Letters to the Editor
Buckethead Wendy
Published Letters: 43 Editor's Choice: 14
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Really? This is the best use of your vast resources, Catholic Church?
[Read the article: "The Da Vinci Code"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I mean, didn't Jesus say something about helping out poor starving people, or something? But getting people to not watch a work of fiction is way more important. My parents are Catholic and they loved the novel, because they are adults capable of making those sorts of decisions with their own brains.
If your faith is so fragile that Tom Hanks is going to change your entire belief system, then wow, that's an impressively crappy faith you've got there. Did people protest that Nick Cage movie where there was a treasure map on the back of the Declaration of Independence, or something? Cause there actually isn't, you know. And people might think there is. Because that's like, anti-American, and also, we are all drooling morons who need to be told what to believe. It's way too much trouble figuring it out on our own.
Also, excellent point, wingspan, except that there's not really any evidence in the Bible that she was a prostitute. She's just introduced right after the story about the prostitute with the anointing of the feet and all that. But if she had been, she almost certainly would have known how to prevent pregnancy pretty effectively. As it is, I can't see why there should be this much controversy about a woman who was apparently chosen to be the first person to see the resurrected Jesus. That seems like an honor reserved for a pretty important person. Let her have her place in history and in fiction.
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Sweden, again
[Read the article: What happens when your country isn't weird about sex?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I knew a guy from Sweden once who summarized the situation thusly: "In Sweden, everybody has sex, but nobody gets pregnant. In America, nobody has sex, but everybody's pregnant." And this was fifteen years ago. They probably have alot fewer abortions as well, and certainly have lower infant mortality rates. Honestly, how anyone can believe this is a country about Family Values™ is beyond me.
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When I worked at an abortion clinic
[Read the article: Coercing women in "crisis"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]in a small Louisiana city, the "Crisis Pregnancy Center" in town changed their phone number to be one digit off of ours. To catch the ones that misdialed. Classy! Then they use the Christian right's preferred method of persuasion, fearmongering, to convince them of how risky and painful an abortion is. Presumably they let someone else remind them that childbirth is neither particularly safe nor especially pleasant either.
So apparently being pro-life means that tricking people into having children they don't want or can't afford is totally fine, noble even. But once the kids are actually born? You're on your own. No welfare for you!
That the public may be paying for this kind of sanctimonious bullshit makes me want to throw up.
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ha!
[Read the article: Coercing women in "crisis"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This smells like bullshit to me. Seeing as there are seven numbers in a local phone call, there are potentially seven numbers misdialed.
I don't really understand what you're saying, or why it smells like bullshit, so maybe I was unclear - what I meant was that businesses, and residences I believe, can request certain phone numbers. 555 BUGS or 555 FOOD or whatever. This particular place, which was listed alphabetically just below our clinic, chose a number that was, let's say, 555 2000, while ours was 555 1000. (Note: I do realize 555 is not a real exchange, I am attempting to illustrate this without using actual phone numbers, because that's rude. Just to be clear on the whole bullshit thing.)
Whether it was particularly effective I can't say, I just think it's kind of tacky. It would be tacky if it were competing hardware stores, but in this situation, it seems especially nasty, considering the whole enterprise is designed to trick people while they're most vulnerable.
I apologize for not having a good enough story. My life isn't real exciting, but it's not quite boring enough to sit around making up stories about phone numbers.