Movin' to Wordpress

Hey Folks.

I'm moving this blog over to WordPress. Check it out at: http://tedrick.wordpress.com

Also check out my new photo blog: http://godhatesprotesters.wordpress.com.

I'm learning about the new blogging platform, so both blogs are a work in progress. I'm gettin' my own domains, too.

This will be the last post on this blog. Be sure to update your links and bookmarks!

Two literary announcements

First, my good buddy Rachelle Escamilla, who is currently working on an MFA at the University of Pittsburgh, will headline a poetry reading at Morocco's restaurant in San Jose on Monday, March 16th. Rachelle is crazy talented and her poetry career has really taken off. Rachelle has asked me to introduce her before her reading, and I am honored to do so. Details about the event here. Rachelle's brand-spankin' new website is here.

Second, William Lobdell, the former LA Times religion writer whose story on ex-Mormons started me on my own publishing career, releases his new memoir tomorrow. Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America - and Found Inner Peace has garnered great reviews and adds to the growing body of New Atheist literature.

Congrats to both of you!

New business card

My good buddy Ryan of Applehead Design made these absolutely kick-ass business cards.

I have long admired Ryan's design talent. When I talked to her about making cards for me, she put together several cool designs. I came back with suggestions for a couple of them and the final result is this gorgeous card you see above.

And no, my phone number isn't blurred out on the real thing. (This is teh interwebz, folks. Can't be too careful these days.)

I feel like Ryan crammed a fat chunk of my personality into these. I can't wait to hand them out.

A week of geeky delights

Awesome robot wallpaper found here.

This past week brought wonderful delights to my geeky heart:

1) New RAM

If I had known that I could get 2G of RAM for only $30 bucks, I would have spent the money years ago and saved myself from tedious, grueling computer hangups. I can't tell you how much of a joy it is to have my desktop boot up faster than a priest lifting the robe on an altar boy.

2) New Ubuntu

With that faster RAM I finally downloaded the latest version of Ubuntu. I tell you, folks, this OS is a joy and a half. Above is the screenshot of my shiny new desktop (I found the wallpaper here.). Sometimes I just stare at it whilst touching myself.

With Windows, things start out fine and then they slowly go to shit: programs stop working, system tools stop functioning. With Ubuntu, the frustration is reversed: it's a serious pain in the pooper to get things working right (I can't overstate how much work goes into getting this OS to do all the things you want it to.). But once you get it working, using your computer becomes more joyous than a toothless blowjob.

3) Offline Gmail

Google recently announced offline Gmail, a way to compose, search and send emails even when you're not connected to the Internet.

I tried it today and it works wonderfully. After enabling offline access in the settings menu (You have to either install the Google Gears add-on for Firefox or use Google's new Chrome browser) Gmail downloaded more than a year's worth of email to my laptop.

I went down to Starbucks and fired up Gmail before connecting to the wireless network. I searched through messages, sent out a couple of emails, and even downloaded to my hard drive three CDs that had been sitting in my inbox for six months. Once I connected to the Internet Gmail automatically sent out the stored emails and updated my inbox. Just wonderful.

One-sentence review of Coraline

The Coraline movie is like that super hot chick you meet in a bar: It's so beautiful you can't help but look; but it's so vapid and unsatisfying that you'll regret spending any money on it.

I've created a monster

Since writing my "Why I Go to Church" piece a few weeks ago, SN&R has received lots of responses from believers explaining why they go to church. This first one was written by a Mormon who took issue with a few of the things I said:

http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/Content?oid=913419

The Why I Go to Church theme will be an occasional Sacreligious! feature for the time being.

This week's SN&R...

