802 Music Video

We got one area code and it's 802....cell phone service is questionable...our dome is so blingin' it's plated with gold...
Check out the VT Rap. It's not Maine, but it is our kindred spirit.

We Are Virginia Tech

Yesterday, the TV created white noise while I worked. The VaTech Memorial Service, broadcast live, was just too sad to focus on until Nikki Giovanni rose and delivered her words at the end.
For those of you who didn't see Nikki Giovanni at yesterday's Memorial Service, here is the poem that silenced the room:

“We are Virginia Tech.

We are sad today and we will be sad for quite awhile. We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning.

We are Virginia Tech.

We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly. We are brave enough to bend to cry and sad enough to know we must laugh again.

We are Virginia Tech.

We do not understand this tragedy.

We know we did nothing to deserve it but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, but neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by a rogue army.

Neither does the baby elephant watching his community be devastated for ivory. Neither does the Mexican child lookin' for fresh water.

Neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy.

We are Virginia Tech.

The Hokie Nation embraces our own and reaches out with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong and brave and innocent and unafraid. We are better than we think, not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imagination and the possibility we will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears, through all this sadness.

We are the Hokies.

We will prevail, we will prevail, we will prevail.

We are Virginia Tech. "

Nikki Giovanni had the gunman in her class in 2005 and those "disturbing writings" that were reported on yesterday were written for her class. She brought his work to the attention of Lucinda Roy (who wrote a beautiful OpEd in the NYTimes yesterday). Administration was notified but there was nothing that could be done as there was no direct, specific threat. Nikki feared him so much that she eventually threatened to resign rather than to continue to teach Cho. She said that she was "troubled by his meanness" this morning on CNN.

Love That Dirty Water......Boston You're My Home

What's not to love about a town where fans rooting for the same team will toss pizza at each other?

Also note that Remdog thinks the guy got tossed not for "throwing the pizza" but for ruining a good piece of pizza....(the pizza tosser was from Maine. Wicked small world.)

Bruce Feiler Responds to James Cameron

Feiler isn't a Christian, but he's written books like Walking the Bible and Abraham.
He's got some thoughts on what he's calling "the Jesus Hoax"

CENSORED

Google seems to have one standard for Christianity and another for Islam. Nick Gisburne has been posting videos questioning Christianity for some time, yet when he turned his attentions to Islam, You Tube banned him, saying "After being flagged by members of the YouTube community, and reviewed by YouTube staff, the video below has been removed due to its inappropriate nature. Due to your repeated attempts to upload inappropriate videos, your account now been permanently disabled, and your videos have been taken down."
When Google decides against you (be it your adsense account or your You Tube account), there's very little you can do.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin weighs in

Friends of God

Did anyone else happen to watch Friends of God, the Alexandra Pelosi documentary on HBO last night? (If you didn't, it's re-running all weekend on HBO and is available on demand. I recommend it. I think it's a good attempt to try to understand the more fundamental segment of the Evangelical nation).

So I have just one question for anyone who happened to watch: when Ted Haggard asked his two church members how often they had sex with their wives, and the first guy said "EVERY DAY!" and then the second guy said "Twice a day!" did you think "9th Commandment! You shall not bear false witness"? I sure did.

And then my follow-up question to you is when Ted asked them how often their wives climaxed during sex and they both said 100% of the time, did you think, oh, their wives are liars, too? I sure did.

Based on my upbringing there were one or two surreal deja' vu moments for me--the sex discussion was not one, I assure you, although I can also assure you that the born-again kids in my hometown (me for one) were having just as much sex as their heathen peers (but the Christian kids' pregnancy rate was much higher. Abstinence education does NOT work). And I need to state for the record that my parents NEVER expected their kids to believe in creationism vs. evolution, nor do they believe that dinosaurs walked the earth with Job.

Now I'm not even going to discuss the creepy factor of the conversation given what we now know about Ted.....



UPDATE: I've added the video clip.

Stephen Colbert on The O'Reilly Factor

We just love the Colbert Report.

I Have A Dream

The entire speech.

NOTE: This should have posted sometime Monday morning, but it seems to have taken You Tube and Blogger about 18 hours to make it happen.

Crack Spider

Brilliant.