Infidels of Every Denomination

The Big Deal about Big Love

HBO's new series Big Love has gotten quite a bit of press, mostly aimed towards its portrayal of a polygamous family.  The key word being "polygamous."  Perhaps some of their promos mentioned the word "Utah."  One word you most definitely didn't see, however, was "Mormon."

Interesting, that.  Especially since, from where I'm standing, the show's about a Mormon polygamous family -- the most relevant word being "Mormon."

I wonder how the press -- and the Mormon church -- would have reacted to that?

Daily Musings

Just finished watching tonight's Daily Show, and I have two observations:

1. Falafel O'Reilly really is little more than a noisy, stinky turd, and
2. You can always tell how much Jon Stewart dislikes his current guest by how carefully he avoids eye contact with them (usually ends up staring at the desk). Tonight, his eyes were *glued* to the desk until he started pushing back, and even then he looked everywhere but directly at Billy-boy. It was much the same when Santorum was on.

That is all.

Just as I suspected...

So, now that the water has mostly receded and it turns out the Rita didn't deliver the "two" punch to Katrina's "one", some of the dust (well, maybe mud) is beginning to settle.  And guess what?  It's beginning to look like post-Katrina NOLA wasn't such an atrocity exhibition after all.   This counts as good news, I suppose...

I'm sure that some bad things happened, more of them than should have.  And a lot of horrible stuff probably didn't get reported officially- the locals don't trust the cops or the city government.  Still, it no longer looks like the behavioral sink that was originally reported.

Why the wild exaggeration? The phenomenon is in some part understandable, and even forgiveable.  After all, it was an extraordinarily messy situation by anyone's lights; everyone knows how easy it is to blow things out of proportion, to misinterpret what you see.  The same event gets reported multiple times, details get abraded and lost as rumors fly.  It's part of the human condition.

But parts of the article made me grit my teeth, nonetheless- not the writer's fault, but the content...

"Wolverine can move a mountain"

Earlier this evening I saw a commercial showing a man on a gray rock cliff.  The camera panned back, and words were superimposed over the image:  "Wolverine can move a mountain."  More of the hillside is shown, and you can see other hills and valleys.   The text goes away for a moment, so you can see the complete scene before the word "Wolverine" comes up again, with a picture of the Wolverine work boot beside it.

The complete scene, unless I'm quite mistaken, is a strip mine.

Yes, Wolverine can move a mountain.