Gay or Country Singer?

Not all of us are blessed with gaydar, which can lead to some highly uncomfortable misunderstandings. In an effort to educate the public at large, here’s a quick little quiz to see just how good you are at telling the difference between a gay person and a country singer. Answers are posted in the comments.

1)

2)











3)















4)









5)











6)

Beatlemania!

I am so fucking happy! Just in time for Christmas, someone has published a new biography of the greatest band of all time, The Beatles. I’m sure this volume has many interesting facts and anecdotes that haven’t been revealed in the previous 1,151 books, 1,300 CDs, or 89 DVDs that have come before it and are still available for purchase.

For those who were born in a cave and have been living in that cave ever since, The Beatles were a rock group from the 1960s that no other four human beings have been able to surpass musically in the 35 years since they disbanded. I’m not even sure why anyone even tries to write music anymore, since The Beatles’ songs are plainly the greatest ever composed by mere mortals. They were bigger than Jesus, after all, and Jesus was pretty fucking big.

Each one of them, even Ringo, was clearly descended from deities, and I thank Zeus every single day that he brought them in to this world. Next to my Yoko Ono dart board, I have a giant poster of the “Abbey Road” cover that makes me happy whenever I am down.

Here are some of my favorite bits of little-known trivia about the four greatest human beings ever designed:

• Contrary to popular belief, The Beatles were not really British; they all went to high school together in Dayton, Ohio, and perfected their fake English accents after a week of watching James Bond movies and listening to the BBC World Service.
• The stress of fame and excessive drug use eventually resulted in John Lennon becoming anorexic. The song "I Am the Walrus" is clear evidence of his distorted self body image. He eventually died from organ failure due to his eating disorder, and his meticulously preserved body can be viewed in Moscow (I have already visited it four times myself).
• Paul McCartney was a fanatical racist. The song “Yellow Submarine” is a reference to the stereotypically diminutive size of Asian male genitalia. His band Wings is still a favorite of the White Power movement, particularly the song “Live and Let Die”.
• George Harrison lost a testicle in a cricket accident shortly before the formation of the band. He has never disclosed whether it was the right or left one.
• Ringo Starr’s mother created the popular office product “Wite-Out”. Using her vast wealth from the invention, she bribed the other three Beatles into allowing her son to join the band, despite having no discernable musical talent.
• The song “Come Together” details The Beatles’ tradition of having a hot, sweaty orgy after each songwriting session. “Flattop” was the band’s nickname for manager Brian Epstein, allegedly because of the bizarre shape of his penis due to a botched circumcision.

Without The Beatles, my life would be wholly without meaning. I go to sleep every night tucked in to my Fab Four bed sheet set, and dream of my own personal “British Invasion”.

Vatican to Homos: You’re Weird

The Vatican released a paper today about homosexuality. I let this bit of rubbish speak for itself, aside from the following observations:

• Calling homosexuality "an incomplete and immature part of human sexuality" sounds just a bit odd coming from a bunch of guys who are theoretically celibate. If anyone has an incomplete and immature sexuality, it’s a 65-year-old virgin in a funny hat and flowing silk robes, not a gay person in a loving relationship.
• The Vatican accusing something of "destabilizing people and society" is just too hilariously ironic. Anyone remember the Crusades? The Inquisition? The AIDS epidemic?
• Barring devout but gay-inclined Catholics from becoming priests is going to put a serious dent in the enrollment at seminaries. And, by the way…. “seminaries”? *girlish giggle*

(The Raving Atheist skewered the Vatican on this topic far better than I ever could.)

Idiotic Religious Beliefs, Part 2: The Holy Prepuce

If you are interested in astronomy, you may be surprised at what 17th century theologian Leo Allatius speculated the rings of Saturn were made of. Rocks? Angels? Cheese?

Nope. Good old Leo, always the realist, thought that the rings of Saturn were, in fact….

Oh, hell. I can’t even type it, it’s so fucking ridiculous. You can’t make this shit up, folks. Here’s a completely unrelated picture of a litter of puppies with their adopted sibling, Finnegan the squirrel:

Ok, here we go.

Leo Allatius, a respected Catholic scholar, thought the rings of Saturn were made of Jesus’ dick.

Ok, not the entirety of His Holy Schlong. Leo thought that maybe Jesus’ prepuce (a fancy word for foreskin, used to discuss His wang in polite company) ascended to Heaven along with the rest of the Messiah. Why did Leo come up with this theory? Well, perhaps he was ineptly trying to stop his fellow Catholics from the embarrassing pursuit of a religious relic.

