The Baker and the Beast

I have an idea for a movie.  It's a moving tale of passion and vocation.  I've pitched it to my wife and a few friends, and all agree, it's pretty brilliant.

Since it infringes on all kinds of Disney copyright, and since the premise is kind of ridiculous, it will never actually be made into a movie.  So I figured I'd just pitch it here.

The genesis.

So, I hate pop music.

I am very susceptible to having songs stuck on my head.  And I absolutely hate it. For this reason, I despise pop music with the burning fury of a thousand suns.  I will not enter stores playing pop music, because then I'll have these obnoxious jingles stuck in my head for months.  Solid months.

So I developed a coping mechanism.  When a song gets stuck in my head, I gradually deform the lyrics to make the song stupider and stupider, until it more accurately reflects the worthless string of noises it so truly is.

It's kind of childish, but it makes me feel better.  If I have to be infected with these memetic viruses from every store corner and coffee shop, at least I can mock the virus.  I'd mock the flu too, if I could.

Back to the movie idea.

I went to see Beauty and the Beast a few months ago when it came out.  They repeat the animated Disney version with the classic soundtrack, but in live action and with some slight tweaks to the story.  They seem to have attempted to answer some of the fan speculation questions that Cracked reposts every four months, like why the enchantress cursed all the servants for what the prince did, and they added a lyric here or there, but mostly the same story and same songs from my childhood.

One of the songs from the film got stuck in my head.  The opening song, "Bonjour," where Belle is walking through the village openly dsparaging the simple townsfolke as "provencial" for having to actually work for a living to support their families, instead of getting to read books all day and refuse to do chores.

The song isn't really as dumb or obnoxious as pop music, but it was in my head, nonstop for weeks.  And when I have an earworm eating my brain I start getting a tad resentful.  So I started changing the words to the song.

But by changing those words, I changed more than just the intro song.  I actually changed the direction of the entire plot, which lead to a completely different movie.  A movie called:

The Baker and the Beast

Replies not working

I just want to apologize to people who have commented and I haven't replied.  For some reason, Blogger is eating my reply comments, so that after I hit "submit" the reply doesn't get saved to the server.

A similar problem also happens to people trying to comment on older posts with lots of comments.  I can't complain about Blogger, it being free and all, but I will need to look into my server situation and perhaps go with a different hosting platform.

UPDATE: I think the problem is my computer's browser (safari).  I tried updating all of my computer's software, but it still doesn't work very well with Blogger.  I have tried responding to some comments three or four times now, and this is really frustrating.

I am a monotheist about Zeus

Growing up in the time I did, I have had plenty of chances to hear atheists -- on talk shows, PBS documentaries, classrooms, debates, YouTube videos, internet forums -- present their arguments, and I've heard almost all of them by now.  There are especially some arguments that get brought up rather frequently, and then keep getting repeated for years later.

There's one in particular I want to address, the "One God Further" argument.  I believe the argument originates with Richard Dawkins, but I have certainly heard Christopher Hitchens and others make similar arguments on stage.  This argument is that we are all atheists about most of the gods anyone has ever claimed to believe in.  I'm an atheist about Zeus, Hercules, Mithras, Minerva or any of these other figures.  Dawkins simply goes one god further than I do.

And so, to clarify this issue once and for all, let me just resolutely state that I am not an atheist about Zeus.

I'm really not.

I am a monotheist about Zeus.

My issue with Zeus isn't that he's clearly ridiculous and there's no evidence for him.  I mean, yeah, Zeus is pretty ridiculous and there's no evidence for him.  But that isn't really my objection to Zeus worship.

My objection to Zeus worship is that Zeus isn't the kind of thing that should be rightly called a god, or the kind of thing that should be worshipped.