(BTW- NO ONE except Sniper got my Belladona O Ring reference. I swear I thought that was the funniest thing I have written in 39 years, and was devastated that a few people were asking about it. Trust me on this one, DO NOT GOOGLE Belladona and O Ring while at work. But, God it was an awesome reference.)<\/p>\n
Answers are on the board:<\/p>\n
1)\tBicycle riding is for Lance Armstrong, mormons and Teh Gheys. Just kidding on the Gheys. Also, those assholes who have those spontaneous rides where they block traffic and then some pissed off homie runs over one of them and they all cry like Nancy Kerrigan or those obnoxious dolls that cry when separated.<\/p>\n
2)\tJazz sucks. Hasn\u2019t been the same since John Stockton retired and Bleeding Gums Murphy died. Also, I never get the words right.<\/p>\n
3)\tYou know how you go out early in the morning on your bike, and you go to the beach, and you sit there, and you wait\u2026and you wait\u2026and suddenly the sun comes up. And you have perfectly situated yourself to shoot the sun rising over the water (or I guess setting since you are west coast) and you have it centered between two volleyball nets, and you come up with a pithy title like, \u201cSplitting the Nets, a Sun is Born\u201d. And you tell us how you shot it with a Kodak Whatthefuck 1400 with a Whocares lens with a shutterspeed that is slower than that of Belladona\u2019s O ring? Yeah. No one gives a shit. It\u2019s like when I used to climb mountains in Afghanistan with an M204, surrounded by ANA guys in Reeboks while I pray that one of them was carrying cardiac paddles, because the asshole that had me carrying 120 lbs of shit didn\u2019t think it all the way through. Both stories nearly the same, only mine has slightly less phaggitocity. (Just ask Nathan Lane, he\u2019ll tell you. BTW- I talked to him last night and he wants you to man up.) I’ll take Michael Yon’s photography 99 times out of 100 over yours. Except that one he did from the helicopter through nods that just looked like shaky green lights. That one blew. Plus, my girlfriend is the greatest food photgrapher in the world. And I have yet to see you do “Cupcake on the Counter” in the proper light like she does.<\/p>\n
4)\tPony Tails. Unless you are some wandering shaolin monk or something, it just looks ridiculous. Cut that shit off and get a high and tight. You aren\u2019t a shoalin monk are you? Man I am gonna feel bad if Killgore Trout posts something tomorrow about how you were found unconscious with a rope tied around your neck and your junk.<\/p>\n
5)\tI\u2019m a veteran, and thus an extremist. I am cold today, and thus a climate denier. I think Obama has been bad on most issues, and thus a racist. I think less government is better, and thus a militia member. And I think words written on a blog are just words written on a blog, and thus a self-hating professional apparently. Or, it could just be that the world is made up of many folks of many opinions, and I support each of them telling me what they think, without classifying them with titles that are ambiguous at best, and mal-descriptive (not actually a word, but I couldn\u2019t come up with the right one) for the vast bulk of times they are used.<\/p>\n
Although Ace and Blackfive have been my favorite blogs for as long as I\u2019ve known what blogs were, I always liked Little Green Footballs. At one point on my mental list, they were a close #3. Especially since Charles was actually pretty good about responding to emails. Ace pretty much blows at it, and Burden last time I went drinking with him showed me his blackberry that had something like 42k unanswered emails. So, I really appreciated that Charles responded to my first email, and I started reading him daily.<\/p>\n
As you know, we parted ways with him back a few months ago when he seemed to have left the reservation. At first I couldn\u2019t quit cold turkey, so even though I cancelled my account, I would go back and read it. But you can only read so many posts where Charles purports A as fact, and 200 people leave 500 comments that \u201cOh God Charles, you are so right! No one has ever been as right as you! A is a fact!\u201d So, I stopped reading entirely about 2 months ago.<\/p>\n
I only went back this morning because of an email from Jonn. <\/p>\n
\n So, I went and read his magnum opus entitled \u201cWhy I Parted Ways With The Right\u201d. I didn\u2019t read the comments, but I bet somewhere in there Kilgore Trout says \u201cOh God Charles, you are so right! No one has ever been as right as you! The right has gone off the rails, and that is a fact!\u201d<\/p>\n
So, here are his 10 reasons for leaving the \u201cright.\u201d As designated spokesman on this topic for This Ain\u2019t Hell, the 3,625th most popular blog on that rabid right, a blog characterized by our (now good) friend Alex Horton as \u201cGun Clinging Fundamentalists\u201d, a title we share with LGF, I hereby give my comments to his 10 reasons.<\/p>\n