You see, Christians realized that Jesus, being born to a good Jewish family, would have been circumcised. Thirty-three years later, He conveniently rose up to Heaven, leaving behind no grave or remains of any kind for us to worship. So, His faithful followers embarked on a mission to find the foreskin of the Lord.

Over time, something like a dozen churches across Europe were said to possess a piece of the Lord’s Blessed Beefstick. Claiming to have such a relic no doubt brought in the tithes like crazy; I myself would gladly spend a few bucks for a peek at the tip of the Sacred Skin Flute.

Sadly, the last known Holy Foreskin was stolen in 1983 (is there a black market for this kind of thing?). Long before that, the Vatican, in a rare moment of rationality, declared that the pursuit and display of such relics encouraged “'irreverent curiosity” (no shit?) and began to put a damper on the practice. So unless Pope Benny XVI turns out to be the “party pope” we’ve all been waiting for (and those Pradas he’s been sporting might be a good sign), it looks like the days of leering at skin from the Consecrated Crankshaft are long gone.

Evidence of Design

Now that the theory of evolution has been disproven, we can finally begin to examine Intelligent Design. By shedding the rules of logic and scientific inquiry, we can gain insight into the All-Mighty Designer (who may or may not be God) by looking at nature and making shit up.

After minutes of dedicated research, I’ve compiled this short list of some of the Designer’s greatest hits:

The Kiss of Death
The Designer clearly never intended young people to touch each other before marriage. There’s one 15-year-old girl in Canada who won’t need reminding of this fact anymore – she kissed her boyfriend after he ate some peanut butter, had an allergic reaction, and went into anaphylactic shock. Shortly thereafter, despite the best efforts of her godless doctors, she died and went to Hell. If only she had followed God’s law and simply shaken hands with her boyfriend, she’d still be here today. Would Darwinism have saved this girl’s life? Nope. Only an understanding of the intentions of the Designer could have rescued this poor girl’s soul.

Penile Fracture
When two people (one male, one female) love each other very much and get married by a qualified priest, they are granted permission to engage in sexual intercourse (for the sole purpose of making babies). If they get too vigorous during this intimate time, however, the Designer made it possible that the man could be punished by suffering from a no doubt excruciatingly painful penile fracture. So keep it in your pants, gentlemen, and if you must use it, make it quick and gentle.

Human Papilloma Virus
Just in case you didn’t get the message, the Designer doesn’t want you fucking around before marriage. So he designed the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) just in case you girls get any sick ideas. Even if you use a condom, or limit your depravity to just giving head, you can still catch this little critter, which then has a good chance of punishing your wanton hedonism by giving you cancer. (You can also catch HPV from a toilet seat, so perhaps you ladies should be careful about those as well.) Unbelievably, some atheist heathen perverts are trying to spit in the Designer’s face by pushing a vaccine for HPV on our young girls in an effort to turn them all into dirty whores.

Malaria and Sickle-Cell Anemia
We’ve long suspected that the darker your skin, the less God likes you. Now that we can infer His Divine Will from Intelligent Design, it seems pretty clear that this is the case. Take the example of malaria. It kills millions of non-white people across the globe every year. However, some chosen individuals have been designed with a natural immunity to this deadly disease. Cool, huh? Well, not so fast. If two such people get married and have children, there’s a decent chance that their kids will have sickle-celled anemia, which will almost certainly kill them before their thirtieth birthday. You’re damned if you and damned if you don’t, darkies. It’s probably best to just accept God’s plan, give up breeding, and let the white people take over.

Marijuana, Opium, Shrooms, and Other Natural Highs
The Designer created a wide variety of mouth-watering plants and animals for his people to eat. In his infinite wisdom, he also created many plants with hallucinogenic properties to allow us to get so high that we think we are talking with him. Since we’ve abandoned the voodoo of evolution, we now know that the Designer put these magical plants there for us to use, so it’s vitally important that we repeal the drug laws keeping us from getting closer to him. More to the point, being high as a kite is the only thing that makes Intelligent Design sound plausible to thinking people.

Rampant Consumerism

"No X-Box for you, grandma! How about a new hip?"

Ahh, Black Friday. That’s the name given the orgy of shopping that starts in the wee morning hours of the Friday after Thanksgiving. Millions of consumers line up outside their favorite stores in a calm and orderly fashion in order to share in the wonderful bounty of discount products we are all so thankful for. Just kidding! You can always count on dozens of entertaining news stories about the vicious ways American shoppers treat each other just a scant day after giving thanks to the Creator for the wonderful country He has granted us.

