Dreams Of Noise

Oh.

Oh.

There's an ache in my soul.

Something is lost.

There's a person-sized hole.

For ninety-four years, he was here.

Now he's gone,

But his life and his music live on.

Crude, perhaps, as a chorus. But you can all sing it with me. And maybe come up with some verses to go with it.

For Pete.

Our old buddy Gary Wood, the filmmaker behind Saving Star Wars, is doing something cool for the next week:

Beginning today, August 23, through Friday, August 30, WoodWorks Films will donate $2.00 from every online viewing/rental of Saving Star Wars. We're excited to make this happen and hope you'll make this a Saving Star Wars/Make-A-Wish Weekend.

If you haven't seen it before, SSW is a great little picture, with humor, wit, and a lot of heart. I wrote "Rock Me Amidala" for it, and I'm proud to be a part of it.

Check it out, won't you? And, if you like it, boost the signal.

On this dKos page, which also has links to US statistics and resources (more in the comments).

Ninety-four years young. Teacherken at dKos has a great selection of videos. Feel free to link us to more.

What's your favorite anti-war folk song? Mine, without question, is "The Band Played 'Waltzing Matilda'" by Eric Bogle. And Tom Paxton's "What Did You Learn In School Today?" is right behind, followed by Phil Ochs' "I Ain't A-Marchin' Anymore".

That covers it, really. (h/t MJP on FB)

Necessary for your philosophical advancement. The important part here is the commentary. The pic is probably NSFW, although it is technically, I guess.

Warning: triggery regarding rape.

You may know already that NCSoft is planning to shut down the MMORPG City of Heroes (as well as Paragon Studios, the company that develops it) by the end of the year.

This is not going over well with the large number of people who play it.

CoH is probably the primary reason I don't play MMORPGs. Once, while visiting Tom Trupinski and Lady Cheron and Kitten, I sat enraptured by it for about twenty minutes. It was literally the point at which I realized that, if I got into an MMORPG, especially a really really cool one like CoH, none of you would ever hear from me again. It was that effing glorious.

This is a game, and a community, that deserves to live on.

If you want to join the fight to keep CoH going, join the Facebook group and sign the petition.

Jeez, get off the internet for a couple of days, and you miss all kinds of WUT I DON'T EVEN:

Rep. Todd Akin, a tea party candidate who is challenging incumbent Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill in the closely watched race, was asked in a local television interview about whether he supports access to abortion in the case of rape.

"If abortion could be considered in case of, say, a tubal pregnancy [which threatens the mother’s life], what about in the case of rape?" asked KTVI host Charles Jaco, in a clip that was disseminated by Talking Points Memo. "Should it be legal or not?"

"It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that's really rare,” Akin said, referring to conception following a rape. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let's assume that maybe that didn't work or something, I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child."

According to a 1996 study by the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, an estimated 32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year. The journal put the national rape-related pregnancy rate at 5% among victims age 12 to 45.

It's so insane and offensive and flat-out stupid that the Romney campaign has already rebuked it.

We keep coming back to this again and again and again: I have no idea how some people think. It's such an alien way to look at the world, such an utterly different set of priorities, that I'm stunned.

I'll see if I can make it easier for Mr. Akin. I'll likely be clumsy about it, but it has to be said.*

Rape is primarily an act of violence and control and selfishness taken to the extreme. Sex is not so much the point of the exercise as the medium by which control is established and violence and selfishness are satisfied. Rape is a violation of a person, not merely of their genitals.

There is no circumstance in which rape is "legitimate". And I feel there is truly something wrong about a society that values an embryo or fetus over the woman carrying it.

* The original post said, "this sort of thing should be said by a woman, of course, but I don't know if he'd listen to her, 'cause that's just how he rolls," and pocketnaomi pointed out in comments that, while I was trying to make it clear I didn't speak for all or even any women, it's as much the duty of men to speak out against this bullshit as it is the duty of women.

ETA: Akin's non-apology (he "misspoke"), and Romney seriously distances himself from Akin.

ETA2: A little clarification on my posting this.

ETA3: Sorry, but Akin is indeed not out of step with the Republican party on this.

Steve Benen notes a huge problem that the Democrats have running against Republicans, especially Mitt Romney: People simply can't believe that what the Dems are saying could possibly be the truth.

This is a serious, nasty problem. When you're told something so outlandish that your immediate instinct is to disbelieve it completely, what happens when it turns out it really is someone's policy goal? And what if they actually get it implemented?

What are your trusted online news/analysis sources? Mine include Steve Benen at The Maddow Blog, Think Progress, and Ed Kilgore in Steve's old spot at Washington Monthly. There are also a number of excellent people on Daily Kos, but some people reflexively avoid that site.

Because, after all, what's being said there couldn't possibly be the truth.