Thank Yahweh or Allah. . .

. . . or the Great Spirit or TV-4 Chief Meteorologist Rob Fowler or whoever's in charge of weather for days like yesterday and the day before. If it stays like this all winter -- sunny and 80+ degrees I will not complain.
As an aside to my niece Caroline: I read your offer of compromise to Winter and I must say I think that cursed season ought to jump on that deal. Allowing Jack Frost to hang around from December 15th to January 4th is more than generous on your part. The best I was willing to offer was to let him have his way on the 24th and the 25th of December -- snow if he wants to -- but be gone on the 26th.

addendum

By the way, if you're as upset about the Marvel stamps as I am, don't e-mail them -- well, you can but they're just going to tell you to buy a stamp and send a real letter to:

Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee Stamp Development US Postal Service 1735 North Lynn St Rm 5013 Arlington VA 22209-6432

You might also want to mention what a spiffy-looking piece of postage She-Hulk would make:

Stamp Stuff

Back in July the US Postal Service put out a sheet of first-class (in both senses of the word) stamps honoring Superman, Batman and other DC Comics heroes. I loved the stamps (of course) and other than thinking they probably could have picked a better Wonder Woman picture I had no complaints.
Well now they've announced the new Marvel superhero stamps coming out in Summer 2007, and, hoo boy do I have complaints.

(You can get a better look at them -- along with all the 2007 commemorative stamps, including one honoring the joy of jury duty here.)

For one thing, is this the best the Marvel Universe has to offer as far as female icons? Spider-Woman was slopped together in a hurry because Marvel was afraid some other publisher was going to do something along those lines and they wanted to protect their trademark. She's never been well-done or popular. And Elektra isn't even a hero for God's sake, she's an assassin! She kills people for money; I don't think that should get you on a stamp. Why didn't they use Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman (Marvel's original super-heroine)? Or the Wasp? The Scarlet Witch, Storm, Marvel Girl, the Black Widow, the Black Cat -- even Shanna the She Devil or Aunt May Parker -- all would have been better choices than the two losers they selected.

(All right, I admit it. What I'm really disappointed about is that they didn't use my favorite 8-foot, green-skinned hottie, the She-Hulk. Now this would have made a hella stamp:)

And that's not the only problem. On the backs on the stamps they have information about the characters and artist credits -- only some are incorrect. The Sub-Mariner portrait is credited to Gene Colan and anybody can see that it's actually by John Buscema (well, anybody who's spent their life reading comics.) Captain America is credited to Johnny Romita but any fool can see that's Jack Kirby. John Buscema gets credit for the Hulk portrait and it's actually by Rich Buckler.

Speaking of the Hulk stamp, take a closer look at that one. Notice anything odd?

How about the fact that one earth's mightiest mortals has no muscles in his stomach. That's because when the genuises at the Post Office went lookingh for a picture of the Incredible Hulk -- one of Marvel's most popular characters, who has been around since 1962 -- the best one they could find was one where somebody is standing in front of the She-Hulk's cousin Bruce -- someone they digitally erased and then only halfheartedly touched up the abs. No six-pack for Dr. Banner.

Here's the original cover and the stamp:

Hey, Post Office, I suggest you put Archie and Jughead and the gang at Pop's Choklit Shop on stamps in 2008.

And I suggest you let me pick the pictures of Betty and Veronica.

What poetry is not

It would be hard for me to pick which classic rock band I despise the most out of these three: Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, the Doors. Pink Floyd did the single worst song ever: "Another Brick in the Wall" and convinced people that there was something profound about not being to have your pudding if you didn't eat meat, or in recording Mr. Floyd calling (and hanging up on) Mr. Floyd. Led Zeppelin is just so overrated it's not funny; their best song is probably "Rock and Roll" and that sounds like a third-rate Ramones tribute band.
Then there's the Doors, and among the myriad of annoying things about them -- the name of the band, that damned organ, "Light my Fi-Yur" -- the most annoying has to be their fans, the ones who say "Jim Morrison, he was a poet, man."
No, he wasn't even a good singer. He sure as hell wasn't a poet. Poets understand the importance of making your pronouns agree. They would never write a line like "If they say I never loved, you know they are a liar."
I swear my ears just break out in a rash every time I hear that.

