roger ebert on Creationism through q and a

but first this old clip where he makes fun of religion

in his sunday column for the chicago sun-times (i wonder if it made it in print) the author of Your Movie Sucks presented questions and answers in regards to Creationsim. here are some examples:

Q. Were there ice ages lasting millions of years?

A. No, but a recent and catastrophic Ice Epoch.

Q. Did the Colorado River carve out the mile-deep Grand Canyon over eons?

A. It was the result of Ice Epochs, the Great Flood and other catastrophes within the last 64 to 100 centuries.

Q. Was there a Noah, and did he have an Ark?

A. Certainly. There are many unverified reports of a massive wooden vessel on Mount Ararat. The Arc contained eight people, from whom we are all descended. It also contained two of each kind of animal. Since living species were obviously not created through an evolutionary process, every surviving land-based mammal species (about 5,400) had both ancestors on the Arc.

Q: What about dinosaurs?

A. They walked the earth at the same time as man, but were wiped out by the Flood, whose turbulence buried their bones in non-sequential sediments.

rarely will i link to the sun-times, as they seem to favor the white sox, but this column is amazing, to say the least.

raymis mind is beautiful

as she celebrates today, the first day of fall

she begins:

it’s true, fall is my favourite season, i have written many things in my journal about it, all gay, all true. it makes me feel sad and dreamy and sentimental, it’s the shortest season which makes it SO INTENSE. it’s the best time of year for fashion and no i don’t mean your fashion, i mean my fashion, which consists of the same bag lady sweater i’ve had crinkling up on my hanger for years, stupid jeans that don’t fit right, and toques, omg toques.

later she makes love to us with her ears

my fall soundtrack consists of led zeppelin and that’s it, zeppelin and longboarding in oakville and my grandma’s house and riding into town or walking into town at nite taking a different route every time and then meeting up with fil at a pub and staring at him like that woman who lied about being kidnapped or whatever that story was about.

and then brings it home:

i was pretty thin when i met fil which made crazy fall outfits ten times easier, when you have long hair and a big mouth you can essentially wear any old tickle trunk outfit – it’s v hard to pull that off in the heat of summer but i give you props for wearing a scarf and a t-shirt when it’s 28 degrees and when i say props i mean silently guffawing my head off.

fall is for lovers, sears catalogue lovers, THAT is fall.

theres more. because shes raymi theres lots of photos, including an inappropriate gift for a young girl who looks alot like our long lost ettienne.

sad to say raymster, LA has fall, but only in theory.

steve lopez goes to wasila, alaska

in search for Main Street USA

Our biggest columnist found a lot of things in the video above, including a jaywalking moose.

At the airport I’d asked for a mid-size car, and they gave me an SUV. Now it was becoming clear why: A Camry wouldn’t have a fighting chance against a moose.

Maybe it was a sign that I wasn’t welcome in Palin country and should go back home to California. But just six years after she was mayor of Wasilla, a town of fewer than 10,000 residents, Palin could become vice president of the United States. I wanted to get a better sense of her by seeing the place that launched her onto the world stage.

The scenery on the drive to Wasilla is stunning, with jagged snow-capped peaks and dense birch forests. But if you travel this way, do not make the mistake of thinking you’re about to enter a quaint mountain village.

Some towns have character. Some have a sense of place.

And then there is Wasilla, which greets visitors with Wal-mart, Target, Lowe’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Carl’s Jr., McDonald’s and Taco Bell.

They paved paradise, and all they’ve got to show for it is chalupas and discount tube socks.

read the whole thing, as they say.

the bears are killing me, so heres the answers to ask tony

Kerry: Coke or Pepsi and why are people either one or the other?

when im sleepy i like coke. when im listening to that little voice (of karisas) in my ear i drink diet coke. when the pop machine is out of everything else i drink diet pepsi. are people really one or the other? i hope not. thatd be boring. which is funny because i know in central and south america the entire town will be one way and then the next town will be the total opposite. and those people never seem boring to me. but i also like diet dr pepper, naked juice, and generic hundred per cent apple juice. and rum.

adrienne: is it true that all bloggers are self absorbed?

lots of people are self absorbed. it wasnt until blogging that people got to see to what extent.

