Old FURIOUS nads! by The One True b!X

Although I am obsessively avoiding spoilers for Dollhouse, last night I broke down and plunged into reading the script that’s circulating purporting to be that for The Cabin In The Woods, the horror movie from Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard which is scheduled to begin filming in British Columbia just over a week from now.

My full intention, after shuttering Its Own Sub-Genre at the start of this month, had been to avoid most discussion of Cabin as well. But I’d become increasingly frustrated with writers of movie websites and horror blogs who seemed intent on telling people that the filmmakers have been running around proclaiming that this is some sort of “game changing” movie that forever will alter the horror genre.

Most of these people point to how Whedon described the project when he first announced its existence (in then-unsold script stage) way back in 2007 at Comic-Con: “The horror film to end all horror films, literally.”

For these movie and horror critics, this comment has become the proof that Whedon’s ego has gotten the better of him. The problem, of course, is that almost everyone else who saw him make that remark didn’t take it that way. Most people who know anything about how Whedon talks about his work instead took it to be something of a tease about the plot, not as a statement of Hollywood braggadocio. In other words, took the use of the word “literally” to have implications for the story in the film, not for the real world reaction to it.

Having now read what purports to be the film’s script (and presuming, for the moment, that it is authentic) that reality is more clear than ever, and the early critics are shown to be more interested in trying to puff up their own traffic and reputations by mischaracterizing the filmmakers’ teases as swagger, than they are in trying to discern the reality of the remarks and communicating it to their readers.

As for the script itself, I’m not going to say anything specific. But I will say what I said about it on WHEDONesque: If this script is real, then by my read The Cabin In The Woods is about the legitimate psychological reasons for horror and the ways in which we pervert and abuse those reasons. That, in fact, is entirely consistent with something else Whedon has said about it: “Ultimately, it’s my and Drew’s take on the classic horror movie, which means that it is a classic horror movie, but we also have something specific to say about it.”

Except, of course and as might be expected, not quite in as dry, boring, and lecturous way as my statement makes it sound. In the end, I hope this script is the real one, or at least a version of it, because I’d like to see how it plays out — both on screen and off.

The Mysteries of Twin Peaks: Thoughts, Ruminations, and Research
by Christopher Frankonis

Just after midnight on November 11, 1990, I wrote the following in my journal: “Tonight I am going to try to dream of BOB. I am going to try to let my unconscious mind piece together information and sensations from Twin Peaks and see if I can come up with anything.” Earlier, on Saturday night, the killer of Laura Palmer was revealed to be the BOB-possessed Leland Palmer, her father. I fell asleep listening to the Twin Peaks soundtrack.

The dream:

I’m in a cafe, sort of outdoors. I hear talking about some woman using a weird bank account to buy strange things. I keep trying to leave, but new things happen outside. Glows and other things. I am embarrassed that I keep returning every time something happens. I think that people are laughing at me, but I have to come back. The cafe becomes one side of the brick-floored, outdoor mall area of my college. More and more people are coming out to sit along the edge.

Out on the mall, by Henry Moore’s “Large Two Forms.” People are heading off toward the dorms to play the electric guitar. My friend Jack and I are listening, with the crowd, to the music from Twin Peaks that is floating in the air. Jack becomes Leland Palmer, and we become the only two people who can hear the music. He cries. I comfort him. I try to get him to come with me toward the source of the sound, but he won’t. It hurts him. “In here?” I ask him, pointing at my head. “In here,” he responds, pointing to his own.

I am out on a dark road. Leland is with me. Cars pass, right to left, along an intersecting road up ahead. Voices from inside them. I’m acting like events are happening for the second time. I know what’s next. The passengers in the cars are yelling things I’ve heard them yell before. That’s how I know what’s next. I’m waiting for the right car. Off to one side, a woman is killing herself. “Just another normal night in Twin Peaks,” I think to myself.

