Vacation Playlist # 3

Gun Songs








































(God, remember "Night Music?" How great was that show?)


And, last but not least, the song that most people don't know is about a mass shooting (Google it!)

Vacation play list # 2

Today's playlist is songs with a state's name in the title. I'm going to try to think of one song for each state. I would appreciate your help filling in the blanks.

Alaska





Alabama



Arizona



Arkansas



California



Colorado



Connecticut



Delaware



Florida



Georgia



Hawaii



Idaho



 Illinois



Indiana



Iowa


Kansas


Kentucky



Louisiana



Maine



Maryland



Massachusetts

(h/t Tal Hartsfeld)

Michigan



Minnesota


Mississippi



Missouri



Montana



Nebraska



 Nevada



 New Hampshire



 New Jersey



 New Mexico

(h/t Jaded J)

 New York



 North Carolina



 North Dakota

(h/t Jaded J)

 Ohio



 Oklahoma



 Oregon



 Pennsylvania



 Rhode Island



 South Carolina



 South Dakota



 Tennessee



 Texas



 Utah



 Vermont

(h/t Anne Marie)

 Virginia



 Washington



 Wisconsin



 Wyoming

Vacation play lists

We are on vacation this week, so I thought I'd try something new. Somethimg I can do on a hand-held that doesn't require a bunch of cutting and pasting or reading the news. So here goes.

Since today is Sunday,  the first play list will be pop songs that reference verses or stories from the Good Book.

Here gies nothimg:



(ref: Song of Solomon 1:2)


(ref: Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8)




(ref: Joshua 6:20)

Who is Cathy Young?

I was blissfully unaware of the existence of Cathy Young until yesterday, when her name popped up twice on my Twitter timeline.

Cathy blaming a rape victim for her rapists's suicide after being exposed is extremely on-brand https://t.co/laI8TyFjSY

— דער ייִדישר אַרבּעטער (@JewishWorker) September 2, 2019

Cathy Young, who refused to accept that a very racist depiction of Serena Williams was actually racist, is trying to convince people that a Jewish professor calling Bret Stephens a bedbug is antisemitic. pic.twitter.com/9bV2klpVq0

— saeen (@saeen90_) September 1, 2019

Which made me think that she must be a really awful awful person. So, being a glutton for punishment, I Googled her.

Apparently, the woman named Cathy Young was born in Moscow. Russia, not Idaho. I mean, "Cathy Young" sounds like this :




Not this:

But that's neither here nor there.

Cathy Young is a writer. She has written for the Boston Globe, the Daily Beast and Reason Magazine among other outlets.  According to her bio: Catherine Alicia Young is a Russian-born American journalist. Young is primarily known for her writing about rape and feminism. 
And considering that she was or is employed by Reason Magazine and Quillette, it is not at all promising that that is the beat she covers.

Here is a little something she penned back in 2016:

RAPE

Canadian University Student Convicted of Rape, But Was the Judge Biased Against Men?

Mustafa Ururyar's trial highlights a dilemma.

Oh for God's sake. . .
I expect this kind of grotesque garbage from the Jordan Peterson disciple  incel community, but from a grown woman?

Concerns that the crusade against "rape culture" is creating an accusation-equals-guilt mindset in sexual assault cases have been mostly aimed at colleges.

Aaaand we're off to a great start already, putting rape culture in quotes, implying that this is a made-up term or that rape culture doesn't exist.
Rape culture is absolutely a real thing and it has been around for a long time. Probably for as long as there have been humans. When I was a teen, back in the late mesozoic, we used to go to lots of movies. Because they had second-run theaters back then that were super cheap. I can not tell you how many teen comedies I saw back in the 80's in which the "cool" guy gives the not-so-cool guy dating advice that included some version of "when girls say no, they mean yes." And sometimes the not-so-cool guy found out that this was not true, but his attempts to treat a "no" as a "yes" were generally treated as hilarious fun.
Or take the example of "Revenge of the Nerds." This was a hugely popular comedy in which the "nerds" get revenge on the "jocks" by planting cameras in the women's dorms so that they can watch the jocks' girlfriends in various states of undresss. Then they print up nude photos of the girlfriends and sell them at a school fair. This is depicted as a fine and amusing way to get back at the jocks, by violating the women whom the jocks are dating.

