Quote of the Day - Iowa City Edition

From DC2Iowa, discussing the proposed naming of the college of medicine at the University of Iowa after Wellmark in exchange for a donation:

Once a university gets in bed with corporate America is oral sex "adultery" -- hell, is it even "sex"? Are we still virgins if we don't "go all the way"?

We're already in bed, folks. Now we're just drawing lines and haggling over price.

Vivian: I would have stayed for two thousand.
Edward: I would have paid four.

ROFL

This is the most hilarious thing I've read today. A brilliant parody of the anti-Harry Potter hysteria, she even got it posted on a fundamentalist site. An excerpt:

Lucius Malfoy (meaning of bad/wrong faith, again this is misleading!), a respectably dressed family man with the pale hair and ethereal looks of an Angel, representing the Angel Gabriel of the Annunciation (Luke 1:31, but with the name of the fallen one in order to confuse Christian readers) gives the girl of a humble home, Ginny Weasley, the diary of Tom Riddle.

It is not hard to realize this diary, containing the life history of our Lord Tom the Son, represents both the message that she is to become the Divine vessel, and the Christian Bible, the very base of our faith. The Angel Malfoy, with modesty that befits his kind, does not touch the revered and frightened girl but puts the diary in the girl's cauldron, representive of her womb.

The innocent Ginny confides in the diary, asking it questions, and the diary advises her, guides her, like the Holy Scripture. About the diary she says, I'm so glad I've got this diary to confide in ... It's like having a friend I can carry around in my pocket (p. 335). Isn't this the way we wish our children would think about the Holy Scripture? Ginny continues to ask Tom for guidance, until she, under the malevolent and seductive influence of the anti-Christ figure, Harry Potter, bearing the mark of the beast on his front, rejects it and it falls into his hands.

The author, and the discussion about the hoax.

Deja Vu All Over Again

Nelle (whose birthday it was last Saturday, by the way) is coming down to help us move back to Iowa. I hope this finally appeases the moving gods and I don't have to relocate again for quite a while. I'm not sure if I need prayers or an exorcism.

My worst nightmare: we'll get halfway through and realize (cue Brody/Jaws impression) "We're going to need a bigger truck."

Things I've Found on the Internet Lately

How Not To Be Pranked:

When Electronic Frontier Foundation privacy lawyer Kevin Bankston announced that he was locking his office door to "prevent pranks" by this summer's crop of interns, the interns took it as a personal challenge. They figured out how to get into his office (they had the universal key!), took some pix, and then made a snappy little LOLCats animation commemorating the event.

One of the photos:

Vaporub solves a Hampshire gang problem.

In the heart of Africa, native art, untouched by the commercialism . . . d'oh!

The ultimate cliffs notes - famous poems rewritten as limmericks.

The natural successor to the Segway - motorized pink bunny slippers.