Jingus

Are we sure that was the Orchid he was signalling to or someone somewhere else waiting or a signal from Ben? It would help if we ever had any idea whatsoever where things on the island were located in relation to everything else. Locke's early obsession with the hatch seems kinda silly now, seeing how it seems like you can't walk through the jungle for five minutes without tripping over another building.

So why doesn't God just kill the gays, why does he kill these other random people, I DEMAND EXPLANATIONS

And why did this majority (same one that voted for Bush 1.5 times) feel that way? Because of religion. Religious teachings should never, ever dictate civil law. I'm still waiting for an argument against gay marriage which doesn't boil down to "because the Bible said so". Pretty much exactly what happened when Lincoln (hey look, another non-Christian deist!) freed the slaves. Most people back then either wanted slavery or didn't give a shit about it. But that's the facetious answer. The real one is that this moral majority has never reasonably explained how it hurts anyone or anything to allow this minority of consenting adults to marry whoever they want.

Never spent much time around hardcore activist college students? Oh yeah there are people like that. Not legions of them, but they exist. Some people are just so angry about their chosen cause that they go around looking for fights with anyone who disagrees. Even longer than that. There were already gay marriage ceremonies at least as far back as the late 60s. The first openly public one was in 1969. And there's plenty of ancient historical examples, in the Roman empire and such. She's having trouble with her cancer and the treatment, so she's not around much. But actually she argues against gay marriage. Not against the gay part, but the marriage. She has some odd ideas about how nobody ought to ever get married. Checking wikipedia, it turns out that America is literally the only English-speaking westernized country left which doesn't at least recognize civil unions.

Seriously, that's kind of what you sound like here. Sure, you have the right to say it. You don't have the legal right to do jack shit about it. It's against your religion? Tough titty. Separation of church and state. And marriage laws belong to the state, not the church. It's debatable. The common beliefs of deism still specifically refer to the creator of the universe as "God", and they didn't publicly reject scripture as being worthless. Of course, deists were kinda like Unitarians in that there was no established dogma so no two of them ever quite believed the exact same thing. Some leaned much more Christian than others. Franklin and Jefferson both attended church regularly and kept up the appearance of being ordinary God-fearing folk. But still, all that's incidental. My main point was that several of the key men who created this country were nowhere near the traditional ideaology of the Christian faith, despite what various people today would have you believe.

Not saying you are (I personally think all religions are more or less equally kooky, but that's neither here nor there). Just saying that your average faithful Baptist, Catholic, or adherent of the other similar Walmarts of Christianity do tend to think that Mormons are some kind of cult. That you all live in Utah and have three teenage wives and wear dorky button-downs with short sleeves and ties, and that you get all your beliefs from a fictional book written by some madman who claimed to get it from an invisible angel. My personal view of that interpretation would be "This sure is a nice glass house, hey let's sling some stones!". But it's one that tends to be prevalent among people who just believe whatever their preacher tells them. And considering some of their rather unusual beliefs which differed from the typical Christian mainstream, if Deism was still a strong movement today it would likely be lumped into the same type of category. Yes, this means that by standard fundamentalist theory, Thomas Jefferson is burning in hell next to Hitler and whoever made the first telemarketing phone call.

Well, technically it was founded on one specific sect of Judeo-Christian principles because it disagreed with another group. And many of the most important founding fathers were Deists, which sit in the same general ballpark as snake-handlers and Mormons as being considered "sort of Christian but not really" by the religious mainstream. So it's not like we ever had a consensus on what was right or wrong. Neither is treating women as being equal to men. Or tolerating anyone who worships differently. Shit changes. Deal with it. There is no "basic family unit". Not now. The divorce rate is officially over 50% now, is it not? The majority of children are now raised in a "nontraditional" manner. Come up with a better reason than "it's how we've always done it".

Yes. Yes we do. There aren't really any compelling programs going on right now. Joe/Booker could be interesting, but they haven't laid any groundwork or buildup for it. They haven't even made a really big deal on Impact about Joe being the new champ. Most of the midcard is just floating in limbo, just wrestling random matches with no storyline. Tomko, Angle, and Petey are all hurt. (I know Petey ain't on their level, but he is still the X champ.) Steiner's endless angle with the briefcase title shot got suddenly cut short in a very non-blowoffy fashion and seems dead. Hell, the main storyline seems to be the Kurt/Karen/AJ love triangle, and really, does anybody give a fuck about that? Also, look how the former ratings winners the Knockouts have fared. The crowd seemed willing to tune in, more than average, to watch good female wrestlers beating the crap out of each other. But as soon as the Pole Grind Twins became the dominant focus of the division and started shaving heads and winning matches, suddenly the chicks are no longer the highest rated part of the show.

Pretty much my exact sentiments. I do think the central concept is kind of interesting, some strong Phillip K. Dick overtones, let's see how it's handled. But... Dushku? Why? She was quite possibly the single weakest recurring cast member on Buffy, all too often just coming off as phony and insincere (the actress, not the character). Plus, can anyone point out anything non-Joss she's ever done which was any good at all? Although, admittedly, you could say the same thing about Gellar. Still, I'm sure as hell gonna watch. It's a new Whedon show, and we haven't had one of those on the air in four years. Maybe even more importantly, one of the main characters is Amy Acker. Numfar, do the dance of joy!