For example, a 73-year-old woman had this to say about an incident that occurred yesterday morning:

"I was trying to get out of the way, but they knocked me down"[…]"I hit my head on the floor, and people stepped on me," said the woman, who was resting on a box of merchandise inside the store following the 7:30 a.m. incident. "I don't understand why people do these things."

What’s not to understand? If there’s a sea of people between me and the last $29 portable DVD player, I’m going to take the path of least resistance to get to it. And guess what – knocking down and stepping on a 73-year-old woman is the path of least resistance. It’s survival of the fittest, dear Josephine, and if you are frail and weak, you need to plan ahead. Take a cue from the off-duty police officer who sprayed Texas Wal-Mart patrons with pepper spray.

(Image and links ripped off from The Drudge Report, which is always a good source of amusing stories of human folly, as well as fixations on gay cowboys.)

A Few of the Myriad Reasons Why I Despise Humanity

If you are a regular reader of my posts, you may think that I am a bitter, hateful, and intolerant person. This is a very perceptive assessment. But before you judge me, let me elaborate on some of the reasons why I wish that you, along with everyone else, were dead:

Democracy
The Ancient Greeks may have been able to make it work for a while, but they were wise enough to limit the right to vote to male citizens. Leave it to America to ruin the party by inventing women’s suffrage. Modern voters are apathetic, uninformed, easily manipulated dipshits who base their selections on TV commercials and meaningless issues. They deserve what they get.

Those stupid magnetic ribbons you slap on your car
Do you “Support Our Troops”? Why not stick a ribbon on your SUV that looks exactly like a rotated Jesus fish! It takes virtually no effort, and everyone behind you in traffic can instantly know what a mindless sheep you are. Ever notice that the density of these eyesores is inversely related to the fuel economy of the vehicle they are plastered on? That’s not a coincidence.

Religion
It may come as a shock to readers who have visited this blog before, but I am no great fan of religion. The opiate of the asses just doesn’t appeal to me anymore. In fact, it depresses me that grown adults still swallow this bullshit. The looming threat of a “United States of Jesus” only serves to heighten my desire for a catastrophic meteor strike.

The Internet
It seems like any nimrod with a computer and opposable thumbs can get a blog these days and start flinging their worthless opinions at the rest of us. Most of them are offensively uninformed, but that doesn’t stop them from expressing themselves every chance they get.

Christmas Music
It now starts just after Halloween, and magically disappears on December 26th. And I loathe every minute of it. Whether it’s “We Three Kings” or “Jingle Bell Rock”, all of it is fucking terrible, and yet I can’t walk into a store without having this shit pounded into my auditory canals by substandard speakers. The only remotely good Christmas songs are Weird Al’s “Christmas at Ground Zero” and “The Night Santa Went Crazy”, yet you never hear them while shopping for presents. It’s always endless remakes of the same dozen or so shitty carols, and it needs to stop.

Television
I currently pay about $100 a month for my cable television. That is three times what the average laborer in East Timor makes in the same time span. You’d think that I would be getting something valuable for my money. But I challenge anyone to turn on their television at any time and find more than two programs on that aren’t an affront to thousands of years of human evolution. With exceedingly rare exceptions, everything on television is mind-rotting rubbish serving only to accelerate the downfall of mankind.

Children
You fuckers keep breeding, and its really starting to piss me off. For social reasons I have to pretend to give a damn that your worthless offspring finally managed to crap on its own, but quite frankly I could not care less. In fact, I hate you for not aborting the little shit, or, for that matter, not getting your reproductive organs surgically removed years ago. I still abhor my mother for bringing me into this world, and I can’t even imagine the sort of demented mindset it would take to want to bring another human being into this septic tank we call “life”.

Obligatory Thanksgiving Post

Thursday is the US holiday where we all get together with our families to thank God for wiping out the natives with smallpox and free-market economics. We also get to reaffirm our superiority to all of the Intelligent Designer’s other creatures by eating one particularly ugly one, the delicious turkey. As if that wasn’t good enough, we get the following day off from work so we can all go spend sickening amounts of money at Walmart to celebrate the upcoming pagan holiday.

I am steeling myself for a day spent with the still-religious side of my family. The tryptophan- and wine-induced drowsiness should be a big help this year.

It’s the End of the World as We Know It

I’ve been thinking about the end of the world a lot lately. Not the “Jesus is coming, look busy” type of apocalypse, but rather plausible natural or man-made events would wipe civilization off the face of the Earth once and for all. It’s disappointing how unlikely it turns out that this actually is. A lot of the scary sounding “worst case scenarios” you hear about are not really disastrous to the long-term health of humanity after all:

Nuclear Terrorism
Yawn. So, there’s a slight chance some religious nut-job somewhere can get a nuclear weapon from some corrupt former Soviet state. Boo hoo. A single nuke won’t do much more than destroy a single city, killing, at best, 7 or 8 million people. Sure, that’s a lot of body bags, but it won’t be the end of the world by a long shot.

