My Answers to a poll on Outsider Music

I don't know if anyone's interested, but here are my thoughts on outsider music for a grad student in Helsinki.

I will try to answer your questions about outsider music:

Age: 39

F

"Outsider music" is independantly produced music by generally passionate individuals, who sometimes wish they were not outsider artists, and oftentimes have no idea they are considered outsider by others. The music is either distributed through friends or accident, or word-of-mouth, or thriftstore bins of homemade tapes, or ads in magazines.

b) "Why are some artists considered outsiders?" "What makes them outsiders?"
Their music is not considered widely listenable, or their message is outside of the norm. Sometimes their buzz is more about their own personal stories. Sometimes the performer is mentally ill.

d) "What do you think are the most important features of outsider
music?"
Passion, individiualism, kook-motifs, sincerity and/or naievete.

4. Most outsider musicians are informed completely by popular genres, either imitating them or rejecting them outright. But mostly they are similar only through the term "music," and sometimes that is debatable, too.

5. "What do you think is the relationship between outsider music and folk
music? How are they different/same?"
Traditionally, folk music was true DIY-do-it-yourself to please your family and friends music. One can see the similarities. However, a lot of folk music is driven totally by ethnic culture. Outsiders, if driven by anything, are driven by personal passion and/or dreams of popular stardom. The exception to this rule might be Louie Louie, star of the "El Touchie" dances. But again, this is latin popular music, not chicano folk music.

6. "Why do you listen to/like outsider music?"
I have always been moved by passion. I am a big fan of Crackpottery--that is, the individual with a "kook motif:" an idea he or she thinks is The answer to life, the universe, and everything. This is one of the aspects I look for in outsider music. I also love a good story. A song that raises my eyebrows and makes me think "what could have possibly motivated her to write a song like that?" What's more comic/tragic than a woman or a man who fancies himself/herself an opera diva, only to produce painful warbles? Yet, they manage to do it with such sincerity and passion towards the song, that it comes off utterly charming. Utterly human. It's rare to find that kind of humanity on the Top 40.

7. "Who is your favorite outsider musician/ band playing outsider music? Why him/her/them?"
Generally, I don't play favorites, as I am always on the lookout for more discoveries. That's even more enjoyable than listening. I have recently discovered Jandek, and am trying to listen to his music. I recently saw the movie about his mythology. As far as a personal favorite, I've wondered if I could include a song by John Carradine, from the movie "Red Zone Cuba." Carradine is a fine singer, however his charm is exceedingly outsider, as is the movie. I quite doubt that many outsider fans would agree with me that "Night Train to Mundo Fine" is a true outsider song.

8. "How did you became aware of outsider music?"
I stumbled across an episode of "Incorrect Music" on WFMU, hosted by Irwin Chusid, around the same time I found the American Song Poem Music Archives. It caused a flash of recognition, as I graduated from the Evergreen State College with a degree in music. TESC's music department has included such luminaries as John Cage and Laurie Anderson, and has promoted all sorts of different music for years. My own music composition prof had us taking trips to Boeing's surplus store to gather materials to build instruments. I've always been aware of music not of the norm, and having been raised a fundamentalist christian as a child, I was no stranger to impassioned nuts making strange music for non-musical reasons.

9. "Why do you think outsider music is considered “underground music”? Why can’t you hear/see it in the mainstream media?"
The top forty is interested in music that is catchy or promotes money-generating fads. The mainstream media wants songs that will appeal to the largest number of ears possible. They may occasionally sneak in some niche interests, but not as a rule. However, the internet has shown industry the power of such niche-marketing, and may incorporate more interesting sounds in the future. MTV and other companies have embraced DJ's, who tend to be incredibly knowledgeable about these sounds and artists, and sometimes incorporate them into their mixes. The more these mixes are played, the more the typical teenager will become used to it. Everything weird can become "normal" if we're acclimated to it. Just look at "The Rite of Spring" by Stravinsky. Of course, his musicians could play...

10. "If you’re familiar with outsider art/art brut, what do you think is,its relationship to outsider music?"
Art for Jesus. Some of those paintings and songs go hand-in-hand. When you add mental illness or deficiency to basic skills in painting or music that don't include formal training, you've got your similarities. As long as it's sincere.

Thanks, this was an enjoyable survey.

Sincerely,
Alleee
http://www.hellboundalleee.com

Pray Instead

Pope Urges Catholics to Pray More--via

Jaywalk Blog

VATICAN CITY, MARCH 30, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI is appealing to all Catholics to intensify their prayer for vocations for a Church in need of more priests and consecrated persons.

"The priest's mission in the Church is irreplaceable," the Pope wrote in a message for the upcoming World Day of Prayer for Vocations.

"Therefore, despite the fact that in some regions there is a decrease of the clergy, the certainty must never be lost that Christ will continue to inspire men who, as the Apostles, putting all concerns aside, dedicate themselves totally to the celebration of the sacred mysteries, the preaching of the Gospel and pastoral ministry," the Holy Father wrote.

