Seven Heaven

I found this over at Pharynugla, and I figured it might be a good way to waste some time on this mind-numbingly boring day.

Seven Things To Do Before I Die
1. Two Three chicks at once.
2. Buy one of those $1000 bottles of booze that are in the glass-walled, temperature-controlled room at the liquor store, because I want to know what a hundred-dollar shot tastes like.
3. Make a really big score on a slot machine or the lotto so I never have to work again, and can live Howard Hughes-style in a Vegas hotel room and never have to speak to another human being ever again.
4. Design some sort of virus that kills only stupid people in an unimaginably painful way, or at least sterilizes them so I don't have to deal with their annoying hellspawn.
5. Come up with some sort of scheme to bilk religious people out of their money, then give that money to the ACLU to fund the War on Christmas.
6. Shoot a man just to watch him die (I have a list of candidates).
7. Find out the true meaning of Christmas.

Seven Things I Cannot Do
1. Quit smoking.
2. Quit drinking.
3. Dance without embarassing myself.
4. Get out of bed before 8AM unless my house is actually on fire.
5. Make a boulder so heavy I cannot lift it.
6. Get rid of that rash I've had since college.
7. Convince two chicks to do me at once.

Seven Things That Attract Me to Blogging
1. Complete lack of actual human contact.
2. The fact that nobody reads this crap, so I am free to say anything I want. Mother Teresa was a cunt! Kittens are delicious! Child labor laws are dooming this country!
3. I can blog from work instead of actually doing anything productive.
4. Hopefully, impressionable children will stumble across my blog and become permanately warped.
5. I enjoy being called a jackass.
6. I can obsess over my hit counter and my Google rankings, instead of obsessing over that rash I can't get rid of.
7. Once I finally nail two chicks at once, I'll have a forum where I can brag about it to the world.

Seven Things I Say Most Often
1. "I'm going out for a smoke."
2. "I need a drink."
3. "I suck at life."
4. "Die."
5. "I hate you and everything you stand for."
6. "Another Jack and Coke, please."
7. "Man, I really wish I could do two chicks at once."

Seven Books That I Love
1. Anything Vonnegut
2. The Selfish Gene
3. Does Wikipedia count as a book?
4. The Bible, because it's responsible for more human suffering than any other book, and human suffering is amusing
5. Anything Douglas Adams, except Last Chance to See, which was full of cry-baby environmentalist crap and not particularly funny
6. Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution, because it's hilarious that people think they can lose weight by eating fucking bacon
7. Any book where a guy does two chicks at once

Seven Movies That I Watch Over and Over Again
1. Fight Club
2. Bad Santa
3. The Godfather, all parts - especially that scene where Pacino closes the door in Diane Keaton's face. The look she has just before it shuts is absolutely priceless.
4. The Big Lebowski
5. Anything Kubrick
6. Any porn where a guy does two chicks at once
7. Seven

Seven People I Want To Join In Too
None, I hate everyone and I really don't care about anybody else's stupid list - unless you are two chicks who will do me at once.

Post-Yuletide Boredom

Without fail, the week between Christmas and New Years is the most boring week of the year. Many people take this time off of work, and those of us who actually do show up have little actual work worth doing. I’ve been sitting on my ass in my cubicle all day surfing the web, trying to find something out there to pass the time. I hopped over to CNN and saw I wasn’t the only one looking for something interesting going on:

Saving Iraqi baby a new mission for U.S. troops
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- When troops from the Georgia National Guard raided a Baghdad home in early December, they had no idea that their mission in Iraq would take a different turn.

As the young parents of an infant girl nervously watched the soldiers search their modest home, the baby's unflinching grandmother thrust the little girl at the Americans, showing them the purple pouch protruding from her back.

Little Noor, barely three months old, was born with spina bifida, a birth defect in which the spinal column fails to completely close. Iraqi doctors had told her parents she would live only 45 days.

That’s right; the headline on the front page of world’s premiere news-gathering institution is an article about a baby born in a third-world country with a birth defect, and the brave American soldiers who “rescued” her. Yawn. The only thing remotely interesting about this article is that the baby’s disease, spina bifida, reminded me of spanakopita, that yummy Greek spinach pie. But I’ve already gorged myself for the day, so it’s not even that stimulating to me. (That reminds me - I went to Applebee’s for lunch again, and those fuckers are still playing Christmas carols.)

Here’s a sampling of some of the other headlines CNN has on the front page today:

Mass grave discovered in Iraq
This one seemed moderately interesting until I read the actual article. Turns out this so-called “mass grave” held a measly 20 corpses. Back in the good old days, people knew how to do mass graves right (hint: it usually involves at least a few bulldozers). Twenty people don’t even make for a good party, much less a war crime. For someone nicknamed “The Butcher of Baghdad”, Saddam has turned out to be quite a disappointment.

