Well, that’s only half the story. Actually, that wasn’t entirely true. Also, I don’t own a grandfather clock, but I’ve always wanted one.

First, I should tell you more about this car. Or van. Or mobile circus show. Or whatever it is. It’s the worst car ever. It was a 2009 Chrysler PT Cruiser. I say¹ “was” for a reason.

It did move. That’s all it has going for it.

Okay, the stereo is not too bad either. It sounded decent. However, if you want to save a radio station (mine were all rap when I got it…). You have to press the “store” button, then select the number you want it saved as. Why they didn’t just have it save to the number you held down is beyond me. Oh, wait, no it isn’t. It makes perfect sense given another aspect of this car. Let me get through the worst of it though.

It’s noisy. Exceedingly underpowered. Ugly. Really Ugly. The car is low to the ground², but your seat is about 5 feet up. The dashboard is horrendous. The controls for the A/C are horrendous. The brakes suck³. The doors suck. The interior sucks.

It sucks.

Chrysler wanted to make a good … thing, but they just aren’t capable of it. It’s not a bad car, it’s a bad attempt at a car. How do I know?

The remote key fob. That’s right, it all lies in the key fob and it’s what nearly cost me my life. You see, in all my other cars (which just happen to be foreign), when you get out of your car, close the doors, and then press the lock button, the horn beeps. Why does the horn beep? It’s an acknowledgement that the car has locked and everything is okay. You may proceed on, away from the car. If little Bobby didn’t close his door all the way, the car wouldn’t honk. This would cause you to go back and investigate, fix the problem, and if everything were indeed ready to go, the car honks at you to know that it has in fact locked.

Not so in Chrysler’s world, at least not with the PT cruiser. It just honks whenever you press the button. Whether or not the car is locked, unlocked, all the doors are open, all the doors are shut, it’s on fire, etc.

So, it’s in effect, pointless. No really, all it tells you is that the battery isn’t dead. No shit, I just drove the fucking thing.

So, back to my story. I park in my driveway. I open the door, I get out. I walk toward the front door and press the button on the remote to lock the car. It honked, so I thought it must be locked. Little did I know that I had left the driver’s door wide open. But, it honked.

What could they possibly have thought when they copied this “feature” over? “Oh, hey guys, let’s have the car honk whenever the button on their remote is pressed, so they know that they pressed a button. ‘Cuz, they might forget, or something. Well, I don’t really know, but the other car makers must do it for a good reason, so let’s just make it like theirs.”

So, hours after I’ve gone to sleep, some pounding at the door wakes me up. Someone is furiously pounding at the door and ringing the doorbell. No, I’m not on fire. Hm, Fanny’s still here. She’s not on fire. Who in their right mind is at our front door.

So, naturally, I grabbed a gun. A shotgun, to be specific. I loaded a couple shells and crept to the bedroom door. I opened it abruptly and chambered a round, making sure it could be heard from the front door. The pounding and ringing stopped for a moment, then continued.

Slowly, I crept around down the stairs, put my finger on the safety, and paused. As I came around to the corner in the middle of the stairs, to where I would be visible from the front door, I just peeked my head over.

Some dude was peeking through the window. He yelled at me to, “Put the shotgun down, it’s the police.” At first I thought, “bullshit!” and considered yelling at him to go away. However, I (somewhat stupidly) decided that if it were a criminal trying to penetrate my anus, he wouldn’t have rung the doorbell. I put the gun down next to the door and opened the door. I immediately got a weird chill and thought that maybe I had given up a little easy, and that anyone could have done what he just did, just to get me to disarm myself and open the door.

T0 cut it short, he was really an off-duty cop, who drove by and noticed that the horrendous pile of shit sitting in my driveway had a door sitting wide open, letting all its vile stench out in to the open, killing all kinds of wildlife and whatnot.

So, I closed the door, chatted for a bit, thanked him, and then went back to bed. The end.

