It's a lovely day for a return

Dear friends, it has been quite some time since Brian Paradise has graced the halls of Blogspots. Maybe I just haven't had too much to say. Blogging is too much work!

It's a lovely G-chat for the day

Dear friends,

Brian Paradise apologizes for the delay in writing. Where do the hours go?

Here's a G-chat he received today which gives us an opportunity to think:

Danielle: i just made an excel document of a new calendar
the calendar I think we should use
its "ludacris" that feb only has 28 days
we already need almost every month to have 31 to get all 365 days
feb needs to pull its fair share
then there are certain months i just like having longer
if you ever come back / care about my new calendar. i will email it to you
not too radical like the french revolutionaries
mine is all about making things easier not more confusing
oh. they should better follow the lunar patterns!
maybe add new months. close to menstrual cycles too
that's getting confusing though
better stick with my modified 12 month calendar.. with just the days more even spread thorughout the 12 months

It's a lovely day for Andrew Sullivan to whine

Dear friends,

It seems like every day is a lovely day for conservative liberal gay married Catholic Andrew Sullivan to histrionically whine about one thing or the other, and today is no different from any other day. Sully's target today is (Bishop) Richard Williamson, recently allowed back into the flock by that pimp of all pimps, Pope Joseph "Mad Dog" Ratzinger Benedict XVI. In short, a prominent member of a group of people even crazier and more radical than Ratzinger Catholics (but at least these weirdos- the SSPX- seem more consistently in lockstep with pre-medieval Catholicism, ah, as it should be. They also seem to think the Vatican is Satan, or something, so I'm not sure why he [Williamson] would want to be back in.) Now, he may not be the one most responsible for this, but where's the fun in that, so let's blame Andrew Sullivan more than anyone for bitching about how his blessed One True Church (with whom he agrees on basically nothing except loving that communion wine) is being co-opted by Sully's cartoonishly evil cartoon picture of Benedict the Barbaric.

In this post he joins a chorus of complaints in the past few days since the announcement of un-excommunication (who even knew that was possible?) of fake Bishop Williamson. I guess Sully and this "Shlomo" that he links to are these people who think that all these religions which have fundamentally differing doctrines and agendas but are always looking for "common ground" even though they all know that all the others are going to hell or something. This is of course an extra-specially insidious case since Williamson is a "Holocaust denier" (he basically believes those crockpot documentaries where "experts" go look through the remains of Auschwitz and talk about how "chemical testing" proves there couldn't have been any gas chambers there.) But as with all things Holocaust no one is allowed any subtlety or middle ground and one wishes that the proponents who've made it that way would allow an honest debate to transpire rather than just tar and feather anyone who dissents from the party line (e.g., saying that the number of Jews killed during World War II- while obviously more than the asinine figures 200-300,000 given by Williamson in his Spiegel interview- was probably substantially less than 6 million, a number admittedly made up by Raul Hilberg or someone.) But the squelching of any oppositional opinion, as now transpires, allows dildos like Williamson to go around in his bishopric of exile and sputter and spout his imitations of Ernst Zündel. And that just sends Andrew Sullivan off his rocker all over again, and honestly, who wants that?

At long last

Good riddance to bad rubbish

CNN: The transition from dangerously inept to farcically humorous

Over the past day the Israeli Defence Force has attacked three hospitals in Gaza. Millions (?is that true?) of Americans will turn to CNN.com (as Wolf Blitzer and his incompetent cronies instructed them to do many times during the presidential campaign season even if they were already watching CNN at the same time! What a racket he's got there.)

Anyway, the birds who got eaten up and caused the US Air plane to crash into the Hudson are living up their 15 minutes of page, spewing their charred remains & consequences all over CNN.com frontpage. (This is not only irritating but bad for Brian Paradise's aerophobia, though he is a little relieved that everyone survived a water landing, and that those little inflatable yellow vests aren't just for show!)

After putting on his spectacles and scrolling down the page, your fearless blogger was finally able to find the story about Gaza-- of course there is nothing mentioned about any hospitals in the headline, which reads "Israel intensifies attacks on Gaza City" ("intensifies" is, one must understand, BlitzerSpeak for attacking hospitals and maybe using white phosphorous illegally but who knows or cares?? It's so anti-Semitic to even investigate.)

The Gaza story is ten lines down in the tiny "Latest News" box underneath the plane crash garbage (a survivor called it "miraculous!".. um, the plane crash, not Gaza. Something tells me we're not going to hear a lot from the survivors of the latter. If there are any. And if we do it will be followed by a story three times as long about how some girl in Sderot was "scared.")

Now the best part-- besides the horribly edited Gaza "report" (which cheerleads in the first line about some Hamas figure no one cares about being killed and waits eight paragraphs before mentioning any hospital bombs)-- is the story one above the Gaza massacre: "Iowan: Cold hurts, makes 'skin burn.' "

January in Iowa, who knew it was cold? Thanks CNN, you piece of horse shit.

It's a lovely day for a farewell to a good friend

One of Brian Paradise's best friends is leaving the country for half the year soon, and Brian will probably move before his return, and there will be a farewell dinner this evening at one of Los Angeles' finest cheap Mexican restaurants, La Barca.



But Brian Paradise is not a sentimental man. Let us just say, it's a lovely day!

Until soon,

Brian Paradise

It's a lovely exchange of the day

I sent an e-mail from my new G-mail address (I <3 G-mail!) to the wonderful mother of a very dear friend of my lovely, lovely daughter's. The e-mail read as follows:

Why hello, I'm Brian Paradise, father of M**** Paradise, perhaps you remember me from such features as "The EHS Graduation DVD."

She then politefully responded:

Hi Brian,

It's great to hear from you. D*******[her daughter] told me you guys have moved to the beach - how wonderful. What is up with your family? We don't have much news. I have been volunteering at [an organization] since 2000 and I love it. [Her husband] is still at [company]. My folks are great... But we all MISS D*******. She graduated in May with a degree in Biostatistics and is working for a year at a consulting company in C***** H***. She is applying to grad school for the fall and we are praying for something in the South!!

I think D******* said that N***[my son] had finished Law school and M**666**[my daughter] graduated and was working abroad??
Catch me up sometime and give my best to L***[my wife]

Then she apparently started believing this is not the real Brian Paradise and sent the following:

Bad, Bad Boy

Oh, is it ever a lovely day!

Love,

Brian Paradise