World Destruction!

Happy end of the world everyone!  Total annihilation never felt better.

I'm going to go get a drink now.  Perhaps toast Harold Camping on his next apocalyptic miscalculation.

38% of Americans Are Insane

What happened in Japan recently was terrible. The aftermath, and continued crisis is devastating. But is it "divine retribution," as one Japanese official put it? 38% of Americans seem to think so. So, with a well-deserved leap over the middle (the excluded one, that is), I have concluded that of those Americans polled, 38% of them are utterly insane.

What causes an earthquake is pretty basic: shifting of tectonic plates.  It is a natural occurence not needing divine prompting.  If God sees fit to dip his hand into the Sisyphean burden of pushing giant rocks, well then whatever.  Who's going to argue?  In the meanwhile, until we have some evidence of that reality, I'm content to take the operations of the planet on an evidentiary, naturalistic basis.  Because I'm not insane.

*Thank you Atheist Media Blog for this gem.

Campingatology

Harold Camping.  False toothy prophet.

Remember Harold Camping?  Apparently he's littered the earth, and wasted donations on a campaign sounding a clarion-call for the end of the world.

May 21, 2011.  Mark it on your calendars, folks.  Make sure to love much, and have all sorts of ludicrous fun because when you wake up on May 22, 2011 and you're still alive, and the rapture hasn't happened, you will at least not have wasted your time.

Oh, and keep up the hard work at living life to the fullest, even beyond May 22, 2011 because we have another end-of-the-world to get through on December 21, 2012.

Here's another look at the same silliness, but with a tad more detail.  Enjoy!

Sometime in the future, you're going to die.  Get over it.  But if Harold Camping is right, you're going to die a whole lot sooner than you think.  Isn't Camping such a comforting messenger?  Don't you just want to invite him into your home and let him tell you all about how godless your existence is, and how you're going to burn in hell forever?  Such a nice old man.

I wonder if he'll shut-up about this nonsense when he's wrong for the second time...


Thank you to The Thinking Atheist for this video.

John Paul II: Saintish Update

This blood's for you!

Apparently a vial of the pope's blood drawn from him shortly before his death will be installed in the alter at a Polish church.  This "relic," as it is being described, will serve as a vampiric reminder of John Paul II's something-or-another.  I think it's really rather creepy, to be frank.  But I suppose Catholics will come up with all sorts of theologies surrounding veneration (of the dulia variety, mind), and defend their adoration of a dead man's blood come hell or high water.

Maybe the pope's second miracle will be that he prevents the blood from turning brown.  Or maybe the church will employ a bit of scientific know-how to prevent that from happening.  Personally, I think they should leave it alone and see if this pope is one of the necrotic superheroes, The Incorruptibles.

Normal

I don't like the word 'normal.'  It's one of the most overused, thoughtless, and empty words in the English vocabulary.  Mathematics defines normal as 90°.  After that, normal gets weird, dodgy, connotative and, well, abnormal.

You see, there is no normal in philosophy -- that strange application every one of us does to varying degrees in our lives.  Science really has no normal beyond importing the mathematical definition of the word.  Social sciences harbour freakish political mindsets abstracted from reality and imposed on fledgling minds; their 'normal' is the particular partisan persuasion of the institute teaching the social sciences.  And most often that persuasion happens to be in conflict with reality.

Economics doesn't have a 'normal'.  There's no 'normal' in environmental sciences.  There's no 'normal' in music.  Really, 'normal' just doesn't exist beyond being a sentiment that reinforces the guilt we're taught we should feel if we don't quite "fit in."  Add to the injury of that guilt the insult that mainstream media chats into our ears: be an individual.  So while it is that we should be concerned about 'fitting in', so that we don't appear abnormal, we should also be individuals (just like everyone else!), which is a message to stand in stark contrast to the status quo (i.e., the normal expectations around us).

Well, having explained my bafflement with the uncouth concept of normality, I will leave off this article with Ellen Goodman's famous quotation about what constitutes 'normal'.

Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.

Yeah. There's nothing like aspiring to mediocrity. How pathetic is that?