¹ Argh, you nit-pickers, you.
² I was returning from a gun show, in the pouring rain one day with this infernal machine, and made a u-turn. Well, the water on the road hid the true height of the curb, and thinking that the PT cruiser could handle such a curb, I went over it. Sort of. So, there was a somewhat small dent, and apparently Enterprise thought it would necessary to replace the entire fucking bumper. Ugh. Every time I try to give this car credit, it ends up costing me something.

³ Not too long after I returned this dumb car, and they had replaced the bumper, some idiot rammed the PT Loser straight into something else. I saw it as it was being hauled off on a wrecker from the rental place. Ah hahahahaha! Die!!!!11

Well, I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. We live in a land that you could choose “same-sex marriage” or opposite marriage. And, you know what? In my country, and in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman, no offense to anybody out there. But that’s how I was raised, and that’s how I think that it should be, between a man and a woman.

So, she thinks it’s great that American’s can choose (few of them can), but in her country (America) she believes that it should be between a man and a woman. That’s great. Does she believe that no one should be able to choose for themselves? If so, how is it great that we can choose?

Why is anyone suprised by her answer? How many liberal equal rights people spend time trying to look like Barbie? I’m being heavily stereotypical here, but surely most of those contestants think the same brain-dead way…

Flame away…

You think I’m joking? The science-defending, neutral, young-earth creationist chairman Don McLeroy said it himself: “Someone has to stand up against the experts.” And it is he, the dentist, that has decided to do so:

“Somebody has got to stand up to these experts,” McLeroy said. “Why does evolution have this lofty status? It’s all about ideology.”

Why does it have this lofty status? The same reason the the Theory of Gravity has a “lofty status”. You don’t seem to be contesting gravity’s status. Why is that? Well, there’s not much to contest it with, and your faith seem to jive just fine with it too.

So, two possibilities here: Is there some busting evidence that needs to be considered? You seem to think so, but you also think that the world is around 6,000 years old, despite GARGANTUAN evidence to the contrary. Not that that should preclude you from presenting anything valid. Now, your exquisite background in science should lend you plenty of respect within the scientific community to consider these “discoveries”.

But, they scientific community is just a bunch of narrow-minded bigots who have nothing but ideology on their minds. I mean, what has science really done for us in the last century?

Oh wait, you’re a reborn young-earth creationist. And, you’re a dentist. And you’ve “read books” on the subject. Hm, so as a creationist you doubt evolution, but on scientific grounds. Of course, doubting it on religious grounds wouldn’t be acceptable. So, you want the science to fit your ideology, instead of the scientists’ ideology. Hmm, much better.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with following and “ideology”, surely you should be aware of that. What’s wrong is following the wrong ideology. Like the one that believes humans coexisted with dinosaurs.

There aren’t “two sides” to this debate. There isn’t a debate. All of modern biology is based on Evolution. There isn’t a controversy. It’s the pious doubting evolution, yelling, “but are kids aren’t getting both sides of the issue!” When science speaks back, “What other side?” The pious respond, “See, they are denying it, there’s controversy!”

So, the “Strengths and Weaknesses” language is out. Good. However, before that species could be wiped out it evolved down the standards line to:

Analyze and evaluate the sufficiency or insufficiency of common ancestry to explain the sudden appearance, stasis and sequential nature of groups in the fossil record.

That’s not so bad, is it? No, it isn’t. But one word feels like a small crumb under paper: “insufficiency”.

It’s the foot in the door. It leaves it open for doubt. Is this bad? At face value, not really. However, if tells students that there really is a reason to doubt common ancestry, then yes. And that’s what Don wants, exactly what he wants.

Don can quote mine all he likes, but the overwhelming scientific consensus is for Evolution. It’s a long way from “sufficiency or insufficiency” to burning witches, but the creationists will take anything they can get. That is one reason why I detest using this language. There’s no real reason for it except to cast scientifically unfounded (unless you count religion as a scientific base, which Don seems to) doubt on basic tenets of Evolution. It’s a sham, and it’s shouted as “academic freedom”. Critics are calling us “censoring science”, trying to purvey themselves as the “saviours of science”.

More about the decision can be read here.