Day In Court, Night In Hell

Scott Roeder, the accused murderer of Dr. Tiller has a preliminary hearing set for Tuesday.

In case you haven't been paying attention, on May 31st, Roeder is accused of walking into the Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, KS and shooting Dr. Tiller who was serving as an usher.

He is charged with first-degree murder.

Neither the prosecution or the defense are willing to say anything about the case and Roeder has so far refused to say what plea he plans to enter.

He has, however, been chatty about the crime itself.

Here are some of the things he has said over the course of several interviews with the Associated Press.

"Violence is not wrong in all situations, so if it takes that -- then if it is done righteously -- then, if it's done, it is OK."

"I know there are many other similar events planned around the country as long as abortion remains legal."

When asked if Tiller's murder was justified, Roeder replied, "Well, yeah. The thing is, how could it not be?"

"War has been declared upon the unborn."

He indicated that he would be "very pleased" if others took action to stop abortion "by any means necessary."

But every time Roeder has gotten close, he has stopped just short of confessing.

And the thing about reading between the lines, as obvious as it might be, is that it isn't evidence, so we do have to go through the formality of the preliminary hearing.


I'd like to think that one day this whole mess will be behind us and we can all sleep easy in our cloud beds with our halo pillows with our harp-sounding white noise machines with the warm feeling that comes from knowing that Roeder is in Hell being sodomized by Satan.






And that is what Flag Day is all about.


We, along with his wife, Jeanne and his children and grandchildren can find consolation that Dr. Tiller died because he refused to cower.

He saved the lives of countless women who had nobody else to turn to and he knew full well how this could have ended.

That kind of courage moves me beyond words.

That kind of compassion leaves me speechless.

For now, all we can do is hope for justice and that somebody will be brave enough to step up and put themselves in harms way to help these women who have nobody else who is willing to help then.

And pray that this isn't in fact the beginning of an attack on a much larger scale.

Once again, Dr. Tiller, thank you for the lives you saved and sleep well. You are my brother and when I see you on the other side, it will be an honor to shake your hand.

Darkness, Conversations With The Devil, Once Were Warriors

I read The Darkness: Depths of Hell and I’m too lazy to type in like five or six different names, so we’ll just say it’s by the people who write the comic book, although actually, it may have taken more effort to type this explanation than it would have been to just list all the contributors.

Foiled again by my own slothfulness. Bastard!

So, it’s very dark and very funny at the same time. There were even a few times when this genuinely creeped me out which is rare for me (desensitized and jaded as I am.)

One thing about the medium of the graphic novel/comic book is that for some reason, the writers/artists seem to feel freer to paint their protagonists in whatever way they see fit. They don’t try to force virtues onto their characters if they don’t fit.

Unlike most fiction writers, they seem to have made peace with the fact that the people they create can be truly bad people, far worse than the typical anti-hero we sometimes see.

Such was the case in Wanted.

(Although, if you look at the trailer for the film, it looks like whoever adapted it for the screen either didn’t think the audience would have the stomach for a truly evil protagonist or they just had no balls. I'll watch it sooner or later seeing as how I’ve already resigned myself to being disappointed.)

At any rate, the writers of The Darkness: Depths of Hell don’t seem to deem it necessary to paint Jackie Estacado as some kind of tragic, tormented soul who unwillingly has to bear the burden of this horrible curse.

(To sum up, the curse is that there are these demons, imps, whatever called the Darkness who live inside Jackie and periodically persuade him to let them out to wreak havoc.)

Jackie is the perfect carrier for this curse, primarily because he is a killer and cohabiting with evil just comes naturally to him.

But even without this philosophical alignment of how people behave, there’s still much to enjoy about this book.

Anytime a group of demons are ripping apart a person, feeding on their entrails and one of them takes the time to pause, look up and say “Got mustard?” is going to be entertaining.

Plus, whoever the artist was on this, they really know how to draw boobies.

I also read Conversations with the Devil by Jeff Rovin and it just fucking sucked.

I picked it up because it’s about Satan and again, big fan, but how the fucking fuck does someone like this get published for fuck's sake?

However, it’s pretty clear that Rovin really doesn’t know much about Satan or God or psychotherapy or teenagers or angst or human beings and how they behave and react to anything.

A few months ago, I gave up on just shy of page 100, tossed it in the backseat of my car and forgot about it. Then, I went to a doctor’s appointment or something like that, (yeah, I think it was the doctor) and forgot to bring anything to read.

So, I dug Conversations with the Devil out and in the next ten pages or so, the story actually started.

Then the story got old and tired and just when I’d start to put it down, every 50 pages or so, something would happen that was just interesting enough to make me keep reading.

So, the book does have some genuinely unsettling moments but not nearly enough to recommend that anybody wade through 428 pages of shit just for a couple of mildly entertaining surprises.

Rovin simply does not do Satan justice.

Then, I read Once Were Warriors by Alan Duff which can be best described as mournful.

This book, like the film, is part scathing social commentary, part intensely personal and painful human story.