Dozens indicted in alleged Katrina scam
Again, another one that sounds great until you dig in to the details. It’s always nice to have my bleak view of humanity confirmed by stories of people taking advantage of disaster victims. In this case, forty-nine people were indicted, yet the total amount of fraud is only expected to reach about $400,000. That works out to about eight grand a piece; sure, that’s a good chunk of change, but you’d think with the billions of dollars being thrown at the recovery effort, these people could have managed to at least score enough green for a new car. How hard can it be to scam a bunch of chumps like the Red Cross?

Report: Comedian died of overdose
No shit? There are few phrases in life that are less self-evident than this headline. John Belushi, Lenny Bruce, Chris Farley – I’d be hard pressed to name a decent comedian from that past 50 years who didn’t die a drug-related death.

Pediatricians: Most kids outgrow bedwetting
Wow, and I thought I was special. Really, do you know any kids who haven’t eventually outgrown bedwetting? Is there some national epidemic of adult bedwetters I’ve missed out on? Do these people have some sort of support group, like a 12-step program that begins with plastic sheets and includes tying a rubber band around your dick at night?

Report: Tori Spelling engaged again
Why is this fucking country so obsessed with the personal lives of vapid whores like Tori Spelling? Sure, she’s fairly fuckable, but she is not even remotely talented – she was easily the worst actress on 90210, and that’s really saying something. The only reason anyone has even heard of her is that her Nosferatu-esque father is one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. I only remember her because she was in a movie with the stupidest title I have ever heard – “Mother, May I Sleep With Danger?” However, it turns out she’s going to be in a movie called “Cthulhu”, so maybe she’s not so bad after all.

Last year, the post-Christmas news cycle was spiced up quite a bit by the Asian tsunami. Watching the body count get ratcheted up on a daily basis was a good distraction from the tedium of real life. This year’s headlines are really lacking, so here’s hoping some newsworthy catastrophe strikes before I have to go back to work tomorrow morning.

Have a Miserable Christmas and a Horrid New Year

I just got back from my final Christmas obligation. Its time to declare the official end of this year’s Jesusfest, and I am personally celebrating with a large bottle of Jack Daniels. Hopefully this will also be the end of hearing fucking Christmas music everywhere you go, and maybe even Fox News will shelve the ridiculous “War on Christmas” bullshit and go back to fellating the Bush administration.

My Christmastime is usually wretched, and this year was no exception. To start, this is the first Christmas I have spent without my sister, my only sibling and one of the few people I actually find bearable. She usually manages to make family gatherings semi-tolerable, but earlier this year she wisely fled to the other side of the continent, leaving me to fend for myself.

The festivities this year started early, when on Thursday my 77-year-old grandfather, who suffers from emphysema and has an exceptionally weak heart, decided to try to clear snow off of his car over the shrill objections of his wife. Predictably, he had a minor heart attack and I ended up waiting in a dingy emergency room for most of the night, severely impacting my scheduled drinking and poker activities.

On Friday, my friend Alex, whom I’ve known since fifth grade but haven’t seen in over three years, flew in to Buffalo and arrived at my house around midnight. Awaiting him was a generous spread of Mighty Taco and a ridiculously expensive bottle of scotch. We immediately began drinking, catching up, and reminiscing. The scotch ran out by 6 AM, but instead of thinking rationally and calling it a night, we decided to call a cab instead and headed over to the local Indian casino. There were a surprising number of degenerate gamblers at the casino at 7 on Christmas Eve morning. We managed to piss away a not-insignificant amount of money before feasting at the breakfast buffet and heading back to my place to grab a few hours of sleep before going off to our respective family gatherings.

My Christmas Eve dinner was hosted at my grandparents’ house. The Grim Reaper is hovering outside this place, as my aforementioned grandfather races with my equally sickly grandmother to be the first to the grave. They could each be on a poster advertising the dangers of a lifetime of smoking and alcohol abuse, although having lived together for 50+ years I can understand the urge to make life more bearable through chemistry. They are both stubborn assholes, and refuse to allow themselves to be moved to a nursing home, causing no end of grief for their only close relative dumb enough to still live near them (me).

Of course, their imminent deaths are of some concern to their children, my mother and my aunt. They both traveled several hours to be here, as it is likely that this will be the last Christmas either of the old farts will see. So mom and my aunt labored for hours on a traditional Polish feast, with sausage, pierogi, and other stuff I have no hope of spelling correctly. My aunt even went to great lengths to get a CD of Eastern European Christmas carols, which were a welcome relief from the usual American fare (they were still crappy, but they were crappy in a foreign language).

Once dinner time rolled around, everyone gathered around the table – except grandma. Apparently Kelly Ripa was about to appear on Entertainment Tonight, and she didn’t want to miss it. So we all waited a few minutes for Kelly’s historic appearance to finish. When grandma finally entered the dining room, she immediately requested that the “awful music” be turned off, and as she was sitting down, she commented how one particular dish looked like someone had puked into the bowl.

