Rufus T. Firefly

Not much in this world is funnier than Groucho Marx.

Trust.

"I am a sinner"

Just in case you forgot what REAL acting is all about, Daniel Day-Lewis reminds us all.

A clip of what i consider to be the highlight of Paul Thomas Anderson's THERE WILL BE BLOOD.....

Classic Batman

All that fuss over INSTANT coffee ? Really?

Cleese Quote

Great interview with John Cleese in The Onion today......especially enjoyed this section regarding controversy and the Black Knight.


AVC: Life Of Brian was very controversial. A Fish Called Wanda generated controversy as well. Have you ever reached a point in a project where you thought "Maybe I've gone too far?"

JC: No, I don't think I've ever had that thought. I've often thought to myself, "Have I stepped over a line?" Or, "Is this particular line over the line?" In the German episode of Fawlty Towers, I sensed it on two or three lines. And funnily enough, when one of my favorite people at the BBC rang me up and said "There's two lines here we're worried about," I said "I'm delighted to tell you I've already cut them."

No, I've always kept my eye on things like that, but I also know that unless your comedy is completely bland, there will always be someone somewhere who's offended by it. You can't really avoid some offense, so the question is not "Will you offend people?" but "What sort of proportions will you offend them in?" I'll give you a good example. The producers of Holy Grail actually wanted to cut the Black Knight scene, where the limbs get cut off, because they thought it would worry people. Of course, 95 percent of the audience thinks it's the funniest scene in the film. Two percent of the audience don't like it, because it seems so violent. So do you cut the scene so that two percent don't object to it, and deprive 95 percent of their favorite scene?

Three Orange Whips

A LOL Cat

BURT REYNOLDS - Sings

Burt. Sings?

Sarah Silverman on Jimmy Kimmel - I'm F*cking MAtt Damon

Because everyone else has posted it.

The Three Greatest Films of 2007

Joel and Ethan Coen's NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

David Fincher's ZODIAC

Paul Thomas Anderson's THERE WILL BE BLOOD

No Reason

Movie Quiz

90%The Movie Quiz

FilmCritic.com - Movie Reviews

As if his name wasn't embarassing enough....

"Wimps," House GOP leader John Boehner called Republican defectors in the Senate — a growing breed as public opinion polls chart ever-deepening opposition to the war and a climbing U.S. casualty count 16 months before the 2008 elections.

Boehner, R-Ohio, made his "wimps" remark in a private meeting Wednesday with rank-and-file Republicans — ironically at nearly the same moment that several GOP senators beseeched the White House without apparent success for a quick change in course on Iraq.

Wimps? After going on four years of keeping silent while thousands of men, women, and children get slaughtered in Iraq, SOME republicans begin to speak up and say that JUST MAYBE we should be getting out of there by now. And, the unfortunately named, John Boehner feels the need to lash out at them as wimps. Unbelievable.
What world am I stuck in?

Huh?

Judge Reduces Bond For Man Accused Of Running Underage Strip Club

http://www.wtov9.com/news/13656141/detail.html

The man accused of running an underage strip club out of his Weirton home was back in court Tuesday, trying to get his bond reduced.

The judge reduced Ray Loy's bond from $200,000 to $100,000.

Loy is charged with four counts of using a minor in sexually explicit conduct.

If Loy posts bond, he will be on house arrest.

More lunacy....

So tomorrow the U.S. Senate will open with a Hindu prayer by Rajan Zed, a Hindu chaplain that says he believes this may be the first time any Hindu prayer is delivered in the Senate since its formation in 1789. Seems like a nice sentiment. Most Americans don't know the difference between an Arab and an Indian to begin with, so what harm could be done by having some dialogue and reaching out to the Indian community by having a Hindu Prayer open a session of the U.S. Senate. Works for me.

Seriously. This is U.S. SENATE we are talking about. A full Pentecostal Tent revival, four Catholic masses, and a Wiccan Full Moon testimonial couldn't wash these swine clean of the blood on their hands.

But OF COURSE....somebody is upset. This is America....somebody is always upset for one reason or another. And that somebody this time would be the always tolerant, loving, 'let he without sin' crowd......

