Christian Legal Society v. Martinez

Reposting something I wrote today at Volokh Conspiracy, in response to a question about whether a hypothetical bad-outcome had ever actually happened:

could the Muslim students also bring a claim against the university as a contributing party because the elimination of one or more unpopular student groups through this very tactic was a very-likely and easily forseen outcome of the “take all applications” policy the university chose to establish? Why is it a “very-likely and easily foreseen outcome”?
Is there a significant history of this sort of thing? If there were, I’m sure someone would have brought it to the Court’s attention and Justice Alito would have highlighted it.

Maybe not YET, but I’m really fuckin’ hoping that come September, Evangelical Christian college students will be lined up along with Orthodox Jewish and Muslim students to join the “LGBTQetc. Student Union” at schools across the nation, and insisting on their right to be voting members and potential officers.

And it would be super-sweet to see a newly and duly elected president of the Podunk University Queer Consortium submit an op-ed to one of the campus newspapers under the headline Why Gay “Marriage” Is Not a Right.

Come to think of it, you don’t even need to be religious, or anti-gay at all — everybody who believes strongly enough in freedom of association should merely pretend to endorse anti-gay viewpoints, while simultaneously insisting on their right to be a fully enfranchised member of the Podunk University Queer Consortium.

Maybe THAT'S what it'll take to make people understand why this was such a ridiculous decision.

P.S. I’m a 38-year-old man who doesn’t believe in God, but who DOES believe with fundamentalist conviction that another man’s erection tastes even better than a mouthful of Jelly-Bellies™! And if I were a college student, and had gone to the considerable trouble of organizing a student group for other homos, based on the founding principle that homosexual lovemaking can be dignified and life-affirming and joyous, I sure as hell wouldn’t want my organization invaded by a bunch of Bible-misreading nincompoops pushing the self-evidently ridiculous theory that M2M or F2F bonking is intrinsically degrading, emotionally sterile, second-rate, and upsetting to God. Just as THEY wouldn't want their Jesus Club to be overrun by people like me, because I'd insist on spouting the un-Biblical notion that homosex can be sweet, gentle, loving, and spiritually healthy (as long as you do it the right way -- which, granted, many faggoty fags don't).

In short, I would happily say to the president of the Christian Legal Society at Hastings College:

Freedom of Association works for thee, AND for me!

P.S. Go Christians! Go Christians! It’s your birthday! It’s your birthday!

posted by Throbert | 6/29/2010 07:38:00 PM | (6) responses

12 August 2009

When Alien Baby Jesus Attacks!

or, "Is the Χ in ΙΧΘΥΣ short for Xenomorph?"

or, "A totally silly yet perfectly serious defense of the apocryphal 'Infancy Gospels' from early Christianity"

Well-read Protestants know that the Roman Catholic version of the Bible is 14 books longer than the editions that all those schismatic Christians use. These 14 books, which the RCC takes to be part of the canonical Old Testament, are collectively termed The Apocrypha. (One of the best-known of these Apocryphal works is the Book of Judith, whose deadly she-mantis stunt with poor old Holofernes would inspire countless Western painters, including Gustav ''Your wife was just showing us her'' Klimt.)

Anyway, there's a whole 'nother set of Apocryphal books relating to the "New Testament" period of Christianity. Some of these are dubious epistles attributed to Paul and other early Apostles, and others are "pseudo-Gospels" purportedly describing the life and career of Mr. Jesus H. Christ -- but in either case, even the Catholic Church, along with nearly all other Christian denominations, reject these as authentically inspired parts of the canonical New Testament.

Some of these works are disqualified from the Canon because textual and manuscript evidence proves that they were written many hundreds of years after the time when the Son of God allegedly beamed down to Earth and became flesh. Others were roughly contemporary with the canonical NT, but at a theological level are overtly shaped by Gnosticism, which mainstream Christianity rejects as heretical. And a few books -- like the Gospels of the Infancy that I'll be discussing below -- may have been excluded from the Canon just because they is so DANG weird!

