Pistol-Packin' Mama

Miss America 1944: You go girl!

After confronting a man she said was stealing from her Kentucky farm, Ramey pulled out a gun and shot out a tire on his truck so he couldn't leave, allowing police to arrest him and two others. "He was probably wetting his pants," Ramey said Thursday from her home in Waynesburg, about 140 miles south of Cincinnati.

Sylvia Browne Is a Mean Fucking Bitch...

...and so is Montel Williams. She takes advantage of people who are very very sad, and he gives her a stage. (Apologies to people whose first name is "Sylvia" and last name is "Browne" who don't claim to be psychics.)

Check out Anderson Cooper (here's his blogpost on the subject) and guest James Randi:

Here's The Amazing Randi's blurb on the situaton shown above (James Van Praagh is a real prick too, but we can get to him another day), here's the Wikipedia link to Sylvia Browne controversies, here she is on Quackwatch, and here's the Stop Sylvia Browne website's page on her Hornbeck predictions. (Bonus: Here's the whole Penn & Teller: Bullshit! episode on talking to the dead.)

No doubt, the parents deserve at least some criticism for agreeing to appear with her on television, but, you know, they were probably grasping at straws.

So here's what I think I'll do (and I invite everyone to join me) -- The current Google hit page for the phrase "Sylvia Browne" appears below. I think we should Googlebomb her (à la "Miserable Failure") so as to put the pertinent James Randi, Stop SB, Quackwatch, and Wikipedia criticism pages above her own 5ylv1a dot org. How? Copy all or some of the text that appears below the screenshot and paste it into your own blog or website.

Memo to Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne, Sylvia Browne: You suck!

Just a Few Things...

Several items:

• Study links intense Catholicism with high crime rates!
• Happy 25th anniversary to indie label Epitaph Records.
• Here's the Massive Resource List for All Autodidacts.
• Here's the early gestation of a movie script.

Black Dahlia Movie Not Very Good; Try Reading Book Instead

Currently watching the recent film The Black Dahlia, about 1/2way through. It's not that great. It's certainly nowhere near as good as the James Ellroy novel, and neither the book or the film of L.A. Confidential, both of which I rave about at every opportunity. (Update: Not even in the same ballpark.) Writings on the unfortunate Elizabeth Short here, here, and here.

I said recently that I thought that Damon, DiCaprio, and Wahlberg had gone past their pretty-boy personae and proven themselves as excellent actors. I have yet to make such a statement about Mr. Hartnett.

Here's some Black Dahlia and other artwork by Sherri Page. Her stuff is more interesting than the movie by far: Following the murder of a favourite uncle, Page began a lifelong fascination with crime and has incorporated it into her work. (Similar to Ellroy's lifelong fascination with crime subsequent to his mother's murder when he was a child.)

Before:

After:

"The Departed" Is Excellent!

Speaking of coffins, they needed plenty of them in The Departed, which we just saw last night. I must say, this movie wasn't awesome, it was fucking awesome. Lots of cops, lots of bad guys. Lots of cops who are also bad guys. The only Italian-American gentlemen were dispatched with quickly, and the most of the surnamic vowels were followed by apostrophes.

Three guys who, when I first became familiar with them, I had thought to be nothing but pretty boys for the girls to flutter over (Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Mark Wahlberg) were in this film, and they were great! (Not just here, either -- Damon was great as Ripley, Wahlberg was great as Diggler, DiCaprio was great as Hughes.) So were Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen, and Alec Baldwin. I'm not kidding; SEE THIS MOVIE. It's possibly as good Scorcese's great films Taxi Driver and Goodfellas. Actually, it was a remake of a Hong Kong crime film from a few years ago called Infernal Affairs, which I had meant to see a while ago, but which is now at the top of my Netflix queue.

I'm going to have to do some reading on the Bulger brothers. One (William) was an influential Boston politician, another (James "Whitey") was the boss of the South Boston Irish mob and an FBI informant. He is now a fugitive and is on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, right next to Bin Laden. He was largely the basis for the Nicholson character, though not strictly.

Here's the trailer on Google Video.