Book Covers

I might have mentioned my love for this book before. This book absolutely blows me away every time I read it, and I cannot wait to read it again. For me it beats Mark Twain, Fyodor Dostoevski, Harlan Ellison, Charles Dickens, Anne Tyler, Alan Moore, and all my other favorite writers. It is my favorite book of all-time and I didn't pick it up for a long time. It kept catching my eye but I didn't (and still don't) like the cover. So I kept putting it back, until one day I read the first couple of pages and couldn't stop, at which point the cover no longer mattered.

I'm not sure what my second favorite book is but it might be "Her Name Was Lola." (And if it's not my second it's definitely in the top five.) It's hard to say what this romantic comedy is about because it's about so many things -- opera, the I Ching, Hindu gods, music, love and destiny. It's heartbreaking and hilarious -- frequently on the same page. And I only picked this up because I liked the cover.

When I was a kid growing up in Richmond, Virginia, my goal was to read every book in the library. It quickly became apparent that was going to be impossible. Now I'm wondering how many magnificent, life-altering books I'm not aware of and wondering what -- if anything -- I can do about it. You can't read all of them and my experience with these two books proves once again that you can't judge a book by its cover. But how else are you supposed to judge it? And what to do about all the great ones that eluding us?

Saddam and Bush - no difference

This is from the (London) Guardian newspaper:

Terry Jones
Tuesday October 10, 2006

Dear President Bush,

I write to you in my capacity as secretary of the World League of Despots.

It is with great pleasure that I am finally able to extend an official invitation to you to join our ranks. For many years, we have watched your efforts to fulfil the requirements necessary to join our number. From the start, we were greatly impressed by your disdain for democratic principles - the way you wrested power from the democratically elected candidate in the 2000 election, and again in 2005 when you managed to swing what was clearly going to be a victory for your opponent.

Contempt for human life has always been a priority requirement for membership of the league, and I and my fellow adjudicators were well aware of your record as governor of Texas when you quadrupled the number of state executions. But your record since seizing power has surpassed even our expectations. The thousands of innocent people in Iraq, who have died so that you could fulfil your declared political objective of establishing "an American force presence in the Middle East", attest to your eligibility to join our ranks.

I cannot, however, disguise the fact that we adjudicators were extremely anxious when you announced your intention to remove from office one of our most stalwart members, Mr Saddam Hussein. However, we need not have worried. According to a recent UN report, you have ensured that there are now even more human rights abuses in Iraq than there were under Saddam. No less than 10% of those in custody are being physically or psychologically abused. Well done!

Of course, your unstinting efforts to make torture an internationally accepted aspect of human life have surpassed everything we could have ever hoped for. I don't think there is a single member of the league who could have imagined, six short years ago, that our activities in tormenting our fellow creatures would once again be recognised as acceptable, civilised behaviour, as it once was in the middle ages.

Despite these achievements, we had, until now, felt unable to extend our invitation to you because you had been unable to fulfil one of our basic requirements: the ability to carry out arbitrary arrests, imprisonment without trial, secret torture and executions at will.

We approved of your attempts to establish the principles of arbitrary arrest under the Homeland Security Act of 2002, but unfortunately it was still restricted to terror suspects. We appreciate that you were hampered by the US constitution, but the restrictions this imposed on your arbitrary powers kept you below the threshold requirements for qualification as a despot.

Now, however, all that has changed. At the end of last month you persuaded the Senate to pass a bill regarding the treatment of detainees. Illegally obtained evidence can now be used against suspects, even if it has been gathered abroad under torture. Anyone you care to accuse can be thrown into prison without the right to a trial or the right to represent themselves.

Officially the legislation is restricted to "enemy combatants", but you have skilfully adapted this definition to include anyone who has "purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the US". This presumably means that anyone who publicly criticises your conduct can be defined as supporting hostilities to the US. You are now free to arrest and imprison anyone you don't like. You've got it in the bag!

It is with great pleasure that we in the World League of Despots note that you have now appropriated to yourself all the powers of arbitrary arrest and torture that Saddam once enjoyed. You are now one of us. Congratulations!

