Here’s what I got from the ol’ comic shop this week.

Previews - Ah, the emotional roller coaster ride that is Previews. From the dizzying heights of finding out about a new Hellboy book or a neat toy to the depressing lows of 80-pages of boob comics.

Ruse #24 - I need to get caught up on this series, just in time for it to be canceled, according to a rumor I heard.

Terra Obscura #5 (of 6) - I decided to wait until the end to read this whole thing. It’s pretty densely packed, and I keep feeling like this is the sequel to another series I didn’t read. I’m hoping when it all comes together I can grasp it better.

Queen and Country: Operation: Broken Ground - The first trade paperback for this spy comic. I’ve been wanting to try this one out, so I decided to grab the first TPB.

More Fund Comics - An anthology to support the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. I’ve come to really enjoy anthologies, so this one, for a good cause, I couldn’t pass up.

Dungeon #105 - I had to go to a different store for this one. For some reason, my regular store doesn’t seem to get it in regularly. The thing with Dungeon is, I want it often enough that I want my shop to carry it, but not so often that I want to subscribe. This particular issue has a d20 mini-game in it called “Deathnet” which is a sort of cyberpunky game.

And that’s it for this week!

This weekend started out just fine. Friday night we headed up to Northampton, where I picked up the Gamma World book (huzzah!) and we had dinner with Beth and Mark. We ate at a Moroccan place, which was interesting. My dinner was a bit too veggied-up for my tastes, but I’d like to try some other dishes there.

Then on Saturday we headed up north again to go see Mike’s Maze, a large corn maze that was (this year) shaped like King Tut’s gold mask. T.J. and Mary had invited us on this adventure (T.J. is the GM for the Shadowrun game I’m playing in) and we had a really good time. There are photos in the Scrapbook.

We got back tired from all the walking, and then tragedy struck. I get migraines from time to time, but Saturday night I got hit with the worst one I’ve had in a long time. I have no idea what set it off. I awoke at three a.m. feeling like bolts were being screwed into my skull. I also got the migraine nausea. It took a long time for me to get it under control, so I felt kind of blah on Sunday, which matched Becky, who appears to have come down with a full-blown cold.

So let’s look at the facts. Friday and Saturday, we do fine. Saturday after the maze and Sunday? Sick.

Clearly King Tut’s Curse strikes again!

I need to go to the store today and get some more coffee and some milk. We could also use some bread, probably. And I have GOT to get a haircut soon. Also, my new light jacket I got is nice, but I’m starting to wish I’d gotten it in brown instead of grey. I wonder if they’d let me exchange it?

This article joins a recent spate of similar articles all attempting to do one thing: explain to conservatives why many people hate Bush. It does a pretty good job, but it, like all the others, will ultimately fail. For some reason, conservatives are absolutely baffled why anyone would dislike the man. For them, it’s a completely irrational reaction, with utter madness being the only possible explanation.

The reason for the inability of conservatives to fathom this dislike for the President is obvious to anyone with even an intermittently working brain. It’s just another example of the bizarre cognitive dissonance and mental gymnastics one must go through to support this administration. If you need more evidence that the mental shortcomings of these people are to blame, and not the other way around, simply observe that many of them claim to have never seen this much venom aimed at a President, ever. Since I’m assuming these pundits are more than three years old, I can’t imagine they didn’t notice what was going on during the Clinton administration. (But I shouldn’t mention that, because that just makes me into a “Clinton apologist” whose thoughts are therefore suspect.)

A piece of ‘conventional wisdom’ going around is encapsulated here. It is summed up thusly: “Conservatives think, liberals feel.” This quote seems to be attributed to Rush Limbaugh. The theory is that liberals decide with their hearts and emotions, while conservatives rely solely on cold hard facts and logic.

That’s a nice story, and it’s not hard to see why it plays well in the mental landscape of the conservatives, but it takes a titanic amount of self-delusion to believe it. There is simply no evidence to support this statement. Which party is constantly discussing such emotion-and-feelings charged concepts as “patriotism,” “evil,” “morals,” “freedom,” “hatred,” and “religion”? In fact, which party practically centers its entire viewpoint on those terms? Which party right now seems to be completely at odds with the facts, those little pieces of information needed for rational and logical thought? Which party has classified a record amount of information to actually prevent people from making informed decisions and instead admonished us to simply trust them in their hearts? It takes only a few moments and an average level of thought to see through this inane “Conservatives think, Liberals feel” statement, and yet it still circulates as a truism.

Some people might think that it’s not too bad to let the conservatives remain in their own little world where George W. Bush is an ethical and moral leader one can be proud of, where the War in Iraq is going swimmingly, and where there are no starving Americans. However, as I have stated before, a problem with your own private mindspace is only your problem until you make it someone else’s problem.