Arken Counter (It's a Copyright thing...)

World famous young earth creationist, Ken Ham -- of Answers In Genesis fame -- has stepped up and asked for donations of $24.5 million dollars to make an amusement park out of Noah's Ark.  Said distraction is, thus far, banally labelled, "Ark Encounter".

Yes, that's right, Mr. Ham is set to dazzle the world by recreating a big boat.  And he wants everyone else to pay for it.  Isn't that nice of him?

Well, in the spirit of charity, I decided to pop over to his blog and feed him a reflection.  However, because my response there was not immediately supportive but more probative, I have been placed in 'moderation' while others after me (because they're enthusiasts) have been permitted their breezy remarks.  Here is what I wrote:

If people are willing to donate multiple thousands of dollars to contribute a peg, plank, or beam would they also be willing to contribute the same kind of money to something more practical, like hosting a dinner for homeless people? Or, perhaps, renting an apartment for a struggling university student?

Why not do something more useful for God’s people? If the biblical stories are true, then we’ve already had an ark. Why do we need another one; especially one that’s just meant to impress viewers and serves essentially as vainglory?

And has anyone realised the contribution to deforestation this project entails?

I think my comments and questions are fair.  Why do we need what would essentially amount to a theme park attraction imaginatively abstracted from the pages of a 5000 year-old book?  And while the U.S. economy rides the waves of recession and depression, is it really essential to anchor otherwise useful funds into a boat-shaped playground?

And why build the bloody thing inland?  What kind of a stupid waste is it to have a giant, brand new boat sitting inland?  At least make the damn thing funtional!  Ooo!  I know: load on board the young earth creationists two-by-two and let them float away somewhere where we don't have to listen to their illiterate twaddle about the earth being 6000 years old. 

And on that point (about the earth being 6000 years old), I think Sam Harris summed it up best when he wrote in Letter To A Christian Nation, "This is, incidentally, about a thousand years after the Sumerians invented glue" (Vintage, paperback ed., p. x - xi).  But, if you're going to beat a dead horse, you may as well have glue as an end-goal.  Then maybe the young-earthers will have a little something-something to seal their planks and beams against the unfloods and inland breakers.

Muzzle the Man, Please

Darth Benedict, head of the Catholic Empire, has used his force to publish a book.  Again.  This time, in Light of the World, one of the topics he tackles is the subject of condom use -- something he and his other spindly-fingered, virgin Sith Lords know a lot about.  I suppose when we want advice, we're all be beholden to the experts, right?

Anyway, Catholicism's chief mouth-breather has announced it to the Empire, and to the scattered remnants of the Rebel Alliance (i.e., Protestants and Non-Catholics alike) that people can hereby use condoms in exceptional circumstances; e.g., if you're going to have sex with a male prostitute.  Or perhaps he should add "if you're going to have sex with a priest."

In any case, people are going to hit the sheets.  There's no exception to that reality.  So, just what kind of "exceptional circumstance" warrants capping one's John-Thomas?  Why, if one's John-Thomas is going to potentially threaten the life of another, of course!  But if you just want to have an hour well-spent with your partner, and not be given over 9 months later to an 18-20 year responsibility, well that's just wrong, evil, sinful, and damnably ungodly.

So are condoms valid in AIDS-riven Africa?

"The Pope made clear in his view condoms were no answer to the Aids pandemic."

So there you have it, commmoners, Darth Benedict has indicated that despite the exceptional circumstances of sexually transmitted diseases that will kill you, they are not the kind of exceptional circumstances that warrant a latex moment. But if you're an African male prostitute, perhaps with AIDS, well that's fine. Go ahead. It's exceptional only when it's exceptional, and not all exceptions are the same. Excepting exceptional circumstances, your circumstances are only exceptional if they're exceptionally exceptional. Then you can put a cap on it. But don't do it if you're just out for some fun. That would make you an evildoer.

Yeah. Okay.

Don't you wish we could have some more 80's spandex-metal bands again? Don't you miss them?

High On Jesus

Well, here's an interesting one. Enjoy.

