Bilingual Holidays

Sappy Holidays

It's that of year! We interrupt our regular programming of cynical, sarcastic, snark to bring you  sappy, maudlin, tear-jerky, feelgood stories. Start with a blind dog, lost, presumed dead ... but then at the last minute, his human found the kennel, where he was about to be euthanized,
 

Stevie Oedipus Wonder, home

uncertain the dog would be able to recognize her.  “All he had to do was hear my voice,” she said. “I stood at the entrance of the kennel building and called out ‘Stevie, Stevie.’ And he started barking all over the place.”

-----Awwww----

 To make a difference, all it takes is for one person to step up. Like the Turtle Lady.  One little thing, and five years later she finds out that

"his children have often reminded him of being careful with wildlife"

after she stood up to some bullies.  It would make your day to hear someone tell you that.   Never underestimate the effects our actions can have on others.

Here's a teacher that turned 1st graders from gender bullies into kids that say

"I want a baby Alive Doll and I don't care if it's for girls."

Not tearing up yet? Click on the picture and read the story behind it. It has warm fuzzies that will choke you, fer sure.

Non-discrimination between genders? HA! I give you non-discrimination between species!  How about a video?

It's a holiday, have a happee, mmmkay? 

Think good thoughts,
Uzza

Something Christmasy

Since it's Axial Tiltmas, I'm reposting something I wrote last year. It turned out rather well, I thought.

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.

WOOT

It's winter solstice today. Kind of hard to think about the cold dark days of winter giving way etc, when it's sunny 70 degrees. Anyway, Rachael .

Kind of neat.

Falling for this again?

According to all the US news[sic] we should all be deliriously dancing and singing. Why? Well, because

That's right, The War Is Over!  See, Look

Wait, what's that date? July 4th, 2009?  Oh, it's a joke.  HO HO HO, Just like 5/1/2003, when we Accomplished our Mission.  Or 8/19/2010, when we took all combat troops out. Or this time we took all our troops out--except for these guys.  No troops now, just 16,000 hired mercenaries with a license to kill.   HOORAY!!

All together now, Jingo Sells, Jingo Sells, Jingo all the way ...

Who would Jesus Knee?

While we're on the subject of quoteables, how about this one?

Guy is walking down the street, cop comes up and blindsides him with a knee to the ribcage.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Emily Post:
What do the Rules of Etiquette tell is is the proper thing to say in such a social situation?

A fan

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Fan;

It sure and the fuck isn't "Sorry. I didn't realize you were press,"

Sincerely,
Emily

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Quotes

"Other countries care for their mentally ill. Making them debate on TV is just cruel."

Andy Borowitz

"Give a man a gun, he'll rob a bank.
give a man a bank, he'll rob the whole world."

--some internet person

heh

Mary is Drowning

This is Full of Win!   Catholics, of course, are in an uproar. giggle.

"Jugend gegen AIDS" (Youth against AIDS), a Hamburg based youth organization, launched a campaign in support of the use of condoms and against Catholic policy targeting Mary, the mother of Jesus. In a video, a statute of Mary is taken hostage and placed in glass tank. A pipe is connected to the Virgin´s eye, and every time a Facebook user "likes" the campaign web site on the social media, a drop of water falls from Her eye, and increases the level of the water in the tank where the Virgin has been placed.

The campaign was designed by Stefan Strumbel, a German national. The leaders, for example Frederic Rupprecht and Fridtjof Vieth, of "Jugend gegen AIDS" said that the goal of the campaign is to see "how the water reaches the Virgin Mary´s neck" and that "only the Catholic Church can stop the Virgin to be drowned" by changing its policy towards the use of condoms. "Increase the pressure on the Catholic Church by increasing the water level", claims the advertisement.

source

Good on you, JGA.  Here's their Facebook page, where you can drop in on Mary.  

Tu Kyoot!

From Buzzfeed

"China Airlines is a proud corporate sponsor of the panda snactuary at Cheng Du and was happy to help out recently with the transfer of a young panda cub to a zoo in the United States of America.
After extensive consultation with the Sanctury's veterinary staff it was concluded that the importance of the panda cub precluded it from traveling in the hold of the aircraft, where attending to its needs would be difficult. Thus China Airlines agreed to donate seats in its Business Traveler First cabin for the panda cub named Squee Squee and his carer, Fu Jiang Lang, seen here sitting in the window seat."

Days of Infamy

71 years ago today, a day "that will live in infamy" and launched a war.We won that war.

23 years ago today, a day that may or may not be remembered. 

We're still fighting that war.
 

Update ...

This, and then ... awwww, fuck. 

WOMAN STRIPPED IN PUBLIC BY POLICE – (TENT MONSTERS)

This morning at 8:45am a peaceful Occupy Melbourne Protester was forcibly stripped of her protest costume and discarded on the ground in her underwear in public.

The individual in question was part of the Occupy Melbourne protest and was dressed in a protest costume made from a converted tent. The significance of the costume was to highlight restrictions placed on protesters staging a 24/7 protest in Flagstaff Gardens.

The protester was surrounded by at least 4 Melbourne City Council officers and 8 Victorian police officers. Her movement was restricted by the formation of officers surrounding her and she was subsequently restrained as officers proceeded to aggressively removing her costume.

At each stage she declared that she did not consent or feel comfortable with the actions of the council and police officers, stating that this was a sexual assault. “This is not consensual”, She said while the costume was being removed

Her requests and declarations were ignored as officers continued to rip and jostle her costume and person. A knife was requested and used by MCC Officers as the Protest Costume was cut from her body with blades. The remaining severed costume was violently torn from her body while the protester herself was choked, then discarded, semi-naked and crying on the ground as Vic police and MCC officers walked away with the costume.

No effort was made to assess her health or wellbeing after the incident nor conceal her disrobed body.

“How would you would feel if this was your daughter standing up for her civil and democratic rights?” asked media team member Sam Castro.

Links:

Viral tent monster hit:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKMwigI3mdM

Tent monster video featuring Sarah: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4NEKtYYYk0&feature=youtu.be

Video of the attack:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAkUB7jRb2c

Extended account of events: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSq6tPXJHZ4

from here

Quote of the Day

 Re the stupid 'personhood' bill in Virginia, commenter Laurie Tillett

If I’d wanted the government involved in my uterus, I would have fu@cked a Senator!!!

"All we are saying, is give tents a chance"

Definitely the coolest thing this week: Occupy Melbourne knows what to do when police came to take your  tents (but not your clothes). LULZ! 

Hippies, right again

Psilocybin cures PTSD? I could see that. Maybe even cancer? Here's a ray of common sense shining through all the murk and gloom in the news.

the first [study] since 1972 to explore a hallucinogen's therapeutic value.

It only took them 40 years to see the nose on their face. Now they suspect these drugs help with

post-traumatic stress disorder, drug or alcohol addiction, unremitting pain or depression and the existential anxiety of terminal illness.

Gosh, who knew? Well, not the govt., but a lot of people, like this commenter

I doubt if it is even possible to be depressed while on psilocybin

 And get this:

With her form of leukemia, those counts are expected to rise steadily as the disease progresses. But in June 2009, four months after her psilocybin session, they went down. Every three months since, they have retreated further,

It occurs to me that those old stoners were right about medical marijuana too. This research could eliminate a lot of needless misery:

expect the Department of Heightened Suffering to send Predator drones after these labs any day now.