Most hideous, dishonest attack ad ever.

lol update: A friend just asked why I don't think this is actually funny, which is a major fail on my part since I do.

This is total bullshit;

“We’ve faced many challenges over the years, and each and every time we’ve discovered that courage is the answer. Hyenas don’t understand that. They back down from fights. They play dead. We need to set an example for other animals, and high-strung scavengers aren’t the way to go. Have the courage to stand against the cowardly hyena.”
Paid for by a lion

This next one is subtler, but is also rife with anti-hyaenidaeism (emphasis added);

“Mongooses have consistently betrayed the trust of other animals: for example, the recent hydroelectric power station that displaced hundreds of birds and fish had the backing of more than half of all mongooses. Plus, they giggle when they mate. Is that dignified? They say that a mongoose is not closely related to a weasel, but actions say otherwise.”
Paid for by a snake

If you truly must see the rest for yourself, you can find the other attack ads here: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/when-animals-run-attack-ads

(minor edits for formatting)

Guilty Conscience Much?

Media Matters has a video of one of those "traditional marriage" quack-experts, by the name of Peter Wolfgang, addressing Connecticut's state congress. His argument is that providing legal protections to trans-gendered individuals will lead to men going into women's bathrooms to sexually assault little girls while the child's (presumably) straight father stands outside.

Mr. Wolfgang literally calls the bill, "The Bathroom Bill".

Stare rep Holder-Winfield responded to the inanity very well (the following transcript is literally copy-pasted from the link above):

REP.HOLDER-WINFIELD: Good afternoon, Mr. Wolfgang.

WOLFGANG:Good afternoon.

REP.HOLDER-WINFIELD: You said if this bill passes, nothing would prevent thesexual predators from taking the actions that you suggest might happen. What prevents themfrom doing that now?

WOLFGANG:Well they’d certainly have more of a reason to do it. And men in general shouldnot be allowed into women’s bathrooms. At issue is the fact that you have anexception for sex but not for gender identity and expression if this billpasses and men can enter women’s bathrooms.

REP.HOLDER-WINFIELD: But my question to you is, whatprevents them from doing it now? Youranswer, while a response, doesn’t actuallyindicate what does that.

WOLFGANG:Well, I mean, you know, there are laws thatprevent crimes, obviously, from taking place in bathrooms in general. But, I mean, why give sexual predators a pretext? Whygive them an excuse to say, “Look, I’m transgendered and that’s why I went intothe women’s bathroom.” Obviously it’s – you know, there are laws for registeredsex offenders.

REP.HOLDER-WINFIELD: And so those laws would actually exist if the crime wascommitted after entering the bathroom, even if thislaw passed – if this bill passed, is that not correct?

Wolfgang and his ilk betray a severe lack of comprehension of the issues at hand when they rattle of the type inanity seen above. I'm honestly proud of Wolfgang for acknowledging that sexual assault is a problem in America; but his single-minded fixation on trans-gendered males, and those who would pose as one, obfuscates and distracts from other possible types of harassment and assault. I'll ignore men and boys as victims, since Wolfgang doesn't seem concerned about them, and point out that by his logic he should be arguing for separate bathrooms for the L and B women of the LGBT communities. IMHO a *more* sensible topic to discuss would be how to offer protections to everyone from everyone else.

The failure of his imagination to think of those possible scenarios makes me wonder; what has Mr. Wolfgang been fantasizing about that makes him so concerned about protecting little girls from straight men?

Or maybe he's just a dumb-ass bigot.

Fun fact: I've always assumed that it was spelled "Conneticut" until I spell-checked this post and discovered "Conne[c]ticut" is the correct version. Also it was only a few weeks ago that I discovered "gover[n]ment" isn't spelled "goverment". Somewhere all of my English and social studies teachers are crying :'(

No, this isn't an advertisement :P

Starbucks had this tumbler on clearance and I just couldn't help myself.

Now if I could just get the cat to stop rubbing itself on my laptop's screen life would be great.

Yay!

Ok, I'm not going to link to Pharyngula all the time; I just felt like after my last post I should be a wuss and point out some positive things in the world. This is a post which suggests that warfare is a relatively recent phenomenon in human history and isn't something that we're hardwired for.

And also this "Slayer Goes To Church" video, makes me very happy.

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.