Even 4chan Can't Stand the WBC...

Wanna see something just hilarious?  Click on the image below to read the whole thing. 

The image screen capture is courtesy of the blogger Joe My God.   I've decided to put our differences aside for one day and give him a high-five for snagging this.   Thanks, Joe!

Apparently, Cindy Phelps Roper got just a little mouthy about the purported Internet attack on Westboro Baptist Church and Anonymous has finally had enough.  Shortly after proclaiming on a live, on-air radio program that God made the Internet just so WBC could spread their rant to the whole world and (more or less) invoked the protection of God over their servers, a spokesperson from Anonymous (on the same radio program)  took their website down in about 45 seconds with a "swift and emotionless b%&#%slap" courtesy of 4chan.

As of 3:00 EST today, I tried to get on the WBC servers, and all their sites are STILL down.  Yowza.  If you like brimstone served with a side of poetic justice, you can see most of the radio interview on YouTube courtesy of the David Packman Show.  If you want to skip Cindy Phelps-Roper grinning like a zombie and being her generally unlovable self, however, the money shot starts somewhere around the 8:00 mark. 

I know I shouldn't take joy in the suffering of our enemies.  But I did a little dance for joy when I saw this nonetheless.  Oh well. 

And Much Study is Wearisome to the Flesh...

I came across a little gem in a 1960's study guide on Milton that I just had to share.  Do you ever get the feeling you're living in a completely different world in the 21st century?

Adam's sin, according to Milton, is "uxoriousness,' the excessive love of one's spouse...Most twentieth-century readers would not agree with Milton's condemnation of passion, but almost everyone should be able to see with Milton that one can love one's spouse too much.  For instance, if the husband of a communist spy loves his wife so much that he becomes a spy, too, even though he doesn't believe in communism, most of us would think that he loved too much... 

Look out, Adam, that chick is a communist!  

Sorry, between the chauvinism in that statement and the Cold War, I just found this hysterical.
Back to studying for me...

Remember to always drink responsibly, boys and girls...

Most of the time, I really love living in the South-- well, at least this part of the South.  But every once in a while I see something that just sets my rage a-flaming.  You know, like this:

So I go to pick up my prescriptions this afternoon, and this is what I run into-- a freaking drugstore serving forties and ping pong balls together in the same cooler.  It wasn't like it was just the one spot, either-- every other door had a hanging display of em'.  Nothing says encouraging responsible alcohol use on my party campus and the high school three blocks down the street quite like one-stop shopping for all your beer pong needs.

You can't blame this on just this CVS, however.  The drugstore three blocks down the road is a Wallgreen's, and they do the same thing.  Ladies and gentlemen, I don't want to say that this is the reason for the alcohol abuse culture I see with my students...  but it sure ain't helping.

Oh, for shame, fellas...

My home college in Appalachia has a student-run newspaper that sometimes has trouble taking itself seriously, and the most common indication of boredom in the newsroom is when the staff starts screwing around with the headlines for some childish, Beavis and Butthead-esque humor.  One morning in a graduate class, I almost spit coffee all over the guy across the table from me when I read the headline  for a philanthropic showing of The Vagina Monologues:

'Vagina' Opens Tonight for Charity, Issues

I wonder what kind of 'issues' they had in mind...  anyhow, last year or so they got into serious trouble for a rather artsy headline in the sports section after our football team won a narrow victory over the USC Gamecocks.  (I'm sure you can figure out what they did with that.)  It was extremely unoriginal, actually-- just how creative can you really get with a fan base who already spent the entire game chanting, "Beat those Cocks!" at the top of their lungs?

Anyhow, I suppose the trouble they got into for that one has taken some of the edge off of the current staff, but apparently they have lost none of their subversive spirit.  When I looked to the Opinion section, I noticed that they have a section kind of like Newsweek's "Conventional Wisdom Watch" where they vote for or against things.  In a not-so-clever play off of the team's fight song, guess what they named it?  

Rocky "Tops" and "Bottoms"

I just about had an apoplectic fit of laughing when this struck home.  I'm wondering how long it's going to take anybody in the administration to figure this one out...

Well, just... darn.

Every once in awhile when I'm wandering on "teh Internets" I run across something that just makes me burst out laughing so loud that it makes my husband jerk his head up from whatever statistics work he's doing and give me that "are you nuts?!" look.  Well, the other night was one of those nights as I wandered through a site with a bit of Internet potpourri on it.

What got my attention, you might ask? This, actually:

It took just a second or two to track down the original website, which is full of really, really bad English translations from around the globe.  I don't even know where to start. But if this is what other countries think about where I'm from...  maybe we better start up an exchange program to clear the air, perhaps?  

Hope you enjoy it! 

Pro-Wrestling Meets Appalachia

Every once in a while I have these little moments of epiphany where I suddenly look around and realize that I'm not in the Rockies anymore.  Usually it's something subtle, like when I smell lilacs (which are rare down here) and I get desperately homesick, or when I see a Cadillac drive by with a "Git-r-done" bumper sticker, and I get confused.  But recently, the culture of public space has been making my status as resident alien to the South to me much more clearly than anything else.

For instance, take the street-side vendor.  Seeing people hock things on the side of the road isn't all that unusual; you see fruit stands and whatnot occasionally out west.  But I'm still not used to seeing a guy in overalls and a lump of Copenhagen in his lip set up shop on the highway selling "Boled P-Nuts" [sic] or "Shrump" [also sic] off the tailgate of his truck.   The strangest thing, up until last week, were the traveling garage sales that sprout up, like mushrooms, in vacant lots and grassy fields next to the road.  I can understand selling your stuff in a yard sale... but why pack it all in your van and roll it all out on the pavement next to the Kroger on my street? 

But what I saw two weeks ago in my neighborhood absolutely took the cake.  What I ran into was this: 

That's right: a bush-league semi-professional wrestling troupe set up a portable ring a block from my house and held a full-out wrestling entertainment extravaganza.  There were five different matches, complete with a tag team event featuring three male wrestlers and one female personality who styled herself as "Miss Las Vegas."  And I, I'm a little surprised to admit, enjoyed it in a weird sort of way, and for a weird reason.  So without further ado, here are some of the highlights:

Make your Own WBC Protest Sign... um, really?

Obviously, I've been thinking about protests lately, first from the side of the spectator, and now from the side of the protester.  As I was cruising about on Flickr, I ran into this beauty.

If you're wanting to push the boundaries of taste, a few extremely imaginative counter-protesters have created a website where you can create your own WBC counter-protest.

It works a lot like the lol-style caption sites-- just type in a phrase and create your own protest sign in a variety of Phelps-approved color schemes.

As I look at this, I am both appalled and yet somehow thrilled.  The Flickr photostream for the image above has other pictures of this same fellow protesting the WBC with some rather funny signs. My favorite?  His friend is holding a sign that says "Mikey hates everything."  Enjoy (if you can!)

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PHOTO CREDIT:

Picture by Sir EDW, available through Creative Commons License: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sir_edw/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0