The Arabic Gospel of the Infancy of the Saviour has a story of a guy who got turned into a mule by a wicked witch, until Mary and Jesus come a-truckin' up and change him back. And Thomas the Israelite's account of Jesus's childhood makes the kid sound like -- well, to be blunt, like a lethal biological hybrid from an unnatural mating between a human girl and some hideous invisible sky-creature calling itself "Yahweh," though its real name might've been "Q*bert of Tau Ceti IV."

It's no wonder, then, that Christians don't accept these Infancy Gospels as authentically inspired, but in a way, that's too bad -- because on a closer reading, it becomes evident why anonymous writers of the early Church felt it necessary to flesh out the missing years of Jesus' biography in the New Testament. In fact, the authors of these Apocryphal works showed such remarkable insight into the human condition that if I weren't an ~~atheist~~ agnosticky Deist, I'd be inclined to accept these books (in conjunction with the four canonical Gospels) as divinely inspired. But don't take my word for it; here, judge for yourself...

Okay, let's put JC's life story in rough sequence, based on the New Testament and those Apocryphal accounts:

1. He's a totally adorable baby whom people shower with presents (Matt. 2:11) and whose used diapers even have magical healing powers! (Arab. Ch. 11)

2. When he gets a little older, we get to see a toddler-aged Li'l Jesus hanging out with cute Muppet Babies versions of his future Apostles and other Gospel characters, including Li'l Judas and Li'l Simon the Canaanite. (Arab. Ch. 35)

Unfortunately, Li'l Jesus has turned into a obnoxious young twerp (in the manner of most children) and goes around putting the hoodoo on people for the most trivial offenses, as when he causes a Li'l Pharisee to fall down dead after the poor kid stomps on a clay fish-pond that Jesus made as an Arts 'n' Crafts project. (Thom. Lat. Ch. 4) Plus, he sasses back to his teacher, and then promptly makes the poor dude shrivel up and die when the man tries to apply a little discipline to a misbehaving pupil.

By the way, parallel events happen in John Wyndham's classic sci-fi novel The Midwich Cuckoos -- filmed and re-filmed as The Village of the Damned: a bunch of women in a small British town turn up pregnant without explanation (hmmm!); kids get a little older and start zapping people dead, sometimes for trivial reasons; turns out that all the weird children with superhuman powers had fathers not of this Earth (hmmm!). Of course, the parallelism should not be taken too far -- after all, the half-alien kids in Wyndham's book work their deadly mischief when they're well past the excuse of being only toddlers!

Anyway, going back to the Infancy Gospels: Li'l Jesus and his telekinetic killing spree eventually come to the attention of his parents. Stepfather Joseph, ever the perceptive one, comments to Mary, "Do not let him go outside of the door, because those that make him angry die" (Thom. Gk 1. Ch. 14), thereby revealing this to be a very early draft of that Twilight Zone episode about the kid who would wish people into the cornfield. But a little later -- presumably after reaching the "age of wisdom" -- Jesus finally repents and undoes all of his "black magic," which includes bringing all the zapped-dead people back to life (Thom. Lat. Ch. 6) -- which is more or less exactly what happens in Joe Dante's happy-ending remake of "It's a Good Life" in the 1983 movie version of The Twilight Zone!

3. Later, Jesus is nicer to the teachers (even though the good rabbis are a bit confused and even overwhelmed by this gifted-track student), but the boy is perhaps unnecessarily sassy to poor Joseph and Mary when they come a-lookin' for him (Luke 2:43-49)

4. Fast-forward a couple decades, and Jesus is using his powers for fun frathouse hijinks, like turning water into wine for the wedding at Cana. However, he's just a BIT of an asshole to his mom (again): "What have I to do with thee, woman?!" (John 2:1-11)