Megatsunami
Some science-types think a massive earthquake or landslide at just the right point in the Pacific Ocean would trigger a tsunami so enormous it would make last year’s post-Christmas disaster look like a day at the beach (hehe). But even then, we’d only lose a few islands and some coastal cities.

Flu Pandemic
We will, undoubtedly, experience another flu pandemic sometime soon. And it will probably wipe out several million people. But, realistically, most of those people will be old farts in nursing homes (thus neatly solving the Social Security crisis) and easily replaceable children. After a few years of fucking, we probably won’t even notice the difference - aside from a vague nostalgia for Thanksgiving dinner at grandma’s house.

Meteor Strike
We know that every once in a while, God throws rocks at us that strike the Earth and cause varying degrees of catastrophic damage (like the one that killed the dinosaurs over 5000 years ago). But from what we know about potential threats, it’s very unlikely that we’ll be a hit by a rock big enough to actually end all human life. Sure, a small one might throw up a dust cloud that blocks out the sun for a decade or so, but we can live off of canned goods for a while before we have to resort to cannibalism. It would take a meteor the size of city block to ensure humanity’s utter annihilation, and those are in woefully short supply.

Climate Change
Cry-baby environmentalist are always going on and on about this one. My view of this is that we know - from ice core samples and tree rings and all that other crap - that the Earth goes through cycles of heating and cooling. Ice ages come along every 40,000 years or so. Who cares if our addiction to fossil fuels is speeding up the process? It’s inevitable anyway, so we might as well figure out how to deal with it instead of whining about it. Believe me, we’ll survive – look at all those people who have been living in Alaska for centuries. The average American has more than enough insulation to tough it out when global temperatures plummet. Besides, glaciers are the ultimate form of urban renewal.

That’s just a small taste of what won’t kill us off anytime soon. But don’t give up hope, gentle reader; there are plenty of far more horrid fates that could befall us:

Sun going nova/burning out
Scientists think our sun has perhaps 10 million years remaining, but what if those eggheads are wrong? If the sun exploded, we obviously wouldn’t be around long enough to notice. If it somehow dimmed or contracted, we here on Spaceship Earth would really have a rough time. All the plants would die pretty quickly, which would mean the end of the oxygen cycle and the starvation of vegetarians everywhere. As humanity slowly suffocates, expect widespread rioting and cannibalism.

Biotechnology disaster/Bioterrorism
As I mentioned before, natural pandemics are usually pretty disappointing in terms of body counts. They generally only pick off the already weak, like the very old or very young. But now that mankind is toying around with the code for life, it’s finally possible for someone, either maliciously or by accident, to create a virulent disease that will spread quickly and kill 100% of those it infects. As an added bonus, it will probably have some revoltingly disfiguring side effects, like in 28 Days Later.

Alien Invasion
If there is intelligent life out there, it’s gotta be smarter than us. So despite the happy endings in most Hollywood alien invasion movies, chances are they’d kick our asses post haste. I’m hoping for Killer Klowns from Outer Space-style aliens, because that big-top flying saucer was the shiznit.

Physics Experiment Gone Awry
Back when the US was developing the first nuclear weapon, some of the scientists working on the project thought there was a possibility that an atomic blast could ignite the atmosphere and burn it completely off. Unfortunately, they were wrong. However, as physicists continue to come up with bigger and better experiments, there continue to be concerns that some other disaster (such as inadvertently creating a black hole) could decimate the planet, or perhaps the entire universe. This is why it is vitally important that we continue funding work in theoretical physics.

Technological singularity
This is nerd-speak for the development of an artificial intelligence so advanced it immediately begins to improve itself at an exponential rate. Before we can pull the plug, it becomes a million times smarter than us, and takes over the world. Some people are striving to make sure any such AI is “friendly”, so that it won’t turn us into inefficient batteries in its gigantic infrastructure. I think this is a mistake; requiring AI to be friendly would limit its possibilities far too much. After all, how many truly “friendly” people do you know who aren’t miserable failures?