· Terry Jones is a film director, actor and Python www.terry-jones.net

Speaking of media whores

I can't believe that Don McLean sold out to General Motors and let Chevrolet use the song "American Pie" in its new series of TV commercials.
And I can't believe Chevrolet would want it. I mean it's a great song but do you really want that image of people driving your car around knowing that one of the next lines is "This'll be the day that I die."?
(I don't think big business "gets" music anyway. Remember when Microsoft came out with a new version of Windows and used the Rolling Stones' "Start Me Up" to sell it? Yeah, the song about how you "make a grown man cry".)

More on Reginald Denny

Regarding my previous post, I feel kinda bad showing Reginald Denny in that picture where he's lying in the street bleeding because Reggie is definitely not a victim. But I looked all over the Internet and I couldn't find a nice non-bloody headshot of Mr. Denny. And actually that's another reason why he's my hero. After he became unwillingly famous he didn't write a book, he's not out leading forgiveness seminars, you won't see him on "I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here" or any other reality show. He left southern California (he had to; the non-forgivers ran him out of town) and moved to Arizona where he became a boat mechanic (according to Wikipedia) which sounds like he retired -- I mean, how many boats are there in Aridamnzona?
The fact that he did not become a media whore is maybe even more amazing than the fact that he forgave the man who fractured his skull. I mean, I think I might get to the point where I could forgive someone for trying to kill me for no reason. But by God I'm going to get at least a book deal out of it.

Can we forgive the forgivers?

See that guy lying in the street in a pool of his own blood? His name is Reginald Denny, he used to be a truck driver in California and someday I hope to be the kind of person he is. He is my hero.
I started thinking about him last Sunday because we talked in church about the Amish and what an amazing people they are, how they are doing the unthinkable -- forgiving the man who murdered several of their children. Everybody agreed that this is the way we should be, we should all strive to be like the Amish in this respect.
I'm not spiritually evolved enough to do that, I don't think, but I hope to be someday. And I did think I should warm my fellow congregants that if you choose to forgive those who hate and harm you, most of the world -- including your friends and family -- will turn on you and harm you even worse than your enemies did. They did it to Jesus. They did it to Reginald Denny.
I guess if most people remember Mr. Denny at all today, it's because he became a symbol of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was driving his concrete truck through South Los Angeles when the Rodney King verdict came down and riots broke out. He was pulled from his truck and savagely beaten. Among other things a man named Damian Monroe Williams threw a concrete block at his head. All this happened on live television.
But I remember Reginald Denny from an appearance about a year later on "The Phil Donahue Show." He was there with the mother of his main assailant and he hugged her and held her hand. Reginald Denny did not just forgive the man who tried to crush his skull. He went to the guy's trial and asked the judge to do something for Mister Williams that Williams had not done -- show mercy.
And oh my God, the audience -- good Christian people all of them, the kind that would have been wearing WWJD bracelets if that particular piece of jewelry had been available in 1993 -- just ripped into him. How can you forgive a man who tried to kill you? they all wanted to know. That's just crazy. There must be something seriously wrong with you. One woman, I'll never forget this, said that for Denny to act the way he was acting (i.e. like Jesus) was proof that he had suffered major brain damage in the attack.
So, if you get to where you can forgive those that hurt you, God bless you. But understand that if you don't live in a community of forgivers, those around you are not going to be able to forgive you for forgiving.

New Column

Once again the deadline for my column snuck up on me. I only had a couple of half-formed ideas about what I might write about. I got lucky again and I think this one turned out all right.
(I am putting this up the way I wrote it. Some changes were made by the editor before it ran, changes that I think weakened the piece.)

Do It Yourself

I’m not going to write a column this month. Instead, at the risk of running myself out of a job, I’m going to teach you the secret of how to write a column – or an essay or an article or a book even. The secret is that powerful.

And I know you don’t already know the secret. Know how I know? Because you have at some point asked a writer: “Where do you get your ideas?” You wouldn’t ask that if you knew the secret because that’s not the way it works at all.

Here’s the secret: Writers don’t write because they know all about a particular topic, they write because they want to know more about that topic.

In other words, writers don’t get ideas, they get questions.

