entertainment channels to be had, and online mp3s of Old Time Radio shows, this promises to shape up to be a happy (and cheap) Halloween after all.

(What's that, you say? "Twilight Zone"? I didn't forget TZ - I have the entire collection on DVD. I don't even need an internet connection - I can watch it whenever I want! Bwahahahahaha! *evil laughter*)

Shimmies to Ed Brayton at Dispatches, and Book Patrol at Seattlepi, and all my ghosts and ghoulies out there.

P.S. Any "Twin Peaks" fans out there? You can watch seasons one and two for free at IMDb.

Dear GOD Ben Stein Has Lost It

Yes, I used the word "God." Pretend that it means "Going Out for Dinner," which also may as well not exist these days. I must admit that in this instance, the expression has a certain ring to it. Dear GOD that man is an idiot. Dear GOD I didn't need to read that when I'm trying to suppress my nacho/buttered popcorn habit.

Dear God, Ben Stein is an idiot!

First he goes on CBS to blame "Mr. Obama" (it's President Obama, just say it once) for scaring us into wrecking the economy, because we're not buying stock (I am),

What we need, as Bill Clinton aptly pointed out recently, is more cheerleading and less fear-mongering. We elected Mr. Obama to be National Spirit Leader, not National Scary Storyteller.

If Mr. Obama and Mr. Geithner, his Treasury Secretary, and Mr. Volcker, his well-respected advisor, and some real superstars like Warren Buffett and Jack Welch all came out and said, "The recession will end within 12 months. We are sure of it," the recession WOULD end within 12 months.

and then he's writing in the New York Times that he's so scared because the barfing economy is all the fault of short sellers.

Can it be that as recently as 2006, financial firms accounted for almost one-third of all the corporate profits in the United States? Or that money was so free-flowing that a single bat mitzvah party could be estimated to cost $10 million?

That era is gone with the wind. Now we face a severe recession, frightening jumps in unemployment, a breathtaking collapse of equity and real estate prices. Now we face a major discontinuity with what has gone before — a real, grinding, 3 a.m. fear, replete with nightmares of bread lines.

Geez, bread lines. Way to inspire confidence, Ben. His solution? End mark-to-market accounting, because short sellers selling securities as the securities plunge are driving securities down. Yeah. They're making money hand over fist [all five of them] dumping collapsing securities, whose value was obviously inflated if they're continuing to fall.

Right. And if people would just stop wearing parachutes, no airplanes would ever crash. They're driving the planes down.

*Briefly leans forward into hand*

Okay, I'm not knowledgeable enough to take on his suggestion to bring back the "uptick" rule because I don't know much about it, and as for credit-default swaps - hell, I'm just a civilian. I'm not into that level of investment yet, and I don't think I'd go for a scheme like that. I don't think I'd ever go for a scheme like short selling.

But, MY GOD, what an imbecile! I'm beginning to think that there's another reason, other than cowardice and belated embarrassment for his appearance in a snake-handler movie, why he cancelled his commencement address at the University of Vermont. He was asked, after all, if he would confine his remarks to his so-called expertise: economics. It sounds like his ability to articulate coherently any position in his own alleged field is severely compromised.

Ben Stein Runs Out of Ideas

Oh. And did I mention that a few weeks ago Stein made a rambling argument in favor of automaker CEOs hopping around the planet in private planes? (Can Al Gore be forgiven now?)

The executive of an important company has immense responsibilities. His or her time is precious. To waste that time in an airport security line or dealing with flight delays is, quite frankly, a sin against the stockholders. Flying on a private plane is not a decadent act -- it is just a way to move a very valuable asset around to maximize its productivity. To keep executives from using these planes is as foolish as not allowing them to use cell phones or computers.

And I certainly never see the president, his cabinet members, or key members of Congress flying commercial jets.

Well, apparently no forgiveness for Al Gore - not from someone who expects the President of the United States to fly a commercial airliner (and probably without a parachute to boot).

Idiot!

Ben Stein's Headintushitis

Are there any restaurants around here that serve late-night nachos? How about a $10 million bat mitzvah in Highland Park?

A final word re stocks: Do what you have to do, but save. I'm still buying stock, but I diversified my portfolio and may do so again. I've been hit hard, but I didn't expect to use this money any time soon, anyway. I'm sticking to my previous course, because I don't see the disadvantage in buying stock on the way down when, eventually, the market will go back up. By the time you've figured out where the bottom is stocks will have risen to at least the point they were when you stopped buying them, anyway - or even higher - and you won't have as many shares as you could have. This is not financial advice, just how I'm approaching things.

This Lady's Not for Burning!

NEWS FLASH: The undecider has undecided his being undecided about the debate and will debate tonight. Well, I'll be in class until 10:00 p.m. - learning about witchcraft and pornography and that kind of stuff, of course - but no crystal balls are allowed (think about it), so I won't be able to watch. It's too bad, too. Have fun.
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Hey, witch-hunters and purity police - burn this!