What a cunt.

I witnessed a true Christmas miracle that day when my aunt somehow managed not to strangle her mother during dinner. We made it through okay with the help of generous amounts of pinot noir, and I was able to get the hell out of there by 9 PM.

Today’s festivities were quite a bit better, but nothing notable happened so I won’t bore you with details. The main highlight was the gift of liquor, some of which I am enjoying as I type (thanks Dad!). I also managed to score a bit of cash, and a Best Buy gift card which will be put to use as soon as humanly possible. The oddest gift this year was the jerky sampler my mother gave me, which includes such exotic meats as elk, ostrich, alligator, boar, and kangaroo. I’ve never eaten a marsupial or a reptile before, but I expect it to be a life altering experience.

UPDATE: Kangaroo is yummy

It Was a Very Good Year

Our Dear Leader GWB has recently proclaimed that 2005 has been "a good year for the American people”. Amen! Here’s a rundown of the highlights from the “Year of the Cock”:

Katrina punished the wickedness of New Orleans
Much like Sodom and Gomorrah, God saw fit to rebuke the wanton occupants of New Orleans by decimating their hedonistic city. Bush helped God’s will along by preemptively striking levee money from the budget, and then ensuring that FEMA would be so radically mismanaged that the survivors of the disaster would end up envying the dead. Next on God’s hit-list: Las Vegas.

Brave GOP officials exposed the cynical politics of Democrats
Courageous Republicans like Tom “The Hammer” Delay, Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, and Bill “I’m such an awesome doctor I can diagnose patients from the Senate floor” Frist baited the Democrats in to falsely accusing them of corruption and other felonies, thus exposing the contempt liberals hold for our great republic. For shame, Democrats! It’s not like these guys were getting blow jobs from interns or anything. They just participated in a few business deals like any good American patriot would. But I guess you dirty commies wouldn’t understand that.

People began to appreciate the value of fossil fuels
Now that the Blue Book value of most people’s vehicles has been surpassed by the cost of a tank of gas, the American public is finally beginning to understand just how important petroleum is to the smooth running of our economy. Congress has responded by increasing tax cuts to the benevolent corporations that supply us with the life-blood of our economy. Sure, Bush couldn’t manage to run his own oil company, but now that he’s been given a chance to influence them all, he’s taken that ball and run with it. Of course, the liberals keep fighting our God-given right to drill for oil in ANWR, but those polar-bear huggers aren’t going to be able to hate America for much longer.

Terrorists haven’t managed to strike us again
Thanks to bold moves like banning lighters from airplanes, freedom hating terrorists haven’t been able to hit us again on American soil. Bush’s plan of “giving them targets over there so they forget about the targets over here” has worked spectacularly, at a bargain price of only a few hundred billion dollars, a few thousand soldiers, and a few tens of thousands of innocent civilians. Next time you see a legless veteran panhandling outside of a Starbuck’s, be sure to let him know how much you appreciate his sacrifice by giving him your pocket change.

Briefly, some other highlights from “aught-five”:

Michael Moore hasn’t made another movie – The Godless liberal commie was so crushed by the defeat of John “Swift Boat Back to Taxachusetts” Kerry that he hasn’t been able to churn out any more of his disgraceful “documentaries”.

NASA put something into space without losing it or blowing it up – Shuttle Discovery made a triumphant return to space almost 3 years after the Columbia accident. The shuttle’s mission included studying effective ways to torture Iraqi insurgents in zero gees.

An earthquake in Kashmir eliminated over 80,000 potential terrorists – And with the infamously harsh Kashmiri winter about to set in, we can expect that number to grow by quite a bit before spring. God is a valuable ally in the War on Terror!

Race riots in France – Minorities in France began a weeks-long riot after some dumbasses electrocuted themselves while running from the police. Americans laughed at the frogs’ inability to subjugate and oppress their own dark-skinned citizens.

The US executed its 1000th prisoner since the resumption of capital punishment in 1976 - One thousand down, three hundred million to go!

Coming soon – the not-so-great aspects of 2005.

Hitch's Happy Holidays

Pretentious gasbag Christopher Hitchens has a readable article up at Slate about the "War on Christmas" bullshit. I normally find Hitchens to be annoying and irritating, particularly when he appears on Real Time with Bill Maher, but this piece is pretty good. I particularly like the comparison of Jesus to Kim Jong Il.

The Church of Wal-Mart

Yesterday a group of about 50 people decided to protest outside a Wal-Mart in Sacramento. These True Christians were protesting the gigantic retailer’s poor treatment of its workers, such as low pay, meager benefits, and lousy working conditions. The protestors cited the wise words of the Lord Jesus Christ, who told us to do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and to take care of the poorest among us.

