My dick is God

You know what pisses me off? Well, little yappy dogs, but also atheists. Atheism is the lack of a belief. Nothing wrong with it, it doesn't require you to believe gods don't exist, just not to believe they do. Then 'these  people' come along and say they are 100% certain that no gods of any sort exist. That asserts an hypothesis that technically speaking cannot be supported on logical grounds; or, as I like to put it in my pithy illimitable way, it's fucking stupid.

Lissen up, these people. You can't argue that an undefined concept doesn't exist, and if you don't say what you're talking about you're not talking about anything. Also, you don't know what I mean when I talk about god; you just assume whatever I mean has this and that characteristic and go blathering on all smug like you hadn't just committed the logical equivalent of burping Pepsi out your nose. Then when we show you some other kind, you just say, “but I don't call it god” as if reality depends on what you call shit. 

“all modern conceptions of monotheistic gods include at least two common properties. First, god is presumed to be supernatural. Second, god is presumed to be unknowable.”

Presumed by Atheist Revolution, that is, one of these people. He says “no gods exist” and then tells us how a god with these four characteristics is bullshit as if that had some bearing on his premise “there are no gods of any kind”. I'll sic Hindus on him for 'modern' and 'mono-', but he's typical, what's the word I'm looking for, ignorant? ethnocentric? arrogant? Sophomoric, yeah. If you make a claim about every kind, then you have to account for every kind, not just the ones you've heard of that are supernatural and not cactus plants or people. You're making a positive claim: anything that anybody, anywhere, ever called god, isn't real. All it takes is one counterexample to jump your claim like a horny teenager, so here we go

There's a God , and I can prove it.

>>Great, have at it.

My dick is god. It's real, too, if you want I can show you it.

>>No, that's Ok. I'll believe it exists, but it's not god.

Sure it's god. Lots of guys think their dicks are god. We could be one of the world's great religions.

>>Well I don't call it god.

Well I don't call it my dick. Neither does my girlfriend, but we weren't arguing about what to call it.

>>We weren't arguing about your dick, either, we were talking about whether god exists.

Sure, here it is, look.

>>Put that back! Nobody says god is your dick.

So my girlfriend is nobody?

>>No, no, she's somebody, but she doesn't mean it the way we're using it.

I think it's not up to you to tell her what she means.

>>Whoa, no disrespect, it's just that the rest of the world means something different.

Oh, we're voting? The rest of the world's opinions count but hers doesn't?

>>Well, if she means that literally, she just doesn't understand what the word means.

Oh, now you're calling her stupid.

[the debate ends with calls to 911] 

If you don't like my dick, you can substitute the universe or Earth. If that's too uncomfortable, Mother Nature, or Einstein's 'orderly harmony of what exists'. There isn't any argument over whether it exists, only over what to call it. You'll look pretty stupid trying to convince the North Koreans that Kim-Il-Jong doesn't exist, or Stephen Hawking's god:

“One could define God as the embodiment of the laws of nature.”

Or as my dick, but the laws of nature exist, too. Since you can't keep insisting they don't, you'll have to change your argument and tell Hawking he can't say that. But who made you god?

Arguments over whether gods exist are really just arguments over what to call shit, and you'd see that, if you were smart, like Richard Dawkins:

“In this sense, I too am religious. But I prefer not to call myself religious” and “I would have preferred it if physicists such as Einstein, Hawking and others would refrain from using the word God” 

That's what you say if you're smart, but 'these people' are just like the god-bots.  

Searching for Truth

Dissolving in Awe

All that ooohhing and awe-ing and celebrating lately slips into some pretty poetic language. I almost wrote 'religious', but it's not religious, is it?

Religious
1 : having to do with religion

Well, duh...

Religion
1 : worship of god or the supernatural

Worship? What's this worship shit? I was watching the eclipse, not sacrificing a goat to it. Too cold to dance around naked in the moonlight, too.

worship
1 : act of expressing reverence, respect, or admiration for an object of esteem 

Oh. Well,  ok then. I guess so.

supernatural
1 : beyond the visible observable universe;

LMAO. If it wasn't observable I'd hardly go out in the cold at 3 am to observe it, now would I? Fail.

Sooo, according to the dictionary, religion = worship of the supernatural

[worship] of [the supernatural]

= [expressing reverence, respect, or admiration for ] of [that which is beyond the observable universe]

Sooo, what I did in that other post was worship (express reverence etc), but not religious (its object was beyond observable).

BUT: worship is a form of religious practice. So, my non-religious worship is religious, wtf?!?

Go back. It said “god or the supernatural”, check it out

God
1: the supreme or ultimate reality:

as in bla bla examples, old man in the sky, woo woo wonder woman, bla bla

3 : a person or thing of supreme value

mmm

4 : a powerful ruler

that works in North Korea

Woot! Their examples suck but I'm down with that Supreme Ultimate reality. It'd be Tai Chi in Chinese. I tell students that, 'cause they wonder which teacher to believe; should you stand upright, so your lumbar spine is concave, or tuck your hips under so it's convex? Here's an experiment.

Put your hand on the wall, hunker down and press on it as hard as you can; push your hips forward like you were getting head. Ok, right? Now keep pressing and tilt your hips backward: starts to hurt, doesn't it? Now who's telling you ur doing it rong? Me? Mister Miyagi? No, fuck all those guys, that's nature itself telling you. (If they're bible thumpers I go right ahead and say god) See? Same old Supreme Ultimate up there eclipsing the moon as it is talking to your hips.