Gamma ray burst/Nearby supernova
This is perhaps my favorite of the pack. We’ll never see it coming – just one day, some nearby star will supernova, and we’ll get pelted with massive doses of radiation. Astronomers don’t know enough about the phenomenon to estimate the damage, but unlike those pansies, I’m not afraid to speculate. Painful radiation burns, instant sterilization of the entire populace, hideously mutated children, and poisoned food supplies. And that’s just the first few days. No doubt this will be followed by immense social upheaval as it dawns on everyone just how totally screwed we all are. Unfortunately, the odds of something like this actually occurring are pretty slim.

The Glorious Return of the Lord Jesus Christ
If the Christians turn out to be right, Jesus should be showing up any day now. When He finally does, He’ll whisk all His blessed children up to Heaven, leaving the rest of us heathens and sinners down here to fend for ourselves. The result? Murder rates in the US alone will skyrocket to over ten thousand a year. The weak and poor will be systematically oppressed by the rich and powerful. Huge corporations will buy and sell corrupt politicians. Powerful nations will invade weak ones for their natural resources on false pretenses. Third-world countries will erupt into genocidal civil wars, and nobody will stop them. Immense hurricanes will wipe out entire cities. It will be a complete nightmare.

The Blogger Post Editor is a Piece of Shit

I usually draft my posts in Microsoft Word, because I like the way it points out blatantly stupid spelling and grammar errors as soon as I make them. For example, I originally misspelled “blatantly” the first time I typed that sentence, and Word automatically marked it with a little red squiggly as soon as I finished. It’s nice to have your idiotic mistakes pointed out to you immediately. I also like using Word’s built-in thesaurus; it allows me to fake having a larger vocabulary than I actually do.

Another reason I use Word is that I automatically save copies of my posts on my own machine. I have a bad feeling that I’ll get drunk some day and accidentally delete my entire blog. Since it would be a tragedy to lose all my insightful wisdom to one drunken mistake, maintaining an archive just seems like a smart thing to do.

The problem with this method is that copying my posts into Blogger’s post editor usually screws up the formatting. I invariably have to reformat all the line breaks, for example. Indented text is generally fucked up, too. The post editor window is so damn small that it’s hard to navigate around a long document, and it also has the annoying habit of skipping to the end of the text when you use the arrow keys to move around. So if you notice any embarrassing errors in any of my posts, it’s all Blogger’s fault.

"Yo Butt Ain't Made For That!"

From Something Awful comes this sermon every sodomite should watch. Praise the Lord!

Vote Republican or go to Hell

One of my favorite NPR shows, On The Media, recently did a segment called “Free Preach Rights”. It seems that the oppressed Christian majority in this country is starting to whine about its tax-exempt status preventing it from explicitly telling worshippers who they should vote for. They even have a bill in the works, the Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act, to repeal this limitation. This bill will almost certainly be passed.

Imagine the possibilities. No longer will the Catholic Church have to hint that politicians who support abortion are not good Catholics. If this Bill passes, Pope Benedict XVI (the son of the previous Pope, John Paul “Deuce”) can go on the TV and tell everyone “God told me you shouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton” or whichever other Democratic sacrificial lamb ends up running in 2008. The few remaining semi-rational churchgoers of this nation will be scared shitless by the clergy’s threats of eternal damnation if they even think about not voting for conservatives.

The Republican Party controls all three branches of the federal government and most state governments today largely because they have pandered to the religious. Now that the religious have them under their thumbs, they are going to fight tooth and nail not only to keep their power, but to increase it. So, fellow heathens, better crack open that bible and start studying, because before you know it we’ll be next on the chopping block if we don’t play ball.

Dick Cheney Frightens Me

Why do pictures of Dick Cheney always make it look like he's about to lunge at the nearest baby and bite off its limbs? Is it just another example of the liberal media demonizing the right, or is this guy really as frightening as his rhetoric and track record indicate?

Careful, Dick - don't get that blood pressure
up or your pacemaker might explode.

Cheney’s stare can reach into a man’s soul
and extract from it every shred of humanity.

Cheney pounces on an unsuspecting
toddler during a press conference.

The Blood of the Innocent is
finger lickin' good!

With this appalling ghoul as her male role model, it is little wonder that Cheney’s daughter chose to become a lesbian.

Idiotic Religious Beliefs, Part 1: Transubstantiation

In my ongoing effort to demean people of faith, I’m inaugurating what will hopefully become a regular feature here: “Idiotic Religious Beliefs” (Shout out to my dawg ~I AM~, the Evangelical Atheist, whose excellent “God is a Dick” series was the inspiration for this). I’m not going to tackle the wider idiotic beliefs – like the existence of gods or souls – but instead focus on some of the finer points that often get lost in the noise. Although I will emphasize Christianity, this is only because that is the particular fairy tale with which I am most familiar. Please don’t think I’m some sort of bigot; I abhor all religions equally.