Which brings us to Army Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin. General Boykin believes that Bush is in the White House, “because God put him there for a time such as this.” Not too bad? Try this one: “Well, is he [bin Laden] the enemy? Next slide. Or is this man [Saddam] the enemy? The enemy is none of these people I have showed you here. The enemy is a spiritual enemy. He’s called the principality of darkness. The enemy is a guy called Satan.” Still unfazed? Okay with anti-terrorism resources going towards fighting Satan? Well, this remark is certain to help stem the tide of terrorism: “Well, you know what I knew, that my God was bigger than his [Allah]. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol.” (From this story.)

Smooth. That’s some real thinking there. There’s no emotion clouding the rationality in that mind, no sir. Mr. Spock would be proud.

Lest you think this should cause any problem with this guy being the Pentagon’s deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, rest assured that Rumsfeld has defended him. Boykin has since made the usual weak apology citing the usual “misquoted” and “out of context” reasons. But conservative columnist Cal Thomas isn’t happy about that. In today’s column (”General only told truth about Islam” - can’t find it online), Thomas chides those who made Boykin apologize, citing the eternal conservative bugbear: “political correctness.”

Thomas says,

This notion that religion is not at the heart of the hatred directed at America from outside and now inside the country qualifies as extreme denial. Throughout the Muslim world, America is condemned not mainly because of its ideas but because Islamists believe we are infidels opposed to God.

Take that, all you emotion-laden liberals who don’t want to turn this into a holy war. We rational conservatives are going to ensure that it is one! Sunday, Sunday, Sunday! Our God versus Their God in a fight to settle ALL the scores! Why look at any kinds of facts behind this conflict when we can simply declare that these people of a different religion are evil and must be destroyed? Factor in the apocalyptic brand of Christianity that Bush (and apparently Boykin) believe in, where the righteous don’t have to worry about the End Times because they’ll be spared by the Rapture, and you’ve got a whole lot of frightening “thinking” that’s being placed into our world, like it or not.

It’s no longer okay for Republicans to live in their own little fantasy world. Here in the real world we have real problems that giving money to the rich and killing Muslims won’t solve. I think even some Republicans are starting to be alarmed by the extremist wing that’s taking over their party, forcing everyone else to have to constantly strain their minds to support the fictions they declare. It’s time for our Reality to declare independence from their Illusions.

Becky’s folks are in town, along with some friends of theirs, Aunt Sharon and Uncle Will (not actually her aunt and uncle). Her folks were kind enough to take us out to Boston for the weekend.

We really enjoyed it. We saw a lot of touristy things - historical sites such as Paul Revere’s home, the Old North Church, Boston Common, and so forth. We hit Faneuil Square marketplace, the Museum of Fine Art, rode the T, and ate some chowder. It was a nice, albeit short trip. Becky and I already have plans to go back, see some more sights, catch a show (like maybe Blue Man Group).

I’ve put photos from our trip in the scrapbook section, along with (finally!) links to other scrapbook pages. I’m right now trying to figure out how I want those pages to look, so hopefully soon they’ll look a lot nicer than they do now.

(Bonus geek detail! While in Boston, I ran into a comic store and lo and behold, they had a copy of the sold-out Arrowsmith #1, which I had missed! So I’m finally able to read that, and it’s way good.)

Okay, opinion fans, I’ve crammed the Legopinions section full of sweet sweet opining. And let me tell you something. When I first did the original version of that section (”Stuff I Got”) it was for one major reason: to put paid to the notion some people have that I hate everything. It’s SO not true. Look through the Legopinions folks, and see for yourself. Sure, there’s some stuff in there I don’t care for too much. But by and large that’s a big bushel of appreciation in there. I give you the evidence, ladies and gentlemen, and you have to conclude: I don’t hate everything!

(Though I grant you, some things I hate I hate very very much and will go on about for far too long.)

Right out of LSU I got a job working for the State of Louisiana. One of my co-workers there was Ron. Ron was a nice guy, knowledgable and friendly, but there was one thing about him that got me. Ron listened to Rush Limbaugh religiously. That in itself didn’t bug me, what bugged me was that he’d then come into my office and talk to me about it.

Back in those days I wasn’t much into politics. I never brought the subject up with co-workers. However, Ron had decided that I was not only interested in the subject, but that I was particularly interested in Rush Limbaugh’s opinions on the subject. This was back in late ‘92, early ‘93, the days of “America Held Hostage”. Yep, during those days, right after Clinton was elected, the same people who are telling us to “get over” the debacle of the 2000 election were whining that “the majority of the people didn’t vote for Clinton.” That was the election that Ross Perot decided to play politician and split the vote three ways, so while yes, more people voted for someone other than Clinton, out of the three candidates, Clinton received more votes than either of the other two. You see, that’s how it works.