Chris Carnaghi: Do you or have you as a blogger and human being ever wondered or cared if anyone does really care? Are you depressed?

i used to wonder and cared if anyone really cared. somewhere along the line the xbi poisoned me with hallucinogens and once you see the prettiest girl in town’s face melt you start to realize that everything is perception and everyones faces are melting – extremely slowly. so get back on your skateboard and dont stop till the next keg. it’s then i joined the nexus and never cared what anyone thought ever again.

as for depression. i havent been depressed since one mr steve bartman changed history. because he is tied up in a basement in skokie, i dont think i will get depressed for quite a while.

jon: What should we all know about Geovany Soto?

Geovany Soto is a better writer than you
Geovany Soto is the reason
Geovany Soto is on a mission across america
Geovany Soto is auctioning off a link from his blog to yours
Geovany Soto is brilliant and great and constantly makes me sick with the sheer hotness of his ex girlfriends
Geovany Soto is america’s greatest living poet
Geovany Soto is back
Geovany Soto is presently the main technical and business lead for microsoft in the pci and acpi areas
Geovany Soto is a pretty deep guy
Geovany Soto is the reason i started reading blogs
Geovany Soto is raising money every month for his site so why cant we all panhandle a bit huh?
Geovany Soto is divulging his secrets
Geovany Soto is selling links from his blog on ebay
Geovany Soto is dogpiling the strangers
Geovany Soto is the new strategic director at forest heath district council
Geovany Soto is awesome
Geovany Soto is to baseball
Geovany Soto is still trying to get money for a car
Geovany Soto is back from vacation and has resumed blogging again
Geovany Soto is duly linked
Geovany Soto is my idol
Geovany Soto is my hero
Geovany Soto is entirely the reason i started blogging
Geovany Soto is calling for hits
Geovany Soto is a guy with a crush on anna kournikova
Geovany Soto is always entertaining
Geovany Soto is fscking mad
Geovany Soto is starting to oddly reference my childhood lately
Geovany Soto is totally frickin’ awesome
Geovany Soto is not at all political
Geovany Soto is not only the best candidate for Rookie of the Year, but oughtta be MVP

Mike: is this not hilarious?

the onion is on a damn roll. i dont know how they stay so consistently funny. surely their talent must be constantly plucked by tv and hollywood, and yet theyre as funny as they were when i was in college and we would read every word and say “why didnt we think of that?” i love them. so.

urban h: did you miss sittin’ with your old pal in the RF bleachers yesterday? it was magical – same sun, same temp, same beer, same ladies. you would have loved it.

i did. i think of that afternoon often. mostly because theres no place in the world like the bleachers of wrigley field. dodger stadium is historic and classy and clean and has palm trees, anaheim stadium is phoney and loud and vermin infested, fenway is small and filled with massholes, but wrigley is where God goes when hes in town and wants to show off what His people are capable of. and i miss Old Style deeply.

David: are those girls even old enough to know who or how amazing black francis even is? besides tony’s theme, what’s your favorite pixies tune? or at least a top five please.

5. Hey
4. Letter to Memphis
3. Head On
2. Wave of Mutilation
1. Tony’s Theme

(that was a very hard list to make as i love oh so many of their songs.)

timmay!!!!!: know any good sarah palindromes?

sorry, no but i can see the hollywood sign from my house which means im qualified to make the next star wars movie.

zona: it’s Saturday. am I too late?

baby youre never too late.

ScottB: Tony, how do I link back into your archives? I don’t see an obvious link for it on your blog’s front page.

there is a way but its not obvious. the goal of the busblog was always to keep people in the here and now. somewhere along the way i realized that archives dont really help that idea. so i stopped typing in 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42. when i stopped there was a terrible sound, there was an earthquake, and no longer could you easily go back in time. i might compile a new book one day soon and you can read how great things were then.

keir: The only question is: who will the Cubs stomp mercilessly in the fall classic? Tampa? Boston? Anaheim? Even…the White Sox???

in a perfect world they could just travel around the AL and take care of each of them one by one, leaving room for the yankees and beat their asses in the house that ruth built before playing the real world series against the dodgers, here in LA, the way it should be.

instead i think the Angels are pretty solid and will be tough for anyone with a DH to beat.