I turn left onto the intersecting road. Leland is no longer with me. I am approaching another left. Cars are turning onto it. One car turns onto the road, but I don’t see it continue on the other side of a large bush. As I approach the road, the car is coming out again, having somehow turned around. For some reason, I remember that the first time this happened, the car didn’t turn around and come out, allowing me to attack. There is a man driving the car, a woman in the passenger seat.

I scream something and run towards the car, breaking through the side window as I lunge toward the woman.

I woke up, feeling that at the end of the dream, as I stalked the car, I was playing BOB. That was why Leland had disappeared: BOB had left him for me.

Foward into December. On December 4, I wrote the following: “On this past Saturday’s Twin Peaks, Leland Palmer was caught, BOB left him, and Leland died. Upon Harry’s asking “Where’s BOB now?” we were shown a strange, off-color scene in a ditch that began with a crashed car, its windshield broken.” This made me recall my dream, in which I thought I was BOB as I crashed through the window of a car.

That night, I tried to re-dream that dream, in the hopes off seeing and hearing things I hadn’t caught the first time. What were the voices in the cars saying? What did I scream as I crashed into the car window? I didn’t succeed. But I did have a dream that included the following words:

“Hell isn’t open just for those being sent there, it’s open to anyone who wants to join.”

End of excerpt.

The Devil in Dover: An Insider’s Story of Dogma v. Darwin in Small-town America
by Lauri Lebo

After trial each day, I’d go back to the York Daily Record newsroom and write a story for the next day. This particular night I wrote as my lede, “One of intelligent design’s leading experts could not identify the driving force behind the concept.”

I wrote that Behe said that “intelligent design focuses exclusuvely on proposed mechanisms of how complex biological structures arose. But during cross-examination Tuesday, when plaintiffs’ attorney Eric Rothschild asked Behe to identify those mechanisms, he couldn’t. When pressed, Behe said intelligent design does not propose a step-by-step mechanism, but one can still infer intelligent cause was involved by the ‘purposeful arrangement of parts.’”

At about 11 P.M., I was gathering my things to leave the office, when Randy Parker, the managing editor, called. He wanted me to rewrite the story in order to make it appear more favorable to the pro-intelligent design side. He told me he thought my coverage had been “OK so far, but now I think we’re just piling on.”

I said that would be misrepresenting the truth. “They [the defense] must have done something you could lead with,” he said. The editors had long been concerned with my reporting on the case, fearing the newspaper would offend fundamentalist readers. They reminded me of my obligation “to be fair and balanced,” even as it became more obvious that there was nothing balanced about this debate. But until this phone call, no one had actively tried to force me to spin the story to favor a lie. Parker, who hadn’t spent one minute in the courtroom, was trying to impose a false notion of balance on my coverage. I could hear my voice, shrill, say into the phone, “No, they did nothing. Rothschild eviscerated them.”

Finally, Parker backed down. The lede stayed the same. When I left the office, I was shaking.

I thought of this notion of “fair and balanced” journalism and of how, somewhere along the line, we as journalists have gotten confused by a misguided notion of objectivity. It is our job to inform readers of the truth, not just regurgitate lies, even if it means the stories are no longer “balanced.” Every day, I watched what took place in the courtroom. And while I didn’t always get everything exactly right, this much I knew: If I went back to the newsroom and, in the interest of objectivity, pulled from my notes the best quote from the parents’ attorneys and the best quote from Dover’s attorneys and used them to present intelligent design and evolution as evenly balanced, then I’d be misleading readers.

End of excerpt.

Philippine locations enhance this melodrama centering on a women’s rehabilitation compound.

