:Joshua Ditty

The Onion is a great site, full of the greatest satirical articles of the day, and that is why I’m subscribed to the Onion news feed. But for the past couple days the feed has been delivering virtually nothing but Gay articles. Here are the articles I’ve seen in the past three days.

Article: Gay-Pride Parade Sets Mainstream Acceptance Of Gays Back 50 Years
Article: Band Teacher Gay In Retrospect
Article: Area Homosexual Saves Four From Fire
Article: McDonnell-Douglas Unveils New ‘Gay-Dar’
Article: School Board Adopts Gay-Ass Uniform Policy
Article: Area Man Has Sex With Man To Get Out Of Office Blood Drive
Article: Catholic Church Condemns Metrosexuality
Article: Area Man Accidentally Responds To Own ‘M4M’ Ad
Article: Area Man Feels Guilty For Hating Annoying, Gay Coworker
Article: British Recognize Gay Unions
Article: Why Do All These Homosexuals Keep Sucking My Cock?
Article: Ask The Stage Directions To Tennessee Williams’ Cat On A Hot Tin Roof
Article: New Batwoman: Lesbian
Article: Gay Marriage Could Be Profitable
Article: Pentagon: Gay Equals Crazy
Article: Letter D Pulls Sponsorship From Sesame Street
Article: Dance-Club Bathroom Left Out Of Gay Couple’s Meeting Story
Article: Anti-Homosexuality Sermon Suspiciously Well-Informed
Article: Gay Guy’s Gay Thing Well Attended
Article: Bisexual’s Parents Half-Understand
Article: GOP ‘Ins’ Alabama Representative
Article: Local Bar Comes Out As Gay
Article: Homoerotic Overtones Enliven NRA Meeting
Article: Gay Couple Feels Pressured To Marry
Article: George Takei To Wed Partner
Article: Kentucky Legislature Bans Gay Pet Weddings
Article: Name Of Gay Bar Should Have Been Clearer
Article: R.L. Stine Reveals Slappy From Night Of The Living Dummy Was Gay
Article: Theodore Roosevelt Was A Gay Man
Article: Gay Couple Has Banal Sex
Article: Gay Man, Unattractive Woman Form Tight Bond
Article: Newly Out Gay Man Overdoing It
Article: Supreme Court Rules Death Penalty Is ‘Totally Badass’
Article: Fantasy Baseball Owner Rips Team In Media
Article: Where Do Homosexuals Get All Their Energy?
Article: I Can’t Seem To Find The Moline Gay District
Article: Straight Men, Gay Women Have Similar Brains
Article: Bush Urges Iraqis To Pass Amendment Banning Gay Marriage
Article: Wellesley College Removes Phrase ‘Hot All-Girl Action’ From School Brochure
Article: Gay Gene Isolated, Ostracized
Article: Nation’s Gays Demand Right To Library Cards
Article: Supportive Gay Friend To Counsel American People On Ways Of Romance
Article: New Dad Thinks Baby Might Be Gay

Out of 43 articles a whopping 37 have something to do with someone somewhere being gay. In addition, one about school uniforms has Gay in the headline though it’s not about anyone actually being gay, and another is about metrosexuality - which is straight men trying to be more like gay guys. Even one that seems good and unique - the letter D pulling sponsorship - is quickly ruined when you learn that the reason D is so pissed off is because of a new Gay puppet. So really, 39 of 43 articles could be considered ‘gay related’.

I like an occasional gay joke, just like any joke. There are some real gems in there too, like the R.L. Stine one, which is actually a slam on J.K. Rowling for announcing the Dumbledore was gay. But this is literally a years worth of Gay related articles from the onion in a matter of a week. Why?

I started writing this post to complain when I realized this could actually be the biggest satirical joke the Onion has ever pulled. The potential is there. Think about it.

This is the type of thing you see on all the serious news sites every single day. They take an article, or theme, and simply run with to the point of exhaustion. The joke, quite simply, is that this is what our world has become. If you want an accurate depiction of the news just imagine a women in a three piece suit standing over a dead horse and beating it with a baseball bat - repeatedly - every day for eternity. Isn’t the media great?

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I’ve been sorta following this story, to the extent that I read the article, found it interesting and just read an update to it. Yep, following it real close.

A man in New York created a scheme to defraud people and made out with over $450 Million. He was supposed to report to jail on Monday to start a 20 year prison sentece, but instead left his car on a bridge with a message in the dust saying ‘Suicide is Painless‘ - the title to the theme song of Mash. If this is a fake suicide, and the guy is still alive trying to hide, apparently he didn’t do his research on the message he left as the song was played during a fake suicide in the movie version of Mash.