I didn't actually write anything this week, but I took the photo and was, um, involved in this story:

http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/Content?oid=902481

Plus, Sacto's resident Crazy Christian Lady complained about my "Why I Go to Church" piece from a couple of weeks ago. Check out the madness at the bottom of the page:

http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/Content?oid=902502

There are a couple of letters in this week's CN&R about my refugee story:

http://www.newsreview.com/chico/Content?oid=907132

And CN&R ran my green cleaning story from a while back. Same work, more pay for me. Woot.

http://www.newsreview.com/chico/Content?oid=907112

I'm calling this week's SN&R, "The Ted Issue"

Here's my cover story on the first Iraqi refugees to come to Sacramento:

http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/Content?oid=900123

Plus two sidebars to the cover piece, one about the International Rescue Committee, the other about the Arab Church of Sacramento:

http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/Content?oid=900124

http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/Content?oid=900125

I reworked my recent Twlight rant and it turned into this week's essay:

http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/Content?oid=900101

And the Chico News & Review editor liked my feature story so much he decided to run it as the cover over there as well. It's a shorter version, perfect for all you ADD readers:

http://www.newsreview.com/chico/Content?oid=901225

And yes, Kristin and Jason, I owe you guys, like, 3 bottles of orange sauce now.

Canadian polygamists cite gay marriage in their defense

Gosh, I hate being right all the time. (OK, OK, I was wrong about el Busho pulling an 11th hour false flag operation and enacting a police state.)

But up in Hockeyland, a couple of polygamists on trial for having more than one wife have cited the country's legalization of gay marriage in their defense. Hey, if two men can get married, they argue, why can't a man marry two women?

Check out the MSNBC article here.

The Canadian hornballs in question are closely connected to Warren Jeff's FLDS church in the U.S. You can bet your ass that Jeff's is closely following this case and that he will use the same defense if a federal law is enacted giving gays and lesbians the right to marry.

Why I go to church

My latest contribution to the Sacreligious! column:

http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/Content?oid=897503

Some favorite quotes on writers and writing

I should be writing a news story right now, but I can't stop listening to the latest Common album. So, instead of listening to interviews, I'll share some of my favorite quotes on writing:

Professional writers are often confused. It comes with the territory. - Jon Franklin

There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein. - Red Smith

Perhaps there is another kind of writing. I only know this one: in the night, when fear does not let me sleep. - Franz Kafka

Writing is busy idleness. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Writing always means hiding something in a way that it then is discovered. - Italo Calvino

A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit. - Richard Bach

The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with. - William Faulkner

I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within. - Gustave Flaubert

All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. - George Orwell

At night, when the objective world has slunk back into its cavern and left dreamers to their own, there come inspirations and capabilities impossible at any less magical and quiet hour. No one knows whether or not he is a writer unless he has tried writing at night. - H. P. Lovecraft

Latest Sacreligious! column...

... on Christian sex addicts:

http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/Content?oid=896278

2 more in this week's SN&R

Green Days feature article on green cleaning products:

http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/Content?oid=893176

Scene & Heard piece on the wonders of Craigslist:

http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/Content?oid=893186

Ladies and gentlemen: Tourette's Guy (NSFW video)

Snuggie: Bathrobes for the retarded

Once again, kiddies, I'm going to show you how to save time and money. Why? Because I love you. So much. So very, very, very much.

Take the Snuggie, for instance. You could pay $14.95 (plus shipping & handling) for two Snuggies and a pair of booklights modeled after Tron's penis. But that would mean you'd have to wait two to six weeks before you could watch little Timmy's baseball game while dressed as a retarded Jedi. No, that's not good enough. Below, my friends, are eight easy steps that will help you get a warm, soft Snuggie tonight!

1) Get off of your sofa.

2) Wipe the potato chip grease off of your fingers.

3) Get into your SUV.

4) Drive to your local Wal-Mart.

5) Buy a bathrobe.

6) Put the bathrobe on backwards.

7) Hooray! You have a Snuggie!

8) Throw yourself in front of a speeding bus.

Got that?

Polygamy: The real reason the Mormon church is so opposed to gay marriage

From a scriptural standpoint, it makes sense that the Mormon church would oppose the idea of state-sanctioned same-sex marriages: Mormons subscribe to the King James Version of the Bible, which, from a superficial reading of a few verses, condemns homosexual acts.

But there are plenty of other biblical rules that Mormonism - and the whole of Christianity, for that matter - chooses  to ignore. For example, can anyone point to a single well-funded political campaign to stone adulterers to death? Or to imprison those who work on the sabbath? Or to punish Christians who don't sell all they own and give the money to the poor?