Ha! Just kidding! These protestors were upset that Wal-Mart doesn’t officially endorse Christmas in its holiday advertising:

About 50 protesters took part in Saturday's demonstration, organized by religious leaders. Dick Otterstad of the Church of the Divide donned a Santa Claus costume and greeted shoppers with the message: Don't forget about the meaning of Christmas.

A guy in a Santa suit telling people not to forget the true meaning of Christmas? Was this dufus born without a sense of irony, or was it stripped from him in Sunday School?

As many people have pointed out, there are numerous holidays celebrated during the November-December-January time span, including Thanksgiving, Hanukah, New Year’s Day, Tet, Kwanzaa, and Festivus. Wal-Mart didn’t get to be the world’s largest retailer by pandering to Christians - it got there by pandering to white trash.

What the hell is wrong with these cry-baby Christians anyway? I had lunch at Applebee’s the other day, and the entire fucking time I heard nothing but shitty Christmas carols. In December, you can’t go anywhere in this country – Wal-Mart especially - without being reminded that Christmas is on the way. Religion in general and Christianity in particular permeates almost every aspect of our culture, and yet these people are upset because there isn’t a manger scene on the Wal-Mart flyer in their Sunday paper. Perhaps they are afraid that if we aren't constantly bombarded with reminders that God is watching us, we might start to think for ourselves and realize what a scam religion is.

Narrow Minded Nimrod

Sorry I haven't posted anything in a while; I've been very busy avoiding Christmas and losing at online poker. But I still obsessively check my pathetic hit stats, and I found out that this blog is currently the top result for a Google search on "narrow minded nimrod". I take great pride in that.

The War on Christmas: Phase Two

(The following memo was acquired by an undercover FOX News investigative journalist posing as an atheist.)

Fellow Heathens:

Here at ASSCRACK (Atheists, Secularists, and Satanists for the Complete Replacement of Advent and Christmas with Kwanzaa), Phase One of the War on Christmas is drawing to a close. I’d like to thank everyone – the liberal media, PC police, leftist professors, etc - who contributed the war effort. Our conspiracy to remove all references to Christmas from the public sphere has been a resounding success. Retailers are reluctant to even utter the word “Christmas”, for fear of offending their Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist customers. Christmas displays on public property are routinely torched by ACLU lawyers and activist judges. “Season’s Greetings” and “Happy Holidays” are now the prevalent phrases, and the holiday itself has been turned into an orgy of consumerism marked by tacky home-decoration pissing contests.

Now that our primary goals have been accomplished, it is time to begin Phase Two in earnest. Many components of this Phase have already begun, and it is my honor to report on our progress so far.

Santa Surprise
ASSCRACK agents have begun slipping Viagra to shopping mall Santas across the country. After the little children sitting on Kris Kringle’s lap feel his pharmacologically induced erection, they will tell their parents about the “funny lump” in Santa’s pants and get the jolly old guy arrested for indecency. We anticipate the arrest and conviction of all Santas by no later than December 23^rd. The ensuing nation-wide scandal will result in the permanent eradication of this loathsome icon.

Encouraging deforestation to cut off the source of Christmas trees
ASSCRACK operatives have been quietly buying up tree farms, lumber yards, and paper mills. Over the next year, we plan to eliminate all evergreen trees in North America, thus forcing Christians to use inferior plastic trees for their holiday celebrations. We also have plans to infiltrate artificial tree manufacturers, and secretly change the design and manufacturing of them to increase flammability and toxicity.

Christmas Carol Operant Conditioning
ASSCRACK sympathizers in nurseries have begun applying painful electrical shocks to infants in their care while playing Christmas music. Experiments have indicated that this treatment results in 74% less joyfulness during the holiday season, even after the subject reaches adulthood. As an added bonus, the corpses of the children who do not survive the procedure will be smuggled into outdoor Nativity scenes and swapped with the statue of the baby Jesus. Once Christians discover that they have been admiring dead babies in swaddling clothes, they’ll think twice before putting up another life-sized crèche.

Promoting Global Warming to eliminate “White Christmas”
ASSCRACK’s plan to accelerate global warming has met with stunning success over the past few years. Thanks in no small part to the Bush Administration’s rejection of the Kyoto Protocol and other environmental efforts, we anticipate that snowfall around Christmastime will be eliminated within 30 years. Without the snowmen, sleigh rides, and other nostalgic winter activities that are associated with Christmas, we anticipate a large reduction in the holiday’s popularity. In addition, the disappearance of the polar ice caps will leave no mythical home for Santa and his workshop.

Disrupting holiday travel plans
ASSCRACK has infiltrated air traffic control centers across the country to ensure maximal chaos during the coming weeks. Air travelers who manage to make it to their destination on time (without being gunned down) will find that their luggage is on the other side of the continent. Coupled with our manipulation of gasoline prices, we hope to make holiday travel so aggravating that people will give up on it within five years.