Oh, and this was considered a harmless collegiate prank.

It gets worse. One of the main nerds puts on a costume that is identical to the one that the star quarterback is wearing then has sex with the quarterback's unsuspecting girlfriend. This is rape. But when he removes the mask to reveal that she ahas not been having sex with the man she loves, but with a virtual stranger, she isn't even upset. She asks him something like "are all nerds as good at sex as you are?" And at the end of the movie, she chooses to be the girlfriend of the rapist nerd.  That's rape culture.  A major Hollywood comedy showing rape as a sort of harmless prank that could actually make a girl fall for you. And I do not remember anyone objecting back then. This was all seen as just a silly comedy wherein the violation of these women was played for laughs and cheap titillation. But sure, let's act as if "rape culture" is some siully overreaction to boys being boys or whatever.

Sorry, I got a little sidetracked there.
You know what, though? How long has the "panty raid" been depicted as harmless college hijinks?

Above: Headline of The Daily Texan on November 3, 1961.

That's such bullshit. First of all, that's theft. Undies cost money. Stealing undies is no different from stealing purses or jewelry. I mean, it is different because it's also a gross violation of privacy. I mean, I should think some girls were probably humiliated by having their underthings seen and taken by strange men. God knows the judgments made on the basis of the prudishness or risque'ness of the various knickers. It's really awful. I remember seeing an episode of "Happy Days" where the young men had gone off to college and participated in a "panty raid" and it was played for laughs because who could possibly be upset about some harmless shenanigans?

It's so gross.

Anyway, let's see what Ms Young has to say about this and that.

Concerns that the crusade against "rape culture" is creating an accusation-equals-guilt mindset in sexual assault cases have been mostly aimed at colleges. It's campuses that employ extralegal tribunals to settle rape disputes—tribunals where the accused often do not have the right to an attorney, to cross-examine their accusers, or to examine the evidence against them. 

You do know why they have these "tribunals," right? It's to discourage rape victims from going to the police. It's to protect the "alleged" rapist (and the school's reputation.) It's not to railroad innocent young men who are falsely accused by evil harpies.

But the latest contentious rape case comes from a real court—albeit in Canada, where feminist activism has been much more successful in influencing the justice system than in the United States.

Oh nooooo! That would be so awful if feminist activism influenced the justice system. Oh nooooo!!!

On July 21, Mustafa Ururyar, a 29-year-old York University graduate student, was found guilty of sexually assaulting fellow grad student Mandi Gray, 28. The verdict was handed down by Ontario Court Judge Marvin Zuker in a non-jury trial. The alleged rape—and I say "alleged," because after reading the 180-page judgment I see no grounds for a finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt—happened in the early morning hours of January 31, 2015.

Oh, well, I'm sure you know better than the guy who made the decison. What was his job again? Oh right, he's a judge! But you probably understand the Canadian legal system a bit better than he does because you grew up in Russia and now live in the US and didn't attend law school.

You know what, I can't even go on with this article. Suffice it to say that she tends to believe the rapist when he says it was consensual even though

[h]e said that Gray flirted with him all evening and that he even told her to stop touching him when she groped his thigh, twice. He admitted wanting a threesome, supposedly because he had heard from a friend that Gray was interested, but denied insulting or berating Gray. He also said that back at his apartment after they got into bed, he told Gray he wanted to end their relationship and mentioned being annoyed by her behavior at the bar. He said that Gray began to cry and he comforted her, and that she then initiated sex.

Because a: it's totally plausible that he would ask her to stop touching his leg when he was looking to have three-way sex with her and another woman. Nothing kills a sexy mood faster than the woman you're interested in touching your leg! Also, it seems perfectly believable that he would break up with her, make her cry, and then she would be totally wanting to visit bonetown! With such a believable story, I just don't see how anyone could think him guilty!

Anyway, most of her stuff seems to fit this template. "Men are being victimized, women are liars, no one ever believes the poor men and everyone always believes all the women even though we know what liars women are blah, blah, blah."  It's grotesque and it's completely untethered to reality and it's just horrible. And I wish I still didn't know who she is. But if I have to know about her, so do you. You knew what you were getting into when you clicked on the Daily Irritant.

