Milk (or: goddammit I need to write more)

I saw Milk in class the other week. My immediate reaction was, “So that's Milk.”

Unfortunately, that sort of thing makes for terrible, droll reading, so I got to thinking about it more. My next thought was about some of the things the Christian Conservatives® said for why they were anti-gay and why gays shouldn't be allowed to do, well, anything. One of the most wonderful reasons in my view was given by a man who I don't remember much about, apart from what he said. What he said was this.

“You can argue with me, but you can't argue with God.”

That's got to be one of my favourite reasons for a political position. I hope someone uses that in my favour someday. But the thing is, it absolutely is true for me. Seeing as I don't believe in any gods, I couldn't argue with such a thing. I mean, I can't argue with something that I don't believe exists, the very idea of doing so falls over as soon as I try. He was right on that point at the very least: I cannot by any means argue with his god.

There's another bit with a woman who is actually featured a bit more heavily (read: not very heavily but she talks a lot on telly in what I think is stock footage), saying many of the same things, “Christian heritage”, “upstanding morals”, “gays are bad”, and other stupid crap. It's always based on her religion, and the funny thing is, never anyone else's. It's not like Christianity is the only religion in the world that has a problem with homosexuality. One might think these people could all get together and hate on gays as one. Perhaps luckily, they're too busy hating each other as well as gays. But that's another topic.

Anyway, The problem with these religious arguments is, they're Constitutionally untenable, or as I prefer to think of them, “complete and utter crap.” There is the whole “establishment clause” in the First Amendment that sort of prevents such reasoning behind laws. Or so I thought, then I met the Christian Conservatives® (it really is like a brand name, isn't it?).

The reason I hit on those particular moments, or rather they stuck so soundly in my brain, is that I've been hearing this sort of thing since I can remember. It doesn't help of course that I spent thirteen years at Catholic schools, which only meant I heard even more of it. I heard these asinine arguments so much that I could refute them in my sleep – not that it helped, being, I say again, a Catholic school. But what I learnt from Milk is that the Christian Conservatives® have made absolutely no new arguments in the past 30-40 years.

I learnt if I'm going to be opposing them on this issue (and I shall), I'm going to have to settle in for a lot of repetition.

Hockey - a diatribe

I have been a hockey fan for as long as I can remember knowing about hockey. Needless to say, I have several (thousand) gripes with the sport, despite maintaining it is the best sport in the history of sport.

First off, icing. What the hell is it? I have watched many hockey matches live, a few on television, and listened to none on the radio but nobody has ever explained this to me. Like any good researcher, I looked on Wikipedia first. According to the article on the subject, icing is “when a player shoots the puck across two red lines, the opposing team's goal line being the last, and the puck remains untouched”. Now I certainly can see why this dangerous act is worthy of penalty. Oh wait, no I don't. Yes, certainly it's boring, and not something players should do as a habit, but is it worthy of completely stopping play and having a referee arm signal? Besides, I thought that was “dumping the puck”; icing just gives the idea that we're penalising people for stopping suddenly in front of each other and causing ice to spray all over each other, and this is a sport where if they don't do that, there will be a lot more injuries than just from fights.

On the subject of fights, the NHL is utter crap. My first NHL game was a St Louis Blues matchup against the New York Islanders. This was back in 1994, when the Blues had Brett Hull, and were sort of somewhat good as opposed to just nearby. Anyway, there was real excitement in the air. There were hard body checks, there were fights, there was shouting and swearing – all a beautiful experience for a nine-year-old boy who is still afraid to say “damn.” Of late though, I have been hard-pressed to see much (if any) fighting on an NHL match. If I want to watch a beautiful game, I would watch football (real football, not American football. I know it can get confusing but I refuse to call it “soccer”). I want to see some action in my hockey, not skating back and forth. Throw a punch or change the name of your sport.

Of course, I have no idea when players stopped fighting in NHL hockey, because for several years now hockey has been almost impossible to find on television. I know in 2006 there was a player lockout which probably didn't help convince any networks to air hockey, and that decision carried over a couple years, but the thing with lockouts and strikes is they don't happen every year, or even every other year. If they did, they'd just declare it a holiday week and write it into the calendar. NBC/Universal must have grown some yarbles of late by starting up NHL Sunday, airing daytime games even during NFL season. Unfortunately I can't commend them too much because NHL Sunday airs just this side of not at all. The last time I saw it was in February, and there are still games to play, therefore games to air! NBC, as well as every other network with a sport division: air some hockey already. We fans south of the snowline are starved for a real sport, and this is the only one that happens in this country between January and April.

The LORD be with your botty

Every few weeks, if not more often, I find myself wondering just how many crazy people exist in the world. I usually wonder this after seeing some news story about, well, crazy people. Frequent topics include public nudity and the kind of mother/40-year-old son who lives at home domestic dispute that one can expect to see on the Maury Povich Show, but one of my absolute favourite topics of crazy people news stories involves people seeing the face of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, or Mohammad in a potato crisp, slice of toast, wall, or most recently, a chair.

The French island of Reunion, located in the Indian Ocean, is the source of this latest sighting of the Lord. Someone discovered one day that the rumples in the priest's cushion resembled the Son of God too closely to be a coincidence. According to an Agence France-Presse report, thousands have come to the island to witness the miracle that originated with somebody's bum.

This brings to my mind significant questions about the Divine Nature of Christ. It would appear that the Son of Man first appeared on foods, and now has appeared on someone's seat. Literally. I have been told throughout my life that God works in mysterious ways, but this just seems silly. If God wanted to send somebody a message, why not use the classics – a burning bush worked wonders for the Israelites in Egypt, after all, and don't get me started on the ten plagues! But I don't remember the biblical tale of King Saul seeing the face of Joshua Ben Nun in a plate of hummus, proclaiming it a miracle, and ordering all to visit to take souvenir etchings. Frankly, I think this is mere coincidence. If the real God wanted to send a message to his people, I think he has a better marketing department than one that would tell him to appear in somebody's butt imprint.

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