WallBuilders president David Barton is questioning why the U.S. government is seeking the invocation of a non-monotheistic god. Barton points out that since Hindus worship multiple gods, the prayer will be completely outside the American paradigm, flying in the face of the American motto "One Nation Under God."

"In Hindu, you have not one God, but many, many, many, many, many gods," the Christian historian explains. "And certainly that was never in the minds of those who did the Constitution, did the Declaration [of Independence] when they talked about Creator -- that's not one that fits here because we don't know which creator we're talking about within the Hindu religion."

The American Family Association also has their holier-than-thou panties all up in a bunch about it as well. Sending emails out asking the faithful to contact their Senator and complain.

3,000 plus dead in the most worthless joke of a war ever carried out......and the hardcore Christian groups are seriously PISSED about a Hindu prayer. Maybe it's deity envy. They have the one lonely God, while the Hindus have that whole polytheistic thing going on.

What a joke

Apparantly, according to the new strict German (and absolutely batsh!t crazy) pope, if you ain't goin' to a CATHOLLIC church, then you ain't really goin' to church at all !

That's right skippy. If it ain't the Catholic collection plate you are droppin ca$h into.....then you have just bought yourself a one way ticket to eternal damnation.

Read on and get thee to a confessional booth PRONTO!!

This Pope is turning out to be the most entertaining Pope is quite some time. Not as amusing as Pope Paul III (1534–1549) mind you......but pretty damn entertaining nonetheless.






Pope: Other Christians not true churches

By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer

Pope Benedict XVI has reasserted the universal primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, approving a document released Tuesday that says Orthodox churches were defective and that other Christian denominations were not true churches.

Benedict approved a document from his old offices at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that restates church teaching on relations with other Christians. It was the second time in a week the pope has corrected what he says are erroneous interpretations of the Second Vatican Council, the 1962-65 meetings that modernized the church.

On Saturday, Benedict revisited another key aspect of Vatican II by reviving the old Latin Mass. Traditional Catholics cheered the move, but more liberal ones called it a step back from Vatican II.

Benedict, who attended Vatican II as a young theologian, has long complained about what he considers the erroneous interpretation of the council by liberals, saying it was not a break from the past but rather a renewal of church tradition.

In the latest document — formulated as five questions and answers — the Vatican seeks to set the record straight on Vatican II's ecumenical intent, saying some contemporary theological interpretation had been "erroneous or ambiguous" and had prompted confusion and doubt.
It restates key sections of a 2000 document the pope wrote when he was prefect of the congregation, "Dominus Iesus," which set off a firestorm of criticism among Protestant and other Christian denominations because it said they were not true churches but merely ecclesial communities and therefore did not have the "means of salvation."

In the new document and an accompanying commentary, which were released as the pope vacations here in Italy's Dolomite mountains, the Vatican repeated that position.

"Christ 'established here on earth' only one church," the document said. The other communities "cannot be called 'churches' in the proper sense" because they do not have apostolic succession — the ability to trace their bishops back to Christ's original apostles.

The Rev. Sara MacVane of the Anglican Centre in Rome, said there was nothing new in the document.

"I don't know what motivated it at this time," she said. "But it's important always to point out that there's the official position and there's the huge amount of friendship and fellowship and worshipping together that goes on at all levels, certainly between Anglican and Catholics and all the other groups and Catholics."

The document said Orthodox churches were indeed "churches" because they have apostolic succession and that they enjoyed "many elements of sanctification and of truth." But it said they lack something because they do not recognize the primacy of the pope — a defect, or a "wound" that harmed them, it said.

"This is obviously not compatible with the doctrine of primacy which, according to the Catholic faith, is an 'internal constitutive principle' of the very existence of a particular church," the commentary said.

Despite the harsh tone of the document, it stresses that Benedict remains committed to ecumenical dialogue.

"However, if such dialogue is to be truly constructive, it must involve not just the mutual openness of the participants but also fidelity to the identity of the Catholic faith," the commentary said.

The document, signed by the congregation prefect, U.S. Cardinal William Levada, was approved by Benedict on June 29, the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul — a major ecumenical feast day.

There was no indication about why the pope felt it necessary to release the document, particularly since his 2000 document summed up the same principles. Some analysts suggested it could be a question of internal church politics, or that it could simply be an indication of Benedict using his office as pope to again stress key doctrinal issues from his time at the congregation

My Rating

Mingle² - Online Dating

And it's about time too.....