I agree that Catholics should pray more. All the time, in fact. Especially when they start getting that old craving to hold up sign with aborted foetuses--pray instead.

If you're a nun and feel like beating your student--pray instead.
If you're a catholic and feel like voting--pray instead.
If you see something that looks like Jesus on some food or an underpass and want to sell it on ebay or call the 6 o'cock news--pray instead.
If you want to deny the holocaust--pray instead.
If you feel like insisting that public schools be turned into rectories--pray instead.
If you think you can't stop yourself from getting that Jesus tatoo on your face--pray instead.
If you want to start a speed metal christian boyband--pray instead.
If you feel like making art of any kind praising your god--pray instead.
If someone suggests you might like to sell soap and breathspray with a multilevel marketing business--pray instead.
If you're a senior on a fixed income and a nice big-haired preacher on tv says if you send them money, you'll get a better mansion in heaven--pray instead.
If you get the urge to run for the schoolboard so you can get the schools to teach creationism--pray instead.
If you won some kind of trophy on a television award show and feel like thanking Jesus for kicking the other nominees' asses--pray instead.
If you feel like indoctrinating your children with sexual shame and loathing for their bodies--pray instead.
If you see a choir boy and you....pray instead.

See? I totally agree with the pope.

Bill Maher on Pseudo-Christians?

Dear Internet Diary,

I enjoyed very much this piece done by Bill Maher, via One Good Move:

Bill (Mr animal rights) had me until he sold out to Jesus. What did we just say on our show about Jesus' Morality last week? Bill says Jesus didn't have one good word to say about war or torture. Excpet that it was Jesus who made Hell and our impending torture in it central to his teachings. It's right in the fucking Sermon on the Mount! As far as war, I guess Bill's never heard about the Apocalypse.

(Before you write to me and say "that was all written by John the Elder and stuff," don't forget that we have nothing by anyone answering to the name Jesus Christ. It's all hearsay and made-up nonsense, but that's what people believe, and apparently that's what Bill Maher believes.)

So Bill takes the jerks' way out and says that these demagogues who cry "War on Christians" are not real christians. Like who? Him? No, those people in government, George W, Pat Robertson, Bill O'Reilley, all of them are 100% Jesus-fearing Christians. And nothing they say is inconsistent with scripture. It's the make-it-up-as-you-go-along liberal christians who have it wrong. If you don't agree, please show me this wonderful man called Jesus, this feminist, this peacenick, this environmentalist, this Vegetarian Communist who loved children. I have a bible, and I jsut ain't seeing it.

Thanks for listening.

Keep Away From Children

You've been there. Someone holds up their adorable, darling child and says, gently, "Here is a reason to believe in God."

I think I've seen the same argument with porno and beer.

Rather than being a moment where we all sit down and forget our differences, and bask in the glow of a soft and innocent, lovely child, I see it as more christian bullying. It's a challenge. Dare you make any disparaging comment, like "actually, that's a reason to believe in sex?" If you say anything other than "congratulations, what a cute baby," you're a bastard.

The Alleee way of dealing with this is to hold up a similar child, only one from Vietnam whose mother was exposed to Agent Orange. "Is this a reason to believe in God, too?"

But now that I think of it, it is a reason. God hates Babies. Despises them. Is there even one baby besides the Christ Child that isn't killed or threatened or eaten? Seriously, someone find me one. The god of the bible simply has a taste for them. I woyuld have to say to the proud father: "Don't hold that up! You'll give Him ideas!" Seriously. Don't overfeed the tyke. Just look at the bible! Cutting babies in half. Slaughtering firstborns is evil for the king, yes. But when God does it, it's ok. Parents are forced to eat their own children for thought crimes, but when kids do wrong, they either get eaten by various animals, or killed by their parents. Why can't the kids eat their pets, at least? Parents are always making bad deals with god, and as a result, the children are killed. If you're looking at the bible for childraising hints--and I know you crazy monkeys are--you'll find that if you manage to carry a pregnancy without having a righteous Israelite sword rip through your belly, the only advice for Johnny is beat him, preferably with a rod, but mostly pelt him with stones.

I would have to advise that proud father to take out a restraining order on Jehovah, to keep him away from his Reason-To-Believe. Because, Jesus loves the little children--roasted, with a nice mustard sauce.

Thanks for listening.

LOOK!

Look behind you!







April Fool's!
Poisson D'Avril!

Now go listen to my station for awhile.

The Greatest Infomercial Ever Produced

Thanks to Dave Pearson

Another Visit with Pascal

Dear Internet Diary,

Annoying Question Number 1:
What if you're wrong? If I, a theist, am wrong, nothing happens I have nothing to lose. If you are wrong, however, you have everything to lose! Wouldn't it be safer to just believe?