1. Pam Grier wearing a slinky red dress into women’s prison.
2. Margaret Markov being eyed by a guard, as another guard calls out, “Okay, strip ‘em and get ‘em wet!”
3. “If she digs you, things in here can be a Hell of a lot easier.”
4. The matron wears very very short and very very yellow shorts.
5. They are dubbing over the swearing.
6. The matron is wiping her nose on the other matron’s hair.
7. Now all the prisoners are wearing very very short and very very yellow shorts.
8. Pam Grier is starting a food fight with Margaret Markov.
9. Girl fight! Girl fight! Yellow shorts everywhere!
10. “You’ve been asking for it. A day in the oven. A terrorist and a hooker. You two should have lots to talk about.”
11. Pam Grier and Margaret Markov, naked in the oven, bumping into each other.
12. They’re blurring out the boobs.
13. Pam Grier and Margaret Markov chained together for transport to maximum security in the city.
14. Guerrillas attacking the prison bus! Pam Grier and Margaret Markov attack the matron with the chain!
15. Funky escape music!
16. Are those dresses or slightly-long t-shirts?
17. “We’re trying to set this island free! What the Hell, you’re black, don’t you understand that?!”
18. Girl fight! GIrl fight! Yellow t-shirt dresses everywhere! Slap! Slap!
19. Lavender underpants showing!
20. Oh, man. This movie is only half an hour old.
21. Are those nuns men?
22. Nope, women. Pam Grier and Margaret Markov just attacked them and stole their habits.
23. They are hitching a ride with an alcoholic trucker.
24. Now this fat bad guy seems to be shocking some woman, but they aren’t showing it so I’m not certain.
25. The alcoholic truck driver just crashed, and now can see the chain holding Pam Grier and Margaret Markov together.
26. “What’s that?” “It’s a charm bracelet!” *punch*
27. Happy flower-carrying nuns who are really escaped women prisoners music!
28. Still nuns, Pam Grier and Margaret Markov ride the bus… and some real nuns board!
29. “You screw up this deal for me, I’ll kill you!” *dirty look from real nuns*
30. Roadblock! Busted! Escape! Hit the cop with a guitar!
31. Fake nuns showing leg as they run!
32. Fake nuns no more. Aborted girl fight! Back to yellow t-shirt dresses.
33. Pam Grier and Margaret Markov find a cabin in the woods with naked people inside.
34. But all they do is steal food.
35. The fat bad guy has women with blurry breasts.
36. Pam Grier and Margaret Markov find tools to cut the chain! But also, a sleeping sleazy man.
37. “I like schoolgirls!”
38. Sleazy man knows who they are and wants the reward. Paws at Margaret Markov. “You’re going to be nice to Luis?”
39. Sleazy man attacks! Margaret Markov knees him! Pam Grier kills him!
40. Margaret Markov says, “Shit!” But it’s dubbed out.
41. Set fire to the work shack! Burn the body! Run away, still chained!
42. Pam Grier and Margaret Markov chased through woods by dogs. Another shack! With a puppy!
43. Margaret Markov takes off her underpants! Puts them on the puppy and scares it off into the woods!
44. Underpants puppy nabbed by guerrillas. Underpants recognized. “By sight or smell?”
45. Pam Grier and Margaret Markov find a boat, but a drunk rock-throwing guy is guarding it.
46. Margarte Markox lures him with her giggling and lack of underpants.
47. Margaret Markov, even.
48. Stand-off between guerrillas and bad guys!
49. Is that Bill Richardson in fatigues?
50. Guerrilla Bill Richardson and Lanky Hat Guy chase each other slowly through hanging laundry. Tense!
51. Guerrilla Bill Richardson wins!
52. Pam Grier and Margaret Markov, on the other side of the river, pick and eat hanging fruit.
53. Margaret Markov sees her guerrillas! Reunited! Guerrilla Bill Richardson shoots off the chain.
54. “We wanted to return this.” Margaret Markov has underpants again!
55. Fat Bad Guy sets a trap at the boat Pam Grier is heading towards.
56. Gay Vest Bad Guy struts around the docks.
57. Oh, he’s Gay Vest Guerrilla, arriving with the other guerrillas.
58. Pam Grier and Margaret Markov have real clothes again. Guerrillas wondering where everyone is. Trap!
59. “Smells like an ambush.”
60. Pam Grier and Margaret Markov look dreamily at each other for goodbye.
61. Gunfight! Hey, wait, did one bad guy just shoot another bad guy via bad aim?
62. Guerrilla Bill Richardson sneaks around back. Pam Grier escapes deadly blast! Random white guy with Pam has a gun!
63. Pam Grier gets to the boat with random white guy! MARGARET MARKOV IS SHOT THROUGH THE CHEST!
64. Guerrilla Bill Richardson discovers Margaret Markov is dead! Sad. Shoots and blows up orange jeep of bad guys!
65. Boat escapes! Cops arrive! Guerrilla Bill Richardson escapes into alleys!
66. Cops and civilians look at dead bad bodies, now all conveniently lined up in a row. Head cop sees dead Margaret Markov.
67. “I’ll be a major before dinner.”