Angry atheists are hot authors

By RACHEL ZOLL, AP Religion Writer

The time for polite debate is over. Militant, atheist writers are making an all-out assault on religious faith and reaching the top of the best-seller list, a sign of widespread resentment over the influence of religion in the world among nonbelievers.
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Christopher Hitchens' book, "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything," has sold briskly ever since it was published last month, and his debates with clergy are drawing crowds at every stop.

Sam Harris was a little-known graduate student until he wrote the phenomenally successful "The End of Faith" and its follow-up, "Letter to a Christian Nation." Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" and Daniel Dennett's "Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon" struck similar themes — and sold.

"There is something like a change in the Zeitgeist," Hitchens said, noting that sales of his latest book far outnumber those for his earlier work that had challenged faith. "There are a lot of people, in this country in particular, who are fed up with endless lectures by bogus clerics and endless bullying."

Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, a prominent evangelical school in Pasadena, Calif., said the books' success reflect a new vehemence in the atheist critique.

"I don't believe in conspiracy theories," Mouw said, "but it's almost like they all had a meeting and said, 'Let's counterattack.'"

The war metaphor is apt. The writers see themselves in a battle for reason in a world crippled by superstition. In their view, Muslim extremists, Jewish settlers and Christian right activists are from the same mold, using fairy tales posing as divine scripture to justify their lust for power. Bad behavior in the name of religion is behind some of the most dangerous global conflicts and the terrorist attacks in the U.S., London and Madrid, the atheists say.

As Hitchens puts it: "Religion kills."

The Rev. Douglas Wilson, senior fellow in theology at New Saint Andrews College, a Christian school in Moscow, Idaho, sees the books as a sign of secular panic. He says nonbelievers are finally realizing that, contrary to what they were taught in college, faith is not dead.

Signs of believers' political and cultural might abound.

Religious challenges to teaching evolution are still having an impact, 80 years after the infamous Scopes "Monkey" trial. The dramatic growth in homeschooling and private Christian schools is raising questions about the future of public education. Religious leaders have succeeded in putting some limits on stem-cell research.

And the recent
U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding a national ban on a procedure critics call "partial-birth abortion" — the first federal curbs on an abortion procedure in a generation — came after decades of religious lobbying for conservative justices.

"It sort of dawned on the secular establishment that they might lose here," said Wilson, who is debating Hitchens on christianitytoday.com and has written the book "Letter from a Christian Citizen" in response to Harris. "All of this is happening precisely because there's a significant force that they have to deal with."

Indeed, believers far outnumber nonbelievers in America. In an 2005 AP-Ipsos poll on religion, only 2 percent of U.S. respondents said they did not believe in God. Other surveys concluded that 14 percent of Americans consider themselves secular, a term that can include believers who say they have no religion.

Some say liberal outrage over the policies of
President Bush is partly fueling sales, even though Hitchens famously supported the invasion of
Iraq.

To those Americans, the nation's born-again president is the No. 1 representative of the religious right activists who helped put him in office. Critics see Bush's Christian faith behind some of his worst decisions and his stubborn defense of the war in Iraq.

"There is this general sense that evangelicals have really gained a lot of power in the United States and the Bush administration seems to represent that in some significant ways," said Christian Smith, a sociologist of religion at the University of Notre Dame. "A certain group of people sees it that way and that's really disturbing."

Mouw said conservative Christians are partly to blame for the backlash. The rhetoric of some evangelical leaders has been so strident, they have invited the rebuke, the seminary president said.

"We have done a terrible job of presenting our perspective as a plausible world view that has implications for public life and for education, presenting that in a way that is sensitive to the concerns of people who may disagree," he said. "Whatever may be wrong with Christopher Hitchens attacks on religious leaders, we have certainly already matched it in our attacks."

Given the popularity of the anti-religion books so far, publishers are expected to roll out even more in the future. Lynn Garrett, senior religion editor for Publishers Weekly, says religion has been one of the fastest-growing categories in publishing in the last 15 years, and the rise of books by atheists is "the flip-side of that."

"It was just the time," she said, "for the atheists to take the gloves off."

White Stripes new album cover