Word of the Day...

My browsing as of late has been a sort of stream of consciousness affair. There was, of course, a shooting in Tucson. Much is being made of the possible effect of violent right wing rhetoric on loony nutjobs with overly easy access to guns. Since I don't frequent right wing websites or watch right wing news programs, I have not been witness to the apparent scrubbing of tweets and crosshair graphics, and I guess I'm not terribly interested. There will always be irresponsible jackasses writing irresponsible shit, and other people ready to blame the behavior of violent crazies on irresponsible jackasses.

But I said stream of consciousness, didn't I? From the shooting in Tucson I follow a link that says the Westboro Baptist church is planning to picket the funeral of the 9 year old girl who died in the shooting. So now I've moved from right wing nutjobs to religious nutjobs, and Astasia will attest to my obsession with religious nutjobs, in particular the Phelps family and their bullshit church. I clocked many hours reading about the abuse of Fred Phelps towards his family, and I follow the blog of Nate Phelps, one of three Phelps children who managed to escape their father.

But here's an interesting tidbit. What do Fred Phelps and the Tucson shooter have in common? They are both left wing nutjobs! I know right? I'm as surprised as you are.

It's hard sometimes to tell the nutjobs apart.

Speaking of nutjobs, my father is a nutjob. I'm currently watching The Devil's Advocate, a movie I saw for the first time at my father's house, when I was far too young to watch such a film. Al Pacino as the devil bears a striking resemblance to my father. The raised eyebrows, the gravelly voice, the declarations of selective truth as absolute reality, the uncanny charisma. The unjustified charm. The devastating manipulation. I remember being greatly affected by that movie, though in my religiously compromised teenage mind I was able to read something significant into just about any source. Watching it again, it's just a movie about hollywood-satan, his brood, and how they're all naturally lawyers. Or, alternatively, it's a movie about my father, how evil he is, and his skill at making everyone around him think they're crazy until they have no recourse but to shoot themselves in the head.

So, to recap. There are right wing nutjobs, left wing nutjobs, religious nutjobs, and prolonged-exposure-to-my-father nutjobs. The latter is not unlike prolonged-exposure-to-Fox-News nutjobs, but results in more severe emotional trauma.

Also, the world is not ending in 2012, as we all thought, but rather in 2011. I can't cite my sources as I've been jumping around from site to site with the randomness of a manic squirrel. My sources don't matter, of course, because they are all nutjobs and it's best if you don't spend too much time around them.