So ok then, “God” is Tai Chi, the supreme ultimate reality. Nothing supernatural about it. We're good:
religion = [worship] of [god]

= [expressing reverence for ] of [Tai Chi / supreme ultimate reality]

Shorter, = revering the tai chi

So in this post, when I was watching the eclipse and feeling transported by an inexpressible joy which goes beyond the everyday, when the sense of self seems to dissolve in an ecstasy of awe, I was worshiping god. Religiously! Maybe even praying?

Pray : to address God with adoration ... or thanksgiving

Adore: : to regard with loving admiration and devotion

Address : to direct the efforts or attention of (oneself)

IOW, = to [direct attention to] [the Tai Chi] with [admiration and devotion ] or [thanks]. Yup. I was praying.

Well, fuck me, I was praying and worshipping god. Don't tell nobody, mmkay?

I didn't get one of these for Christmas

I'm crushed, absolutely crushed. What'll I do now, without my very own personal GODJESUS to guide me in making major life decisions?

From Salaryman's video:

So, what is this thing you might ask? Well, it's a fortune telling robot named "God-Jesus" that carries a large plastic cross in his hand and passes judgement on your questions. You ask God-Jesus a "Yes or No" question, clap your hands and God-Jesus gets to work answering your question. After a bow (it's made in Japan after all and even God-Jesus has some basic courtesy) it rolls forward, bows once again and then starts contemplating the question by flashing it's red eyes. After a few moments of thinking it will deliver it's judgement which can be one of four, strong nodding indicating "Yes, surely", weaker nodding indicating "probably, yes", slight shaking of the head indicating "probably, no" or heavy shaking of the head indicating "No, never". Bowing again, then rolling back to its initial position and giving one final bow before resting.

For some reason (i can't imagine why) they don't make these anymore.  Guess I'll just have to rely on the old Ouija board

White Noise Christmas

Christians celebrate the birth of Christ, Simon Singh prefers a different birthday. He quotes Marcus Chown, author of "The Magic Furnace,"

"In order that we might live, stars in their billions, tens of billions, hundreds of billions even, have died. The iron in our blood, the calcium in our bones, the oxygen that fills our lungs each time we take a breath -- all were cooked in the furnaces of the stars which expired long before the Earth was born."

A star collapsing, to make you.

The Big Bang only produced hydrogen and helium, all the heavier elements came later, formed in the wombs of stars now long dead. Simon suggests that

Because we are made from the debris of nuclear reactions that took place in exploding stars, the romantics among you might like to think of yourselves as being composed of stardust. On the other hand, cynics might prefer to think of yourselves as nuclear waste.

I'll go with the stardust.

The third, and even sturdier, pillar to support the Big Bang model is the afterglow that should have followed a creation event, which can still be seen today. 
 
Wow: birth, wombs, and now we're basking in the afterglow; should children hear this?
It's in danger of becoming downright poetic. He goes on to say that we can get an analog radio, set it between stations and listen to it picking up microwaves from that afterglow.

“you can simply close your eyes and listen to the sound of the universe. You are experiencing the echo of the Big Bang, a relic of creation, the most ancient fossil in the universe.”

13 billion years later, that is some refractory period!    Worth celebrating, I'd say.

Happy Holidays

Quvianaq

For those of you who are signing-impaired, that's ASL for Quviasugitsi quviasungnami*, which is "Merry Christmas" in English.  

Away in a Ford Ranger

Away in a Ranger,
No home and no bed
The little boy Jesus
lays down his sweet head

The lights in the city
look down where he lay
The little boy Jesus
under the freeway

The sirens have brought
the poor baby awake
to find law enforcement
has make a mistake

Homeland Security
came by here today
His mama they dragged off
for corporate pay

Ms Suarez was pleading
her baby to take
But little boy Jesus
was left in their wake

We let little Jesus
come to our country
to pick all our lettuce
and do our laundry

If he's lucky, Jesus,
we might let him stay
to work in the shadows
for little or no pay

Why can't all the children
be given good care
with love and compassion
and treated more fair

Where's the Birth Certificate?

World Net Daily Uninvited Commentary. 
---mocking Joseph Farah


Incredibly, we are just one day away from celebrating the Birth of The Messiah and millions of Americans still have eligibility questions that have never been addressed by Jesus Christ and his entourage. All that Christians would have to do to put this issue to rest is to release his complete birth certificate, revealing where he was born and who were his parents.

It seems a simple thing. Personally, I doubt God would be so stupid as to offer an ineligible candidate for The  Savior Of All Mankind, so it would seem Jesus is simply thumbing his nose at the concerns of millions of people. After all, he makes it clear the Bible doesn't mean what it says anyway. It's all a matter of opinion.


Until now, no one in the Jesus camp would even comment on the controversy surrounding his complete birth certificate, which has never been released publicly. I only managed to get one official Jesus representative to proclaim—anonymously—that efforts by atheists to secure the birth certificate are "pure garbage."
Jesus' record of non-cooperation and secrecy has now resulted in conspiracy theories that will plague him throughout his ministry if he doesn't address them now with complete transparency. Do I expect him to do so? No, I don't.

He not only thinks our efforts are "garbage," that's also what he thinks of the people who truly believe the Bible means what it says and those who believe there ought to be some legal authority determining Jesus' eligibility for the office of Savior.

Count me among those who really want to see that birth certificate now.

Imagine the level of secrecy we can expect from a Jesus administration that guards his birth certificate with such tenacity.

I'm calling on Jesus Christ today to release the entire birth certificate. And just so there is no mistake about what I am calling for, I want the part of the birth certificate that shows which hospital he was born in and who his parents really were. That is the only way to establish if he is truly born of a virgin. Further, I am asking as a blogger and citizen;  if there is any government agency or government official anywhere on the planet who has inspected the birth certificate and can provide those details to the people, the time to do so is now.