(Via Unreasonable Faith)

Happy Meal Half-Life

If you leave food on the counter, or somehow exposed, the best predictions would assure us that that food will rot. How long it takes may vary. But the long and the short of exposed food is that it will rot. Simple wisdom.

How complicated things must get then, when that wisdom is confounded by McDonald's Happy Meal. Author Nonna Joann Bruso has been keeping an online journal about the half-life of the Happy Meal. So far, a year has gone by, and the meal has shown no signs of rot, moulding, or decay.

My Conclusion: Food that doesn't break down is not actually food. The infamous Happy Meal may be one of North America's most gleefully recognised packages, but if it defies natural order, it is a paragon of sickness, uselessness, and a plague more than a food. The FDA really ought to have pseudo-foods like this incinerated. Permanently. McDonald's may have the golden arches, but it is inescapably obvious that "all that glitters is not [actually] gold."

*Thanks to the lads at BoingBoing for tipping me off to Bruso's experiment.*

The Vatican and the Devil

Apparently the Vatican is possessed. Well, maybe not possessed as such, but definitely not doing too well in its fight against the devil. At this point, some cynics might add the words of Christ that "a house divided against itself surely cannot stand" (Matt. 12:25).

But that's okay, really, because the gates of hell won't win out against the Holy See, right? 'Cause it was a religious city-state Jesus was talking about when he assured his followers that hell would do its best but fail in its attempt to replicate the falling of the walls at Jericho. Where's Linda Blair when we need some head-spinning proof?

E.T.A.: Is the Holy See really endorsing the "devil made me do it" excuse for all their misdeeds? Pedophile priests, ambiguity toward genocide (Pius XII), residential schools, witch-burnings, the Crusades, etc... It all falls under the clause "the devil made me do it"? What kind of wing-nuttery runs the Vatican? Who are these dottering fools that they can write-off their personal culpability, their responsibility and accountability by stating that it's the devil's fault?

Nevertheless, I think the chief exorcist is right: the devil is in the Vatican. He's a legion of priests, bishops, and deacons that use their position to exploit the vulnerabilities of others. And who can hold them accountable? No-one. They are an autonomous entity enveloped within the religious city-state called The Vatican. They answer to themselves, and hold court on their own, by their own terms, and in their own time. And despite how much they like to reach out and touch others, they are themselves completely untouchable.

E.T.A. #2: Christopher Hitchens has weighed in on the issue, and I have to say that I quite agree with his conclusions. Read for yourself here. And for a more in-depth depiction of the cirque du corps rampant in the Catholic church of late, here's Foreign Policy's article.

The Onion Strikes Again!

Warning: The following material may offend most, and should not be viewed by anybody looking to avoid a laugh. Oh! And it's about sex.

Couple copulates. Kinda.

Shout-out to The Onion for this bit of hilarity!

Jesus The Bruiser

At some point there has to be an end to this kind of absurdity. I'm talking about the absurdity of seeing Jesus in things like irons, mirrors, or MRIs. Yeah, sure, maybe you saw a face and it had a similar look to the typical pale-skinned messiah so often depicted just inside the narthex of local churches, or hanging on the sanctuary doors, maybe even adorning a spot above the sink in the vestry.

In any case, have God and his heavenly attendees become so bored that they've reduced their theophanies to mundane objects like toast and irons and mirrors? Have miracles (e.g., water into wine, resurrection, curing leprosy, et al.) become somewhat passé such that God and the saints are aiming on level with supra-blah?

It's one thing to be devoted. It's another thing to be kinda weird. I see patterns, faces, animals, common objects, and symbols almost every time I look at a stippled ceiling, or a ceiling with those awful dropped-tiles so popular in offices. I don't chalk those coincidental visual cognates up to a miracle, or preserve them somehow so I can sell them on eBay for $28,000. 'Cause that's just crazy!

Mary Mother of Toast

This is old news, but it does need reporting again. From me. Because I'm interested.

Apparently the Virgin Mary Mother of God showed up on toast back in 1994. She wasn't content to hang out with God in heaven. She felt the need to impress people with a crumby miracle. So, she emblazoned herself on Diana Duyser's toasted cheese sandwich.