5. The guy just gets nicer and nicer, using his supernatural abilities to heal people right and left, and interceding when some folks are about to throw rocks at a hooker (John 8 3:7). But even Jesus -- who might've been the super-brainy Son of God, but evidently wasn't granted perfect wisdom and omniscience by the Father -- slips up now and then. For instance, when he thoughtlessly imitates the ways of the average Galilean Jew in that era by uttering a racist slur to a Syrophoenician woman who only wants him to heal her sick daughter: "What, you want that I should give the children's bread to the dogs?" Rather than acting all put-upon, though, she snaps back with a bit of self-deprecating wordplay -- "Hey, even us dogs should get to eat what falls from the children's table" -- and Jesus is so impressed at her insight and faith (and maybe just a trifle humbled by her sassy wit, too) that he sends some good voodoo her way after all. (Mark 7:25-30)

6. Jesus finally cashes in the last of his "magic" to help other people -- in fact, all of mankind -- even though this particular "spell" requires the sacrifice of his own life (Luke 22:37). And unlike the little boy who casually zapped his playmates dead if they so much as looked at him funny, Jesus is a total mensch at age 33. The guy even has the class to say "Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34) -- as well he should, since he himself used to make little "whoopsies" from time to time, like temporarily murdering innocent people way back in kindergarten, when he had not yet gained wisdom.

In other words, when the four canonical Gospels are taken together with the apocryphal Infancy Gospels, the entire life of Jesus can be read as a Bildungsroman whose take-home message is: "Everyone, let's all imitate the example of Jesus by learning to grow the fuck up and always use our God-given talents to make other people's lives better, not worse, Amen."

Amen.

[Note: This is an update of an essay that I originally posted in March 2002 -- now much better edited and with improved linkage. -- ed.
Readers may note that the "Infancy Gospel" links go to the online Catholic Encyclopedia at newadvent.org -- although, as I said in the intro, Catholicism doesn't regard these Gospels as inspired. Here's the Catholic Encyclopedia's general treatment of Apocryphal literature for more info, though be advised that the online Cath. Enc. is based on the 1911 printed edition, and thus the phraseology is at times horrendously un-idiomatic and clunky for modern readers.
And incidentally, regarding the handful of mentions that Jesus gets in the Qur'an, wherein he's called by the Arabicized name "Issa" -- apart from the fabulous story about Jesus bringing clay birds to life and the ridiculously contrived attempt to suck up to Christians by pinning the "Christkiller" label on those rotten stinky Jews even while simultaneously denying that Jesus was the Christ AND denying that he actually got killed, (Qur'an, Sura 4, 153-160), there just isn't anything substantive in Islam's Sacred Writ about the teachings of Jesus. So anyone who tells you that Muslims "revere Jesus" as some sort of secondary but important Islamic prophet who came before Muhammad is either (a) a Muslim fundamentalist who's trying to fool you, or (b) a pathetic New-Age-y liberal mush-head Western apologist for fundamentalist Muslims.]

Labels: art, Bible, Christianity, Judaism, philosophy, religion, revelation

posted by Throbert | 8/12/2009 04:26:00 AM | (2) responses

30 July 2009

An open letter to John Derbyshire

Dear Mr. Derbyshire --

As one of those guys who prefers to describe himself as "incredibly homosexual, but not particularly gay," and who chooses to stay far away from breaking-and-entry through the backdoor, I deeply appreciated your April 2001 column criticizing ''buggery'' -- because it's a dubious practice at best, yet throughout the entire run of the AIDS epidemic, the promotion and glamorization of rumpy-pumpy has never ceased in the "gay community."

I would fall into the category of homosexual men who gave anal "sex" the old college try -- both as a "top" and a "bottom" -- and eventually decided that it just wasn't pleasurable enough (and, in particular, I'm talking about "bottoming") to be worth the disadvantages. These disadvantages obviously include HIV risks, physical pain that even with practice never entirely goes away, minor rectal bleeding, brown stains, etc. Of course, I could've gone on being a "top," but in my mind that would violate the principle of "As I would not be any man's slave, so will I not be any man's master."