Politically, Warriors makes a persuasive and eloquent argument for making restitution for past atrocities before we can move on.

When an entire race is oppressed, enslaved and/or worse, you can't just wake up one day and say, "Okay, we're not doing that anymore, so level playing field and we're all good now."

Genocide and slavery have not only a psychological but an economic impact that will impact a culture for generations and just saying that we're equal now simply isn't good enough.

Reparations have to be made and Warriors makes this argument very well.

But even when you cast the soapbox aside, the human side of this story is simply heartbreaking, but not depressing just for the sake of it. It shows the hope and the despair of the Maori people in equal measures.

The central characters, the Heke family both endure and create such severe misery that at times, you think that nobody could possibly crawl out from under all this anguish and it’s a testament to the strength of some of these people, particularly Beth, the Heke matriarch, that they do.

Urban But Not So Much

I came across a very interesting play I'd like very much to see called Death in Mozambique, which of course, I'm not going to be seeing anytime soon (or ever, let's be honest) since I don't live in New York.

Here's the sad part. When I googled Kansas City Underground Theater, just out of the vain hopes that maybe this town offered something I didn't know about, the results that came up were how to put a home theater in your basement. Stupid literalists.

When I Am Elected God Part Whatever

Anybody who makes a vampire movie and includes a scene of said vampires playing baseball gets to be Brendan Gleeson's taint in their next life.

I'm not saying anything bad about Brendan Gleeson. I just wouldn't want to spend one of my lives being his taint.

Consent Must Be From The Male? WTFWJD?

This shit pisses me the fuck off. Is it 2009 or not?

Would Jesus endorse this? Before you answer, may I remind you that you're under oath.

Aurora man killed at firing range - The Denver Post

This is heartbreaking and it's everywhere, twice this weekend in my city. Accidents, random, strays, it doesn't matter. It has to stop. It's not worth it.

Aurora man killed at firing range - The Denver Post

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I’m Back And So Is My Soap-Box

Okay, I've taken off a couple of weeks to play video games and junk and now I'm back.

This is in response to a good friend's response to a post of mine urging President Obama to reverse our military’s 'don't-ask-don't-tell' policy.

First, let’s get the preachiest sentence out of the way from the get-go. Equality is not a social experiment.

Okay, the rest of this entry gets about thirty percent less pompous and forty percent less vainglorious from here, I promise.

Animal Collective is excellent. If you aren’t already a fan, seek them out.

Second, from what I have read, the military has not been keeping their part, the don’t ask part, of the bargain. But that is incidental.

The question becomes, is it right to demand silence from the men and women who serve our country?

Why is it that I can say anything in the world with impunity while our service men and women have to shut up?

I have never served partly because of ideological reasons and partly because I don't have the balls.

So, I think that our troops are at the very least entitled to the same freedoms that we take for granted under the first amendment.

And lastly, I do understand that there is a difference between racial prejudice and prejudice against homosexuals, but it is prejudice nevertheless.

Every civil rights struggle in every period of history in every region of the world has looked and behaved differently.

Injustice ranges in nature from beating down ideas and art to economic oppression to genocide, simple murder, rape and everything in between.

Sometimes these fights are won in centuries, sometimes they take days.

Sometimes the solutions are peaceful, tragically, sometimes they are not.

But one thing that every single one of these fights have in common is that they are worth fighting.

There is value in ending prejudice no matter where we find it, and no matter what form it comes in.

Tea Parties Round Two or Maybe Three, Lost Count and Picked a Catch-Phrase

Yet again, Republicans are out there with signs demanding less government involvment in our lives.

I am too sleepy and bored to really say much except come back when you're willing to talk about ending the war on drugs and support reproductive rights and marriage equality.

And I picked a catch-phrase.

Fucktard. No hyphen.

The Crux of the Argument and Some Documentation

“It has been estimated that as many as 5,000 American women die each year as a direct result of criminal abortion.

The figure of 5,000 may be a minimum estimate.” Richard Schwarz, SEPTIC ABORTION 7 (1968); “One recent study at the University of California...

Read More’s School of Public Health estimated 5,000 to 10,000 abortion deaths annually.” Lawrence Lader, ABORTION 3 (1966);

“[M]ore than five thousand women may have died as a direct result [of criminal abortion in the United States in 1962].” Zad Leavy & Jerome M. Kummer, Criminal Abortion: Human Hardship and Unyielding Laws, 35 S. CAL. L. REV. 123, 124 (1962);

“Taussig and others have concluded that the abortion death rate during the late 1920s was about 1.2% and amounted to over 8,000 deaths per year.” Russell S. Fisher, Criminal Abortion, in Harold Rosen, THERAPEUTIC ABORTION, MEDICAL PSYCHIATRIC, LEGAL, ANTHROPOLOGICAL, AND RELIGIOUS CONSIDERATIONS 8 (1954).

For me this is the reason for supporting reproductive rights. It's not an issue of personal autonomy. It is the simple fact that when abortion is inaccessible, women die and I just refuse to accept that.

