Now, Alabama, that's the state to mock (I must've gotten the abbreviations confused: Alabama being AL, and Alaska being AK, which you'd think would be Arkansas, but that's AR). So, why Alabama? Because it's populated by cretins.
Now, as Cant readers are sophisticated, computer-using literate types (and by "literate" I don't mean "people who read a lot," I mean "people who can read, period"), you know that Alabama is Hick Central. When I think of Alabama, I think of the inbred, banjo-playing albino from Deliverance, and then I remember that Deliverance is set in Georgia, and if that is supposed to be backwoods Georgia, then damn, what the hell sort of twelve-armed, three-eyed, 200-years-of-inbreeding monstrosities exist in Alabama? People who wear tank tops and watch nothing but Nascar races and WWF and play "Sweet Home Alabama" over and over and over and fucking over. Sorry, that song bugs the hell out of me. No one who plays that song can play it at anything other than max volume, and then they sing along to it, and I don't care for Neil Young's music, but if he said something nasty enough about Alabama to get Lynyrd Skynyrd to get pissed at him and rant against him in their song, well, he can't be all bad.
Ok, so what in particular, you ask, set me off? Oh, just the latest nonsense in the battle between bible-thumping morons and those of us with teeth. According to this article, when the mouth- breathers who make up the Alabama Board of Education (which definitely puts "moron" in oxymoron) decided way back in 1996 to put stickers on biology textbooks warning that evolution is a controversial theory, there was actually some debate on the issue. But now, in the bright, shining future in which we live, such a thing can be done without anyone raising a dissenting voice.
The stickers that will be added to those books say,
in part, that evolution is "a controversial theory...
Instructional material associated with controversy
should be approached with an open mind, studied
carefully, and critically considered."
As long as you "critically consider" the correct things, of course.
But let's take the statement at face value. And who can argue with a recommendation that students should apply critical thought to their studies? I can't. Thinking critically about it, it appears that we have a big ol' truckload of evidence for the controversial theory of evolution, and absolutely no evidence whatsoever that an omnipotent being created humans at the tail end of a weeklong life-making binge. Oh, sure, there are certainly quibbles about the details of evolution, but I have yet to locate a stamp on my heel that says "TM, God (pat. pending)." I won't get into a debate about the existence of a god or gods, but it just seems difficult to debate against the evolutionary process, whether planned or unplanned. But that's just me, and pretty much everyone else who isn't an idiot. Which doesn't include Alabama's previous governor:
At a 1995 board meeting to approve the original
disclaimer, then-Gov. Fob James impersonated an
ape to poke fun at evolutionary theory.
Yeah, that's just the sort of stunt that says "Look at me! I've got a big human brain that God made for me!" Anyway, I'm pretty sure that the other primates would be embarrassed to know that Alabamans are their descendants. Yup, that silly evolutionary theory must be wrong. I mean, humans thought of it, right? And God certainly wouldn't spend all effort creating these wrinkly gray things just so we can use them, right? Nope, not at all. Best to just stop all that thinking nonsense entirely, before we think up any other dangerous ideas and piss off God enough to make him create more Alabamans to keep us in our place.
And who the hell is named "Fob"?