While the photo is hilarious, the story itself rides the fine line between just desserts and mean. As picketers go, this woman clearly meant to be helpful in her unsolicited condemnation.
Via BoingBoing.
Beware of church Category
Current events, clips
Tuesday, June 23rd, 20091. Rice Bowl! Myanmar decides to overlook their law forbidding more than 5 people to gather in one place in order to support their first professional soccer league. While organized teams once had names like “Central Supply and Transport Depot” and “Forestry,” the new league teams now have proper club titles ending with “United.” The Man of the Match wins $500. WSJ piece and vid here.
2. Speaking of Myanmar, it has a new capital city, Naypyitaw, under which North Korea is building secret tunnels to smuggle leftover SCUD missiles. No worries, the Pentagon is “just watching.”
3. God save us from crazy Romanian truckers.
4. Let’s finish with a healthy workout.
Spam of the Day
Wednesday, May 6th, 2009From a “Knickerbocker Sturgell”: Too Pooped to Pop? And then some sort of misspelled pitch for little blue pills. “Too pooped to pop” is a phrase my mother uses, and it’s the only time you’ll ever hear the word poop cross her lips.
It still irks me that saying “crap” in her household got you an earful of admonition and a mouthful of soap. Didn’t she know that everyone else was out drinking Zima behind the barn IN MIXED COMPANY? Heck if I ever turned up pregnant or drunk after youth group Bible study.
Anylegalism, here is a list of things that suck, lest we let all this Grace in Small Things get out of hand:
1. Our tax bill. Before The Biz and joint filing entered my life, I viewed tax season as a sort of fun event where you do a few math problems, and then the government gives you a check. This year, there were way too many zeros on the check we gave the government. At least there was an accountant to do the math.
2. It has been raining for days, with no end in sight.
3. Due to my over-eagerness to bond with obscure branches of my family-in-law, I rsvp’ed to a stranger’s wedding instead of to The Dirty Thirty Cougar Coming Out Party of one Flashmistress Gogodancer. It’ll be calico jumpers and fruit punch instead of animal prints and cocktails.
4. My new haircut makes me look like this. 
It’s been a long two days of ranting with my liberal hippie feminist sister
Thursday, November 6th, 2008And I’m still pissed about this letter. Even though it is so batshit that it makes me laugh. You know how Obama voters were threatening to move to Canada if McCain won? Turns out the Dobson crowd is headed to Australia and New Zealand. Apparently, it’s chock full of homeschoolers there.
Like this adorable gentleman.
Obamalypse now!
Thursday, November 6th, 2008Dear disappointed conservative friends and family,
Rend not thy garments and fret not thyselves. It’s unlikely that the Homosexual Agenda (that rabble-rousing army of drag queens) will chase you down the street, brandishing their genitals and threatening to “roast marshmallows” with your young Boy Scout sons. The dark, godless heavens will not rain down condoms and contraceptives upon your praying heads. And Dora will not be Exploring more than her bi-lingual cartoon maps.
So instead of writing 16-pages of crazy, why don’t you find a pregnant teenager and buy her a pack of diapers.
mailtime
Friday, June 20th, 2008Ok, this is a long and inexcusably wordy document, but I spent about 6 hours going through our oldest files at work and found that one book was stopped at the Post Office as “unmailable” due to its sinful topic (psychosexual analysis). Here’s the law they had back in 1940, which prohibited literature about naughty bits AND abortion-by-mail. What?! Anyway, in addition to crossed eyes, papercuts, and a nasal passage full of dust, sometimes I find some interesting things in those old files. (PS. All typos are sic, which means I am still an untaintable grammar nazi). This is all very Patriot Act-y, in my opinion.
POST OFFICE,
SECTION 598, POSTAL LAWS AND REGULATIONS, 1940
Every obscene, lewd, or lascivious and every filthy book, pamphlet, picture, paper, letter, writing, print, or other publication of an indecent character, and every article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for preventing conception or producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use; and every advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use or apply it for preventing conception or producing abortion or for any indecient or immoral purpose; and every written or printed card, letter, circular, book, pamphlet, advertisement, or notice of and kind giving information, directly or indirectly, where, or how, or from whom, or by what means any of the hereinbefore-metioned matters, articles, or things may be obtained or made, or where or by whom any act or operation of any kind for the procuring or producing of abortion will be done or performed, or how or by what means conception may be prevented or abortion produced, whether sealed or unsealed; and every letter, packet, or package, or other mail matter containing any filthy, vile, or indecent thing, device, or substance; and every paper, writing, advertisement, or representation that any article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing may, or can be, used or applied for preventing conception or producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral purpose; and every description calculated to induce or incite a person to use or apply any such article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing, is hereby declared to be nonmailable matter and shall not be conveyed in the mails or delivered from any post office or by any letter carrier. Whoever shall knowingly deposit, or cause to be deposited for mailing or delivery, anything declared by this section to be nonmailable, or shall knowingly take, or cause the same to be taken, from the mails for the purpose of circulating or disposing thereof, or of aiding in the circulation or disposition thereof, shall be fined not more than five thousand dollars, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.
2. And the term “indecent” within the intendment of this section shall include matter of a character tending to incite arson, murder, or assassination.
3. Any person who knowingly and willfully deposits or causes to be deposited for conveyance in the mail or for delivery from any post office or by any letter carrier any letter, paper, writing, print, missive, or document containing any threat to take the life of or to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States, or who knowingly and willfully otherwise makes any such threat against the President, shall upon conviction be fined not exceeding $1,000 or imprisoned not exceeding five years, or both.
In which I am an orthodox Jew and Piglet meets a Heffalump
Tuesday, March 4th, 2008I’m on my way to the gym today and decide to sit on a bench in the sun. And this lady sits next to me. Seems like a typical frumpy middle-aged NY-er with a Strand totebag, but out of the blue she asks me, “Are you religious?” Now, I had been using my stylus and iPhone, and this was not at all the question I was expecting/hoping to hear.
I say, “Not particularly,” and she says, “Because you’re wearing a skirt!” with a look of bewildered delight on her face, as if I was wearing a sun bonnet or some other legitimate relic.
She continues, “You know, most women wear pants. So I wondered why you were wearing a skirt.” I stare at her, then reply that I decided to wear a skirt today for no particular reason. And then decide my sunshine needs are met and scurry away to the gym.
wtf?!? It really felt like she was fresh out of a head-covering cult and was just getting used to the pants thing herself and couldn’t believe someone would deliberately put on a skirt unless they were compelled to. But I think she was just a slightly air-headed person who wanted to make conversation and maybe had an idea that there were Jewish skirt-loyalists in NY and perhaps she had met a live one.
What I learned from reading David Quammen today
Friday, January 4th, 2008“Semelparity: an animal or plant waits a very long time to procreate only once, does so with suicidal strenuousness, and then promptly dies. The act of sexual reproduction proves to be ecstatically fatal, fatally ecstatic. And the rest of us are left merely to say, Wow.”
Semelparitous creatures: bamboo, agaves, Pacific salmon.
Jim Elliot comes to mind.
I suppose that’s at least one notable similarity between salmon who goad themselves upstream, upwaterfalls, upwhitewater to get to their breeding grounds where they blow their, um, supplies and die of exhaustion and earnest young men practicing chastity. Perhaps they don’t all meet such early and unfortunate ends as Mr. Elliot. Still.
You may not die a virgin, but you may die just barely not a virgin.