Edelweiss, motherf*****, do you speak it?

Best thing on the web today:

http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2010/10/26/fearful-symmetry/#more-10809

A lot of people think The Sound of Music is a trite, crap-my-grandma-watches kind of movie. I used to be one of them, having never seen it as an adult, having been force fed it as a child, and having vowed to avoid it the rest of my days.

Then a few years ago, I was force fed the damn thing at Thanksgiving and I was entranced. I’ve watched it several times since then. It is a subtle, exquisite, amazing work of art on multiple levels.

On to Edelweiss. If you don’t know why, in the link above, Mr. Fernandez recommends Edelweiss as the epitome of the protest song, go watch the movie again. If you watch again, with his hint, you’ll get it.

Robert Wise was working on The Sound of Music simultaneously with The Sand Pebbles. He ended up producing two of the best movies ever made all at once, and if you get both movies (The Sand Pebbles has been out on Blu-ray for a while, and is cheap to buy and beautifully remastered), and watch them close together on a weekend–they’re both epic long–you’ll appreciate each of them better.

UPDATE: The Blu-Ray Sound of Music looks great and sounds very good. They’ve made a mess of the BD Live part. Turn it off and clear your cache if you’re having problems playing the disc. Maybe you’ll have to update firmware. Realize of course that most times when you update firmware it has to do with copy protection and them obsoleting compromised keys, not them giving you new features.

Bristol Palin – Still Abstaining

Abstaining from logic.

Presumably, Bristol got knocked up while on the abstinance plan. So I guess her argument is, had I followed that plan, I wouldn’t be knocked up. Therefore, abstinence works. It just doesn’t work for stupid sluts like me.

Ok, Bristol, your mom probably told you not to run with scissors. What a moron your mom was. She should have put you on the scissors-abstinence plan. She should have told you never to use scissors, and then there’s no chance you’d ever get hurt from running with them.

The effectiveness of all birth control methods is evaluated not on whether people perfectly implement them, but on how successful at not getting pregnant the people are who report that they intend to implement the method.

Anyhow Bristol Palin got pregnant while using abstinence as her birth control method. So abstinence is not 100% except in a world where nobody is allowed to grow up and use scissors.

Actually, I don’t have studies to back this, just personal observation, intending to be abstinent is far less effective than any other form of birth control, including using condoms. Both abstinence and condoms are horribly annoying ways to avoid pregnancy.

The religious right is right to ridicule the notion that condom education will significantly slow the spread of AIDS. People who like the kind of sex that causes AIDS aren’t likely to like condoms. Not that the rest of us like condoms either. Condoms suck, and not in a good way.

Condoms suck, teenagers fuck. That pretty much sums up why neither condoms nor abstinence are particularly effective forms of birth control.