(Who Would Jesus Beat with a Metal Object?)

Our friend Stephanie in Kansas shares the news that the professor who recently announced a course
called "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and
other Religious Mythologies" has told police that he was attacked along
a rural road late last night and beaten by two men, who were quite clear that his opposition to Christian fundamentalism was the cause of the attack.

This is precisely the kind of thing that gives being vaguely
conversant with history or having the slightest ability to reason the
delicious tingle of danger.

Granted, Prof. Mirecki himself isn’t infallible, as he showed in an
email which referred to his proposed class as a "nice slap in [the
fundamentalists’] big fat face."  After the controversy — triggered
because, as we all know, most right-wing ministers are glowing paragons of health, often as skinny as supermodels — the professor
decided that the class should be cancelled out of fairness to all concerned.

I agree.  Not one televangelist I can think of has enough double-chins to give his head its own scrotum.

OK, well, one.

Actually, five.  Wait, no.  Seven.  Hmm.  Anyhow.

Naturally, there are already people on the right — I won’t dignify
them with links, but you can find them easily enough — who have
already decided that the professor staged his own attack.  Well,
certainly.  Because beating themselves up in the middle of nowhere
is the kind of thing rationalists do.

I don’t know if the local District Attorney
plans to prosecute this the same way they would if two atheists beat
the crap out of a minister, specifically for his beliefs.  But they
should.  I’m gonna send them an email in a minute and say so.

And this Kos diary suggests making a donation to Americans United for Separation of Church and State
in Prof. Mirecki’s name, as a specific show of support for him and a
deterrent to future similar attacks.  Not a bad idea.  I’m gonna go
chip in a few bucks myself.

You’ve got Peter Feaver, too!

At least, that’s what Team Chimpy thinks, thanks to the work
of one Dr. Peter Feaver, author of the Bush administration’s "Plan For
Victory" which primarily involves a lot more talking about
victory.

Yeah.  That’ll work.

Now that an actual Dr. Feaver is working for the White House, is it just me, or is Team Chimpy gradually turning into WKRP right before our eyes?

We already had Bush playing Mr. Carlson, the ineffectual middle-aged
station manager, the one whose plans never quite turn out.  Karl Rove
is a spot-on Herb Tarlek, the asshole sales guy with no morals
whatsoever.  You could even argue that Donald Rumsfeld is turning into
a decent impression of Les Nessman.

If Dick Cheney starts wearing a pimp outfit and calling himself "Flytrap," we’ve got ourselves a government.

UPDATE: Several emailers have suggested Condi Rice as Jennifer, the Loni Anderson character.  The same thought crossed my own mind, but she strikes me more as a Bailey Quarters, the sort of bookish loyalist who almost gets it on with the boss in a Very Special episode, until they think both better of it and vow to become better friends.

But then it dawned on me: who else in the White House would go shopping for thousand-dollar designer shoes while New Orleans was being destroyed?  That’s a devotion to fashion that even Jennifer Marlowe couldn’t touch.

UPDATE part deux: It has also been pointed out that Iraq is starting to look a lot like episode in which the station did a massive giveaway of turkeys — by hurling them out of aircraft, causing a Hindenburg-like disaster below.

I agree.  Except on WKRP, the tragedy had an end.  The station manager was able to understand that the carnage meant he had made a mistake.  Not gonna happen here.  So Arthur freakin’ Carlson would be a vastly better president than the one we’ve got.  Also, there wasn’t a rival station where people like Hillary Clinton were standing under the plummeting birds, insisting that yes it was a good idea.

Just came back from the dentist, who numbed things this morning from from roughly the bridge of my nose down to Earth’s mantle.

As a result, the entire right side of my face is fairly inactive.  And when I smiled in the mirror just now, to see how this morning’s excavations turned out, a surprising face looked right back at me:

Dick Cheney.

GAAAAAAHHHHHH! I said, running from the room, screaming, frightened that I was about to be tortured, or worse, forced to keep looking at Dick Cheney.

Blogging will be light today.  I need to get back to the book.  Also, I am going to be busy slapping the right side of my face over and over until the nerve endings wake up.

Given who that side of my face just resembled, I suspect this will be oddly satisfying.

True story: this little fellow gently nudged his nose against my hand through the mesh, moments after this picture was taken.

This endowed me with a power known as The Nuzzling, and it is the most fearsome force in all pududom.  Whenever I shake someone’s hand, I now have the power to see two and a half seconds into their future.

Usually what I see is us still shaking hands.  Pretty much always, actually.

Sometimes we’re not.  Occasionally there’s a hug.  Not much else so far.

Pudus are very small.

While reading this post over at the General’s place, about heroic Americans reporting people dressed as ninjas to the British police, I learned today of the Air Force’s Eagle Eyes website, which actually includes a guide to spotting and reporting terrorists.

Among the things you are instructed by the Air Force to watch out for (I kid you not):

If you see anyone engaging in these activities, report them immediately to the nearest… um… authority… erm… oh, never mind that.

Still, alert your friends to the, um, whatever! Email them this post!

Remember: vigilance is the eternal price of, uh, something!