You've got Mormon recruiters in their short-sleeved white shirts,
Jehovahs Witnesses with their magazines,
Televangelists, Fundamentalists,
Self-loathing Closet Cases,
Handlers of Snakes, Speakers of Tongues,
Dunkers, Sprinklers, and now Tammy Faye.

Doesn't anyone else think Heaven would be a
particulary annoying neighbourhood in which to spend eternity?

A GORE BY ANY OTHER NAME

Last night I traveled to Half-price Books, the big store on Northwest Highway, mostly to unload the recyclable things which have been piling up here but also to spend some money I shouldn't spend on books I really don't need. This time I'd even thought to take my 23-page list of books I already have so I could shop more efficiently.

So I dumped the bottles, cans, and cardboard while casually checking out some guys across the street doing a rather amazing rollerblade jump using the curved sides of a loading dock as a ramp. Then, inside the store, I made my usual circuit of the store -- clearance area, politics, philosophy and religion, sci-fi, mysteries, then DVDs -- referring to my list for titles I "need" to fill some hole in my collection.

I didn't really expect to find anything, but I got amazingly lucky.

Among the titles I was looking out for were three mysteries by Edgar Box, which I've only recently learned is a pseudonym for my beloved Gore Vidal. I managed to find all three of them, in one volume called THREE BY BOX, the Collected Mysteries of Edgar Box.

I grabbed the books and got out of there before I was tempted to spend more.

But I travel home from that store along one of two routes through North Dallas, both of which passes another branch of Half-price Books. North up 75, I headed west on Campbell and stopped at the bookstore at that intersection.

Again I shopped around with list in hand, but I didn't find anything as attractive. On the way to the truck, I took a minute to peruse the carts on the sidewalk where I found a copy of Donna Tartt's THE SECRET HISTORY for a price so low that I won't mention it, lest the author ever see it and cry. I had been thinking about that book just the other day, wanting to re-read it, so I bought that too.

There's nothing deeply philosophical about this story, though I should probably address my continuing to buy books when I should be finding a job. And continuing to buy books when I so seldom read the ones I do buy.

But maybe I could learn a lesson from HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS. I brought that home at 3am on Saturday, and I finished it by Sunday evening, without really spending marathon amounts of time reading to the exclusion to everything else. If I can read such a book in so little time, I could read through more of the books I own much faster than I do.

Just don't ask me what I think about the latest and last of the Harry Potter books. I haven't quite decided yet.

So now I'll shut up and get some reading done.

WORDS FOR WEDNESDAY

BEFORE AND AFTER

As if I needed proof that Stargate Atlantis is bad for you, just look what it did to Jason Momoa.

The Before Pic (courtesy of Gaytogether.com) shows a smooth, pretty boy with exotic good looks. The After Pic (blatantly stolen from Yahoo TV) is Jason in character as Ronnan Dax, somewhat bloodthirsty "vampire" hunter raised in another galaxy.

One could argue that the changes in his looks are the result of his playing a character, but I want to blame them on Dr. Rodney McKay, the most arrogant man to appear on television since the State of the Union address.

Honestly, I tried to like this show, but I just can't.

True, I liked the original movie, and it took me a long time to warm up to the old series, but eventually I did. Richard Dean Anderson is not Kurt Russell, but eventually I learned to appreciate what he did with the roll, to enjoy Anderson as Jack O'Neil enough that now, when I watch the movie, Kurt Russell seems so serious and heavy in the part.

Maybe if I gave Atlantis a chance, I could learn to enjoy it too.

But I don't want to. I'm tired of shows where the cause each week is to save the entire universe from the greatest danger ever faced, only to come back next season to see what the new greatest danger ever faced is. Buffy did it, and it became trite. Stargate did it, and it became cliche.

I'm not sure I have the patience to go through this again, certainly not when humanity sends people into a different galaxy and find that the greatest danger there are basically vampires. Sure, they call them something else and they suck lifeforce instead of blood, but they're vampires. They might as well have capes and Hungarian accents. The only creative aspect they've added to the menace is the idea that they farm human beings as a food source, the way we do with Brown Swiss.

I've seen enough episodes to know that the writing, acting, and production on this spin-off are as good (if not better) than the original. It's not a bad show by any definition.

But I've got other things to do with my time.

ANOTHER VIDEO CLIP

This is third in a series of pictures of hot guys set to cool songs.

Not very imaginative, I admit, but until I get an actual camera -- and some willing attractive guys to point it at -- these "slideshows" of mine will have to satisfy you.

Now that I think of it, if I knew some willing, attractive guys, I'd have better things to do than make stupid clips for YouTube.

All the pictures in this clip are of either athletes or fashion models pretending to be athletes -- that's why the "boxer" at the beginning is shown later with an American football. Looking through the various images I've saved (ie, stole) from Websites over the years, I found I had quite a few pictures of jocks, many more than I included here.

Athletic guys fascinate me, as of course they do many homosexuals. In my case, that is partially because their athletic endeavours build such strong, attractive bodies.

But there is also the sense that they have something I lack. USAmerican society teaches us to associate sports with manliness; jocks are our society's equivalent to the hunters and warriors of more primitive times.Their athleticism indicates a very basic, primal kind of masculinity, and since I am insecure about my own masculinity, I'm envious of their athletic abilities, their acclaim, and their comeraderie with teammates.

There is more to it than just my wanting to head into the locker room and share the showers.

Of course, that could be fun too.

Batman is one of the more polarizing superheroes. In the 70s it became popular to portray the dark side of a hero's personality, and no one had a darker dark side than the Dark Knight himself.

But what makes me call him polarizing is that he has become so popular with readers who have their own demons that make them long for ruthlessness and vengeance, demons that make them see only the danger and injustice in the world and want to do something about it.

Of course -- also like Batman -- they tend to ignore that justice is usually only just for one side, leaving the other crying unfair and often not without cause.

This is why the enforcement of law is more civilized than the pursuit of justice. The meaning of the law is something rather strict; like it or not, law -- when fairly and objectively enforced -- is the same for everyone. Justice is too subjective, to open to interpretation.

And interpretation by people who are usually thinking emotionally instead of rationally.

It will seem out of place after my little sermon above, but this time I can name the guy in the picture. He's called Tyler Southwick.

He's a really lean muscular guy who's worked hard to build a strong, beautiful body, a process he documented on YouTube. From the videos I've seen, he seems like a reasonably smart and nice enough guy, even if he's got crappy taste in music.

Don't look for him on YouTube anymore. For about a year he put his workout videos on YouTube for all to see, but now he's removed them in favour of selling them -- and other things -- at his Website.

I can't really blame him.

He obviously worked hard to become a statue of a man, and if people are willing to pay to see him, why should he not profit. But he should have left the clips at YouTube there, for all to see without paying. Removing them all after sharing them freely for so long just seems mercenary and materialistic to me.