Nice of Mary to show up, really. Now if she would only do that in diners all across the globe. Then I'd be impressed.

That aside, however, I'd like to know if the bread is Wonder Bread. 'Cause wouldn't that just be the most awesomest blending of human ingenuity and divine intervention: "Need you wonder anymore, mortals, what bread thou needest? Thou shalt take of mine Mary loaf and be blessed"? And really, if you're going to theophanize on burnt bread, why not open a franchise and share the miracle with everyone? It'd certainly be a way to outstrip Jesus's feeding of the 5000. He only had five loaves to work with. But Mary, were she to snag a deal with Wonder Bread, would be able to claim the feeding of the, say, 2 billion!

Still, why would Mary want to run the risk of having her head bitten off? Or much more, invite quips such as "Bite me" into her celestial repose?

I wonder if Mary noticed she has some competition in the miracle-toast department? The late King of Pop, Michael Jackson has his face applied in cineresence, too. That's some pretty stiff competition, if you ask me. But Michael was one-up on Mary in this case. He had a prophetic voice that went ahead of him, Weird Al Yankovic, who in his higher wisdom, told us to "Eat it."

And if I could just put one final word in: I think this "miracle" displayed to a 52 year-old, gambling Catholic (sinner!) was rather milquetoast (i.e., timid and weak) of Mary. C'mon, Mary! You can do better than that. Remember the days of Lourdes? What about in Tepeyec, Mexico? Or Akita, Japan? Now those... those were miracles.

Curious About the Holidays?

Here's one take. Enjoy.

And another one.

For the sentimental folk out there, here's a joyeux noel.

And here's something totally random.

26 Things To Do In An Elevator

1) Bring a camera, and take pictures of everyone in the elevator.

2) Move your desk into the elevator, and whenever someone gets on, ask if they have an appointment.

3) Lay down a Twister mat and ask people if they'd like to play.

4) Leave a box in a corner, and when someone gets on, ask if they hear something ticking.

5) Pretend you are a flight attendant and review emergency procedures and exits with the passengers.

6) Ask, "did you feel that?"

7) Stand really close to someone, sniffing them occasionally.

8) When the doors close, announce to the others, "It's okay, don't panic. They'll open up again."

9) Swat at flies that don't exist.

10) Tell people that you can see their aura.

11) Call out, "GROUP HUG!" and enforce it.

12) Grimace painfully while smacking your forehead and muttering, "Shut up. All of you. Just Shut up!!!"

13) Crack open your briefcase or purse and while peering inside, as "Got enough air in there?"

14) Stand silently and motionless in the corner, facing the wall, without getting off.

15) Stare at another passenger for awhile, then announce in horror, "You're one of THEM," and back away slowly.

16) Wear a puppet on your hand, and use it to talk to the other passengers.

17) Listen to the elevator walls with a stethoscope.

18) Make explosion noises when anyone presses a button.

19) Ask if you can push the button for other people, but push the wrong ones.

20) Stare grinning at another passenger for awhile, then announce "I have new socks on."

21) Draw a little square on the floor with chalk, and announce to the other passengers, "This is MY personal space!!"

22) When there's only one other person in the elevator, tap them on the shoulder and pretend it wasn't you.

23) Push the buttons and pretend they give you a shock.

24) Call the Psychic Hotline from your cell phone, and ask if they know what floor you're on.

25) Hold the doors open, and say that you're waiting for your friend. After awhile, let the doors close and say, "Hi Greg, how's your day been?"

26) Drop a pen, and wait until someone reaches to help pick it up, and then scream "That's mine!"

Thank you kindly, Ojar!

The Stupid! It Burns...

That's true. But it is certainly far more interesting, at times.


Let's get sloshed! Oh, those crazy catholics...


Hmm. A little more thought should've gone into this one. Devilishly funny, though!


Don't believe me? Go here. And may the force be with you. Or something like that.

Eyesore

Honest Thievery

By way of Pilgrim.Not.Wanderer

You Want One. You Know You Do.

Well, here's a product you don't see every day. Thank God.

Thanks go to TAG-photos for this oddity.