I'm also calling on all my colleagues, from coast to coast and around the world, not to let this matter drop. Apparently it is a point of real sensitivity with Jesus people. Good. Let's rub it in. Let's demand they produce the birth certificate at every turn – on every blog, in every interview, at every attempt to proselytize.

Could anything be more important than enforcing the requirements of their own Bible?

This is hardly a laughing matter. The longer this soap opera drags on, the more suspicions it will raise – the less credibility their religions will have, the more many people will believe the whole idea of organized religion is rigged.

Whom does that benefit?
You can easily imagine.

What possible motivation could Jesus have for not producing this simple, innocuous document that every citizen must produce to get a passport, driver's license or Social Security card?

Are you curious?

So am I.

Where's the birth certificate, Jesus?

the Good Word

The bloggosphere is all a-twitter over this new tool that shows you how often a particular word has been used, so somebody has to ask the obvious question.   Puerile is my middle name, so I'll step up to the plate. Here is a chart of how much people use the word "fuck".

Looks like my dad was right, the world went to hell in a handbasket starting in about the 1960's, but wait, this doesn't look right.  The records go back five hundred years, so ...

There, see?  Makes you wonder what was up in 1585, but it puts things in perspective. We don't do fuck compared to those fuckers three hundred years ago. We'll  need to do some serious fucking writing to catch the fuck up.  

More Mythmas Stories

Go here. Read. Laugh.

An Interview With the Nativity Innkeeper

the Reason for the Season—tonight!

This doesn't happen often, it's been five hundred years since the last time, but if you go out at 2:00 a.m. you'll get to watch a total eclipse of the moon, on the night of Winter Solstice.

From now on the nights will be shorter, the days longer, and that's something to celebrate. Always has been, ever since

Oog: Sun not die. Come back now.
Boog: How know?
Loog: Oog always know. Him wise. Talk to sun.
Boog: Oooohhh. Awe.
Loog: Is right. Must kiss Oog ass. 

TAH DAH! RELIGION IS BORN!

way before that new-fangled cult came along to declare war on the holiday, rename it and try to pretend it was some guy's birthday. “Reason for the season”, my arse.

Go out in the yard at 2 a.m. tonight and you'll see the real reason at work. Not only that, but with the eclipse making it so dark you might be able to see the Ursid Meteor shower, which usually is drowned out by moonlight.

So go out there and let yourself feel transported by an inexpressible joy which goes beyond the everyday, when the sense of self seems to dissolve in an ecstasy of awe. Or pray even, whatever.

Info ...  more, from NASA

a Christmas Song

hat tip to the always wonderful Sabina

Jesus, who's your daddy?

Really, reading the Story of Jesus^TM over and over is just boring. Confession time! I've been neglecting my bible lately. Will I have to do penance? Extra years in purgatory?

Who knows, but I have learned some things, mostly that this is a clusterfuck, where everything is controversial. I mean everything; if it's biblical it's controversial—it's controviblical!

The begats in Luke 3:23-28 inspired a poem but I was all ho hum that again until I thought, “I bet they don't match.” Sure enough, the ancestors in Luke aren't the same as the ones in Matthew. It's controviblical, woot! 

It's also complete cowshit, a genealogy that gives only the fathers. DNA testing back then? King Solomon's in there, not one of his 700 wives getting any on the side? Color me skeptical [it's greenish purple].

* The rug rats were Jimmy, Joe, Jude, and Simon.  Also, a sister named Salome, according to the Orthodox church, but that got too creepy to follow up. Mary was like 15, and Joseph was 70?  Ick.

The Quartz Hill School of Theology** talks smack about the usual explanations, and then lulz

“ … such complicated methods of figuring out the relationship between the two genealogies are unnecessary. An extremely simple explanation is readily available,”

I'd summarize this E.S.E. if I could figure it out. Something about Mary's line, one of them means mothers when Luke says 'son of' and Matt says 'father of', it's the father of the mother, but it skips some of the mothers. For sure, it's a muther.

**I was gonna poke fun at them too, but when I saw this

“... what is meant by the word "literal." I do not believe that it means, when confronted by the phrase "he will sit on the right hand of the father" that we should expect to see the father's hand under his butt.”

I let them off the hook. 'Cause it's funny. To me. It's 5 a. m.

the Bible before Solstice

'Twas around winter solstice, alone in the house


I was reading the Bible, as quiet as a mouse.


The stories were thrown in the book without care;


contradictions abounded, mistakes everywhere.


I could not understand, or believe what it said,


its tall tales of people come back from the dead;


original sin, which was such a bum rap,


blood sacrifice, curses, and other such crap.


When deep down inside I knew something's the matter


I sprang to the web to make sense of such chatter.


Away to the Google I flew like a flash,


to try and make out heads or tails of this trash.


The search engine gave me back millions of hits;


molesters, and con men, and other such shits.


When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,


but hundreds of gods from the earliest year.


With a little old edit, the story of Horus


I knew in a moment it must be the sou-rce.


More numerous than seagulls, gods and goddesses came,


and I whistled, and marveled, and called out their name;


Osiris! Adonis! Dionysus! Mithra!


There's Attis and Ishtar! And Baldr and Krishna!


To the land of the dead! Down to hell they all went,


to the underworld, after their lives were all spent.


Like fertility symbols these gods they all die,


and then get resurrected, back up in the sky.


So back up to heaven these deities flew,


to start new religions, and Jesus did too.


Right there in the gospels, just like you would guess,


a brand new Messiah turned up in this mess.


As I willingly tried to suspend disbelief


from the pages this Jesus guy came like a thief.


He was beat all to shit, from his head to his foot,


and put onto a cross just like Horus was put;


His birth in a manger, and marked by a star,


that's a detail he stole from the Goddess Ishtar.