(An aside: someone once told me of a game they used to play in college. They’d turn on Rush’s show and listen until he said the word “Clinton”, at which point they’d turn it off. The longest they ever had to listen was 31 seconds.)

Anyway, even though I didn’t follow politics much in those days, I could often tell when the stuff that Ron was relaying to me just plain wasn’t true. I would point this out to Ron, but it didn’t matter (just like how I pointed out that I HAD a radio in my office and if I wanted to listen to Rush, was more than capable of doing so didn’t matter) because, of course, Rush was an entertainer.

And now, Rush is still entertaining, though not his intended audience. He’s now entertaining hordes of liberals who are thrilled to see him roasting in his own juices. I admit that I would have liked for him to go down for other reasons - for being a liar, for example - but I can’t stand the guy and am happy to see him taken down by any means necessary. Rush Limbaugh nearly single-handedly destroyed legitimate political discourse in this country. Thanks to him, we now have a whole flotilla of “journaltainment” superstars like Bill O’Reilly, Chris Matthews, Ann Coulter, and Sean Hannity who believe that discussion means shouting louder and louder to drown out the opposition until you finally just cut off the other guy’s microphone. And for whom facts are no big deal. Thanks to them, our media has become increasingly conservatively biased while at the same time they whine about how “liberal” it is.

Thanks to Rush and the people he inspired, it’s no longer about the facts behind the issues, it’s about ignorance. No need to actually research any topics, Rush will tell you exactly what you need to know and how to feel about it. And if it turns out that some of those facts are incorrect, well remember, Rush is just an entertainer.

A lot of folks are feeling sorry for the guy. Why? Why on earth would anyone in their right mind feel sorry for him? Why not show him exactly the same compassion and empathy he has displayed for others? Let the man die by the same sword he lived by. I’m surprised that the second-stringers haven’t been flooding in to try and wrestle his crown away from him.

Not that it’s a foregone conclusion that this scandal will take him down. His supporters, after all, are extremely immune to the effects of reality. So far I’ve seen three reasons why this drug thing is no big deal, according to his fans:

1) Prescription drugs aren’t the same as illegal drugs. Well, they kind of are when they’re illegal, sport. Percodan is legally prescribed to people for pain, but if I start eating thirty of them a day without said prescription, that’s against the law.

2) Give him a break, he was in a lot of pain! Strangely, this debilitating pain didn’t seem to affect his golf game. He was still hitting the links on a regular basis.

3) This is my favorite. I’ll go slowly so you can try to understand. (deep breath) Okay, Rush believes in a strict morality, whereas most liberals do not. So if Rush violates the codes of that morality, it is hypocritical for liberals to chastise him for it, since they don’t follow his rules of morality. Are you getting it? See, since we allow that people are fallible and make mistakes, we should give him a pass, even though he has held himself up as a paragon of morality and has belittled others for their human failings. Him then popping illegal drugs makes US the hypocrites for pointing this out.

The way I see it, one of two things should happen here. Either the right wing needs to accept Rush as he is and abandon their stance as the party of morality (even though they’re the only ones who believe this sham in the first place) or they have to cast him out as unworthy (and then pray no one finds out about THEIR peccadillos.) Either way it should make things tough for them. Probably won’t, but I can dream.

In any case, let me raise a cup of coffee and toast your descent to the bottom, you hypocritical pompous ass. I hope you go far down and hit hard. With any luck we’ll eventually throw your idiot spawn down there with you to keep you company.

UPDATE: If you don’t believe me about Limbaugh’s Legacy and the inestimable harm he’s caused to political discourse in this country, check out this example of what passes for discussion of the facts in today’s society.

This weekend was pretty relaxing, even though we spent a good deal of it cleaning up for the arrival of Becky’s folks on Tuesday. On Saturday we went up to Northampton and went on a used CD binge. CDs we got were:

• Foo Fighters - There is Nothing Left to Lose
• Spiritualized - Let it Come Down
• Alex Chilton - Cliches
• The Clash - Essential Clash
• Ashtray Babyhead - Radio
• Kraftwerk - Computerworld
• Neko Case and Her Boyfriends - The Virginian

Wow! A lot of good stuff. And I think apart from the Foo Fighters, none of those were on our “to get” list. We also hit a used book store but didn’t come away with much.

Then on Sunday we saw Kill Bill: Vol. 1, which we both enjoyed. It was pretty much what I expected - ultra-violent and killer cool. You won’t not know you’re watching a Quentin Tarantino movie! And Julie Dreyfus, who played Sophie, was hot hot!

I even got a little Post-Apocalyptic RPG work done! And played some Fallout Tactics. (Quote: “You’re saying ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy marathon’ but I’m hearing ‘Fallout Tactics.’”)

So all in all a good weekend.