So as a man pushing 40, I remain unrepentantly homosexual and STD-free, sustained sexually by a diet of solo wanking (mostly) along with fellatio, mutual masturbation, and "frot" (but nowadays only when I can find another man who shares at least some of my non-sexual hobbies and moral/political values... until I find a "husband," I will settle for nothing less than a "good buddy"). By the way, if you're unfamiliar with the slang term "frot," see this Wikipedia article, to which I am a contributing author and editor.

But while I found nothing to dispute in your eminently fair-minded essay about buggery, you seemed at a loss to explain why the practice is so widespread in contemporary gay circles.

Sir, it's simple to sum up: Gay media culture is saturated with it, from video porn to sex-advice columns to gay "health" education; and for a variety of reasons, gay men who don't enjoy buggery experience relentless (albeit often subtle) peer pressure telling them that they're missing out on something incredibly fabulous and they could/should LEARN to enjoy it ("it" meaning "receptive anal sex") with a little more effort. Or, gee -- maybe they're afraid to try it because they suffer from internalized homophobia and self-loathing?

Anyway, the reason I'm writing to you is that I'm just completely fucking sick of this bullshit, and I've decided it's time for me as a conservative homosexual to stop griping about how massively dishonest gay male culture is, and start some whistle-blowing.

I've already pitched my planned muckraking crusade to some prominent figures in the right-wing blogosphere with whom I already have well-established online friendships, including Charles Johnson of LGF, "Ace" at Ace of Spades, and "Zombie" of Zombietime.

But even before I'd written to them, I had long wanted to pitch this to you, because I respect you immensely for your writings on evolutionary biology and languages (I was a double major in biology and Russian), and also because you've proven to me again and again that you're willing to modify your past assumptions about homosexuals, provided you were convinced by facts and logic.

Please let me know if this whets your interest, and I will send you a longer email detailing my "pitch", establishing my very solid credentials as a conservative AND an out-of-the-closet (though discreet) homosexual, and explaining how the conservative blogosphere and I might constructively collaborate on this project I have in mind. But just to give you a hint, ONE phase of my supergenius Wile E. Coyote plan is:

(B) open up a can of **boiling-hot acidic pain** on the above-mentioned Gay Establishment (waving at Andrew Sullivan et al.), along with their "progressive" straight enablers;

Interested?

-Rob McGee Fairfax, VA

P.S. I first heard of you back in 2003 or so when I was still a regular reader of Andrew Sullivan. Suffice to say I long since concluded that you're an upstanding guy who's not nearly as "homophobic" as rumored, while Sullivan is a batshit-crazy fudgepacking faggot. (Not saying I want him to die; I just think that in a fair world, an irresponsible butt-pirate like Sully would have to sell himself into indentured servitude to pay for his antiviral meds, instead of socking it to the staff and readership of "The New Republic.")

posted by Throbert | 7/30/2009 10:05:00 PM | (4) responses

26 July 2009

An email I sent to my hateful, hateful evangelical Christian friend Danielle...

[And now presented here with additional info and better supporting links as an open letter to ALL my straight friends, and especially the more conservative and/or religious among you -- love you guys and though I don't say it enough, I appreciate that you put up with my potty mouth. By the way, any pink highlighting in this long article is only to draw the reader's eye to really key points, while yellow highlighting on my blog always reveals additional info if you mouse-hover over it .]

Thanks very much, Dani, and sorry again for not warning you about the NC-17 line drawing in the Wikipedia link defining "frot" -- glad your kids didn't see it! One other thing, though: please, please bring that Wiki article (which I co-wrote) to the attention of your husband and his med-school colleagues, and here's why...

In 1985, which is to say just a few years before C. Everett Koop's AIDS letter, the Dutch government launched a two-pronged AIDS prevention campaign aimed at gay/bi men. The message was very simple:

(1) If you are a man who has sex with other men, the surest way to avoid AIDS is to abstain completely from anal intercourse.
(2) If you are unwilling to abstain from anal sex, you must use a condom every time.