Scott: Tony, I’m getting to the point I can’t even count how many good blogs you have introduced me too. I honestly don’t know how you fine the time to read around like you do.

i am completely obsessed with blogs. books are nice. i read them when i poop. i buy them off ebay for deep discounts. but blogs are everything. theyre alive, theyre full of pictures and videos and audios and misspellings and truth. as cheesy as that sounds, its true. theres truth there. the good ones, at least. theyre filled with people saying this is me, this is what i think, this is what i see, this is what im doing. the fake ones are sorta like top 40 bands during the time of Zeppelin, you look at them and say, “youre completely missing the point.” but whatevs. the good ones only look better and more creative and more mighty in comparison, so fine. but yes Sass and Raymi and xTx and leah and the pants all the others are amazing and i should probably spotlight one that i love each week.

monkey: Have you ever seen The Umbrellas of Cherbourg?

i have not, but i googled it and everyone seems to love it. so the next time i find myself in the awkward position of being stuck at a new girls house and shes all, lets rent a movie, and i cant say no, i can say “only if they have the umbrellas of cheeseburger.”

adriel: so during all that time that your truest was givething and takething away the mattress…where did you sleep?

ok heres the history of the mattresses in my life in this century. in 1999 my truest and i slept on the fancy mattress in frisco. then we broke up and i slept on the futon bed of ms jeanine in west la. it was only supposed to be temporarily but i ended up there for a year. then my truest moved back down to LA and we got back together and i was back on that great mattress again. then we broke up again and i moved to hollywood and i bought a super stiff really hard totally unforgiving $200 mattress on sunset blvd cuz i was really broke. even though i had ridiculous luck on that mattress and eventually broke it in, when my truest moved to africa she gave me the old one and i got rid of the super lucky one. but now it seems old and it hasnt been very lucky at all, in comparison, and id like to replace it asap. the end/.

yes the cubs are champs

yes they will do what it takes to get home field advantage

yes i am beyond belief thrilled right now.

yes i woke up at 2pm this afternoon after doing some pre-celebrating last night

yes it’s been a 100 years and people think i can jinx it by talking about it

yes i think theyre crazy.

yes i will buy that hat.

hells yeah

NL CENTRAL CHAMPIONS!

——

Baseball season’s underway
Well you better get ready for a brand new day.

Hey, Chicago, what do you say
The Cubs are gonna win today.

They’re singing …
Go, Cubs, go
Go, Cubs, go

Hey, Chicago, what do you say
The Cubs are gonna win today.

Go, Cubs, go
Go, Cubs, go

Hey, Chicago, what do you say
The Cubs are gonna win today.

They got the power, they got the speed
To be the best in the National League
Well this is the year and Cubs are real
So come on down to Wrigley Field

We’re singing now …

Go, Cubs, go
Go, Cubs, go
Hey, Chicago, what do you say
The Cubs are gonna win today.

Go, Cubs, go
Go, Cubs, go
Hey, Chicago, what do you say
The Cubs are gonna win today.

Baseball time is here again
You can catch it all on WGN
So stamp you feet and clap your hands
Chicago Cubs got the greatest fans.

You’re singing now …

Go, Cubs, go
Go, Cubs, go
Hey, Chicago, what do you say
The Cubs are gonna win today.

Go, Cubs, go
Go, Cubs, go
Hey, Chicago, what do you say
The Cubs are gonna win today.

bill o’reilly hates the first amendment

sometimes its actually funny to watch this man pretend that he knows more about the law than actual lawyers.

does he argue simply to argue?

does he have a strange belief that if he says it’s no so enough it will stop being so?

but more specifically, for such a flag-waving patriot and broadcaster for many years, how on earth could he be so ignorant about the first amendment even when his own fox news cohort is telling him hes flat wrong?