1.\tSupport for fascists, both in America (see: Pat Buchanan, Robert Stacy McCain, etc.) and in Europe (see: Vlaams Belang, BNP, SIOE, Pat Buchanan, etc.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This one is easier than most for me. Through work I have been involved in the issue of illegal immigration. As part of that, I used to go to meetings with organizations that were also involved in this issue. I stopped going about 2 years ago because one of the groups I discovered had ties to Pat Buchanan. In fact, I even emailed with Charles at the time to talk about some of the things they were doing. Since I was getting the emails intended for the group members, and one of the group members had been arrested for something. (Basically, dude was an asshole, case closed.) So, I think it is safe to say that I don\u2019t support Fascists here, in Europe, or anywhere else.<\/p>\n
2.\tSupport for bigotry, hatred, and white supremacism (see: Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Robert Stacy McCain, Lew Rockwell, etc.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
See above. I think that Buchanan is a complete lunatic. And I was banned from the Ann Coulter site. What is more, in my daily dealings with folks on the right, I have yet to hear a single one of them tell me how great any of the people above is. I assume RSM\u2019s inclusion above is some private dig, or I am way out of the loop, because I don\u2019t know jack shit that RSM has ever written. I don\u2019t even know why he is included. I do know that Lew Rockwell is a fuggin lunatic, as some of his people occasionally infest the blog, and we have to delouse the entire place. So, I guess like #1, #2 doesn\u2019t really apply to us. <\/p>\n
3. Support for throwing women back into the Dark Ages, and general religious fanaticism (see: Operation Rescue, anti-abortion groups, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, the entire religious right, etc.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Not only do I oppose throwing women back into the Dark Ages, I also oppose throwing them anywhere near the Paleolithic era as well. I don\u2019t really know what he was going for here, unless just being pro-life means throwing women back to the Dark Ages. Seems a bit hyperbololic to me. Is Tony Perkins the guy that sells the chickens?<\/p>\n
4.\tSupport for anti-science bad craziness (see: creationism, climate change denialism, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, James Inhofe, etc.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
OK, apparently we lose on this one. Mind you, I am not anti-science in the least, but by Charles myopic definition here, I apparently fall into it. Now mind you that as I write this I am listening to an audio book of \u201cA Short History of Nearly Everything\u201d which is essentially a history of science. Right now I am listening (for the 50th + time) to a discussion of cosmic pheruoles (ph) and Neutron Activation Analysis. I have a copy of Origin of Species (purchased as a gift by VT Woody) sitting on the far left of my favorites book shelf. But\u2026.here it is\u2026.Yeah, I don\u2019t believe in Anthropomorphic Climate Change. Now, I haven\u2019t looked at the raw data, but then again, neither has Charles. I know that because just yesterday it was announced that the raw data no longer exists.<\/p>\n
This is what I do know though. Every year I am told that we have 12 months to act. Next years hurricane season will be worse than this years. Holy Shit! By this time next year, Nebraska will have ocean front property. And every year they hold some global warming rally, and it gets snowed out, whether held in April, October or any other time. Based on this alone I would tempted to believe that there is a) in fact an omni-potent God, b) he has one hell of a sense of humor. <\/p>\n
But, I do believe in God. I generally don\u2019t discuss it, but there it is. Now, does that mean I think that Noah actually got a shit load of animals on a little boat, that a whale ate a dude? No. But, I believe what I read in the bible as literal truth almost as much as I believe that what I read on LGF is literal truth. And one of them was written 2000 years ago.<\/p>\n
5.\tSupport for homophobic bigotry (see: Sarah Palin, Dobson, the entire religious right, etc.)\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Dude, I love Teh Gheys. (From a distance, of course.) <\/p>\n
I used to date a chick who lobbied for the gay lobby, and her friends were hilarious. Given a choice, I tend not to hang out with gay folks as much, only because they don\u2019t regularly have the same interests as me. Most straights also don\u2019t have the same interests as me. Actually, only Claymore and Brown Neck Gaitor have the same interests as me, and only sometimes there. I don\u2019t support \u201chomophobic bigotry\u201d anymore than I do heterophobic bigotry. Personally, I don\u2019t really give 2 shits about whether they marry or not, although I vote against that each time if only because certain groups are so overbearing about it (prop 7 or whatever it was) that I feel like a vote FOR gay marriage is at times just succumbing to the threats. I also am in favor of lifting DADT, although I think it should be done slowly, with CSS lifted first. It\u2019s not because I think Gheys or Straights are any better at fighting (the Sacred Band of Thebes comes to mind) but because I don\u2019t believe in screwing the military up right now. <\/p>\n
Either way, I don\u2019t think we have any \u201chomophobic bigotry\u201d here, or at least not from the authors.<\/p>\n