The University of North Texas staged a production of The Laramie Project this weekend (for those that may not remember, it’s about the murder of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming).  Some protesters from the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas staged a protest with their typical hateful nonsense.  This spawned a counter-protest.  If I had known that this was going on I’d have joined the counter-protest.

Protesters, opposition line up near play’s production

04/13/2003

By Megan Middleton / Staff Writer

More than 80 University of North Texas students held a counterprotest Saturday night across the street from 10 members of a Kansas church who came to protest the university’s theatrical production of The Laramie Project.

The play looks at the town of Laramie, Wyo., after the kidnapping and murder of Matthew Shepard, an openly gay college student. It was created by Moises Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theatre Project, a collective of gay- and lesbian-rights activists in New York.

Protesters and counterprotesters took to both sides of Chestnut Street at the intersection of Welch Street near the Radio, Television, Film and Performing Arts Building, where the production would later begin.

The group of protesters from Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., held signs that read “Fags Die, God Laughs,” “God Abhors Fags” and “UR Going 2 Hell.” A child of one of the church members also held a sign that read “Matt in Hell.”

The groups screamed back and forth at each other, and many drivers yelled at the group from Kansas as they were passing by.

The church members remained at the corner for about an hour.

“There’s room for all of you in hell!” shouted one person with the group from Kansas.

Several women with the church stood on an American flag and sang, “God hates America,” to the tune of “God Bless America.”

“This is the scariest damn thing I’ve ever seen,” said Zack Huggins, a UNT junior who came out as a part of the counterprotest against the Kansas group. “I was hoping I lived in a day and age where this kind of hate wasn’t around anymore. I’ve lost some faith in humanity.”

Counterprotesters held up posters, some in the shape of hearts, that read “God Loves Everyone.” Other signs read: “God Made Gays” and “God is Love.”

The group of mainly students also sang “Over the Rainbow” and chanted, “Go back to Kansas,” to the church group.

….

A lot of times we don’t have groups like this [counterprotest],” Mr. Hockenbarger said.

He said the group is not concerned about evangelizing to help people become Christians.

”I’m trying to spread a message—that message is repent or perish,” he said. “Our purpose is not to recruit. Our purpose is not to win souls.”

Note the highlighted portion.  These people sound just like the Islamofascists that rail against America and our “decadent”, “evil” culture.  Simply substitute Allah for God in their rantings.  I’m not sure, but isn’t this the same church from which Phelps spews his hatred?  If so, these are evil, nasty freaks who show up at the funerals of gay people with signs that say things like “God hates fags” and “Fags burn in hell.”  And their hatred seems to include anything modern.  One of the protesters above was holding a sign that said, “God blew up the shuttle.”

How horrible it must be to live with a such a dark and nasty pit of hatred in your heart.  I feel sorry for their children growing up and being indoctrinated into this foul and odious mindset.

This is something that I’d always felt intuitively, but I’d never really given it much thought.  I was raised on rear-wheel drive (and big V-8’s) and I just never liked the feel of a front-wheel drive car, despite what everyone was telling me about their safety.  Combine this with the fact that most front-wheel drive cars during my formative years were econoboxes, it was enough to turn me off of them for good.

We don’t get snow and ice here enough to have a lot of practice driving on it, but the experience I had with a front-drive car on it told me that the safety benefits were overrated.  I’ve gotten used to oversteer and I’ve learned countersteering if the rear wheels should break loose (having spent the past 10 years driving pickup trucks).  I’ve also gotten really used to using the accelerator to hold a curve (which doesn’t work so well in front-drive cars).

Perhaps this explains my disdain for most cars these days (that and the fact that most of them are too damn small).  The cars that interest me are either AWD or rear-wheel drive (and have V-8s).

Link via Instapundit.

To the nimrod at 166.102.192.7 (h7.192.102.166.ip.alltel.net), the virus-laden email that you sent me didn’t work. 

What kind of a chump do you take me for?

Mrs. du Toit has an interesting new essay up on her site this morning.  She talks about the way in which we sometimes “just know” that something is going to happen or how something is going to turn out.  Very often we are tempted to dismiss these thoughts, since we don’t seem to have a rational basis for them, or we don’t want to believe them, or perhaps we don’t want others to think we’re bonkers.

I understand how she feels about this, since I have often felt the same way.  There have been times when I just knew how something was going to turn out, but I had no identifiable rational basis for it.  I must admit that I’m not 100% accurate about these things.  There have been times when I’ve been wrong. 

There is still a lot that we don’t know about how intelligence operates.  I know that most of us tend to seek patterns in the world around us.  It could be that there is some kind of subconscious or non-linear process in the brain that allows us to integrate numerous small inputs and create a larger picture.  Perhaps we’re merely taking advantage of this process without realizing it.

Mrs. du Toit worries that we’re on the verge of another world-wide conflict, World War III.  As of yet, there are few indicators that we can directly identify that would lead to this conclusion.  However, I have also had that little nagging voice in the back of my head telling me the same thing since September 11, 2001.  I don’t have a rational explanation to give at this point.