Let me show you how it works. If I had written a column this month I might have written about why the Dixie Chicks were reviled for expressing their political opinions while Tim McGraw gets a pass for expressing remarkably similar sentiments. I wanted to write about this because I’m curious. Is it because the Chicks said what they said on foreign soil? Or is there some misogyny involved?

I don’t know, but I want to know. And somewhere during the writing, researching and ruminating I would have arrived at an answer that satisfied me and hopefully my readers.

I also considered – because I don’t want to give Jeff Remz another heart attack by writing about politics – a column about the song “Feed Jake” by the Pirates of the Mississippi. This is probably my second favorite country song of the 1990’s, despite the fact that it clearly makes no sense. Why am I so hard on some songs for exhibiting lyrical inconsistency and so enraptured by others? Bob Dylan probably would have come up in this one because he’s the king of dodgy lyrics. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Why is that?

(Say it with me.)

I don’t know, but I want to know.

There you have it. Curiosity and a spell checker. You now have all the tools you need to become a first class wordsmith.

All you have to do now is practice looking wise and inscrutable when people ask you where you get your ideas.

Untitled

Walking down Market Street today I saw a street musician tuning up his guitar. He had hung up a sign in his case that said: "FREEBIRD? Never Heard of it!" First it made me laugh, then it made me think -- maybe he's not joking, maybe he really is getting so many requests from misguided Skynyrd fans that he had to put up a sign to shut them up.
Or maybe he can actually play the hell out of Freebird and he's trying to draw you in. I mean, it hadn't occurred to me to shout "Freebird!" until I saw that sign.

Cool Jewelry

If you've been wondering what jewelry to wear while celebrating Banned Books Week, click here

More recommended reading

Still celebrating Banned Books Week. Here are a few more that are always on the American
Library Association's list of most-frequently challenged books.

"James and the Giant Peach" makes book burners madder than the much gorier and disturbing "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." Why?
Well, it uses the unforgivable and traumatizing word "ass." An obviously-racist grasshopper says, "I'd rather be fried alive and eaten by a Mexican!", and there are references to snuff, tobacco and whiskey. Some censors object to the fact that it encourages children to disobey adults -- and I say if we're talking about adults like Spiker and Sponge then I say they should be disobeyed.

Shel Silverstein was a genius, no question about it. He was equally skilled at cartooning, music and writing. In the poem "Little Abigail and the Beautiful Pony," the title character tells her parents that if they don't buy her a pony, she'll die. Her parents refuse, and she does, in fact, die. Book burners, who were born without a sense of humor, think this encourages suicide. Thank goodness for the judges at the Bedford Central School District in New York. Their verdict: "Silverstein… was apparently intending to be funny." And can't you just see the censors scratching their heads and wondering what that means.

I'm not going to try to pass "Where's Waldo?" off as great literature, but for the Barney the Dinosaur demographic it is a pleasant way to pass the time and sharpen one's visual skills. But the book has been challenged because in one beach scene, a little boy is about to throw water on a sunbathing woman's back -- and (gasp!) her bathing suit top is apparently untied. This seems to me to be a perfect example of someone looking real hard for something to be upset about.
If you've ever dealt with the eyestrain involved in trying to locate that rascally Waldo, you'll know what I mean.

More suggested reading for Banned Book Week

You might think that a book published 55 years ago would have lost its power to shock you, make you laugh or break your heart -- not to mention royally piss off the censors, but J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" is still on the most-challenged list year after year -- ostensibly because of profanity (protagonist Holden Caulfield does like the word "goddamn") prostitution, underage-drinking, premarital sex, and tons of "morons" and "phonies."
Much has been made of the fact that this book is the favorite of nutjob assassins like Mark David Chapman and John Hinckley, and psychologists say it's because misunderstood social outcasts relate to Holden Caulfield -- and he probably is the patron saint of outcasts -- but Holden never shot any of those goddamn phonies. He really in his own clumsy way only wanted to make the world a better place -- that's why he was out there catching all those kids before they fell out of the rye.
And that's why he'll still be out there in that rye a hundred years from now, no matter how hard the book burners try to shut him up.