Today’s topic is the belief of Transubstantiation. The Wikipedia article has a detailed description of what exactly this is, but the basic idea is this: during Communion, the bread and wine are literally turned into the body and blood of Christ. Conveniently, the bread and wine still look like bread and wine, but trust them, its 100% Grade A Jesus. This belief is common in Catholicism and many of its offshoots.

Now, until I heard of this, I had never really connected Christianity with cannibalism. I thought Jesus was just being metaphorical when he came up the whole “Eat of my body” shtick. But it turns out that he was dead serious, and every time these people walk into church, they believe they are in fact snacking on the flesh of their savior.

It’s unclear to me which body part of Jesus you get when you have communion. Perhaps there’s a hierarchy – the good Christians get the tasty bits, like the tenderloin, while the evil satanic atheists like me would get anus.

This belief also seems very unfair to the vegetarian faithful.

What surprises me most about this concept is that no faithful Christians with access to a cloning lab have tried to use this little loophole to resurrect the Lord: go to church, take communion, then quickly sneak off to the bathroom and stick your finger down your throat. Collect the vomited-up remains of Jesus and bring them to your cloning lab. Extract the DNA from the magically transubstantiated bread and wine, and use it to clone the son of God.

Mama, I’m Going Home

I was in the store the other day, shopping for a birthday card for someone I don’t particularly care for but am socially obligated to pretend to like. I briefly skipped over to the “Sympathy” section, on the theory that I might find a sappy card expressing my condolences for the loss of my acquaintance’s youth (hilarious, I know). Smack dab in the middle of the generic “grandpa is in a better place now” cards was something about a loved one’s “Homegoing”.

This was a new one on me, so I picked it up to take a look. Apparently, “Homegoing” is the hot new Christian euphemism for the age-old (and old-age) tradition of kicking the bucket. Google currently lists over a thousand hits for “homegoing celebration”, so you know that this trend is taking off amongst the faithful. If only I could figure out some way to cash in it on it…

Since I know I don’t have a reservation waiting for me at the Pearly Gates Bed & Breakfast, I am absolutely terrified at the prospect of my own death. You’d think this would be enough to stop me from smoking, drinking, doing needle drugs, and eating red meat, but I am a remarkably short-sighted man (which is why I wear glasses). Nevertheless, I sure as hell don’t want any “celebration” when I snuff it; I want my family and friends to cry their eyes out, even if it’s only because they know they probably don’t have much time left either.

The universal human fear of the dirt nap must be one of the most powerful concepts keeping religion alive in the modern era. We are the only species cursed with the awareness of the certainty that we will eventually die, and the religion meme exploits that fear for all it’s worth. People blindly accept almost overwhelming absurdities in the hope that maybe there really is somewhere to go after this life - some reward waiting for them (those 72 virgins can be mighty persuasive) if only they follow the silly rules that the guys in the funny hats say are so important.

Masking death in some silly euphemism like “homegoing” only reinforces the control religion exerts on these people. That’s probably why it’s so popular.

Star Light, Star Bright, No Press Conference Tonight

Those missing the good old days of Ronald Reagan's astrology-based governance may wish to move to Thailand, where the Prime Minister is not afraid to recognize the power of the planet Mercury to affect his administration:

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has said he will not answer reporters' questions until next year because the alignment of the planets is not in his favor.

The Bush Administration would do well to take this notion to heart. Everyone is getting sick of the “we will not comment on an on-going investigation” line at White House press conferences. With Christmas coming up, they can try something like “we will not distract from the celebration of the birth of Christ by answering your meddlesome questions.” That’ll show the liberal media who's boss.

Shrimply Irresistible

I just got back from gorging myself on shrimp, and once again I failed to crack the 100 shrimp mark. In fact, I could only manage 78 of the little buggers, not even enough to crack my own personal record of 83. On the plus side, one of my tablemates shattered expectations by consuming an astonishing 126 shrimp! Since each one is about 1 inch long, if laid end to end this would have totaled ten and a half feet of crustacean goodness.

Oddly, God has yet to smite us for violating his sacred laws. And it's not even His day off.

Teach the Controversy

Many proponents of “Intelligent Design” say that we should “teach the controversy” about evolution. This sentiment has been echoed by no less an intellectual giant than the leader of the free world, George W. Bush. But as with so many other great ideas, I’m afraid we just aren’t pushing this concept as far as we can. So I’d like to propose a few other spheres of human endeavor where “teaching the controversy” may be a good idea:

Sunday School
Believe it or not, there are some people in this world who think that maybe Jesus Christ isn’t watching everything we do at every moment. Although these heathens clearly just hate God and America and are willfully doing the work of the Great Deceiver, there is a controversy. I propose we start teaching Sunday School students about the remote possibility that maybe there isn’t an invisible man in the sky who will kill you if you don't impregnate your dead brother's wife.