For everyone’s sake, I hope that we’re both wrong about this.  I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what the next 10 years bring.

A Lewisville man got himself killed in a road-rage incident that he apparently started by repeately ramming another vehicle:

“It started as an apparent road rage incident,” Officer Burson said. “A man told us he was stopped at a red light at Dallas Drive and Teasley Lane. He said the Jeep showed up in the next lane and sped off toward the interstate. He was in the right lane and moved to the left lane and got in behind the Jeep so he could enter the interstate. The Jeep driver slammed on his brakes, and he took evasive action to avoid colliding. The other driver said he wound up in front of the Jeep.”

The Jeep driver sped up and rammed his car repeatedly on the interstate, the other driver told police.

“He took the exit by Tia’s [Tex-Mex restaurant] and the Jeep rammed him with enough force that their bumpers locked up,” Officer Burson said. “He was trying to brake, and the Jeep was pushing him. He accelerated and broke loose.”

The vehicles moved southbound on the service road in front of the Black-Eyed Pea restaurant, the officer said.

“He felt that the Jeep was ready to ram him again. He slammed on his brakes. The Jeep tried to sideswipe him, missed, and went into the ditch The Jeep went airborne and hit Frenchy’s van head-on,” Officer Burson said.

For those not from the Denton area, Frenchy’s is a local lawn service company which uses big orange vans.  They frequently leave the vans in various parking lots across town as advertisements.

This news is not very comforting:

Severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, has prompted officials in Asian countries to enforce little-used quarantine laws, close schools and impose new health screenings on travelers. Closer to home, health experts suspect a second case of SARS has been identified in Collin County.

The first case was diagnosed about 12 days ago, and the other came to the health department’s attention on Friday. In the first case, the infected man recently traveled to Hong Kong, and is believed to have brought SARS home. The second case is a mystery.

“We know that there is no known link with the first man,” said county spokesperson Leigh Hornsby.

There is little danger to the public, because both infected men are quarantined in their own homes.

“These persons are in their homes, they’re wearing masks, they’re not venturing out into the public,” Hornsby said. “If there’s any type of venturing out, it’s to see their physician. Their family members who don’t live within the household aren’t even visiting them. So there are so many precautions that are being taken at this point.”

Later on, the article points out that it is now believed that the virus can live for several hours on surfaces (like doorknobs and elevator buttons).  That’s just great—now I’m going to be paranoid about touching anything.

I also find it interesting that they haven’t found any link between the two people who are infected.  It makes me wonder if there isn’t someone else out there who doesn’t know he or she has it and is spreading it around.  It’s a little worrysome, because Collin County adjoins Denton County on the east, and many people who live in Collin County work in Dallas and the surrounding areas.

I left early today and met up with some friends to go to the Dallas Auto Show.  There were a lot of nice vehicles there and some interesting new concept vehicles. 

For example, I wouldn’t mind having one of these:

  The Dodge Magnum SRT-8

And while I tend to like driving trucks and SUVs, if I were going to drive a car, I think this would be it:

  The Mercury Marauder

Hmmm…  I seem to be detecting a trend towards big V-8’s.  Call me old-fashioned, but there’s just something about a big rear-wheel drive V-8 that no high-revving 4-banger can touch (even if I wouldn’t mind having one of these).

This gadget is kind of cool (in a geeky sort of way):

The Forever Flashlight uses no batteries or bulbs. Instead it uses Faraday’s Principle of Induction and a bright LED to produce light without batteries. The light is shaken for about 30 seconds to recharge a capacitor and it will then provide about 5 minutes of light. As the light is shaken, a magnet passes through a metal coil generating electricity. During prolonged use it can be shaken for 10-15 seconds every 2 or 3 minutes.

It seems a bit expensive, but the idea is sound (although I wonder how bright it actually is).

I always carry a flashlight with me and I have a couple in the truck and at home.  You never know when you’ll need one.

One of my problem traits is that I have a tendency to be a packrat.  I’ve been keeping my spare change in a large plastic Haloween pumpkin (the kind that kids use to gather their loot) for years and it finally reached the point of absurdity.  So over the past three days I’ve been taking parts of the change to Coinstar machines in the area.  With today’s final load, I’ve converted a little over $183.00.  To give you an idea how bad it was, today’s load had 5411 pennies (yes, that’s $54.11 just in pennies).  I would estimate the weight of the bag that I carried into the Tom Thumb today at between 30 and 40 pounds.  In a way, it was a little embarassing.  They put the machines at the front of the store in front of the checkout lines and they’re very loud.

At least I’m not as bad as the guy described here (who did $8105 in coins in one session).

I have to admit that like almost everyone else I thought that Elizabeth Smart would never be found alive.  We’ve seen so many child abductions of late that almost always seem to end in the discovery of a body (if they are ever found at all) that pessimism has become S.O.P.

At least she can go home now.  I hope that she manages to get back to her normal life.