Here's some trivia about the book from Wikepedia:

• Holden Caulfield's middle name is Morrisey. Although it does not appear in this book, Salinger used it in a 1946 short story featuring Caulfield called "A Slight Rebellion off Madison," that ran in the New Yorker.
• The name "Holden Caulfield" first came to Salinger when he saw a movie theater's marquee advertising the 1947 film Dear Ruth, which starred William Holden and Joan Caulfield.
• The word "fuck" appears in the book only six times and was sometimes given as reason for it being banned. However, in context Holden is trying to remove the word from the walls of a school and the Museum of Natural History to preserve the children's "innocence."
• The word "goddamn" appears in the book 245 times. However and contrary to popular belief, it is not at least on every other page. (This is a little misleading, it might not be on every single page, but with 245 occurrences in 224 pages it averages out to more than once a page.)
  
• Approximately 250,000 copies of The Catcher in the Rye are sold each year, with total sales at about 10 million copies. [1]
• Is the favorite novel of Terrence Malick, Johnny Depp, Winona Ryder, Billie Joe Armstrong, David Tennant, Paul Bettany, Sarah Michelle Gellar and the late John Ritter.
• Simon & Garfunkel originally wanted to name themselves "Catchers in the Rye."

• "All morons hate it when you call them a moron." Holden Caulfield
  

Suggested reading for banned books week

Although he gets a lot of competition these days from J.D. Salinger, Judy Blume and J.K. Rowling, Mark Twain is probably the author that pisses off the book burners the most. His masterpiece "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" has been censored since it was first published in 1885 (originally people objected to the fact that pipe-smoking elementary-school dropout Huck was not a good role model, which goes to show that political correctness is nothing more than old wine in a new bottle) and still tops lists of most-challenged books year after year. Nowadays the main objection is its frequent use of the word "nigger" -- one of the two main characters is even named Nigger Jim. This is the perfect book to read during banned books week (or any time, of course) because it perfectly encapsulates how twisted and misguided the book burners are.
They say it's racist because it uses the "n word" even though they acknowledge that it is a historically-accurate depiction og the way people in Missouri talked at that time. I say there's no way in hell these people have ever read this book. No way. If anybody reads Huckleberry Finn and finds it to be racist, that person is an idiot and should be sterilized so as not to pass on idiotic genes. The truth is this book is a beautiful, eloquent plea for racial harmony and judging people not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. The part of the book where Huck decides he's going to go against everything he's ever been taught and save his black friend Jim even though he's sure it means he'll be sent to hell is one of the most powerful moments in all of literature. Nobody , not Martin Luther King, not Frederick Douglas, not Sojourner Truth, ever expressed the truth of our racial oneness half so well as Mark Twain in that passage.
And the book burners absolutely DO NOT GET IT!!!! They don't get it, and then they want to tell me I should be as narrow-minded, as clueless and oblivious and thin-skinned as they are, and they should be allowed to pick what MY children read -- and it makes me so mad I want to renounce my lifelong commitment to nonviolence and put my foot far enough up their ass to knock some sense into their foolish little minds.
Whew.
But I digress.
Ernest Hemingway said, "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.... All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since." That was true when he said it in 1935 and it's still true now. If you've never read it, you need to read it -- and I know you will love it, it's hilarious, it's exciting, it's unforgettable. Please don't let the poisonous screeds of the book burners color your perception of this magnificent work of art.

Trashing Alabama

I've been a professional music critic for 12 years now. It's a lot of fun, especially when you get to review a bad record -- after all there's only so many ways you can say "This is good," but there's no limit to the ways you tear crappy artists a new one.
Here's one of my favorite reviews of one of my least favorite records by one of my least favorite bands:

