Christian Cleaners: "No More Wire Hangers!"

The debate over abortion has broken out in an unlikely place: dry cleaners.  Most people think of their local dry cleaners as a place where they can bring their clothes to have them professionally cleaned and pressed.  To such an uninformed consumer, all those paper-enveloped wire hangers are simply a place to hang a shirt.  However, these useful tools can be used to perform "back-alley abortions," creating a moral dillema for Christian dry cleaners.

Emboldened by the recent stories regarding Christian pharmacists refusing to dispense the Plan B emergency contraceptive, a small, but growing group of Christian dry cleaners are refusing to use wire hangers at their businesses.

Welcome to the new site!

Welcome to everyone who knew me from my work at The Fake News, as well as anyone who just happened upon this site.  My old site focused only on news satire, which I enjoyed and still enjoy.  However, it was a lot of work to keep up a feasible posting schedule.  Also, I wanted to post other content in addition to news satire.  Anyway, keep checking back and thanks for stopping by!

UPDATE:

I think I am going to move the majority of stories from The Fake News here in the next little while.

Palin Book Titles

We know it's coming, but what will it be called?

My pick is "As I Say, Lying."  What do you think?

Moving on up!

I'm moving to www.jimmywellington.com starting next week. Please update your bookmarks (ha ha!) accordingly.

What If Sarah Palin Gave The Gettysburg Address?

After Gov. Palin's rambling, incoherent resignation speech, I began to wonder what it would have been like if she had given famous speeches throughout history. Here's Part One: Gettysburg.

Hi Gettysburg. About eighty some odd years ago in the past, those brave forefathers of ours gave a precious gift to US. They gave (to us!) this amazing country of ours that we live and reside in, founded in God's LIBERTY!! And also, it's dedicated to the fact that all of us are created by God, who is so amazing, to be the same.

What if Sarah Palin Wrote The Gettysburg Address?

After Gov. Palin's rambling, incoherent resignation speech, I began to wonder what it would have been like if she had given famous speeches throughout history. Here's Part One: Gettysburg.

Hi Gettysburg. About eighty some odd years ago in the past, those brave forefathers of ours gave a precious gift to US. They gave (to us!) this amazing country of ours that we live and reside in, founded in God's LIBERTY!! And also, it's dedicated to the fact that all of us are created by God, who is so amazing, to be the same.

Right now, even as I stand here before you to speak, this great country of ours is wrapped up in a battle for Real Americans against people led by those chattering class intellectual elites who sit in their ivory towers and plan to try to destroy me. Right here on this war zone, I stand READY to take those people on! I do this in the memory of our brave soldiers who fight and die to protect our freedoms, like the First Amendment, that guarantees me the ability to speak what I believe in my heart to be true without those in the press conducting a witch hunt of me and my financial transactions. And here at this site where brave men like my son Track fought and died for those hard-fought liberties that I and my children, who are here with me: Bristol, Willow, and Piper – say "Hi" kids!, enjoy so much since they live in this great country of ours.

However, If we take a step back and look at the bird's eye big picture view, our brave men and women like my son Track have made this ground even more special than words can ever do. Even after I make this speech, and the press "fact checks" (important: make sure to use finger quotes for that dramatic effect) it, and points out all the alleged "factual discrepancies," (more finger quotes!) and those talking heads on the television spend a week talking about it and I pick a fight with one of them and the press talks about it for another week and I do something completely impulsive and unexpected and the press talks about it some more - as long as that lasts, we will never forget the sacrifices our brave men and woman made to protect our freedoms. Those of us who make up the group of the living need to get those hands dirty and those noses to that grindstone to keep going forward with that GREAT mission that our brave men and women in uniform started, in addition to protecting our freedoms. It's just so important for us here now to realize how much further we have to go to protect this great country built buy our brilliant, patriotic forefathers and protected by our brave men and women in uniform, some of whom have given the ultimate sacrifice, giving their own God-given life in defense of this great nation. And we need to say to them, "Listen guys and gals, we will make sure that us Real Americans always remember your sacrifice!" And our nation, under God, indivisible, with LIBERTY and justice for all, will be born again in freedom and liberty and justice for all. And we will always remember and we will never forget, that America is the greatest country on Earth and although many things divide us, our faith in God unites us and will continue to keep us going forward on that bright road of democracy. God bless you, and GOD BLESS AMERICA!

You Should Be Afraid of the Dark (Man)

I wrote a post a few weeks back about discovering the Grammar Girl podcast. The woman behind Grammar Girl has started another podcast, called "Behind the Grammar," in which she interviews authors and writes about literature. Through this podcast, I learned about author J.C. Hutchins, and his latest novel Personal Effects: Dark Art.

I read many genres of literature, but I really enjoy a good thriller. I decided to buy his novel based soley on his interview on the "Behind the Grammar" podcast. I was mainly intrigued by the unique method of storytelling Hutchins and his collaborator Jordan Weisman used to unspool a rich tapestry of terror, revenge, and mystery. You see, Personal Effects: Dark Art is not just a book, it's an experience.

You Should Be Afraid of the Dark (Man)

I wrote a post a few weeks back about discovering the Grammar Girl podcast. The woman behind Grammar Girl has started another podcast, called "Behind the Grammar," in which she interviews authors and writes about literature. Through this podcast, I learned about author JC Hutchins, and his latest novel Personal Effects: Dark Art.

I read many genres of literature, but I really enjoy a good thriller. I decided to buy his novel based soley on his interview on the "Behind the Grammar" podcast. I was mainly intrigued by the unique method of storytelling Hutchins and his collaborator Jordan Weisman used to unspool a rich tapestry of terror, revenge, and mystery. You see, Personal Effects: Dark Art is not just a book, it's an experience.