And as I've pointed out in previous blogs, the historical role that polygamy has played in Mormonism makes it supremely hypocritical for church members to claim that marriage is strictly between one man and one woman.

But perhaps I've been thinking about this issue the wrong way; Maybe polygamy is the reason why church hierarchy has been so opposed to gay marriage.

The church has painted same-sex marriage as a redefinition of "traditional" marriage. If marriage is redefined as a legal contract between any two consenting adults, what's to stop marriage being redefined as a legal contract between any arrangement of men or women? Couldn't modern-day polygamists argue before the courts that their unions should be just as legally valid as man-woman or man-man marriages?

The Mormon church doesn't want to see that happen, because that would mean church leadership would then have to make a decision as to whether or not to continue the practice of polygamy. The church originally abandoned polygamy for legal and financial reasons: the federal government was threatening to seize church property if polygamy wasn't renounced.

I know quite a few Mormon men who would love for polygamy to become legal again. The doctrinal teaching is still in place; all it needs is legal sanctioning from the government.

That's why the church is fighting so hard against same-sex marriage. "Redefining" marriage contracts to allow for polygamous unions could throw the church into (yet another) public relations disaster. 

The easy route for dealing with polygamy, as with all of Mormonism's troubled history, is to keep it buried and hidden. Unfortunately, in the case of same-sex marriage, it means the church is willing to deny to all human beings equal protection under the law.

Christmas greetings from heathen friends

Did anyone else notice this on Dec. 25? As the day wore on, I got the usual slew of text message greetings (I think texting is my generation's version of the holiday card - a mass-distribution of impersonal end-of-the-year messages.).

But I noticed something about the messages that I thought was unusual: Almost all of my atheist/agnostic/non-religious friends typed "Merry Christmas" while my Christian friends wished me "Happy Holidays."

I don't have a problem when people wish me a Merry Christmas, especially on Dec. 25.  If someone says to me, "Happy Hanukkah," for example, I'm certainly not going to fly off the handle for that person making the assumption that I'm Jewish. 

I should also point out how wishing a non-religious person "Happy Holidays" isn't really less offensive than a "Merry Christmas"; The word "holiday" comes from "holy" + "day." We observe "holydays" by resting, much like the Jews of the Old Testament.

Good advice

Which of these 3 Metallica covers sucks the most donkey ass?

Sum 41 being completely unprepared "For Whom the Bell Tolls," "Enter Sandman," and "Master of Puppets":

Snoop Dogg mutilating "Sad But True":

Or Avril Lavinge butchering "Fuel":

Christ, these make me want to jam rusty HIV-infested pitchforks into my ear canals.

But since I'm such a nice guy, here's a worthy Metallica cover. It's by a little metal band called Pantera. You may have heard of them:

Twilight: Porn for women

OK, I admit it, I have seen Twilight. Besides the crappy special effects, and the fact that every character plays one single mood – moody – it wasn’t as horrible as I was hoping it would be. 

In case you have been living in a hole for the past few weeks, Twilight is the story of Bella, a clumsy, unpopular teenage girl who tries to juggle an awkward relationship with her mustachioed father while she adjusts to life in a new town. Bella falls madly in love with Edward, a vampire who has been undead for “a while.” 

Edward is inhumanly gorgeous, inhumanly strong, holds several medical degrees, plays concert piano, and, most importantly, is uncontrollably attracted to Bella. Edward’s family is filthy rich, having amassed wealth over the past hundred-something years. 

It’s not hard to see why Twilight has become so popular, especially among young women; Twilight is every teenage girl’s fantasy: the hot, rich guy falls madly in love with the unpopular klutz. 

Twilight is porn for women. While porn for men usually takes normal, everyday guys and pairs them with idealized women, Twilight flips the formula around: Bella is the everyday teenage girl who ends up with the ideal man. 

Often when women are idealized in popular media, it’s (rightly) labeled as pornography, misogyny, objectification or unhealthy fantasy. Activist groups sound the alarm about “impossible standards” and the danger of warping society’s expectations about women. 

But when men are idealized to impossible standards, it’s a bestseller. Tell me, gender activists, where is the outrage over Twilight and the impossible standards for men?