Re: I May Have To Start My Own Reading Group

1

I find that use of "radical" puzzling.

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2

His outreach group is skateboard-based. I assume the use of "radical" is similar to how one would use the word "gnarly" or some such. An adult's attempt to be hip.

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3

Still, that's some outdated slang right there. And the surrounding context is pretty staid, making it all the more bizarre.

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4

I believe this group of kids infringes on the copyright of the Burger King Kids Club.

Is there a black guy with a gigantic mouth nicknamed "Jaws"?

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5

Teo, you forget that "God made [Stevie B.] cool so that the youth culture would look up to [him]."

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6

So anything he says or does is automatically cool? Nice racket.

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7

Why the googleproofing of Stephen Bal/dwin? Is he liable to show up here?

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8

That would be an entirely new sort of awesome.

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9

You never know with these combination famous/pathetic types. Catherine semi-infamously traumatized poor Mich/ael Chia/rello a while back.

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10

I dunno. He could google his name. I feel kind of bad about making fun of him. He did spend over two hours trying to get me to accept Jesus Christ as my personal savior, after all. And he even gave me his number in case I ever wanted to talk to him about Jesus. In a way, that was very sweet of him. But he was still batshit insane.

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11

10: True. Some people, like V/ox D/ay, appear to google their own names on a near-daily basis. I know, because I posted something about how he was fucking nuts, and he linked to me and his commenters came over. WTF. On a fucking livejournal blog.

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12

I have this radical idea. I want to convert people to Christianity through heroin! Nothing says instant community like helping one another tie it off. It's like washing one another's feet!

Now, I know what you're going to say: heroin's for "bad kids." But Jesus Christ was a pretty "bad kid" himself, going around sticking it to those Pharisees! The important thing is that Jesus thinks you're cool.

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13

That thing about Mic/hael Chia/rello made me cry. I know he's obnoxious, but I do sometimes fantasize about being the party guest he singles out to core apples or something while he says, "Don't these apples smell fantastic? All lined up like little soldiers!"

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14

You know, the problem with links like the first one in that post is that they totally fuck up my Amazon search history. Right now it thinks I like Christian graphic novels, books about how to be a stay-at-home mom, and Kwame Appiah.

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15

Here you go, B.

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14: And damn everyone who's linked to Coulter's book in the past few weeks. I've accidentally visited it so many times that Amazon thinks I'm psychotically repressed for not having bought it yet.

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17
I try to cook dishes that are simple...ingredients avail. at an Piggly Wiggly

"Piggly Wiggly" s/b "fellatio"

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18

The only ingredient that counts, baby.

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19

Thanks, Becks. I owe you one.

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19: Oh wow, that book reminds me of this faith-healing manifesto that I got roped into copyediting. Someone at work had me look over an article she was submitting to her son's high school newsletter, which I was happy to do, but she then mentioned it to someone else who asked me to do the same thing.

Turns out this other person's article was for the newletter of some nutty born-again Christian church--it was all about replacing your doctors with prayer. So as to avoid workplace unpleasantness, I tried very hard to confine my suggestions to subject/verb disagreements and the like. A very awkward experience.

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21

All of my tinkering with my Amazon profile has pretty much only led the site to recommend different editions/translations of books that I already own. So I've given up.

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22

So Baldw/n's book is Captain Planet for the religious right?

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23

Planeteers' true ring powers revealed!

KWAME: cock.
MA-TI: stinge.
WHEELER: imperialism.
GI: shitty driving.
LINKA: irremediable sadness.

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24

Next to the four basic elements of cock, imperialism, shitty driving, and irremediable sadness, Ma-Ti's "stinge" power always seemed like an afterthought.

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25

And yet it proved to be the one that saved them all.

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26

How to good-bye weird Amazon search history.

LINKA: irremediable sadness.

So she's Russian?

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27

Becks, I insist that spending two hours trying to convince someone to accept Jesus is not something that should be repaid with kindness, for fear of encouraging that sort of thing. Though I guess martyring him would be even worse from the "never hear the end of it" point of view.

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28

People may also be interested to know that the link in 26 is not actually helpful for good-byeing weird Amazon search history. (As for the rest of 26, duh.)

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29

Man, Weiner, what's it to you?

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26: And a diminutive one, too.

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31

Turns out that's wrong: Ukrainian.

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32

How did I not know that LeVar Burton was the voice of Kwame?

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33

When I worked at the bookstore, a customer ordered the book linked in 26, as we sadly did not carry it in stock. It's every bit as ridiculous as the title indicates--the whole thing is written in the sort of literally translated Japanese that comes out rather oddly, to say nothing of the subject matter.

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34

26: why would you need a whole book about this? I would think a simple wall-plaque would do:
"If you don't know concentration which gives you peculiar pleasure, your life looks like a hell."

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35

Interesting, I've had more than one run-in with S. Bald/win, as he kept a house in Tucson when I still lived there. He was always very friendly but never gave me the Jesus spiel. However Tucson is absolutely chock full of skateboard-riding Evangelicals. I kid you not. They all try to hang with the kids who are downtown smoking cigarattes (read: me) and help you find your way to Christ. I wonder if that's how he got mixed up with this stuff.

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36

He was pretty cool in The Usual Suspects.

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37

Amazon's data mining system for me is all screwed up because of teh little one. I get 400 wallace and gromit things, not that there's anything wrong with that. But with a little jiggling of categories, it works much better than the Itunes one. The Itunes one creeps me out. I can't figure out how to tell it that I own much better blues and hip hop than it keeps recommending to me. Not to be all music snobby. Or is it just that the blues in particular on Itunes sucks?

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38

I wonder if B/aldwin hangs out with Ki/rk Cam/eron.

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39

I've ridden an elevator with Baldw/n. He screamed the whole way up (screamed as if to say "I'm pumped.") So that was pretty hip.

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40

Man, Weiner, what's it to you?

If you mean good-byeing search history, I am actually on a computer that other people will be looking at soon enough and, well, maybe I can blame it all on whoever was using it for me. If you mean the parenthesis, sheer meanness and malice. And, apparently, inaccuracy.

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41

Test

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42

Wow, the reading group is barely even formed and already there's a test!

I'm thinking the student evaluations at the end of the class are going to be pretty harsh on you, Becks.

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43

Yes, I shudder to think what you will all be writing in my evaluations on Rate My Blogger.

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