His magic trick changing his water to wine,


was a ripoff of Bacchus who used to brew 'shine.


He claims to have brought people back from the dead,


that's just like the other gods—what they all said.


And in some of his stories he acts like a cad:


“Hate your mother and father! Don't bury your dad!”


Sends his guys to steal donkeys, and kills farmer's pigs,


and cusses a tree out for not giving figs.


He's a crazy old preacher, who just seems kind of silly


though I had to admit that his book was a dilly,


that tried hard to steal those old stories by stealth,


and I laughed when I read it, in spite of myself.


A shift of my eyes and a twist of my head,


to the headlines, told me I had nothing to dread:


all the Pope's rules have been shown not to work,


evangelicals picket, and act like a jerk;


they cry “war on Christmas” and make silly fusses,


when we put up billboards, or signs on our buses.


But to all the fanatics I give this epistle,


away from your church people fly like a missile,


and I have to exclaim, on this solsticey night,


that millions of us, without gods, are alright.

Begatterwocky

(because I'm up to Luke 3)

`Twas boring, and the slimy tome
Did gyrate and shimmer in my sight;
all measly was its boring poem,
And the tone wrong outright.

"Beware the Begats, by God!
The names will bore, the clause not match!
A pair gave birth with holy rod
and spurious virgin snatch.

He took his gospel text in hand:
Long time to stay awake he sought --
So bored he by redundancy,
And grammar not so hot.

And, as the ancient words he lipped,
The Begat, a noun archaic,
Came whiffling from the manuscript,
And made his eyeballs ache!

One, two! Three, Four! And more and more
The gospel text got snickered at!
He skipped ahead, left it unread
and ne'er regretted that.

"And, has thou read all the Begats?
No damns or drats, and done so soon!
Jaysus to ya! Halla! Looya!'
He chortled like a loon.

`Twas boring, and the slimy tome
Did gyrate and shimmer in my sight;
Atrocious were its boring poems,
I threw the tome out right.

(with apologies to Lewis Carroll)

How come

… when you join the military you agree to follow their rules, promise not to release classified documents and not have gay sex, 

and when it comes to your promise about gay sex, they don't want to know, they want you to sneak around behind their backs and lie about it, 

but with your promise about classified documents, they act completely different?

link

Just read this.

War Wounds

How come

Christains get upset about the F-word when their commandments only say not to misuse the Lord's name?

Is that his middle name or something?

I mean, Jesus Fuck N. Christ.

What's the N for?

When the Mormons Settled America

A sane person might not know this, but Mormons say the lost tribes of Israel came to America and basically reproduced all the Old Testament, you know, stone cities, steel weapons, all that litter archeologists find everywhere except here. Insane person Screaming Nephite**says

I have chatted with many anti-Mormons over the years, I find it a bit amusing how every single one of them magically turns into an expert on Pre-Columbian cultures the moment the subject of the Book of Mormon comes up. Seriously, without using Google, how many of you anti-Mormons know the difference between the Olmecs and the Mayas?

Well, me. I don't claim to be an expert on Pre-Colombian cultures, only on their writing systems, but …. oh, ho, looky what we have here.

"The Zapotecs [600 BC - 800 AD] were the first Mesoamerican people to use writing in the true sense of the term and to perfect the computation of time and calendrical cycles."

[and Screaming's footnote] Lehi landed in 600 BC

See? See? Joey Smith's ancestors loaded two of every clean wife and seven of the slutty kind on board their boats and sailed all the way around to the west coast of America bringing writing and numbers and calendars and Monte Alban. Maybe even coffee and chocolate.

After beaching their ships high up on the Mexican Plateau, they gave up their decimal numbers for a base twenty/sub-base five system, and gave up their 22-letter Alphabet in favor of hundreds of complicated pictorial heiroglyphs that stood for everything from individual words to syllables to sounds to meanings. Why wouldn't they? They even stopped writing right to left and started zigzagging down from the top left corner. It's more righteous, see.

You can hardly tell the difference, can you? 

On the other hand, we have good examples of Mesoamerican writing from before 600 B.C., so maybe the Mormons are full of shit.

**update: link is dead, he took his blog down. Guess I pissed him off.

Role Models

This is a REALLY GOOD IDEA.   Harriet J at Fugitivus has a 'list' called "Stuff What Boys Can Do".  It's a collection of personal anecdotes in which men have been allies against misogyny.  I'd love to see it as a Wiki kind of thing for people to add to. She says=

This list is for men that want to help but don’t know what to do. It is also for anybody who wants to share a story of something good that they saw.

There's a LOT of stuff there, so it's great reading for when your faith in humanity needs an IV.  Some will make you choke up, here are a couple that are funny.

Silvia:

I know some nice men. I have an old friend who is rather asocial: he is quite shy and feels it necessary to prove his masculinity around other men, and does so by almost becoming a parody of macho attitudes. I like him a lot, have worked with him very fruitfully, and put up with his shit because I know that underneath he is a decent fella. He’s married to a woman called Mary.

One day he was out with two of my male friends. They’re men who respect women as colleagues and equals. My first friend, let’s call him M, was ogling every single woman they passed in the street: cor, get a load of those tits! wouldn’t you like a bit of that! she’s stacked! and so on and on and on. My other two friends didn’t respond, but became more and more embarrassed and annoyed that their obvious unenthusiasm wasn’t reaching him. They reached the pub and bought a drink. M was still making crass observations about the breasts of woman patrons.

Finally one of my friends, who’d had more than enough, leant over the table and asked pleasantly: “And what are Mary’s breasts like, M?” For a moment it looked as if M was going to punch him; then he turned bright red and muttered, they’re ok. Finally it got through to him that he’d been talking about real people. And he shut up. According to my friends, he hasn’t made comments like that since. At least, around them.