And that’s exactly what authorities are thinking. Is this a fake suicide? Well, it seems to be as no body is turning up, but I loved this quote from the article that pretty much sums up the attitude toward the missing man.

“We’ll continue to search, if it takes a week, a month, you know, the rest of the summer,”

Yep, we’ll be out there, looking, keeping watch, for as long as the weather holds up.

But really, you can’t blame the police. There is only so long they can search for a body that may, or may not, be there. I just think that could have been phrased a little better.

Ah screw it, who cares? Give it another week then break for a beer.

Article: Dead or Alive

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I have taken up the cause of Global Warming, crafting a side project site called Manpollo Project. The name comes from a series of videos, viewable there, by a physics teacher named Greg. In those videos he talks about the risks of ignoring Global Warming and calls for a government project to combat the effects of Global Warming that should be as big as both the Manhattan project and Apollo project combined - hence the ManPollo Project.

Yes, I stole took his ideas, but he gave permission too. In fact, it’s what Greg wants. He wants as many people to spread the word about Global Warming as possible. He’s doing great work too, writing a book based on his videos. So I’m giving him good PR. But I digress.

I truly believe in Global Warming. The signs are there, the scientists confirm it. It’s pretty blatantly a reality, and aside from a few staunch people who are trying to deny it (who can blame them really, it’s pretty grim) I get the feeling most of the world accepts it as a reality now. But oh, where do we start? How do you fix something so mindbogglingly complicated?

It is terrifying, when you think about it. The effects won’t be disastrous, they won’t be astronomical. The effects will be of biblical proportions. Literally. The most plausible scenario, when you think about it, will be mass global famine, water shortage, possibly war, massive recessions for developed nations, and pretty much catastrophic for third world nations.

Pennsylvania, the state I live in, is projected to turn into a dust bowl due to a decrease in precipitation. Pennsylvania, I think, is number one in Potato harvests in the U.S.. If not number one, I know it’s in the top five at least. We make a lot of potatoes. We are also ranked high in other vegetables. Corn, tomatoes, pumpkins, we grow it all. It’s good farm land, and needed farmland. When Pennsylvania turns into a dust bowl the U.S. will lose the breadbasket - and food shortages will be nationwide. I say when because it’s speculated that some of the effects of Global Warming can no longer be prevented.

In the 1930s the midwest became a dust bowl. Simply a freak of nature - not enough rain. Long droughts ripped the land apart, withering it into a vast wasteland. Farming was virtually impossible. If something like that could happen simply by nature so fast, it’s hard to imagine that such a scenario won’t happen when prompted by an effect such as Global Warming.

The doomsday scenarios so frequently dismissed by skeptics are easy. After all, it’s hard to imagine things getting to a state where the world is virtually turned into the movie Mad Max. But is it so hard to imagine something as mundane as a drought? Category 5 hurricanes, one right after another? Or even a category 6 (the scale stops at five only because we’ve never seen a six)? What about this increase in tornadoes? Has the midwest always had so many tornadoes?

This is what I think about. Not every day, but a lot.

And that is why I’m glad that the sun has no spots. I saw a show on the Science channel earlier today, talking about Sunspots, but didn’t really get to pay a lot of attention to it. Luckily, I stumbled an article that probably explains what the whole show was about.

Article:The Sunspot Enigma

You see, the sun currently has no sunspots, Scientists say the sun typically goes through an 11 year cycle, where the sun is at it’s peak in relation to sunspot activity and then declines - sometimes to zero sunspots - before going back up again.

For two years now, however, the sun has had no spots and this worries scientists - a little. There is a record of 50 years previously where the sun had no spots which happens to coincide exactly - or near enough - to the little ice age of 1650 to 1700 to make scientists wonder. Could they have been related?

If so, then the earth may be cooled by this. Wouldn’t it be a wondrous thing if it did?

The earth supposedly cooled 0.7 degrees this past year according to the article, though I have yet to see anything else that states this. If the cooling diminished the effects of global warming, that would be a coincidence. If it plunges the earth into an ice age that would be ironic. But if it negated the effects entirely, and not so much to cause an ice age - if it were so perfectly aligned that everything simply cancelled - well, there you have it.

The world would eventually run out of oil and coal, and we’d have no choice in 10 or 20 years but to finally admit defeat. To finally admit that we need an alternative fuel source, and we would find one, and the earth would slowly suck up the C02 in the atmosphere.

But we would wonder. We would question what happened. Was Global Warming really true? Did the sun’s lack of activity cool the earth? And more importantly - the most important question to me - is God still watching out for us?

I’d like to believe he is.

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