Pedophilia
I mostly agree with the conventional wisdom that pedophilia is a bad thing (I say “mostly” because, let’s face it, sometimes the kid is just begging for it). But there are those, aside from Catholic priests, who think that love between a man and a boy is something to celebrate, not punish. So I urge everyone interested in teaching the controversy to sign up with NAMBLA and see what the fuss is all about.

Holocaust Revisionism
History classes are teaching our precious children that the brave Nazi party systematically killed millions of Jews in the second world war (also known as “The Other War To End All Wars”). As anyone willing to do the research knows, the Nazis were simply trying to help the Jews realize the error of their Christ-killing ways. The fact that millions died in Nazi “concentration camps” (so named because of the intense bible study sessions) is due to the inferior nature of the Jewish race when faced with a robust German diet. How much longer will we tolerate the dominant theory of history taught by nancy-boy historians in our own public schools?

Christian Science
The medical field of today is dominated by materialistic, dogmatic scientists who only believe in unproven claptrap like “double-blind experiments” and “the germ theory of disease”. They constantly push bizarre pill-based cures for every ailment under the sun, with nary a thought for the healing power of Jesus. We need to teach our children about the wisdom of Mary Baker Eddy before the medical establishment can get their latex-clad hands on them.

Geology
Today’s ivory-tower scientists have been quietly pushing a ridiculous theory of "plate tectonics" on our schoolchildren for decades. This so-called theory rests on the laughable idea that the Earth has existed for billions of years, and that earthquakes are caused by gigantic plates rubbing against each other (yet another example of the sick sexual inneudo being fed to our innocent children). As anyone familiar with the Bible can tell you, the Earth was created about 6000 years ago, and earthquakes are simply the wrath of God laying waste to the sinful (even though He loves you and wants you to be with Him in Heaven). Yet, there is not a single textbook available to teach our children the controversy about this simple truth.

Taking Care of the Poor

There are plenty of reasons to doubt the competence of the current government here in the good ol’ US of A. For instance, they don’t even have enough common sense to assassinate their political enemies. Add to that the rampant cronyism, skyrocketing deficit, and continued inexplicable employment of Donald Rumsfeld, and your faith in the capability of our current leadership to improve things diminishes rapidly.

So when W. promised to work to eliminate poverty in the wake of hurricane Katrina, I certainly had my doubts. After all, government policy of the past several years hasn’t done much to stem the rise of poverty, much less actually reduce it. But now comes word from the House that perhaps they are taking a much more practical approach to the problem:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Friday to cut $700 million from the food stamp program, despite objections from antihunger groups complaining that estimates show some 235,000 people would lose benefits.

Ingenious! Take away the main source of nutrition for 235,000 people who are already without health insurance and probably unable to afford keeping their homes above freezing this winter. With any luck, a cold snap will wipe out a lot of the sickly and starving, and we will be that much closer to the dream of eliminating poverty within our own borders.

Important Reminder!!

Don't miss out on a golden opportunity to be an affront to God twice in one sitting. Monday is the last day for Red Lobster's Endless Shrimp deal. For $15 (in Buffalo), you can gorge yourself on these delicious "roaches of the sea". You will thereby be defying God by (1) being a glutton and (2) eating shrimp. As an added bonus, if you eat enough you will chip away at Red Lobster's corporate profits, possibly getting someone fired.

Last time I went for this deal, I managed to choke down 93 shrimp. Hopefully I can do better when I go back on Monday - I want to hit triple digits.

Top 10 Reasons To Be A Christian

Alan over at Meet an Atheist (which at first I thought was a dating site) recently posted his “Top 10 Reasons To Be An Atheist”. He makes quite a few good points (particularly the thing about sleeping in on Sundays, which always struck me as one of the better arguments for rejecting God), but it occurred to me that there are also several advantages to being a Christian. So here’s my rebuttal:

Top 10 Reasons To Be A Christian

10. Forming your own opinions on controversial topics is hard. Whether the subject is abortion, stem cell research, or meat on Fridays, it’s much easier to let a professional theologian answer the tough questions than to think about them yourself.

9. No longer get fed to lions on a regular basis. My, my, my, how the tables have turned. Now it’s only magicians living in sin and Sin City that have to worry about that one.