Actual 100% real headline not from the Onion.

Catholic school reportedly removes Harry Potter books from library because they 'risk conjuring evil spirits'

 Megan Johnson,Yahoo Lifestyle Sun, Sep 1 3:35 PM EDT 

The Rev. Dan Reehil, a pastor at the St. Edward School, a pre-K through 8th grade Roman Catholic school in Nashville, explained to parents in an email why the extremely popular seven-book series by J.K. Rowling about a young wizard and his friends was taken out of the school’s collection.
"These books present magic as both good and evil, which is not true, but in fact a clever deception. . ."

Wow, you're really jumping on this one right on time! The first Harry Potter book was published in 1997. And just now, 21 years later, you're noticing that that they're about spooky witches and magick and whatnot?

And in those 21 years, have you seen any sort of an uptick in wizardry-related casualties?
Seems like 21 years is a good enough sample size to determine that these books are pretty benign.

"These books present magic as both good and evil, which is not true, but in fact a clever deception. . .

Well, I'm not sure how clever that deception is, seeing as how the "deception" here is that being a wizard and casting spells is made up? And maybe some kids might be naive enough to think that they could actually somehow find a wizard school to teach them how to do magic? And then they would be disappointed when they eventually figure out that nonr of this is real?

"These books present magic as both good and evil, which is not true, but in fact a clever deception. The curses and spells used in the books are actual curses and spells; which when read by a human being risk conjuring evil spirits into the presence of the person reading the text," 

What????
The spells are real?
You, a grown man, think that magic spells are real. Seriously, this is a thing that you think. You think that there are actual, literal, magical spells that can actually be used to conjure up actual, literal evil spirits?





So you know how many people have read the Harry Potter books? Over half a BILLION of these books have been sold. And God knows how many people have checked them out from libraries. So, hundreds of millions of people have read these books and I promise you - I PROMISE you - none of these people have inadvertently or intentionally summoned any demons into our realm.  Zero evil spirits have been conjured up by the readers of the Harry Potter books. Zero. Which is, coincidentally, the number of evil demon spirits that actually exist.

I mean, you know J.K. Rowling just made these spells and incantations up, right? She didn't copy them from ancient scrolls she unearthed in a repository of forbidden knowledge. She made them up. Honestly, she didn't even put a lot of effort into them. She just used some high-school Latin words that approximate the description of the desired result. Like this:

Aqua Eructo  (Aqua Eructo Charm)

Type: Charm

Pronunciation: A-kwa ee-RUCK-toh

Description: This spell is used to create, and control, a jet of clear water from the tip of the wand.

Etymology: Aqua means, in Latin, water. Eructo is a verb meaning "I raise"; roughly translated, it means "I raise water".

The email also reportedly shared that Reehil had consulted with several exorcists who also advocated for removing the books from the school’s library.

Okay, this is a joke, right? This article is from the Onion, right?
Right?

No, this was actually reported in the Tennesseean, a part of the USA Today network, which isn't exactly LeMonde or Der Spiegel, but is a legitimate newspaper not known for playing pranks.

Why on Earth would you consult with exorcists? I didn't think the Catholic Church even did exorcisms anymore. Where would you even find exorcists with which to consult? Haiti? New Orleans? maybe some hidden pocket of Appalachia? What century is this? How long was I asleep?

Rebecca Hammel, the superintendent of schools for the Catholic Diocese of Nashville, confirmed to the Tennesseean that Reehil removed the books. 
As for whether students should be allowed to read the Harry Potter series on their own time, Hammel told the Tennesseean that it’s up to each child’s parents to make that decision.

"Should parents deem that this or any other media to be appropriate we would hope that they would just guide their sons and daughters to understand the content through the lens of our faith," Hammel said. "We really don't get into censorship in such selections other than making sure that what we put in our school libraries is age-appropriate materials for our classrooms."

Wait, what?

Age appropriate?
I'm sorry, what is the appropriate age for conjuring evil spirits?
Is that the objection? That these children are too young to be conjuring evil spirits? Like, in Catholic high schools, sure. Summon all the demons you want, you're old enough to handle them. But in elementery school it's just irresponsible to have these kids  communing with the underworld. That's just child psychology 101.

Age appropriate!

What is going on in this country?