Geek Girls Rule:

...we had one bouncer, B, who went sort of above and beyond. B was 6′7″ and a good 290 lbs, easily. He had multiple facial piercings and tattoos, a beard and a network of scars on his face from getting hit with a beer stein.

You all know that guy who starts hitting on you by invading your personal space, and keeps getting closer if you say no, all the while asking you “why not?” B used to watch for these guys, and if he saw them doing that to girls, he would walk up to the bar and do that to the guy in question. It usually took less than a minute for the guy in question to start freaking out. At which point B would say, “Yeah, well guess how you made that girl feel.”

We rarely had repeat offenders.

LOL! It's surprising how many of these are just the simplest little things, but leave a huge impact. Go and read the rest. 

How about it, readers, you have any experiences of your own to add?

How come

right wingers constantly say shit like this,

“When you take money (i.e. steal) from hard-working people in order to give that money to bums, it is not only morally wrong, but it disincentivizes the hard workers and enables the bums!”

"Redistribution of Income" they call it.  =Evil.  and then say shit like this,

"It raises taxes, it raises the death tax. I don't think we needed to negotiate that aspect of this thing away."

A tax on inherited money, WTF? Do they think dead people pay taxes? Do they think we need more Paris Hiltons?  I don't get it.

OMG, Nooo, Noooo...!!

It's not just Kentucky.  

There's already one in Los Angeles.

There's one in the Netherlands, that sits on a barge so it won't sink.

There's one in Hong Kong. 

For added creepiness, the Chinese one has an actual  freak show in it.

Worst of all, to my everlasting shame there's now an ark themed restaurant polluting my home state of Oregon. 
Think 'polluting' is too strong a word? Get a load of their ad. 

“Noah saved the animals so places like the Wildlife Safari could show live animals.”

Even that cute bus can't make up for a line like that. So much for all my happy memories of visiting there. Thanks a lot, jerks. 

Gay ants attack Jesus!

It seems the Smithsonian has had an art exhibit that pays paid tribute to AIDS victims, and it looks looked pretty moving. Nobody else noticed, because they were too namby-pamby busy sympathizing with the suffering victims, but Bill “Beavis” Donohue of Catlick Leak noticed, it's a major offensive in the War on Christians^TM.  

He wouldn't miss a chance to be outraged, wave his dick around, and complain to Congress as soon as he noticed a picture of Jesus. Hate speech, he called it. You want hate speech, Beavis? Got some right here for you,

'The creator of this "masterpiece" video is dead of AIDS. But he did not die without blaming society for his self-destructive behavior.'

That disgusting rant goes on for a whole paragraph, What's that you say, Beavis? I'm quoting YOU? Oh, my mistake.


Then there's Jack Kingston (R-Insurance Co's), who has the vapors because the Smithsonian is blowing tax payer conditioned air on smutty pictures.

Elene Degeneres holding her breasts! How dare woman touch her own body? Doesn't she know that those shameful mounds of enticing flesh were put there for a husband's use?  
 
Ants on Jesus! How dare those AIDS victims want sympathy just for dying horrible deaths? 
 
I just don't know what the world's coming to.

By Order of the Queen

The Queen of the Entire Freaking Planet says,

a kid can have any damn kind of water bottle she wants, so lay off.

The advice came from Padme Amidala Skywalker, Galactic Senator and Queen of the Planet Naboo, speaking by way of actress Catherine Taber. When she heard little seven year old Katie Goldman was being bullied into trading her Star Wars stuff for a bunch of pink crap, she

"I immediately had to say something," Taber said. "The whole theme of the 'Star Wars' universe is an anti-bullying theme. It's good versus evil, standing side by side with your friends, doing what's right. One of the most important things to stopping bullies in their tracks is to empower kids to stand up for themselves."

Taber found Katie's mom's blog, sent it to everyone she knew, and left a comment she hoped would help.

"I am [the] actress who has the great honor of being Padme Amidala on 'Star Wars: the Clone Wars!' I just wanted to tell Katie that she is in VERY good company being a female Star Wars fans," Taber wrote. "I know that Padme would tell you to be proud of who YOU are and know that you are not ALONE!

"THE FORCE is with you Katie!"

Yay! Mad props to Catherine Taber, and to everyone involved in this mushy episode.  And to little geek kids everywhere.  

A Savior is Born?

Dog Sledding

I didn't even know dogs did this. They look so happy.

from Dependable Renegade

Jesus is Born

the Circle of war

Riding to class with my roommate in the Best Car That Has Ever Been Built**, we got behind a guy with license plates that said “Survivor—Bataan Death March” Since my roommate was an exchange student from Tokyo, I got pretty uncomfortable. Finally I blurted out something, he gave me a bland look and said “Never heard of it”. Came to find out that was typical: none of my Japanese friends knew what happened in WWII, they were taught that Japan was forced to defend themselves against Western countries taking their oil and stuff. Let's just say that's not accurate.

**Volkswagen: Baja Bug

OTOH ...

At the turn of the century 20,000 Japanese troops were part of a Western Alliance that ended the Boxer Rebellion and took over Beijing. Troops from the US and six other Western nations did a Rape of Nanking performance, murdering, raping and stealing everything in sight. The Japanese soldiers, though, were paragons of virtue, universally praised for their discipline and exemplary behavior, even giving sanctuary and protection to fleeing victims.  They were horrified by the actions of their Western allies.

-----

That was in 1900. The Bataan Death March was in 1942. In just one generation, during my father's lifetime, the Imperial Japanese Army went from being the best Band of Brothers possible, to being worse scum than the Nazis. Racism can't explain that. The atrocities of WWII were not due to some inherent flaw, and people who say it can't happen here are simply not paying attention. What happened there?  What else---Religion.