Spiked Egg Nog
Over the past year, ASSCRACK poultry farmers have been purposely infecting their flocks with avian flu, and supplying the tainted eggs to the nation’s egg nog manufacturers. The resulting outbreak among Christmas revelers should thin the ranks quite a bit. Plans to introduce bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, aka mad cow disease) into traditional Christmas foods were scrapped after it was realized that Christians infected with BSE would act pretty much the same way they do now.

Continued spread of reason, education, and science
ASSCRACK will continue to spread the concept of “rational thought” across the world to undermine Christianity. Even though we know Jesus to be the One True Savior of Mankind, we nonetheless hate God and Freedom and America so much that we will continue to force our heathen beliefs of science and objective reality on everyone we can.

Thanks to all the dedicated, godless ASSCRACK agents who have been working tirelessly to end Peace on Earth. Have a happy Winter Solstice!

Fetishophilia

Few aspects of human behavior fascinate me as much as the wide world of fetishes. It seems there is no object or activity which cannot be twisted into some sort of perverted sexual fixation. It used to be that people with these bizarre penchants would never act on them, let alone tell anyone about them. I would have thought these self-defeating proclivities would have been bred out of mankind a while ago, but today, thanks to the Internet, every weirdo out there can find a group of weirdoes with which to discuss his or her strangest desires. Some of the more perplexing of these include:

Coprophilia
Has anyone ever accused you of having a shit-eating grin? Well, for coprophages that would be a badge of honor. These are people who find feces to be sexually stimulating, and occasionally make a yummy snack of it. Anyone who takes the phrase “eat shit” seriously has some major issues. I can understand if mommy’s potty-training technique gave you some disturbingly exciting memories, but anyone who can flush a toilet should know better than to treat poop as a sex toy.

Furries
These are grown adults who get aroused by dressing up as anthropomorphic animals and crawl around sniffing each other's assholes. Some of them claim that there isn’t necessarily a sexual aspect to this, but they are fooling no one. People who get aroused while watching Pepé Le Pew cartoons are frightening, and should not be allowed to breed.

Emetophilia
Most people try to avoid vomiting. The smell, the burning sensation in the throat, and the yucky clean-up make the entire experience unpleasant. Then again, there are people in this wonderful world of ours who actually find “Roman showers” to be a huge turn-on. Given the prevalence of bulimia in our society, these people should have no problem getting dates. After all, you can always be sure they’ll treat you to a nice dinner before its shower time.

Crush fetishism
I dislike small furry animals as much as the next guy, but I don’t usually get a woody when I see them stepped on. And I certainly don’t get all hot and bothered at the thought of myself being crushed. But apparently, there are quite a few people out there who enjoy such fantasies. We should do these people a favor by locking them in the trunk of a car destined for a junk yard trash compactor.

Gerontophilia
This is the hobby of those creepy guys who hang out near nursing homes with obvious erections. I’ve been tricked into viewing grandma-porn on a few occasions, but I can’t imagine what path someone’s life would have to take to compel them to actively seek it out. Anything that requires a few ounces of Astroglide to penetrate simply isn’t worth the effort. I suppose the allure of a “gum job” might justify this obsession, but I would personally be worried about the risk of cracking some old hag’s hip, or getting her so worked up she suffers a stroke or heart attack. God invented Viagra so old people could fuck each other.

Those are just a few of the trendy sick fetishes that are out there. I’m still waiting for my own unpopular paraphilias to gain a large following:

Zipperphilia – sexual arousal from getting your dick caught in your zipper
Globophilia – sexual attraction to planetary bodies
Deiphilia – sexual attraction to god(s)
Teeveedropophilia – sexual arousal from having televisions dropped on you, or dropping them on others
Comaphilia – sexual attraction to people in persistent vegetative states (drool is a natural lubricant)
Bigpapaphilia – sexual attraction to Biggie Smalls
Petrophilia – sexual arousal from the smell of gasoline (Bush may have this)
Jheriphilia – sexual attraction to greasy, curly hair
Blogophilia – sexual arousal from reading or writing pointless blog entries
Velcrophilia – sexual attraction to hook-and-loop fasteners
Neccophilia – sexual attraction to wafer-shaped candies
Philatephilia – sexual arousal from licking stamps
Dorkophilia – sexual attraction to people who wear bowties with sincerity
Craftsmanophilia – sexual attraction to power tools
Ambidextrichronophilia – sexual arousal from wearing a wrist watch on both arms
Jackophilia – sexual arousal from watching news reports about Michael Jackson’s legal troubles
Pyrophilia – sexual attraction to fire (oh wait… that’s a real one)
Tacophilia – sexual attraction to Mexican food
Nikephilia – sexual arousal from putting your shoes on the wrong feet
Carpaltunnelphilia – sexual attraction to victims of repetitive stress injury
Catastrophilia – sexual arousal from the news of massive death and destruction due to natural disasters
Petalphilia – sexual attraction to flowers
Mayimbialikophilia – sexual attraction to child stars from awful early-90s sitcoms
Alarmophilia – sexual arousal from the obnoxious sounds made by alarm clocks, smoke alarms, etc
Philadelphiphilia – sexual attraction to large cities in Pennsylvania
Gopophilia – sexual attraction to the Republican Party, or members thereof
Harpaxophilia – sexual arousal from being robbed (damn, that’s a real one too)
Magmaphilia – sexual attraction to lava
Xmasaphilia – sexual attraction to Christmas trees, wreaths, or garland (not Judy - only fags love her)
Scrabblephilia – sexual arousal from using all 7 letters for the 50 point bonus
Escargophilia – sexual attraction to snails
Spiltsodaphilia – sexual attraction to the sticky substance on the floor of movie theaters
Pundiphilia – sexual arousal from watching people yell incoherently at each other on cable news shows
Agletiphilia – sexual attraction to the little plastic thingies on the end of shoelaces
Plushophilia – sexual attraction to stuffed animals (Holy shit, that’s another real one! What the hell is wrong with people?!?)