Careful with that statement. I remember Siskel & Ebert once going on about how Hollywood should be remaking bad movies instead of good ones. The movie in question was a shitty French comedy called Little Indian, Big City. Which WAS remade into the shitty Tim Allen flick Jungle 2 Jungle. During their reviews of the remake, they never quite got around to mentioning the fact that they literally demanded that this movie be made. Although I think it would be interesting for a seriously talented filmmaker to take a legendary bad film and see if they could keep the basic plot intact yet turn it into a good movie. Like Darren Aronofsky's Manos: The Hands of Fate or Alfonso Cuaron's Plan 9 From Outer Space.

His last WWE match, with Sabu, was just terrible. And that's coming from a guy who really liked both Angle and Sabu. Angle's work took a sharp nosedive in 2006, and his earlier TNA stuff was lackluster too. He's been slowly rebuilding it since then, but is still nowhere near the level of performer he was in, say, 2001.

Hey, there's something I'd forgotten about that I'm glad they don't do very much anymore: the end-of-show music video montages that they seemed to end every frigging episode with back in the first season. It got so bad with them that they even made fun of it with the episode where it turned out the music was something Hurley was listening to on his cd player and it suddenly stopped when the batteries died, but they still did the montages frequently even for a while after that. Also, anyone else catch Sawyer calling the Others' village "New Otherton"? Heh. That's gotta be the influence from the former Whedon employees on the staff, back on Buffy and Angel they commonly the fans' internet in-jokes about the shows and write them into the scripts.

Great episode. Best part was Jack's exhasperated "SON OF A BITCH!" when he found out they had to go rescue Hurley. Just a perfect "it's ALWAYS something on this goddamned island!" frustrated moment that you rarely see from the calm competent leader guy.

::Goes ice skating in hell. Gets into a hockey fight with Benoit.:: I'm... a little surprised that Jerk made my usual point for me here. Guys, I don't like Bush. I think he's done a fairly lame job overall as President with few positive things anyone could point to in which he improved this country's standing. Bash him all you want... but keep it accurate. I don't care if someone wants to make a comment about, say, Tom Cruise wearing tinfoil hats and flinging his own feces around, because he's just an actor and who the fuck cares. When you're talking about the President of the most powerful nation on the planet and all the extremely serious political issues that go along with that, don't exaggerate. Get your fucking facts straight and call him out on all the bad shit which it's factually accepted that he's really done. Don't go making the Hitler comparisons or chimpanzee jokes, because that makes you look like a fucking nutcase and nobody will listen to your arguments other than the fellow hippies who already think that's true.

I generally agree with those points. Unfortunately it seems like Angle has decided he wants the HHH role, and TNA would rather push former WWE midcarders and guys who have been proven to not draw a dime in years yet are still playing the same characters. Whoa now, one of those things is not like the others. Nash ever get around to doing that job for Chris Sabin? I'd replace his name on that list with Steiner, better matches and more willing to lose.

At least that might, in theory, be somewhat plausible. Poor guy did spend an awfully long time in that P.O.W. camp. As opposed to "Obama might have had a relative who was muslim, plus his name just sounds like a towelhead's, ergo he must be an Al Quaeda sleeper agent who just pretended to go to this one Christian church for decades".

B-but he ran around in his underwear for an hour! HIS UNDERWEAR! Which is somehow very different and much worse than rolling around on the mat with other men in tights! Nobody could ever take an Olympic gold medalist and Wrestlemania main eventer seriously after he did that! We gotta put the world heavyweight belt on the little indy kid who does the Macho Man comedy gimmick, or else all is lost!!!

Why call me out? I like Olbermann. I don't listen to him much because I rarely listen to any pundits, but he's one of the better ones. I enjoy his "dry, serious version of Jon Stewart" routine as opposed to the screamers, whiners, and megalomaniacal psycopaths who comprise so much of the professional opinion-havers.

I've only been through West Virginia once, but it was enough to get me to agree that Atlanta > WV. Except for the traffic. Atlanta traffic must be seen to be believed. That shit's scary.

Except that Obama himself is a supporter of partial birth abortion. He's voted for it in the past. That's one of the biggest negatives about the guy which makes me dislike him.

D'oh. I forgot which one was Bob and which one was the one that split away because they couldn't stand working with him anymore.

Why am I not surprised that TNA employee Bob Ryder's website printed an article saying "no, it's okay, Roxxi wanted to shave her head anyway".

This arguement is like trying to fight a fire with a gasoline hose. Show of hands, please, everyone ELSE who thinks that Black Machismo is world champion material without dropping the Savage parody.

HE'S A GUY WHOSE ENTIRE FUCKING GIMMICK IS DOING AN IMPRESSION OF SOMEONE ELSE. Ditch the entire gimmick and learn how to cut a regular promo, and we'll talk. Until then, he's got zero chance. There has never, ever been a credible money-drawing world champion who fits that description. And "Well, all of TNA sucks, so it doesn't matter what they do" is not a valid arguement.

Nobody here is agreeing with you on this one, Truthy. I think you're just being kind of a blind mark for Lethal. I do agree he's a better in-ring performer than Sharkboy, Eric, or Kazarian. But as long as he is doing a Randy Savage impression he will not be taken seriously, period. Nobody is going to believe this guy is a legitimate threat to the top wrestlers as long as his act is based on parodying someone else.