Note that the Dutch campaign said nothing at all about oral sex, and more than 20 years later, we have massive amounts of clinical data vindicating the Dutch assumption that it really wasn't crucial to discourage fellatio in order to contain the epidemic. Studies of gay/bi men who don't have anal sex at all support this, as do studies of serodiscordant hetero couples where the man is HIV+ and the woman is HIV-. All the data point to the inescapable conclusion that blowjobs very, very seldom lead to HIV transmission, even if you swallow the jizz (unless supposing you're a crystal-meth using gay party boy or female crack ho' and have lesions all over the inside of your mouth).

Which leaves anal sex as practically the entire reason why gay/bi male HIV cases number in the hundreds of thousands in the U.S. alone. Hundreds of thousands who got infected either because the condom broke during a buttfuck session, or (much, much more often) because they made the choice to imitate "bareback" porn movies in which condoms aren't used at all. Curious readers can find bareback porn at just about any adult video store stocking gay titles -- oftentimes just three feet away from the "Safer Sex Always!" poster.

But guess what? If I should ever figure out a way to fund my dream of directing and co-starring in a slickly produced, quadruple-X-rated DVD demonstrating and role-modeling exactly how gay men can make "frot" unbelievably, skull-poppingly pleasurable and also sweetly intimate, it will be the FIRST such movie in the entire buttfucking history of the buttfucking gay porn industry.

That's right -- what you will definitely not ever find near the "Safer Sex Always!" poster, or anywhere in any goddamned porno shop in America, is a movie that depicts frot as anything more than 5 seconds of foreplay before driving right up the Hershey Highway -- with a condom whose presence the pornographers do their DAMNEDEST to disguise from the viewers, so that the "safer" anal sex resembles barebacking as closely as possible. Thus, even while the actors are protected, the message visually reinforced for the porn audience is that "bareback is better."

Of course, gay male entitlement-mentality recklessness has cost billions of taxpayer dollars, along with higher healthcare premiums for everyone who shares an insurance plan with these barebacking idjits. (For example, Andrew "Sex has gotten so much hotter since I turned HIV+!" Sullivan's antiviral drugs, and the testosterone injections he gets to counteract the side-effects that the antivirals purportedly don't cause him, are subsidized by whatever health-insurance company that The New Republic uses, since Andrew was still Editor-in-Chief of TNR when he chose to let some other dude ejaculate a big wad of semen (that just happened to be chock-full of HIV) into his heavily-trafficked rectum. (Your Word-of-the-Day™ calendar entry: The ubiquitous and utterly enchanting gay slang term for ejaculating into another man's rectum with no condom to catch it is "to breed" -- e.g., "Breed my hot guy-pussy, you fucking stud!")

Anyway, by Andrew's own admission, his little "oopsie!" definitely happened circa the early '90s -- already several years AFTER the Dutch government and C. Everett Koop had tried to warn him that practically the only way for a non-heroin-using gay man to get AIDS is to do precisely what Mr. Sullivan chose to do.

Quite incidentally, some of you already know that I got my ass fired from The New Republic a couple years back, because I'd been gossiping online about a little fact-checking problem they'd immersed themselves in. Je ne regrette rien about having tattled on my employer -- after all, it netted me some much-appreciated free publicity in VanityFair.com and The Huffington Post. And anyway ,it was the third goddamned time in a decade that TNR had gotten caught in a total failure to do the most rudimentary fact-checking, so I would urge my former employer to consider the faint possibility that just maybe, God Himself directed me to their offices as His hand-picked courier bearing the message:

Dear TNR: Y'all needs to STOP doin' this NOT-doin'-fact-checking shit -- it just screams "sloppy."
Hugs,
The LORD God
P.S. Though you were fully justified in firing Mr. McGee for his unprofessional behavior, do please continue to water the office plants he left behind. It is not My wish that they should suffer because of this.