Don't ever forget. And don't do it again. 

It's Pearl Harbor Day.

Disaster At The Creationist Theme Park

The Creationist Theme Park inspired a good idea, I think, in me, but for the awesome Digital Cuttlefish, well, read for yourself.

Our day at the park
Having fun on the ark
Will begin as we stroll up the ramp
With the mammals and dino’s
And strange hellifino’s
And all of it, gaudy and camp

There are creatures in twos
Like the grandest of zoos
Some in cages for people to see
Some are plastic, of course,
Like the odd “Jesus horse”
You can ride on (just children!) for free

With the tour guide explaining
It soon will start raining—
It’s best that we get through the doors
And with thunder and lightning
More piped-in than frightening
The skies open up, and it pours

It isn’t surprising
The water starts rising
With rivers obscuring the ground
We’re on board! We’re the winners!
We laugh at the sinners
Outside, who are there to be drowned.

Some electrical junction
Is bound to malfunction;
The waters continue to rise—
Now it’s panic and screaming
(Please tell me we’re dreaming!)
On board, we can hear all the cries

Now the water is rushing,
The pipes are still gushing,
We realize, we’re really afloat!
Like the Genesis story
We share in the glory
And ride in the biblical boat

Though it’s ill-built and creaky,
Substantially leaky,
We ought to be fine for a while
And although we’re all stuck
We rejoice in our luck
And we look at each other and smile.

Soon the still-rising tides
Means the screaming subsides
From the folks who did not get on board
And we know that God willed
That these people be killed
So we all praise the works of Our Lord

As the day turns to night
With no rescue in sight
Our exhaustion will drive us to sleep
Though the children are wary
Cos darkness is scary
And the lions are eating the sheep

So we all sleep in shifts
As our giant bed drifts
And there’s still not a star in the sky
Soon the sun will arrive
And we’re mostly alive
And if not, then God wants us to die.

At the whim of the weather
We huddle together
As carnivores roam through the decks
And we learned within hours
The stench overpowers—
Of feces, of death, and of sex

When the rain finally ceases
We pick up the pieces
And head to the top deck, for sun,
Where the clean-smelling breezes
Sweep by (thank you Jesus!)
And we kneel down and pray, every one!

As we float, we survey
The remains of the day
From our vantage above, on the ark
Where our neighbors and friends
Met their untimely ends
With the visitors there at the park

And we bow heads, and praise
God’s mysterious ways—
Our friends’ bodies have now begun bloating
And as plump as you please
They rise up through the seas
All disfigured and blue, they are floating

All the husbands and wives,
Little children whose lives
Were destroyed by their callous Creator
While we’re safe on the ark
Cos we chose to embark
A bit sooner, and not a bit later

There was water to drink
But it’s starting to stink
And starvation’s its own form of hell
But the hunger and thirst
Isn’t even the worst—
More than that, is the horrible smell

The miasma which flows
Though you cover your nose
Overwhelms you, and just never ends
And the worst of it all
This olfactory pall
Is the smell of our neighbors and friends

We float day after day
As around us, decay
And disease take a toll on our minds;
And our bodies grow weak
As around us, unspeak-
able horrors are all that one finds

In the decks down below
Where we never dare go
There is carnage like never before;
Most the mammals are gone
But the beetles live on
As they feast on the filth and the gore

There are maggots and flies
Which is no great surprise
In the dung and the foul, rancid meat
But up top, it is grim
Cos the pickings are slim
And there’s nothing for humans to eat

If we haven’t quite died
When the waters subside
We’ll praise God, and we won’t think to sue
Sure, it’s horribly cruel
But we learned, at home school
That what’s right is what Yahweh would do

the God of Electricity

Way long time ago, even before there was TV, cavemen looked up at the sky at lightning, and thunder, and would have peed their pants except they didn't have pants yet, but they were scared, and they wondered what caused it. No one knew, so they all just looked at each other. Some people said, “there must be big invisible dudes up there making that happen”, and everybody laughed at them and said, “Well, that's really stupid.” But nobody knew; maybe it wasn't.

Then along came a jerk who somehow convinced everybody he did know, and they all followed him when he said “It is a “god” with a mighty forge, and the sparks from his hammer are the lightning”, until some other guy came along to kick his ass, and say “It's a “god” driving a fiery chariot”, and they all followed him for a while. As time went on, the descriptions of what this “god” thing was got stupider and stupider, but everybody all agreed that the thing that caused lightning, whatever it was, was a “god”. A lot of people died arguing over the details of what that god was like.

After a few thousand years of this, somebody got the idea to actually test god, the cause of lightning, and when they did they found out that the god of lightning wasn't a fiery chariot or a heavenly forge or a the cigarette butts of invisible critters at all, it was positive and negative charges on …. oh, whatever, the details are all technical and boring. Thing is, this was a new description of “god” that had never been proposed before.

Nothing new there, but it was one that couldn't be dismissed by killing the guys who proposed it—that was new. The “electromagnetism” description of the god of lightning held up no matter how many people you burned at the stake, plus you got electric lights, so the priestly caste had to come up with a new strategy to hold on to all the loot they'd conned out of the peasants over the centuries.

They did it by separating things into natural and supernatural. Up till then you could look at lightning and say “OMG, it's an ineffably beautiful expression of the immutable laws of nature at work that fills me with humility, awe and gratitude and makes me want to express my overwhelming feelings in praise and glorification”. After that you could only say “Meh, it's just a natural phenomena, electric charges, no big deal.”

They'd changed the rules.

For hundreds of thousands of years we'd wondered what was up there causing lightning, that we were calling god, and when we finally found out we should have been shouting it from the rooftops “Yay. We finally figured out what god is!”