8. Christian girls are sexually repressed and easily tricked into giving it up. I’ve heard they can be pretty wild in the sack, once they get over the whole “sin” thing. Of course, if you manage to knock one up, you can expect a visit from her shotgun-toting father in short order.

7. Instant excuse for disowning your gay children. Plus, because of the impressive level of cognitive dissonance required to maintain your faith, you can easily do so while still enjoying a tasty shrimp dinner.

6. Free wine every Sunday morning. There’s nothing like a little hair of the dog to take care of the hangover from Saturday night.

5. If you’re a pedophile, you can become a priest. It looks great on a resume, you get an honorific in the phone book, and if anything goes wrong with a choir boy, you can rest assured that the church hierarchy will take care of it for you.

4. Prayer is a great way to avoid hard work. Short on cash? Just pray to hit the lottery. If you don’t, then paying the rent this month just wasn’t in God’s plan.

3. Fellow Christians will attend your funeral. You’ll seem far more popular and respected than you actually are when everyone in your church shows up – even though most are only there out of a vague feeling of obligation, a fear of going to hell, or for the free refreshments.

2. You don’t have to accept that you are descended from monkeys. Instead, you can feel superior to other species because you were made from dirt.

1. You’ll be on the winning team when the US officially becomes a theocracy. And with 20% of the country composed of Jews, Muslims, Atheists, and Others, you’ll have plenty of people to torture in the name of Jesus.

No Oil Company Left Behind

The Senate has been busy passing a tax bill to extend tax cuts to the rich, as well as take back a little bit of the truckloads of cash we've been handing to energy companies:

Senate Republicans beat back Democratic attempts to use the bill to pinch oil and energy companies that have been reporting record profits while consumers pay high gasoline prices, efforts that reflected sensitivity on Capitol Hill to high gasoline prices and fears of skyrocketing home heating costs this winter.

The largest oil companies, nevertheless, would be hit with about $4.3 billion in taxes through a change in accounting methods. That provision drew a veto threat from the White House and upset some Western Republicans, who deemed it an unfair and political attack on the energy industry.

"Is it a windfall tax by another name?" said Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho.

The Senate defeated a Democratic effort to impose a temporary windfall profits tax, 50 percent on the sale of oil over $40 a barrel, on profits not reinvested in increasing domestic oil and gas supplies. The money would have been returned to energy consumers through an income tax rebate. A 64-35 procedural vote defeated the effort.

I wish I had the balls to pull something like this off. I can understand the philosophy of cutting taxes on higher incomes to stimulate the economy, even though I think its bullshit. It's classic supply side economic, after all. But how can anyone possibly justify allowing oil monopolies to rape the public so blatently? What possible explanation could there be?

Ah, fuck it. I'm just bitter that I didn't have the foresight to invest in oil stocks when W. was sworn in.

Witch’s Tit

It’s starting to get really fucking cold here in Buffalo. Any suggestions for speeding up global warming? That would really save me a bundle on heating costs this year.

First Post

Welcome to my first blog! I really doubt anyone is going to read this garbage, but I have a lot of thoughts swirling in my head that I feel the inexplicable need to puke onto a web page. And since everyone else on the ‘net has at least five or six blogs these days, I figured I should “get on the bus”, lest I risk becoming dangerously un-uncool.

I guess I’ll start off with a little bit about myself. I’m a tall, unathletic, borderline alcoholic, straight, 28-year-old, male nerd living just outside Buffalo, NY. I smoke about 2 packs a day in an effort to get lung cancer and cash in on a tobacco lawsuit (I might have missed the boat on this one, but now I’m too addicted to stop). I am generally misanthropic, because the more I pay attention to humanity, the less I believe it deserves to survive much longer. I used to be a Jesus freak, but soon after entering college I realized how utterly moronic religion is, and am now an avowed atheist. I’m far too apathetic to vote, but if I did, I would vote Republican out of pure spite.

I work as a software engineer. For those of you who don’t know what this entails, it generally involves sitting around surfing the web until the boss wanders into my cubicle. In my spare time, I watch movies and a few selected TV shows, surf the web, and endlessly re-view my pirated Buffy and Angel DVD collection. I’ve also lately been playing online poker pretty much non-stop, even though I am terrible at it.

My goal with this site is to come up with offensive and hopefully entertaining ways to express my views on a wide variety of subjects. In particular, I’m going to stress examples of human stupidity in regards to topics such as religion, politics, culture, etc.

So please, if something offends you, don’t hesitate to leave a rambling comment insulting me, preferably with terrible grammar and spelling. Bonus points for posts so ludicrous I can’t even understand what the gist of it is.