In the late 1990s I was reading about a drive by newly-converted African Christians coming to America to "convert" whites who were not sufficiently Christian, because we largely don't believe in spirts, demons, angels, and fairies but instead put our trust in godless intellectualism. I kid you not. Unfortunately it's still a story largely overlooked by the media.

One of these tinfoil-hat The-End-Is-Near "bishops," Thomas Muthee, blessed Sarah Palin's candidacy for governor and invoked protection against "witchcraft" in front of a congregation full of allegedly sentient beings. (Video and story at link.)

The church where Palin was "saved" is one of the most extreme in the nation. Palin herself tried to get a book by a (relatively) moderate pastor in a nearby town banned. (Real advocates for "teach the 'controversy'" aren't they?) She has fond memories of Thomas Muthee, not of Rev. Howard Bess.

Transcript of part of this lunatic's "blessing" of Palin:

Number three, or number four [NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!], it’s the area of education. We need believers who are educationists. [And "I'm the educationaler"...nice one.] If we had them, today we would not be talking about the Ten Commandments being kicked out of the church, I mean out of our schools. [You know, that's a pretty bad slip.] They would still be there. One of the things that you, you know, I would love you to know, I’m a child of revival of the Seventies, and that revival swept through the schools. They are open to preaching, you know, open. Open. Wide open. You go to any school, there is what we call Christian Union. Christian Union is nothing more but a bunch of kids that are born again, spirit-filled, tongue-talking, devil-casting. Is anybody hearing me? All over the country! Is anybody hearing me?

We need God taking over our education system! Otherwise, we, if we have God in our schools, we will not have kids being taught, you know, how to worship Buddha, how to worship Mohammed, we will not have in the curriculum witchcraft and sorcery. Is anybody hearing me? [emphasis mine]

Hey, Thomas Muthee - fuck you. Don't attempt speak for this nation or its educational system. Of course you have no flipping idea that Wiccans (and Muslims, and Buddhists, and atheists) are protected under the First Amendment - since when have you been in the thinking business?

Thomas Muthee, you're a murderer. You achieved your political power by accusing helpless people of "witchcraft." As a result of your fear-mongering eleven elderly people were accused as "witches" and burned to death by your frenzied, superstitious followers.

Plus you drove another woman out of town on fear on stoning, and you still brag about it! Get the hell out of my country and take your ignoramus "missionaries" with you!

Oh, sorry, I was also speaking to Sarah Palin. Hey, foreign policy/energy expert - can you see Russia from where you stand? Well, I can see the stars at night, so I guess that makes me an expert on the universe. So get out and find a cosmos you like better, and let those of us who care about what the Constitution actually says have our country back.

Dear John - I'll say it again: you should have chosen Elizabeth Dole.

Happy Halloween

Because of school commitments and commute time, etc., I'm not doing Halloween this year, regrettably (although we had a fun time at a friend's party Saturday night). But you don't have to be a workaholic just because I am.

Why did the ghost cross the road?



Newsweek has a fun article entitled "The Ghosts We Think We See."

Chief among those normal processes is our neurons' habit of filling in the blanks. The brain takes messy, incomplete input and turns it into a meaningful, complete picture. Visualize four Pac-Man-like black shapes arranged so that the wedge removed from each seems to form a corner of a white square. Neurons in the brain's visual regions, whose job is to fire when the eyes see a square's edges, do fire—even though there are no edges to see. The mind also sees patterns in random data, which is why the sky is speckled with bears and big dippers. This drive to perceive patterns—which is very useful in interpreting experimental data as well as understanding people's behavior—can also underlie such supernatural beliefs as seeing Jesus in the scorch marks and flecks of grain on a grilled-cheese sandwich. "If a stain looks like the Virgin Mary," says Hood, "then it is a divine sign and not a coincidence. If the wind in the cave sounds like a voice, then it is a voice."
...
As scientists probe deeper into the brain for what underlies superstition, they have found a surprising suspect: dopamine, which usually fuels the brain's sense of reward. In one study, two groups of people, either believers in the supernatural or skeptics, looked at quickly displayed images of faces and scrambled faces, real words and nonwords. The goal was to pick out the real ones. Skeptics called more real faces nonfaces, and real words nonwords, than did believers, who happily saw faces and words even in gibberish. But after the skeptics were given L-dopa, a drug that increases dopamine, their skeptical threshold fell, and they ID'd more faces and words as real. That suggests that dopamine inclines the brain to see patterns even in random noise. Boo!

That reminds me of the scene in A Passage to India.

An investigator discovers the true identity of a "ghost" in a courthouse in Albuquerque.

Scientists study what makes us afraid.

And here, something for the dark - my only soap opera. (Well, that's not true; I also used to watch "Santa Barbara" in the 1990s.)