Gears of Mortal Reach

Since everyone else in the universe is doing it I figured I'd waste your time with my thoughts on that corporate hypefest known as E3 so far.

I'm not a huge Gears of War fan; the chainsaw kills are just barely awesome enough to make me ignore the brain-dead narrative. The new trailer for GoW 3 is pretty cool though. I mention it though because I think it's hilarious that they ended the trailer with "Brothers To the End" and this also happens to be the trailer where they show the first* female soldier in the series.

Also awesome is the new Mortal Kombat they're showing off. I have a friend who's obsessed with the franchise; I hope this game is good if only because that will get him to stop whining about how awful MK vs DC was. Well, that and because Fatalities are fucking awesome.

And finally, if you're a Halo fan this speaks for itself.

That's all, later!

*There's actually a female medic in GoW 2. When you first enter get into the locust tunnels using the drilling pods you can find her down by where all of the cogs are engaged in combat. She has the exact same "A. Carmine" model as the rest of the soldiers and you can only tell by her voice.

Speaking of Rape Apologists.....

I'm not a fan of Glenn Beck. I used to try to stay up to date on his conspiracy theories simply because so many of the male college students I know are fans of him. I gave up a long time ago though and have mostly been living in blissful ignorance for the last few months.

Then I heard that Beck has a novel coming out and instantly I became intrigued. For whatever reason I have an obsession with paranoid literature and apocalyptic rhetoric; so while I'm sure it'll have more in common with the so-awful-it's-hilarious The Turner Diaries than it will with Orwell's masterpiece 1984 I'm certain that The Overton Window will be a thoroughly entertaining read.

Media Matters obtained a review copy, and has already posted aTop Ten List of what they claim are the most blatantly awful parts.

I'll spare you all the details, but I do want to discuss their #1 pick. Quoting from the above link, Media Matters posted (emphasis in the original):

1. Rule number one is: "Don't tease the panther"

Noah and Molly [the protagonists] find themselves in bed together early in the book after a harrowing experience at a Founders' Keepers rally. They agree to sleep in bed together because Molly is too scared to sleep at home, but Molly insists that nothing sexual will take place. Noah agrees, on the condition that she "not do anything sexy." She presses her cold feet against his legs, and Noah responds:

"Suit yourself, lady. I'm telling you right now, you made the rules, but you're playing with fire here. I've got some rules, too, and rule number one is, don't tease the panther."

First of all; That's just fucking hilarious. I'm pretty sure that "DON'T TEASE THE PANTHER!" is going to be my official battle cry from now on whenever I feel like being a jackass in an online game. As far as awful dialogue goes that has to be tied with.... well that has to be tied with pretty much anything that George Bush or Sarah Palin has ever said.

More importantly though I want to take this opportunity to decry to tired notion that females are responsible for any sexual arousal that males experience. I'm not sure which is more insulting, the idea that males are incapable of stopping themselves from fucking the nearest hole when they get hard or that it's female's fault for naively tempting fate simply by existing and seeming fuckable. Either way I'm sick and tired of this bullshit paradigm going relatively unchallenged within our culture, and for that reason I'm adding Glenn Beck to my list of people who officially bear the title of Disgrace To the Entire Human Race (D.T.E.H.R.).

As a side note; how can anyone take The Turner Diaries seriously? The prose is awful, the story lacks drama, and its theory that all Jews and so-called "negroids" are working to overthrow the so-called "white race" is (just like every other racist theory out there) patently false to the point of being laughably absurd. And people have died because of this fucking book.

Know what William Luther Pierce? I'm giving you a D.T.E.H.R. badge too. Wear it with pride asshole.

A Pun About 'Change'

I'm going to be messing with the formatting of the blog over the next week or two until I find a look that I like. Feel free to let me know what you think!

Brillo Pad to the Brain

In the spirit of the "scrape my brain clean" metaphor I used in my previous post I went and watched a few of my favorite videos on youtube. Then it occurred to me that not everyone in the world has seen these videos. And that makes me a sad panda. So here they are!

Death Metal Rooster
Cat Death Metal
Nine Inch Snails. As a rabid NIN fan I declare this the best NIN parody ever.