However, I've certainly not held any lasting grudge against the mag. Despite having feet of clay (viz., an embarrassing inability to recognize a badly-repackaged urban legend presented as factual reportage), Franklin Foer and his editorial staff remain, within their narrow spectrum of competency, truly excellent political analysts. And their book/arts/movie reviews are really kick-ass. Therefore, it pains me to know that TNR readers everywhere have to pay just a little bit more for the magazine, and TNR employees have to pay just a bit more for their health plans, and all because Andrew Sullivan had once done something that even a goddamn learning-disabled baby hamster could've told him was a terrible idea.

Now what was I saying about that Dutch anti-AIDS effort? Oh, yeah. By the early '90s, the language of the Dutch campaign had been changed -- totally dropping the "don't have anal sex at all" suggestion. (Which was, let's remember, MERELY a suggestion, as the libertarian Netherlands had abolished its anti-sodomy laws as of 1813 .) In place of the two-pronged approach, the revised language put all the AIDS-prevention eggs into just one basket. That basket being, of course, "Use a condom every time you have anal sex." Which in no time at all got truncated to "Use a condom every time" -- thus subtly reinforcing the highly dubious notions that breaking-and-entry through the backdoor is not only "vanilla," but also the Default Mode of male/male sex.

And why exactly was point (1) dropped from the Dutch campaign? And why was it never even given a chance by the NIH, CDC and other tax-funded government health institutions in the US?

In a nutshell, folks: Because telling gay men "you know, not having anal sex at all is actually an option you guys might wanna consider" would offend them. Even worse, it would concede a tiny point to those awful, awful homophobic religious conservatives -- namely, that "it's not a lifestyle, it's a deathstyle" occasionally has a kernel of truth to it.

Thus, that utterly reasonable "Option 1" of the Dutch campaign -- you can abstain from anal and still be gay as a tangerine and still enjoy other modes of HOT MAN-TO-MAN LOVEMAKING -- got thrown in the trash. And all because of gay political and ideological nonsense that everyone else's money subsidizes. (Just one of the many, many reasons that I tell people: "I'm a total homo with no apologies, but please don't call me gay, because it's a stupid word and an even stupider subculture.")

Thus, in summary, your husband and other medical professionals need to know that this eminently logical approach to preventing HIV among gay/bi men languishes as a neglected and unfunded grassroots movement (if not for the Web, it wouldn't exist at all).

Meanwhile, the victimhood hustlers of the Gay Establishment continue to call poor old Ronald Reagan a "murderer of gay men because he wouldn't talk about AIDS," and continue to chant "Please please please give us mo' and mo' money for Safer-Sex Education and condoms and NIH research studies in Argentinian gay bars to solve the incomprehensible mystery of why every year in America, another 30,000 or so gay/bi men turn up HIV+!"

As you've PROBABLY guessed by now, Dani, I've decided to make it my life's mission (or at least a project for the summer, since I'm still only partially employed) to increase "frot awareness" while also opening a can of boiling-hot acidic pain on the above-mentioned Gay Establishment. (Waving at Andrew Sullivan.)

Admittedly, I haven't quite figured out yet how to accomplish this second part, but it's something I've long wanted to do. However, I've decided I just can't do it without a leetle bit of help from some of my straight friends, which is why I ask you to forward that Wiki link to Kevin so that he can pass it on to others in the medical community whenever appropriate.

Whew. Thanks. That's all!

-Rob

P.S. Just so you needn't fret over my health too much -- although I've slowed down with maturity, at times in my younger days I was incredibly promiscuous. Yet I remain HIV- and thus far, the onliest STDs I've had to deal with have been one case of crabs and one male yeast infection that somehow got established on the head of my wang.

My secret? Well, after giving it the ol' college try because I'm Mr. Empiricist, I quickly concluded that takin' it in the kiester, or doing it to other dudes, just isn't as amazingly pleasurable and sex-sational as the majority of gay men have convinced themselves it is (with quite a bit of help from self-anesthetizing recreational drugs ).

Certainly ain't sexy enough, in my empirically-based opinion, to be worth the elevated HIV risk, physical discomfort, brown stains, minor rectal bleeding, and all the other assorted drawbacks. So I quit doing it! Makes it somewhat less likely that I'll ever have a boyfriend again, but on the whole, I'm happier this way.