When I said, "You are hypocrites," (admittedly an overstatement but I've never been one to shy away from heavy-handed rhetoric) I was speaking to the fact that in all the debates I've had over this issue, I've never heard a good response from somebody from the anti-abortion side as to what they have to say about those 5,000 women every year who died from illegal and unsafe abortions.

When I said that Roe saves lives, these are the lives I'm talking about.

There are women I care about who very possibly could have been in danger if they had not been able to see a doctor to terminate their pregnancy and admittedly that makes this issue very personal to me.

Figuring in the 5,000 women who died every year from illegal abortions, a conservative estimate would put the number of womens' lives that Roe saved at well over 150,000.

And that is simply why I am pro-choice.

Kimball's Demise by Joshua Lucht

It found me three hours ago and I don’t have too long before it eats me alive.

It’s sloppy and predictable and it was just biding its time. I never knew what it was before now. I did not believe in it, but somehow, I knew that it would get me.

And now I’m finding out that there are some things that man was never supposed to know. Like the Tree of Good and Evil. I’m crouched on the floor in the corner of my bedroom.

My bed, a mattress on the floor with no frame looks inviting, but I just can’t lie down. When it finally ends, I want to be awake. I thought it was harmless.

All I can do now is sit here, chewing what’s left of my fingernails, down to the bones and smoking the rest of my cigarettes.

There are eleven left in the pack. I hope they last longer than I do; smoking has always been my security blanket and I can’t deal with a craving in my last moments.

That was my first stop this afternoon. I went into the gas station and bought three packs of cigarettes. I live just around the corner and they carry these cigarettes special for me, French ones that you would never find in a gas station.

I buy three packs every day. He was standing next to a bicycle in a white shirt and a black tie and he was very, very handsome. I was walking quickly; I don’t like to be bothered and the man, smiling, handed me one of those gospel tracts.

“’How much do I love you?’ Christ asked. ‘This much.’ Then he spread his arms and died for me.” I think it got in through my hand. The only reason I say that is because my index fingernail fell off first. Against my better judgment, I took the gospel tract. Sometimes, it’s just easier not to put up a fight. I did not even think about it again until just now; I shoved it into the front pocket of my jeans along with my loose change and keys and walked away.

It’s taken one hand entirely, withered it until it crumbled and fell away like ash off a cigarette and it has moved through my chest into both of my legs. And now it’s bubbling under my skin, turning it dark and blistering. It’s only been a few minutes since I tried to lift one of my legs only to have it dissolve and fall onto the floor, like God was tapping a cigarette.

It’s almost over now, but there’s one small mercy: it’s left my right hand alone so I can still smoke. I’ll light my last cigarette now; it’s almost over. I only have seconds left. With the scant flaps of flesh under my nose and over my chin, I can manage to suck on my cigarette.

She was beautiful and I had no idea that she was in league with the two men on their bicycles. She caught up to me and I thought she wanted me. She touched my hand and told me that I was loved and then she turned and walked away to add another notch in her crucifix. But God, she was gorgeous.

If my lips were still on my face, I’d be smiling beautifully.

All that’s left now, aside from half a cigarette and my stink is memories.

I’m not so sure I want all of them.

Like my baptism; I panicked. The preacher dipped me under the water, and I felt an unbearable fear. I’d never even imagined that kind of fear.

Even in my nightmares, I hadn’t guessed that anyone could be this afraid. I’m looking at the walls of my bedroom and I realize just how sharp the corners are and suddenly, I’m afraid of the ceiling.

Suddenly it occurred to me, when Brother Jim held me under with his chubby hand, what I was preparing for. I was going to die. That was the first time I really understood that. I guess for some reason, maybe childishness, maybe believing in the second coming of Christ, I’d always thought I would be exempt.

But when my head went under and the water crept over me, I knew that I was not special. I was going to die just like everyone and that’s why it was so important for me to go through this; I had to prepare myself to go to Heaven. And I couldn’t breathe.

The light is here now, just like when the preacher brought me up from the water and I gulped the sweet air as hard as I could. I stare up at the corner of my room, where the top of two walls meet the ceiling and it’s sharp enough to cut, so I cower on the floor.

After my Baptism, I gave up the faith. Surely, God would not take a child and send him to hell. If I was not a believer, I knew there was no way I could die.

God would just not do that. But I’m older now. I can see it and it’s gorgeous; it’s a white light, just like everyone said it would be.

It’s enveloping me and my last cigarette is only ash now.

Across the room, I can see the corner of the floor and it’s just as jagged. If I could, I’d scoot to the middle of the room; I know this corner is going to cut me.

My good hand has given out now and it’s all I can do to keep the cigarette in my mouth. And now it’s gone. I don’t know if He has given me peace or if I have just lost that part of my mind, but suddenly, I’m not afraid anymore.

All I can think is how breathtaking Heaven will be if I make it.

I’m going out like a candle.