Instead of being honest about it, though, they changed the definition. “God” was no longer the whatever-it-was that caused lightning, all of a sudden it was some convoluted phantasm that didn't make any sense unless you were one of the priests, and boy would they charge you to explain it.

Natural is just another word for real, so anything that was real, all of a sudden they had to disrespect it. You could only use respectful language, full of awe and reverence, when you talked about their new “super”-natural that they called sacred. Everything else was just boring, even evil, natural stuff that they called profane. It was wrong, they said, to use sacred language to talk about the profane natural world.

This worked for a couple thousand years, but it's getting to where nobody buys it anymore. As we watch their sad little “super”-natural god retreat into the gaps, we know too much about how ineffably beautiful, complex and awesome the natural gods are, and how worthy of our reverence, just as we thought all along, back in those caves, about the god of electricity.

One Tough Cookie

Hell was frozen over so I went looking at sports news, and I found this

http://www.sportsgrid.com/media/high-school-runner-crawls-across-finish-line-for-coach-video/

Can't embed it, and there's an ad, so you'll have to go look at porn or something for 28 seconds, but then it shows the story of a runner CRAWLING across the finish line; for the coach, who has Lou Gehring's Disease. That's a hardcore, good role model.

Where's Jesus?

Stolen from a christian site, which may explain the punctuation. Why are there clouds in the ocean? I have no idea.

According to Luke (2:41-48) Jesus had really bad parents. Get this, the kid's twelve years old, they go to a festival, and when they go home they FORGET THEIR KID! Not just a for a few minutes, either, they forgot him for the whole damn day.

“Where's Jesus?”

“I don't know, I thought you had him”

“Have you found Jesus?”

“No, I'm still searching for Jesus”

“Jesus Christ! Where is that kid?”

[you'll be amazed where Jesus is; click on that picture up there]

So they spend another day going all the way back where they came from, (ain't cell phones grand?). They don't find him, and that night Mary originates the famous bumper sticker “No Jesus, no piece.” They spend two more whole days looking for him, and then find him

2:46 … in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers.

Damn, what a relief! The kid's ok. After three days I'd be so worried, and then on top of that he's all Mr Child Genius, strutting his stuff, I'd be so proud of him, I'd be all over him, “Oh Jesus, we're so sorry, we're so proud of you, so happy to see you're ok, so glad you're all right, we were so worried, ...” it'd be sickening.

Is that how M&J reacted? Fuck no.

2:48 When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.”

WTF? You treated Us?  That's right, blame the kid. It's his fault you forgot about him for a whole day, the little bastard, making you all anxious and shit. Got your pity suit on, we're supposed to feel sorry for you for abandoning your kid. Not even a word of praise for a twelve year old holding his own with the experts, either. Mary and Joseph, you suck.

Doesn't say they beat the shit out him, but they probably did. With parents like that it's no wonder he's got lost years, who'd wanna remember them? He most likely spent his whole childhood trying to please them and never could, and that's where he got his martyr complex, and ended up nailed to a cross.

Thanks, Mum and Dad, way to go.

We need follow-through

A warning to all, just so you don't wreck your car driving around Nashville, some lunatics with too much money and not enough sense have actually put up 40 billboards saying that the Rapture's a-coming in six months, it is. 

My Goddess powers tell me that the flake won't show up--again, he never does. Face it rapture people, you've been stroking the guy for 2000 years and he hasn't come yet: he's not gonna come. 

We should prepare for this. On the 22nd, those billboards will need replaced. What could go on the new ones?

"Got Jesus?"

"Nyah, nyah, nyah. Told ya he wouldn't show".

"Where's Jesus?" (with a Waldo-esque graphic)

"Christ, you missed your appointment again."  (with a list of dates)

"Jesus. Comes once, leaves, never calls." 

Feel free to add suggestions.

Atheist Theme Park

You know what would make a kick-ass theme park? Those guys in Kentucky are doing it wrong; too serious, and too narrow minded. No sense limiting your park to just one silly myth, you should include all of them. Think of the possibilities: not just the Gilgamesh Ark, you could have four armed elephants, feathered serpents, flying donkeys ... 

Think of all the cool rides. Get some pink hair dye, ponies, pointy hats—presto, pink unicorn rides. Not sure how you'd make them invisible, but wev. Ride the Flying Spaghetti Monster and get touched by His Noodly Appendage, see Cthulhu lying 'dead but dreaming' in The Underworld. Ride  Charon's Ferry across the River Styx to get there, of course. Ride on Quetzalcoatl's raft of snakes.

The streetlights could be burning bushes, have actors run around dressed as dog-headed Thoth, crocodile headed Sobek, all those Egyptian characters, Coyote the Trickster—it'd be better than Mickey and Goofy. Bring in the animatronics guys—they could build some BITCHIN gods. Remember Cerebus, the two headed dog in the Harry Potter movie? Medusa? Indra, with the thousand eyes? (or vaginas; might have to put him in the Adult Section, along with that Noodly Appendage act) How about Vajrayogini, with a severed head, spouting fountains of blood? Zombies got nuthin on that babe. Far as that goes, you get zombies, they're part of Voodoo.

Imagine the food court! The Last Supper, no scratch that, what would they serve? Ewww. But those old pagans were always lighting fires and having feasts, eating ambrosia, drinking nepenthe. Dionysis, the god of wine? Corn Woman, who produces streams of corn or beans from her body? Ukemochi poured a different dish out of her mouth for each direction she was facing. Hainuwele was born out of a coconut and shits golden jewelry.

We should totes build this.

Today's News

December 1, 2010
ALL 42 SENATE REPUBLICANS ANNOUNCE HOSTAGE PLAN....

