Todd Stadler's blog

[untitled #511]

"Hello, Mrs. Irony? I'm sorry, your husband didn't make it through the night."

Portland activists are planning on protesting a lighthearted promotion at the local baseball stadium.

The promotion? An event in which spectators make fake protest signs that protest protesters.

That's right. Protesters protesting the "Protest the Protesters" promotion.

I quit.

god and country

In a recent CNN interview with Paula Zahn, Pat Robertson talked about his call for prayers that three Supreme Court justices would retire.

He identified the justices he had in mind as John Paul Stephens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O'Connor. For those of you following along at home, two of those are considered to be red-letter liberals, and Robertson would like to make the court safe from their flag-burning ways.

But Robertson also made a startingly strong case for why he he is irrelevant as a spiritual leader. Let's listen in (emphasis mine):

ROBERTSON: I think our people are just so tired of this particular accord. I think they feel it's gotten out of control and we didn't know who else to appeal to, so we're appealing to the judge of all the Earth to see if there might not be some correction.

The "Republican", er, "Reverend" Pat Robertson really just knows how to preach, doesn't he?

"We didn't know who else to appeal to ... I mean, we'd tried going straight to the top, asking Bush if he could just edit the Constitution a bit more to get rid of these guys, but no. We tried pulling some other strings in the administration, but no go there either. Finally, we decided that we might as well try praying because, hey, we call ourselves Christians, and it just might work! Surely God would be interested in making a correction to this gross error he had made in letting liberals on the court."

It's the kind of talk that just makes you want to confess your sins right now. But wait, there's more!

ZAHN: Would it be in your judgment and your definition of prayer, equally appropriate for you to pray for a change in the Constitution that wouldn't allow for a life term on the bench?

ROBERTSON: The possibility of getting a Constitutional amendment of that magnitude through both houses of Congress on a two-thirds vote and then through three quarters of the state legislatures is virtually impossible. I can't understand it.

"Hey, why bother praying to God about something if I can't understand it? I mean, it's not like he's going to know any more. God's omnipotent and all, but he's got nothing on two-thirds of the legislators. Have you heard those guys?"

I guess Robertson has a different translation, but my Bible has Jesus saying, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." Of course, Jesus is talking about salvation, not political hegemony. I guess salvation is a lot easier.

Of course, Robertson continues.

ROBERTSON: Paula, the problem is you have five unelected people who are determining what the Constitution is, how it affects all of us, and these people aren't elected. They're accountable to nobody and I'm just saying there needs to be some accountability, that's all.

So by praying for three more unelected people to be appointed to unaccountably determine what the Constitution means, this problem will be solved. Because these three new unaccountable people will be unelected by a God-fearing conservative president, not like those hippies Ford, Clinton, and Reagan who appointed Stephens, Ginsburg, and O'Connor. Of course.

Asking more or less the same question, Zahn continues:

ZAHN: When you're talking about prayer, I mean, have you ever prayed for that Constitutional amendment? ... Have you ever prayed for that change?

ROBERTSON: Listen, we prayed, we worked, we lobbied, we did everything we could possibly do and six Republicans blocked it because they said, if these religious people get their way on this one, they'll keep coming back for more. And it was a heartbreaking thing that took place, and as I say, 1982, so I'm at this a long time.

"Listen, Paula, we did everything ? lobbied, pulled all the political strings, sang, danced, er ... scratch that, no dancing ? but still God somehow didn't listen, no matter how hard we tried. Because, when you come down to it, what power does God have over six turncoat godless Republicans, who are probably actually communists in disguise?"

What's that, communists? Did someone say communists?

ROBERTSON: But Paula, I prayed for the downfall of the Soviet Union. I thought that communism, the tyranny of communism, was an abomination and I beseeched God to bring that terrible evil down and he did. It was a great triumph, it took awhile, but it happened.

Ah, the tyranny of communism. The absolute horror of sharing all your worldly goods. What sort of godless heathens would "[have] everything in common", "selling their possessions and goods [and giving] to anyone as he had need"? Not Pat Robertson!

What's that? You think Pat's referring merely to the flawed government referred to as communism and implemented with disastrous consequences in the Soviet Union, not the utopian commune envisioned by Marx? You think he is merely opposed to brutal, totalitarian governments?

Not so.

For instance, Robertson just loves Liberian President Charles Taylor, whom he recently defended as a "Christian, Baptist president", in spite of running a regime Amnesty International has accused of imprisoning, torturing, and raping its citizens.

I guess it's a funny kind of Christian who is indicted for war crimes.