I Heart Buffalo

I’ve lived in and around the city of Buffalo, New York, for most of my life. It’s not a particularly bad place to live (especially compared to my past hometown of Binghamton), but it does have a reputation that is less than spectacular for various reasons. So in the interest of being a cranky bitch, here’s some of the things that make life in Buffalo slightly more miserable than life elsewhere:

Snow
Most people know practically nothing about Buffalo, but almost everyone knows that we get a lot of fucking snow. Sure, there are other places in the world that get significantly more than us, but when it comes to heavily populated areas, Buffalo and its suburbs really take the cake. The problem is that Buffalo is located on the shore of Lake Erie, one of the largest freshwater lakes in the world. In the summer, the Lake provides Buffalonians with many opportunities for water sports such as swimming, jet skiing, boating, fishing, and catching weird diseases. Once winter sets in, however, the still-warm Lake becomes a massive snow producing machine, and Buffalo is directly in its path. Although the resulting snow is generally just a pain in the ass, it is nice to get the occasional day off of work due to life-threatening road conditions. Plus, I hear the skiing is great, although I personally prefer doing doughnuts in unplowed parking lots from the comfort of my heated car.

In 1977, Buffalo was battered with the famous “Blizzard of ‘77”. I have a personal reason to be thankful to the weather gods for sending the Blizzard to us; I was conceived during it because my parents were too lazy to shovel the 18 feet of snow in the driveway and decided to fuck instead.

Humidity
Another amusing side-effect of living next to a giant lake is that it can get really humid around here, particularly in late summer. In fact, Buffalo is the birth place of air conditioning, which is often considered screamingly funny by jerks who only know us for our miserable winters. The humidity also means that we have a large number of swimming pools, which is great for voyeuristic perverts like me.

Disappointing Sports Teams
They call Buffalo “a drinking town with a football problem”. Anyone even somewhat familiar with American football will remember the Buffalo Bills' 4-in-a-row losses at the Super Bowl, an unfortunate record which exemplifies what it’s like to be a Buffalo sports devotee. Football fans who watched yesterday’s embarrassing loss to Miami know all too well how the Bills are continuing to carry on this tradition.

No less disappointing are the Buffalo Sabres, who in 1999 lost the Stanley Cup finals due to a highly questionable call, and have continued to fail ever since. Despite the perennial loser status of Buffalo’s professional sports team, we continue to have some of the most hyperactively dedicated fans in the world.

Ugly inhabitants
I may just be biased, being ugly myself and having only ugly friends, but it seems to me that Buffalo has a higher-than-average percentage of unattractive citizens. My theory is that good-looking people wisely flee the city as soon as possible, leaving the hideous natives behind to interbreed. I could be wrong; it’s entirely possible that there are comparable amounts of unsightly people everywhere.

Brazenly Corrupt and Incompetent Politicians
Buffalo and surrounding areas have been plagued by horrible government for decades. I could devote several blog entries to this topic alone, but most people, including myself, would find them boring. For detailed and entertaining coverage of the ongoing meltdown of politics in Buffalo, read The Beast.

It’s not all bad out here, though. Here are some of the advantages of living in “The Queen City”:

Food
If you’ve never had Buffalo wings, you are missing out on one of the finer artery-clogging, taste-bud-nuking pleasures in life. Residents of Buffalo consume hot sauce in scandalous quantities, largely to distract us from the sub-zero temperatures, shitty sports teams, and ugly people. Other traditional Buffalo foods include beef on weck, fish fries, Mighty Taco, pizza, and Canadian beer (drinking Budweiser is punishable by death), all of which contribute to the jiggling layers of fat we need to survive our harsh winters.