Each reader will find, enclosed in a pocket attached to the inside front cover, a pile of paper and plastic. A driver's license and bank card for one Martin Grace, who is apparently a character in the book. Copies of birth and death certificates. A strange, incredibly colored drawing. A letter from the...CIA? What the...?

These "personal effects" are an integral part of the story. While the novel itself is very entertaining, the other aspects (in addition to the personal effects, the reader finds websites to visit, numbers to call, passwords to suss out) immerse the reader in an alternate world, in which the reader has access to more information than do the characters in the story.

The plot centers around Zach Taylor, an art therapist who works at a psychiatric hospital lovingly referred to as "The Brink." He uses art to help his patients work through their myriad of psychiatric issues, many of which are interesting enough to merit their own book. When he attempts to treat the aforementioned Grace, a psychosomatically blind man who is accused of murdering a dozen people in amazingly gruesome fashion, his ability is severely tested and his own dark past intertwines with his patient's.

After finishing the book, I'm still left with unsolved questions and nagging inconsistencies. Why did one of the characters refer to another character by a name he shouldn't have known about? Why is the story Zach Taylor tells different than an incident report? How does information found on one of the fake web sites about Zach's lineage fit into the story?

My wife and I have an agreement that I'm not allowed to talk during any type of mystery movie or television show, because I have an awesome (annoying if you ask her) knack for figuring out what will happen before we're meant to know. With this story, I was able to see some plot twists coming, while others surprised me. Some of this was definitely due to scrutinizing the "personal effects" as soon as I opened the package from Amazon.

In addition to being a writer who has a vision of the future of storytelling, Hutchins is one of the most accessible writers I've encountered. I sent him several direct messages on Twitter and he replied to all of them. It seems that he spends a great deal of time interacting with his fans, which I know from my experience running The Fake News can be a time consuming process.

If you like thriller/horror novels, I urge you to pick up Personal Effects: Dark Art by J.C. Hutchins and Jordan Weisman. You'll find out that even if you can't see in the dark, the dark can see you!

Words Have Meaning: Empathy Already Has a Definition, Senator

In general, I want to stay away from politics in my "serious writing," at least for the time being. Talking about politics ostracizes people who don't agree with you, and it's not a smart idea to alienate potential readers. However, my interest in language takes me into the realm of politics today, although I will attempt to treat the issue objectively.

In yesterday's Congressional hearing on the confirmation of Judge Sotomayor to the US Supreme Court, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions said this: “Empathy for one party is always prejudice against another.” This quote is absolutely ludicrous.

Words Have Meaning: Empathy already has a definition, Senator

In general, I want to stay away from politics on this blog, at least for the time being. Talking about politics ostracizes people who don't agree with you, and it's not a smart idea to alienate potential readers. However, my interest in language takes me into the realm of politics today, although I will attempt to treat the issue objectively.

In yesterday's Congressional hearing on the confirmation of Judge Sotomayor to the US Supreme Court, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions said this: “Empathy for one party is always prejudice against another.” This quote is absolutely ludicrous.

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, empathy is defined as:

1: the imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object so that the object appears to be infused with it

2: the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner ; also : the capacity for this.

Notice that there is no mention of bias in either of the definitions. As a future educator, it disgusts me to see empathy, which I feel is vital to fully understanding any subject, used in a negative connotation. Empathy is being able to see another point of view, it has nothing to do with being biased towards that point of view.

I realize that much of the debate deals with Judge Sotomayor's alleged reliance on emotion rather than the rule of law. As I said earlier, I'm not using this forum to discuss that topic. However, I simply cannot sit idly by while United States Senators are changing the meaning of words. If Senator Sessions means bias, he should use that word. Empathy is such a positive trait that it is absolutely despicable for him to drag this word into the mud with him.

The word "empathy" already has a definition, Senator.

Anything I Can Do You Can Do Better

Don't you hate it when you come up with a brilliant idea, a fantastic way to satisfy an itch that nobody else is scratching, only to find out that someone else has been doing it for years? It reminds me of the time that I created an animated sitcom about a fat man who is inexplicably married to a beautiful woman, also featuring a talking dog and a baby bent on world destruction.

I thought it would be a great idea to come up with a series of posts that explain common grammatical problems in a fun way that people can remember. I still think this is a great idea, but my enthusiasm is somewhat tempered by the discovery that someone has been doing it. For years.

Anything I can do you can do better

Don't you hate it when you come up with a brilliant idea, a fantastic way to satisfy an itch that nobody else is scratching, only to find out that someone else has been doing it for years? It reminds me of the time that I created an animated sitcom about a fat man who is inexplicably married to a beautiful woman, also featuring a talking dog and a baby bent on world destruction.

I thought it would be a great idea to come up with a series of posts that explain common grammatical problems in a fun way that people can remember. I still think this is a great idea, but my enthusiasm is somewhat tempered by the discovery that someone has been doing it. For years.

So, allow me to fully endorse Mignon Fogarty, aka Grammar Girl, who hosts the Grammar Girl podcast, which is found on iTunes or at her site http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/. It's pretty much everything I had thought of doing, but done much, much better.

Each podcast addresses a common grammar stumbling block in a humorous and memorable way. Her show is sort of a "Grammar for Dummies" in concept, but without the unfortunate title of that series. Seriously, why would anyone want to buy a book supposedly marketed to "dummies?" I guess "Plumbing For People Who Are Knowledgeable in Other Areas But Not Well Versed in the Field of Plumbing" doesn't fit on the cover. Aside: Do they make Depression for Dummies? That book seems counterproductive to me:

Patient: "I'm feeling much better. This book has really helped me to understand my condition *looks at cover* Now I feel worse about myself again..."

But seriously, check out the podcast.