P.P.S. Although it's obviously not my place as a non-Christian to tell you what Jesus would think of all this, I *can* assure you that at least a few Orthodox Jewish rabbis have more or less endorsed the grassroots frot movement, albeit not shouting their qualified "okay" from the rooftops.

You see, in the Talmudic interpretation of the Pentateuch, the verse "If a man lies with a man as with a woman, they shall both be put to death," is understood to be a narrow ban on fudgepacking only. In the Orthodox view, all the other types of man2man frolics, along with lesbian sex in general, will most certainly make G-d sigh and go "Tsk-tsk-tsk, I'm rather disappointed in you, kiddo" -- but He doesn't flip out and make a HUGE Federal case about it.

And the gay dude who coined the slang term "frot," one Bill Weintraub, draws substantially from traditional Orthodox Jewish analysis of the Bible's sex rules in formulating his arguments, though he himself is one of those semi-agnostic Jews who presumably eats bacon (and Bill definitely has lots and lots of gay sex with his Baptist-raised hubby -- just not the one particular form of gay sex that the Torah completely prohibits as an abomination worthy of capital punishment).

P.P.P.S. Mr. Weintraub is a cantankerous old left-winger who was part of early gay activism even before the whole Stonewall thing 40 years ago. I have massive disagreements with some of his politics, and I think he shoots himself in the foot in the way that he tries to promote "frot."

For example, he seems altogether unacquainted with such time-honored proverbs as You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, and also Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and also Mary, Mary, Mary -- you just can't win friends and influence people by calling one of your fellow gay men "idiotic bug-chasing faggot" directly to his face, even when it manifestly applies. (Waving at Andrew Sullivan again!)

I used to waste time arguing with Weintraub over his chosen approach, but now I've decided it's far better to bless the man for having done the enormous work of launching the "grassroots frot movement" in the first place -- and I'll just let him play the Bad Frot Cop role, while I play Good Frot Cop...

posted by Throbert | 7/26/2009 02:15:00 PM | (4) responses

16 July 2009

Cookie Recipe

Howzabout some Litterbox Logs to get your guests' attention?

So horrible to look at, so tasty to eat, and so easy to make!

Oreos finely crushed in a blender or food processor to make 1 cup of crumbs
1 cup 10X powdered sugar
1 tablespoon unsweetened baking cocoa
1/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate mini-morsels
1/4 cup sunflower kernels
1/4 cup Rumplemintz peppermint schnapps

Mix the dry ingredients together in a medium bowl; then liquor. Stir until thoroughly blended and smooth. Let the mixture rest for a few minutes, and have ready a small electric fan and a half shotglass of peppermint schnapps. If mixture seems too sticky to shape by hand, add another tablespoon of powdered sugar let the fan blow over the mixture for a few minutes. Conversely, if the mixture becomes too dry and starts to crumble, add a little more peppermint schnapps. (Or water, but schnapps is more fun.)

Meanwhile, prepare a "litterbox" by filling a 13x9 lasagna pan (or a Tupperware container of similar size) with one box of Grape-Nuts cereal plus a cup of quick-cooking oats, uncooked.

Roll the cookie mixture between palms of your hands to create -- ahem -- "torpedo" shapes, and plop them decoratively into the litterbox so that cereal and oats cling to the "logs."

These are best made a day or two in advance so that they can air-dry and mellow.

posted by Throbert | 7/16/2009 07:16:00 PM | (46) responses

16 February 2009

Happy Valentine's Day

posted by Throbert | 2/16/2009 01:31:00 AM | (0) responses

08 February 2009

The cake I'll make when I turn 40

Okay, I wouldn't necessarily want the girly pink flowers, but I totally dig the idea of eating Tom Selleck in frosting form. What can I say -- chest hair is super sexy.

posted by Throbert | 2/08/2009 07:39:00 AM | (0) responses