Bars
Speaking of beer, Buffalo is awash in great places to drink. Whether you’re hanging out on Chippewa on a Saturday night hitting on underage girls, looking to slip a roofie to a drunken coed on the Elmwood Strip or Main Street, or just drinking your misery away every night in the local dank hole, Buffalo is the place to be for hardcore alcohol abuse. Plus, most bars are open until 4 AM, so you can keep drinking long after the DWI patrol has gone home for the night (driving drunk on ice-covered roads is a true test of skill). Due to creeping fascism in New York State, it’s no longer possible to smoke indoors at bars, but some of the better places have heated outdoor patios for their nicotine-addicted clientele.

Niagara Falls/Canada
Just a short drive away is Niagara Falls, honeymoon capital of the world and one of the seven natural wonders of the world. And just over the border is Niagara Falls, Canada, strip club capital of the world. I have been to titty bars in several different cities across the country, and I can say with confidence that none provide as much sheer depravity per dollar than those in Ontario. I won’t go in to details - this is a family blog – but let’s just say I have single-handedly put more than 5 talented strippers through college. At only $20 (Canadian!) for a lap dance, you’d be a fool not to go.

Native American’s Tax Exempt Status
The original settlers in the Western New York region were too lazy to completely eliminate the native population, and as a result there are numerous Indian reservations all around Buffalo. They are a great source of cheap, tax-free cigarettes and gasoline. Given the retail price of well over $5 a pack, I would have quit smoking years ago were it not for “Smoking Joe’s” providing me with cartons of my favorite brands for under $25 a piece. Plus, the natives are working on opening a casino right in Downtown Buffalo, thus completing their devious plans to slowly poison the white man with tobacco and comped drinks, and then take all his money.

Boo hoo

There's yet another "miracle" going on right now, this time in Sacramento. A statute of the "virgin" Mary is crying, and it's not just regular tears, it's blooooooooood:

Steady numbers of Catholics have made their way to the Vietnamese Catholic Martyrs Church in Sacramento, California's capital, to view an outdoor statue that has clearly visible dark streaks running down from the eyes.

"I am a believer because throughout history the Virgin Mary cried," Van Li, who came to the United States from Vietnam in 1993, said as he visited on a rainy Thursday afternoon. "She cries for everybody's sin."
[. . . ]

"It usually has to do with a time of anxiety," she said. "A statue weeping blood, kind of obviously, she's not crying for joy."

"She cries for everybody's sin"? What a cop-out. Here's my guesses:

- she's crying because she's a 2000-year-old virgin, and everyone knows it
- she's crying because of the Liberal War on Christmas
- she's crying because "Joey" got pulled and may be canceled (that's why I'm crying)
- she's crying because the US has only managed to execute 1,000 people in the last 28 years, when so many heretics are clearly deserving of death
- she's not crying blood, she's got Rage
- this inanimate hunk of plaster (or whatever) is not actually crying, it's just some running paint
- someone looking to boost church attendance dumped some fake blood on it, because they know how pathetically gullible people are

Stupid for Jesus

I’m really sick of dim-witted theists arguing that “atheism is a religion”. Just because your myopic worldview doesn’t make sense without “faith” doesn’t mean that everyone else is so mind-numbingly clueless. One particular example of this brand of annoying assholery was pointed out yesterday by Lya. In it, a theist argues that both atheism and evolution are religious beliefs. This is, of course, patently absurd. Here are some of the more idiotic sections of this article, along with my rebuttals:

“…adherence to atheism is indeed a form of faith since it is a firm belief with a strong conviction in something for which there is no proof…”
I would almost feel sorry for someone who came up with this line of reasoning, because it is clear evidence that person has a severe mental handicap. However, this asshole is a professor of ethics (!!), so hopefully he is capable of at least rudimentary reasoning, and is therefore apparently being grossly intellectually dishonest here. Atheism is, in fact, a strong conviction that proof is required to support belief. If someone could actually prove to me that God existed or that the Earth was 6000 years old, I would pay attention. In fact, I have examined many such claims, and they are all baseless, circular, and just plain silly.

“The US courts have, in fact, held that atheism is a religion.”
They’ve also ruled that corporations are people, but when’s the last time you had one over for dinner? This ruling was little more than a legal fiction designed to guarantee that the godless aren’t denied rights available to Zeus-worshippers. Besides, just because a court ruled that way doesn’t make it right. There are plenty of other court rulings that theists don’t agree with.

“Proponents of secular and naturalistic Darwinian evolution invariably claim that proponents of intelligent design have wrongly left the realm of science and have entered the domain of religion because intelligent design implies the existence of a designer, and that designer is understood to be God.”
Yup, that’s exactly what we claim. Science is the search for explanations; if you blindly accept the notion of an all-powerful being, the scientific method becomes moot. Why bother trying to figure out how to make cold fusion work, when you can just put a bunch of stuff in a test tube and pray really hard? If that doesn’t work, does that mean cold fusion is impossible, or that God doesn’t want you to have it?