Alabama
Twentieth Century
RCA

Even though this is Alabama’s 500th album, it has a youthful air about it. And it’s not just the presence of bubble gummers In the Sink. . .er, ‘N Sync. . .on “God Must Have Spent a Little More Time on You” (which should probably be called “Alabama Should Spend a Little More Time Picking Their Singing Partners.”) Listen to this line from the title tune: “Oh, the Twentieth Century wasn’t all that bad / It was a time like no one has ever had . . ./ We sent a man into the sky / When he walked on the moon we were so glad.” Now you can’t get much more youthful that that; sounds like a first-grader wrote it.
Maybe Alabama is in their second childhood. Like many an Alzheimer’s victim, they tend to repeat themselves a lot. (“Life’s Too Short to Love This Fast” finds the Bama boys still in a hurry but not knowing why; 9 of the 12 songs here are about romantic love, 7 of them could easily be retitled “Gosh, I Love You.”) They tend to ramble semi-coherently about the past (“Twentieth Century”) and they sometimes think old things are new (on “I’m in That Kind of Mood” a connection between dancing and sex is discovered!). In advanced stages of senile dementia people often develop unreasonable sentimental attachments to inanimate objects, like Alabama for azure ink on “Write it Down in Blue”.
We probably should have seen this coming years ago. (Can anybody really tell any difference between “High Cotton”, “Song of the South”, “Down Home” and “Born Country”?) But research goes on, and someday we will have a cure for Alabama if not for Alzheimer’s. Call it the 21st century.

Family Tradition

Friday on my way home from work, I stopped and bought (among other things) a Star magazine for my son Dylan.
Kim asked me why and I told her it was a family tradition. My mom told me how when she was a girl she got hooked on romance and true confession magazines. When people would ask her father how come they let her read such trash, he said “Hey, at least she’s reading. And it’s none of your business”

Then when I was a lad living in Richmond I tried to check Arthur Hailey’s schlock bestseller Airport out at the library. The librarian wouldn’t let me because she said I had a juvenile card and that was an adult book. Now, I never saw my mother raise hell with too many people, but she sure got on that lady. She told her I could check out any book I liked and if I couldn’t do it with the card I had then she would make sure I got an adult card.
My parents never really got on me much about all the hours I spent reading comic books and Carter Brown books either.

Now Dylan enjoys celebrity gossip magazines and I think that’s great and I buy him one whenever I get a chance.
It’s a family tradition – encouraging reading.
And loving lowbrow literature.

An Open Letter to Goodwill Industries

Robert Loy
114 Gatewood Street
North Charleston, SC 29418

Goodwill Industries International
15810 Indianola Drive
Rockville, MD 20855

Dear Goodwill;

I spend a lot of time and money in thrift stores -- but not much in Goodwill stores anymore. It's not that I don't like your stores; I do. They're clean, well-lit, and always have a good selection of merchandise. But one of the things I like to shop for in thrift stores is T-shirts, and for some reason every Goodwill store I've ever been in separates shirts not by size but by color. I have never understood your reasoning behind this. Do you think that people go to the store desirous of purchasing a green shirt -- any green shirt, whether it be too large or too small or just right. I do not think I am alone in saying that I shop by size not color and having to dig through a bunch of shirts not in my size to get to one that is has become so frustrating that I now do most of my shopping at the thrift store up the street which is not as clean or well-lit and doesn't have Goodwill's selection but separates their shirts by sizes.
If you can explain your reasoning on this issue I would appreciate it very much.
Thank you.

Sincerely Yours,



Robert Loy

To Hell with Censorship!

More than a book a day faces expulsion from free and open public access in U.S. schools and libraries every year. There have been more than 8,700 attempts since the American Library Association began electronically compiling and publishing information on book challenges in 1990.

From September 23 to September 30 it is Banned Books Week, celebrating the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one's opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met.

So tell the book banners to go shit in their hat.

More censorship nonsense

I have no tolerance for censorship of any kind -- whether it's Rumsfeld and Cheney and other members of this evil regime trying to convince people that speaking out against that jug-eared moron in the white house is unpatriotic, or people cutting up old Tom and Jerry cartoons to get rid of the nicotine therein.
And the self-appointed arbiters of what we should see and think never rest, do they? They're at it again at Marvel Comics. Marvel has been reprinting a lot of its older comics and they're doing it with the 1970's Tomb of Dracula -- only they're not doing it right.
But here, read about it for yourself, then come back and we'll discuss.
In the meantime, remember the immortal (albeit paraphrased) words of Billy in "Easy Rider"
"This used to be a helluva country, man, till everybody turned chicken."

Oh, you're back from the Tomb of Dracula page? Is your mind reeling? How in the hell in 2006, at the pinnacle of human evolution, can we be so terrified of a breast, a baby bottle, mother's milk? But to show somebody slashing a woman's jugular vein, blood spurting everywhere, no problem, very entertaining in fact -- but before you die, cover up that booby! Have you no shame?