End of movie.

Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism
by Susan Jacoby

It is one of the greatest unresolved paradoxes of American history that religion has come to occupy such an important place in the communal psyche and public life of a nation founded on the separation of church and state. The tension between secularism and religion was present at America’s creation; a secular government, independent of all religious sects, was seen by founders of diverse private beliefs as the essental guarantor of liberty of conscience. The descendants of passionate religious dissenters, who had fled the church-state establishments of the Old World in order to worship God in a multiplicity of ways, were beholden to a godless constitution. From the beginning of the republic, this irony-laden and profoundly creative relationship produced a mixture of gratitude and unease on the part of its beneficiaries.

Given the intensity of both secularist and religious passions in the founding generation, it was probably inevitable that the response of Americans to secularism and freethought — the lovely term that first appeared in the late 1600s and flowered into a genuine social and philosophical movement during the next two centuries — would be fraught with ambivalence. Beginning with the revolutionary era, freethinkers periodically achieved substantial influence in American society, only to be vilified in periods of reaction and consigned to the margins of America’s official version of its history.

American freethought derived much of its power from an inclusiveness that encompassed many forms of rationalist belief. Often defined as a total absence of faith in God, freethought can better be understood as a phenomenon running the gamut from the truly antireligious — those who regarded all religion as a form of superstition and wished to reduce its influence in every aspect of society — to those who adhered to a private, unconventional faith revering some form of God or Providence but at odds with orthodox religious authority. American freethinkers included deists, who, like many of the founding fathers, believed in a “watchmaker God” who set the universe in motion but subsequently took no active role in the affairs of men; agnostics; and unabashed atheists. What the many types of freethinkers shared, regardless of their views on the existence or nonexistence of a divinity, was a rationalist approach to fundamental questions of earthy existence — a convinction that the affairs of human beings should be governed not by faith in the supernatural but by a reliance on reason and evidence adduced from the natrual world. It was this conviction, rooted in Enlightenment philosophy, that carried the day when the former revolutionaries gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to write the Constitution.

End of excerpt.

In the event someone actually requires the definition, the phrase “popping the cherry” (at least according to Urban Dictionary) means one of two decidely-related things.

Most generally, it simply means the process of losing one’s virginity. More graphically, however, it can refer to the circumstance (although I’ve applied some copy editing here) in which “a male penetrates a virgin female too fast, and rips or tears the hymen, causing the vagina to bleed slightly.”

It is with those definitions in mind, then, that someone once used the phrase as the subject line of the very first post to the Bandwidth forum on an old system called MindVox (scroll down if you really want to find it), and I myself used it as the title of the very first entry to a now-defunct weblog with which you might, possibly, be familiar.

That particular usage is what I called upon back in November of 2005 when I inaugurated the first incarnation of FURIOUS nads! and it is that usage upon which I call yet again as I inaugurate that site’s reincarnation, swept clean of content and thereby restored to a state of innocent purity, a kind of born-again virgin with a miraculously new and fresh cherry to pop.

No particular meaning should be taken from the sexual nature of both this site’s name and this entry’s title. It is simply that sometimes these necessary coincidences happen.