Disclaimer to avoid confusion: None of those videos are mine.

Dead Men Don't Rape

Trying to read the posts on Glenn Sacks' website is an exercise in intellectual masochism. The goal of overcoming cultural and legal systems that are harmful to males is admirable and necessary. To claim that struggle is anywhere near being as important as feminism is absurd.

Basically the entire so-called "Men's Rights" movement needs to collectively quit their pathetic whining. By essentially taking a stand against feminism they not only encourage direct harm against half of our species, they also create a cry-wolf scenario that prevents productive discussion on important issues.

Are rapes by female aggressors much more common than reported?

The answer: NOBODY GIVES A SHIT BECAUSE YOU WON'T SHUT THE FUCK UP! We get it. You're losing your precious patriarchy. It hurts any time you lose power. But you're just embarrassing yourselves with your crazy ranting*.

Especially when they start talking about false rape reporting. That link leads to an article by the above mentioned Mr. Sacks where he states;

The 2% claim originated with Susan Brownmiller in her book Against Our Will which was published in 1974. Where'd she get the figure? As Sherlock Holmes would say, "The game is afoot!" In other words, that's where the mystery lies. But solving it is like feeling in the dark. All who have tried - and there are more than just Greer - come away with empty hands.


Fuck you. According to the this 2007 report on rape in the US 18% of american women have been raped at least once and only 16% of rapes are ever reported. As far as I can tell every credible study in the US and UK has found that false reporting for rapes is at the same level for other violent felonies, around 2%. That number rises to 8% if you look at cases that are considered "unfounded", meaning that cases where the victim drops charges or refuses to cooperate with in investigation are included.

In that light any attempt to discredit or call into question the testimony of Rape victims is utterly contemptible. Glenn Sacks is a disgrace to the entire human race.

Thanks a lot Sacks. Now I'm going to have to listen to "Dead Men Don't Rape" a few times to scrape my brain clean of this insanity. (I'm mostly talking about Red Harvest's cover of the G.G.F.H. song, but 7 Year Bitch also has a song by that name that's pretty good.)

That's all I have to say right now, so adios!

*Yes. I am familiar with irony.

Update: Originally said that it was an FBI study, it isn't. It was funded by the Dept. of Justice and published by the NCJRS.

Oh. Shit.

I was checking out random things on the Harris Poll website's 'Vault' and I found this breakdown of what Americans believe. According to their 2009 polling 32% of americans believe in UFOs, 26% believe in astrology, and 23% believe in witches. Meanwhile only a measly 45% think that evolution is a real phenomenon.

Think about it. We have the most powerful conventional military in the world. We also have a metric shit-ton of WMDs. And a quarter of our population still believes in witches.

I wonder if this has anything to do with that. With the elections coming up I'm already hearing the conservatives hollering about needing to cut school funding and fire teachers. Every few years in the town where I grew up they try to get their hands on millions of dollars to build a field-house for the sports teams; meanwhile the liberal arts have been slowly butchered so they can pay for maintaining the football field.

Fuck. It's not like I have anything I can say on this subject that hasn't been repeated elsewhere a million times before. For the record though; I just want to say that my instincts tell my that a well educated nation is a nation better prepared to wage war.... so it blows my fucking mind that so many of the people I know who are extremely vocal in their contempt for public education are also the same people who have "Nuke their ass/Take their gas!" bumper-stickers. There is no zero-sum game going on between supporting the military and educating our population.

But that's another rant to be ranted another time. Thanks for reading, and feel free to let me know what you think. Unless you happen to actually believe in any of that pseudoscience crap. Then you can go google "James Randi" instead.

Screaming into the void.

What's up?

Welcome to my first blog! I'm creating Sic Transit Gloria Coffea for two main purposes.

First, lately I've been under a lot of stress and just want a space where I can shout out my crazy conspiracy theories in relative anonymity. I'll try to keep it entertaining!

Second, I write a lot of short stories and figure this is as good a place as any to inflict them upon the unsuspecting public.

Oh, and about the name. As far as I can figure out it's latin for "such was the glory of the coffee"; I reserve the right to be hilariously wrong about that translation.

That's all for now, talk to you later.