Meanwhile in other news,

That's a quote from Osama Bin Laden, or some other asshole. And in fighting our ongoing War^TM,

South African Video

This was on Huffpo. To test people's responses, these guys played drums in an apartment complex, compared to a loud recording of a woman getting beat up. Pretty effective ad, I thought.

This is in South Africa, which is a hellhole, but I wonder if it would play out any differently here.

Born in Two Places

I was having trouble with Luke's book, because this Jesus dude was born in two different places. Nazareth, which didn't exist at the time, and Bethlehem.

Matt2:5 “Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea”
Matt 2:23 born in Nazareth
Luke 2:4-7 born in Bethlehem
John 7:41-42 not from Bethlehem
Mark 6—wherever his hometown was, he didn't get no love there, and anyhow he's J of Nazareth, not J the Bethleheme.

There's another town called bethlehem in Galilee, about five miles from Nazareth, but bottom line, nobody knows. It's controversial, but he sure as hell wasn't born in both of them, biblical literalists.

This news item, via Daylight Atheism, cleared it up. William Dembski's in hot water, even though he's “a first order star in the intelligent design firmament.” He wrote The End of Christianity, where he noticed the universe is billions of years old, and fantasized that

“God brought death, decay and natural disasters to earth long before Adam and Eve sinned. That natural evil, he said, was a retroactive punishment for their disobedience … ”

Wait … what? His fantasies are about death, decay and natural disasters: mine run more towards Antonio Banderas and Angelina Jolie, but whatever, Original Sin lubed up a Delorean, entered it, rode it to the Big Bang … oh shit, i've lost my train of thought here ….


[ cold shower ]



The beef wasn't that he waterboards logic and leaves it for dead in a dumpster, it was that he “let scientific commitments trump the most natural reading of the Bible”. One of his co-workers at Hillbilly U. (officially, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) mentioned it in a book review, so the Pres

“convened a meeting with Dembski and several high-ranking administrators at the seminary. At that meeting, Dembski was quick to admit that he was wrong about the flood”

The dean released a paper that included this groveling analingus from Dumbski:

“In a brief section on Genesis 4–11, I weigh in on the Flood, raising questions about its universality, without adequate study or reflection on my part,” “Before I write on this topic again, I have much exegetical, historical, and theological work to do. In any case, not only Genesis 6–9 but also Jesus in Matthew 24 and Peter in Second Peter seem clearly to teach that the Flood was universal.”

[ I totally lost it here when my brain conjured up pictures of Peter in Second Peter. Wouldn't that entail a Third Peter, and would second Peter have his Peter in First Peter? Theology is so hard! Also, “The Flood was universal”---ROFLMFAO] Wait, wait, there's more!

“As a biblical inerrantist, I believe that what the Bible teaches is true and bow to the text, including its teaching about the Flood and its universality.” [snicker]

Ok, why would he change his opinion just like that? President Paige Patterson, [nickname PeePee] said

“Had I had any inkling that Dr. Dembski was actually denying the absolute trustworthiness of the Bible, then that would have, of course, ended his relationship with the school”

Ah, sooo, Grasshopper, it only requires a proper reading of John 1:1-4

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was PeePee, and his Word was God.
2 The same was in the bottom corner of your paycheck.
3 All faculty were paid by him; and without him was not any body that was paid.
4 In him was a living; and making a living was the light of men.

This clears up my little problem with Luke, too, and how the bible can contradict itself and still be inerrant. Doesn't matter what the Bible actually says, what matters is the most natural reading of it. To a god addict, it's a lot more natural to kiss ass than draw unemployment, and if the guy who's paying me says so, that mutherfucker was born in Pasadena.

Bad Things happen when you're Horny

This guy got himself in a predicament. His horn caught on a wire--that's a live wire---he slid downhill, and ended up hanging 15 feet in the air.  A 13yo kid noticed his "halp!"s and came to the rescue.  She took more awesome pictures of this while they roped him and got him down, somehow.

Not only was he not hurt, they think maybe he was eyeing the ewes in the field down below, so they put him down there with them. As a reward.

Some guy'll do anything to get laid.  

How it Feels to be a Woman

Kevin Foley, Australia's deputy Premiere, went out barhopping, was out  on the streets alone around 3 a.m., and somebody punched him out.  Deborah, In a Strange Land, has a post that's worth repeating the whole thing.

___________________________________

News flash. One is entitled to walk on city streets without being assaulted

Pop on over to Dr Cat’s blog to read her excellent analysis of this claim

Ministers arriving for cabinet yesterday said Mr Foley was entitled to walk on a city street at any hour without being assaulted.

Now you know how it feels to be a woman, Kevin (SA edition)

__________________________________________

money quote from Dr. Cat:

Yes he is. And I'm sure none of those Ministers would even dream of saying Well, clubbing and pissed on the streets in the small hours, he was just asking for it. I wonder if he was scantily clad.

What's this Blog?

What's this blog about, anyway? I could use some advice, because I don't fucken know. Oddly enough, people read this, so I thought maybe they could help me.

It started out with reading the Koran and recording my impressions. Back then I only posted stuff if it was related to the Mohammedan's Book.  I was focused, baby, on task.

After I finished the Koran I missed blogging, but I needed something to blog about. I started doing the New Testament, but let's face it the bible is BORING, and besides, everybody does it. It's really hard to stick with it, I keep getting distracted by current events, aka things to bitch about.

I don't want to just bitch, so I try to hunt up "good news"--things that are inspiring or admirable, to keep alive a little spark of hope, spread some love. Humor is good. You might not have noticed that I try to be humorous.
Oh well, here's the deal: you tell me what makes you come to this blog, and I'll try to write more of it. Deal?