Things I’m Thankful For: Not Being These People

Star Wars fans and conservative comedienne Katherine Timpf have more in common than they realize, and they’re both proof that even in an ever-competitive global economy, many Americans are still affluent enough to self-absorb themselves straight the fuck outta reality.

Timpf, who occasionally appears on Fox News at three in the morning, made comments last week about her lack of interest in the (latest batch of) new Star Wars movies. Being a professional joke-maker, Timpf made jokes about the franchise and its fans, saying she doesn’t follow the stories because she’s “too busy liking cool things and being attractive.

Apparently, while some Star Wars fans are nuanced enough to lead to the creation of a Wikipedia page devoted to Han shooting first they were ere unable to realize a comedienne was using sarcasm. Timpf was subjected to an onslaught of Twitter hate, including claims she should be raped with a light saber, and of course that old hoary heteropartiarchal standby: she’s ugly and fat.


And then, because America is 239 years of one fallacy thrown on top of another, Timpf proved she’s no less out-of-this-world than the very intergalactic nerds she derides when she wrote in National Review, “”A lot of people are clearly a lot of upset. But guess what? I’m not apologizing. Why? Because the all-too-common knee-jerk reaction of apologizing for harmless jokes after overblown hysteria is ruining our culture.”  (my emphasis)

So if you’re keeping score, both Timpf and the a-holes who threatened her are missing the big picture. Star Wars fans suggesting a woman should be raped or have her acid thrown on her face because she doesn’t like a FUCKING FICTION that they do are basically ISIS if ISIS’s perceived injustices took place in a fake universe. If you love Star Wars that much, why not take action against George Lucas or big business? Isn’t Darth Vader’s face appearing on a box and Kraft macaroni and cheese more offensive to your belief system than one person in the world not liking it?

Corporate greed surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the true threats to our world together."


But the delusion is strong with Timpf. Meaningless jokes that 99% of the country doesn’t see or care about, hypothetical apologies, and tempest-in-a-tea-cup hysteria are ruining the country? Meet my friends, Katherine: air pollution, dwindling access to fresh water on a global level, desertification erasing arable land the world over, the endless Malthusian expansion of the gap between the have-too-much’s and the don’t-have-enoughs, stockpiles of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, etc. If you think an overly-sensitive sense of humor chafes where it hurts, wait’ll your grandchildren are thirsty and roasting every day, their pain only relieved by the onset of a nuclear winter. Or an anthrax attack.

So thank you, Katherine Timpf and malicious nerds everywhere. You’ve reminded us all what to be grateful for this year: not being Katherine Timpf or malicious nerds.



Carmelo Anthony: Quadruple Threat


New York, New York, 2/06/2013 Carmelo Anthony #7 of the New York Knicks reacts during the third quarter. The Knicks defeated the Magic at Madison Square Garden on February 06, 2013.  (Paul J. Bereswill)

New York, NY, 2/06/2013. (Paul J. Bereswill)

Athletes are often like supermodels. People fixate on one seemingly innate quality they possess, sometimes losing sight of everything else the objectified human has going for them.

Carmelo Anthony is one of the top three human beings on Earth at putting a basketball through the hoop. But in the NBA, even being that good at that skill can only take one so far; diversification it required. The player has to be better than one-dimensional, and so do his teammates. Carmelo, unfairly, is often slandered as a statistic-obsessed wannabe hero. I disagree. Today, I disagree with evidence.

At Posting & Toasting I broke down four examples of plays that don’t really result in any statistics for Anthony, but in each he is the gravitational sun at the center of the Knick solar system. Come see me break down 24 seconds worth of film!  

Motion + Creation = College Learning, Life Learning

I interviewed Professor Jessica Hautsch for Stony Brook’s PWR blog. Hautsch, a writing professor, studied kinesthetic learning and considered how performance and creative work could help her students with one of the slipperiest tasks a writing professor faces: teaching grammar. Check it out: the end-result ranges from talk of teaching to student anxiety to Garrison Keillor to Abbott and Costello. There’s even talk of strangling a kitten.*


*Note: no kittens were harmed in the making of this blog.