Oh, by the way, on an unrelated topic, did you know that Pat Robertson had business dealings with Taylor, who invested in one of his companies and allowed him to mine in Liberia? Coincidence, I suppose.

Like I was saying, Pat Robertson is my number one source of information when it comes to spiritual matters. That guy knows what he's talking about.

[untitled #510]

In the midst of all this turmoil over Iraq, when you can't tell who's lying to whom anymore, you can always turn to CNN for the news that really matters.

pardon my dust

Good heavens, what's happened to Cock-a-hoop?

The short answer is that I've gone and bungled everything. The long answer is that, as with all such bunglings these days, it's all for your good and it will ultimately make things better and easier and all that.

In between picking my nose and not doing much on this Web site, I've been kicking myself to stop picking my nose so much and start making the changes on Cock-a-hoop I've been meaning to make for a long time.

One small change you'll notice I've made is that the page now calls itself Cockahoop, not Cock-a-hoop. This will hopefully ward off creepy search engine users for whom hyphens look like spaces.

Of course, it's called the Cockahoop Times right now because I thought it kind of looked like a newspaper. Fortunately, this look is temporary.

Temporary like our little outing in Iraq? Maybe. But a temporary look nonetheless, the result of far too little thought and even less design.

So what's different, besides a crappy redesign?

Well namely, everything on the site is now being driven by my favorite database, MySQL. Which will ultimately make things much nicer for me, and hopefully for you as well.

However, in an effort to make myself move forward at a slightly less glacial pace on this redesign, I've published it before it's completely done. Nothing like (perceived) public embarrasment to get me working.

Anyhow, most things should work, but not all. For instance, any reference you may find to an image in an article will not be accompanied by, well, an image. I'm working on that.

But feel safe knowing that even the image information is stored in a database. Which the code is not looking up right now. How nice.

Let's see, what else? Well, I've gone and changed the URL scheme again. I think it's even more clever than the last time I changed it. I'm almost certain it will win an award.

I've even gone one more step clever by setting up a file that catches incoming references to the old URL scheme and translates them to the new scheme. More or less accurately. Still working on that.

The biggest news for the redesign is what's yet to come. Not just a graphic overhaul, nor an even more fanatical devotion to the latest standards (which pretty much leave Netscape 4 lovers in the dust, where they should stay).

No, I'm rethinking the content I'm gonna put up here. Someday.

I'm kind of tired of the blog thing, as such. It makes me write for the sake of writing sometimes, and there's nothing worse than content written out of guilt from a perceived lateness.

I like having a Web page, and the impetus it gives me to write, as well as the forum. But I don't want the extreme time pressure that blogs create. This usually leads to unnecessary rants on my part. Sorry about that.

I'm not saying everything I've written so far is junk. Some of it I like. That stuff will still be featured on the upcoming Cockahoop. The other stuff, the filler, will probably be hidden a bit.

I also plan on adding other stuff, like all the images I've been saving up, and so on and so on. Blah. Blahg. Blog.

This really wasn't written to anyone except myself, of course. But feel free to comment on it if you need to (and also notice that you can now comment on the thoughts, currently on the right side of the front page).

I'm sure you're gonna find all sorts of problems here and there. You can let me know about them however you see fit.

And as for me, I need some sleep.

[untitled #509]

Ari Fleischer continues to amaze me, up to the end of his career as White House spokesman.

Yesterday, he said, "I think the burden is on those people who think [Saddam] didn't have weapons of mass destruction to tell the world where they are."

Okay, I'll give it a go.

They're not there.

[untitled #508]

My friend Beeman recently went hiking on a poorly identified trail with his sister.

Arriving at an intersection and unsure which way to proceed, they decided to ask a burly man coming down from one of the possible trails.

Beeman asked if the trail he had just taken was the one to the scenic vista.

The man replied that he wasn't sure. The trail went up for a bit and seemed to detour onto a road for a bit. At the place where the trail appeared to veer back off the road, the man had heard a growling noise, and, not wanting to find out what had made the noise, decided to give up on hiking the rest of the trail.

Wanting to know if there was at least a nice view, Beeman's sister asked, "but was it pretty?"

The man replied in all seriousness, "Well, I didn't wait around to see if the growling thing was attractive or not, I just high-tailed it out of there."

Pronouns can be so funny sometimes.

[untitled #507]

CNN headline: "U.S. blames bomb-makers for mosque blast"

Oh, that's rich. Blame the people who make the bombs for the violence.

When will we learn that it's not the bomb-makers that kill people, it's the bomb-users?

Unless, of course, the bomb-makers screw up. Never mind.