The main failing of ID as a science is that it doesn’t explain anything. Any idiot can look at a platypus and say, “Somebody made that”. Science is interested in how things happen, not just that they do. Evolution is the best explanation we have for where a platypus came from, because it’s based on observable facts and logical reasoning. Saying “God did it” is not only childishly simplistic, it’s utterly without usefulness.

“But not all proponents of intelligent design are theists.”
Name one. Supporting Intelligent Design makes you by definition a theist, since you are invoking a supernatural power to explain physical phenomenon.

“Moreover, the intelligent design position is indeed a scientific one in that it offers evidence that the received Darwinist account of evolution is incomplete, implausible, and insufficient to explain or account for all the perceived complexity of observed biological organisms.”
There is so much bullshit is this one sentence, I need to refute it in list form:

Simply offering evidence doesn’t make your position a scientific theory. Theories explain the evidence and make predictions about future observations; ID does neither.

Even if IDists actually did have compelling evidence that evolution was wrong (and they don’t), it wouldn’t make ID true by default.

Nobody claims evolutionary theory is “complete”, just like nobody claims relativity, quantum mechanics, plate tectonics, or any other scientific theories are “complete”. If they were, we wouldn’t need biologists, physicists, or geologists any more.

Anyone who claims evolution is “implausible” or “insufficient” to explain the diversity of life is simply ignorant. I often wonder how many of the IDiots have actually read anything about evolution (aside from creationist texts) before babbling about how wrong it is. I suspect these people are willfully ignorant of the actual science, because it threatens their “perfect” view of the world.

“What few proponents of Darwinian evolution acknowledge is that their position, given a fair definition of religion, is also a religious one in that it holds that a genuinely scientific account of the origin of biological complexity must be secular and naturalistic, but this secular naturalism is itself a form of religion.”
Again, this nimrod seems to be a bit confused. At least he is correct that few proponents of evolution “acknowledge” that their position is a religious one. The reason, of course, is that it is not even remotely religious. “Secular naturalism” is in no way a form of religion, and it takes a truly narrow-minded dipshit to claim that it is. By the way, for those without a dictionary, "secular" actually means "not religious", so Herr Professor is actually saying "this non-regilous naturalism is itself a form of religion". (Thanks urwrong)

I could continue quoting various other examples of idiocy in this essay, but I think the point is made. The author is clearly so brain-washed by his assumption of the existence of the supernatural, he can’t even wrap his mind around the possibility that he’s wrong. This is evident in every attempt at an argument made in this article.

Good God, I hate theists.

Christmas Gift Guide

The festive Christian holiday of obligatory gift exchange is rapidly approaching. As an atheist, I completely scorn the notions of peace on Earth and good-will toward Men. But, since I’ll never hear the end of it if I actually boycott the holiday, I continue to celebrate Jesus’ birthday with my family. The big problem is finding worthwhile gifts for the God-fearing friends and relatives that I am legally obligated to give presents to. After hours of researching online when I should have been working, I present to you my Christmas Gift Guide.

Nothing says “The True Meaning of Christmas” like Santa Claus kneeling at the feet of the Baby Jesus. I’m sure that was in the Bible somewhere. It’s a perfect match for the equally myth-mixing “Stocking for Jesus”.

If you’ve ever listened to real Gregorian chants, you know that they are nothing like Enigma’s Return to Innocence; they’re all bland, slow, repetitive, and in Latin. Pop this little gem in the CD player at your next Christmas party to instantly dampen everyone’s spirits. If anybody complains, accuse them of hating the Baby Jesus.

This “stocking stuffer” is the perfect gift for grandma. She’ll have no idea what it really is, and with any luck you can get her to hang it on the wall over her bed.

How Would Jesus Smell? Given his day job as a carpenter, and the lack of indoor plumbing, regular bathing, and deodorant 2000 years ago, I would suspect He’d smell pretty bad. Regardless, Christians apparently love the smell of “His Essence”, and everybody likes a candle.

Imagine the look on mom and dad’s faces when you present them with a beautifully Photoshopped picture of their heads on Adam and Eve frolicking naked in the forest. Just smile creepily at them and you’re guaranteed never to have to go to Christmas dinner again.

Joe Pesci’s got nothing on this heavenly bad-ass. This is actually supposed to be some sort of inspirational “Sports Angel Pin” (huh?), but it’s also great for reminding people not to fuck with the original gangsta, God. Also on this page: various pictures and statues of Jesus in suggestive poses with small children.

Yes, that is an angel riding a snowmobile. You’d think the wings would preclude the need for the internal combustion engine, but maybe they get brittle in the cold. No doubt this angel is heading up to the North Pole to help out with Santa’s Christmas crunch time.

It’s well known that the “Where’s Waldo?” series of books is really a tool created by Satanists to lure children away from the Lord. Coming to the rescue is the book “Can You Find Jesus? Introducing Your Child to the Gospel”. Indoctrinate your children the fun way!