Twitterpated

• 17:39 Is the switch to digital TV ever actually going to happen? It's been put off almost as much as the Second Coming. #
• 19:32 @colleenanne If I were a pedophile, I'm sure I'd give up on Animal Crossing as soon as I had to draw a face for that cat. #
• 19:34 @colleenanne I also love how the article uses all this paranoid language, and then says there's no reason to be paranoid. #
• 19:34 @TheRealTavie Hey, nobody follows me just because they're L. Frank Baum fans! Then again, I never knew the man personally. #
• 19:36 @eehouls I only follow @TheRealTavie because of her hair length. #
• 21:07 When they announced that the American Idol contestants would be singing "Trouble," I hoped it would be the song from "The Music Man." {g} #
• 21:07 The minute your son leaves the house, does he re-buckle his knickerbockers BELOW the knees? #
• 21:41 Why are the two best people on American Idol in the bottom three? #
• 21:52 There's an ad for "Foodler Philly" on LJ. Is he a hobo? #
• 22:25 @TheRealTavie Possibly. #

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It's Hard Out Here for a Pope

You've probably heard by now that the Pope has said that condoms would not help prevent the spread of AIDS in Africa, and could actually make the problem worse. I'm not entirely clear on how someone can be opposed to both abortion AND birth control. I mean, this isn't "life begins at conception," but "life begins long BEFORE conception" (or, as Monty Python put it, "every sperm is sacred"). The basic idea seems to be that sex is inherently bad, but whenever anyone suggests that, they'll pretty much inevitably receive a reply about how only SOME kinds of sex are bad. The thing is, these "some kinds" seem to include pretty much ANY variety that doesn't involve married people trying to procreate, which suggests that it's bad by default. That's one reason why, even if abstinence-only education worked (and we all know it doesn't), I still wouldn't be too keen on it. It's the role of the schools to educate students on the dangers of sex, not to pass value judgments on sex itself. Anyway, the procreation-only concept seems to me to be largely based on the ideas that: 1) people should have as many kids as possible (because you need SOMEONE to help with the farming and herding, and some of them are bound to die in childhood), and 2) sperm is such a precious commodity that any ejaculation that doesn't have the chance of fertilizing an egg (masturbation, gay sex, protected sex, etc.) is a waste of resources. We now know the latter is untrue, and while the former might still be appropriate in Africa, it still shouldn't be taken as a given that everyone wants children. So why hold on to this old dogma? Well, really, I'm not sure the Pope has a choice, even if he wanted to change things. Sure, he's technically infallible, but so were the guys before him, so he can't very well go completely against them. And why would the College of Cardinals choose a leader who was likely to have radical opinions, anyway? The Pope is the titular head of a major world religion, yet he's not really allowed to DO much of anything. On top of that, he's celibate, so maybe it's a given that he's going to be bitter. I can just imagine him thinking, "If God's representative on Earth can't enjoy sex, why should anyone else be allowed to?"

Wally and Zooey

In this entry, I review two cool things that bethje introduced me to. The first is Wally Cox's book, My Life As a Young Boy. I don't think it's any secret that my wife has a thing for the late Wally Cox, star of Mr. Peepers, voice of Underdog, and mainstay on Hollywood Squares. The book actually holds up quite well for something written in the sixties about growing up in the thirties, and I could identify with Wally in some situations, like his hatred of art and shop classes. Also, I was excited to learn that he was a big fan of the Oz books, which I guess were more mainstream back then (they were published annually for over thirty years between the teens and the forties, so they must have been selling pretty well), but it's still impressive to me. Wally's style in writing the book is humorous, and gives the sense that he remembers his childhood feelings and activities quite well.

The other cool thing is She & Him's optimistically titled first album, Volume One. The "She" in the band is actress Zooey Deschanel (the "Him" is M. Ward, but it's Zooey who sings lead and wrote most of the songs), and when I first heard she was coming out with an album, I thought it might be one of those "I'm a thespian who thinks they can become a pop star, because all lively arts are basically the same" kind of things, but it's really quite good. The sound is very cute and kind of old-fashioned. Incidentally, I believe Zooey also sings some backing vocals on Jenny Lewis' Acid Tongue, and I think she also decided that looking like Jenny would be a good idea for her music career. Not that I'm complaining.