FURIOUS nads! by The One True b!X

KGW reports that a survey of educational levels means that Portland is amongst the brainiest cities, but not as brainy as Seattle.

I’m not so sure “educational level” is a sophisticated enough criteria on its own to truly capture some useful notion of “braininess”. And I think KGW’s own story finds one of the holes. “[P]erhaps you’ve noticed,” it says, “a suspiciously high number of Portland coffee shop dwellers studying Foucault while sipping their lattes.”

The problem here? I’ll bet a double ricemilk mocha that a rather large proportion of Portlanders sitting around at coffeeshops “studying Foucault” aren’t actually college graduates, and perhaps are outright college dropouts, and therefore contribute nothing to the survey’s formula for determining “braininess”.

In fact, by the lone criteria of the survey, these Portlanders actually don’t contribute to city’s brainpower at all.

Just how much brainpower does it take, do you think, to create, “research”, and publish yet another useless survey that doesn’t tell us what its authors claim it tells us?

Rockin’ and a-rollin’, splishin’ and a-splashin’,
Over the horizon, what can it be?

The pilgrims sailed the sea
To find a place to call their own.
In their ship Mayflower,
They hoped to find a better home.
They finally knocked
On Plymouth Rock
And someone said, “We’re there.”
It may not look like home
But at this point I don’t care.

Oh, they were missing Mother England,
They swore their loyalty until the very end.
Anything you say, King,
It’s OK, King,
You know it’s kinda scary on your own.
Gonna build a new land
The way we planned.
Could you help us run it till it’s grown?

They planted corn, you know
They built their houses one by one,
And bit by bit they worked
Until the colonies were done.
They looked around,
Yeah, up and down,
And someone said, “Hurray!”
If the king could only see us now
He would be proud of us today.

They knew that now they’d run their own land,
But George the Third still vowed
He’d rule them till the end.
Anything I say, do it my way now.
Anything I say, do it my way.
Don’t you get to feeling independent
‘Cause I’m gonna force you to obey.

He taxed their property,
He didn’t give them any choice,
And back in England,
He didn’t give them any voice.
(That’s called taxation without representation,
and it’s not fair!)
But when the Colonies complained
The king said: “I don’t care!”

He even has the nerve
To tax our cup of tea.
To put it kindly, King,
We really don’t agree.

Gonna show you how we feel.
We’re gonna dump this tea
And turn this harbor into
The biggest cup of tea in history!

They wanted no more Mother England.
They knew the time had come
For them to take command.
It’s very clear you’re being unfair, King,
No matter what you say, we won’t obey.
Gonna hold a revolution now, King,
And we’re gonna run it all our way
With no more kings…

We’re gonna elect a president! (No more kings)
He’s gonna do what the people want! (No more kings)
We’re gonna run things our way! (No more kings)
Nobody’s gonna tell us what to do!

Rockin’ and a-rollin’, splishin’ and a-splashin’,
Over the horizon, what can it be?
Looks like it’s going to be a free country.

Help promote the charity screening by downloading and distributing the handbills (pdf).

That would be the title of the first local media coverage of the unprecedented worldwide event of fans organizing charity screenings of Serenity, and of course of our own local screening coming up on June 23 at Cinema 21.

“The Vatican said on Tuesday,” reports Reuters, “that gay marriage, abortion, lesbians wanting to bear children and a host of other practices it sees as threats to the traditional family were signs of ‘the eclipse of God’”.