You know, you're absolutely right. It would be much safer to be an a-one, righteous, fearing believer! So, if you don't mind, I'll hitch a ride with you to the local Temple, where we both must begin our conversion process to be able to enter the world of Orthodox Judaism. You'd better take a bath, and get ready spiritually, because you're going to have to get circumcized. If you're already circumcized, you're not off the hook. The ceremony of Hatafat Dam Brit is required--they need your blood. Then you'll need the mikveh, during the tevillah., and then...well, our Rabbi will be able to tell us.

After that, in the spirit of safety, we should consider Mormonism. You never know. God might live in Salt Lake City! It might be a fucking second alto in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir! To be safe, you should consider wearing the underwear in the shower.

We have absolutely no goddamned idea of who god is, and what it wants. According to the agnostics, we can't ever know what it wants with us. So, your next conversion, in my opinion, should be Santeria. It couldn't hurt to slit a few chicken throats just in case Ogun wants blood. If you've ever read the King James bible, you should know that gods tend to like the smell of dead animals.

Finally, we should both get out our checkbooks and prepare to schedule a few sessions with the old E-Meter aty our local Church of Scientology. It's a possiblity that the only way to escape our fate is with a few hundred thousand dollars towards the ability to leave our very bodies, just like L Ron Hubbard did. Who knows? You might be able to hang out with Kirstie Alley and some loudmouth manic depressive whose name escapes me.

You didn't actually assume that your particular religion was the default one, did you? After all, there are thousands of religions out there--not to mention the denominations of Protestantism, all declaring that their practices are the one true religion. And there you are, a complacent monotheist. I always thought monotheism was a stupid position: after all, you couldn't possibly be omniscient. Have you looked all over the universe in case there might be more gods out there, with all manner of idiosynchracies? How much chance do you have just believing to "be safe" when even the nice people in your wonderful book had to scramble to trick the Angel of Death every other Friday night, whom had a proclivity for young boys, ? And are you eating hamburgers on Friday? Should you eat hamburgers at all? Are they blessed?

I have another proposition for you. You can live in fear that you're pleasing all the right gods with your obsessive-compulsive practices, worrying that Jehovah or Ogun or the Angel of Death is hiding behind the next corner, or you can throw it all in the dustbin and be a normal human being who lives by the laws of causality just like everything else in the universe. If it turns out you only have one chance at life, I'm betting on the second choice.

Site Visit SPIKE!

Okay, okay, someone please help me out with this. On the 24th, the day I posted the "War on Easter" and "Savaged in South Dakota," I got over 3000 hits. What gives? Some investigation is in order.

PETA and Pet Slavery

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Dear internet diary,

Recently I was disappointed to find that a dear friend of mine had done publicity work for PETA: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. I haven't kept in touch very well with my friend, and assume she doesn't know much about PETA's activities and retarded positions on animals. I'm pretty sure she doesn't, because in the publicity shoot, she asked the audience to "spay and neuter your pets."

Sure, PeTa believes in spaying and neutering. But does PeTA even believe in pets?

(Pets) are slaves, even if well-kept slaves." --PeTa's Statement on Companion Animals.

"The cat, like the dog, must disappear..... We should cut the domestic cat free from our dominance by neutering, neutering, and more neutering, until our pathetic version of the cat ceases to exist."
-John Bryant, Fettered Kingdoms: An Examination of a Changing Ethic, PETA 1982, p.15.

In a perfect world, all other-than-human animals would be free of human interference, and dogs and cats would be part of the ecological scheme, as they were before humans domesticated them and as they remain in some parts of the undeveloped world.---PETA pamphlet, Companion Animals: Pets or Prisoners?

"One day we would like an end to pet shops and breeding animals [Dogs] would pursue their natural lives in the wild."
-Ingrid Newkirk, Chicago Daily Herald, March 1, 1990
Found at Animal Rights.net

Even if keeping pets is slavery, PeTA advocates keeping pets from shelters. So I suppose, if we should rescue pets from shelters, we should also make slaves of people. If they are going to make the argument that pets are slaves, then they should by all means either release their own pets immediately, or keep people as slaves if said people would be better off. That is, if they want to remain morally consistent. I'm weird that way.

Similarly, PeTA sees eating and killing animals as a "holocaust." If so, they should also kill human beings, since they do a much better job killing animals themselves than they do finding slave owners for them. According to the state of Virginia, PeTA killed about 90% of the animals it bragged about saving.Many Humane Society branches claim an 85-95% adoption rate in its shelters. If I ever lost my pet, I think it would fare much better with the local dogcatcher than its likely deadly fate with a PeTA group--which tends to protest the dogcatcher.

I say, if you love animals, you do not love PeTA.

Rockstars' Ramblings: Image Dogtoring #1: Christians & Crusades

Rockstars' Ramblings: Image Dogtoring #1: Christians & Crusades

This is a parody of Dark Dungeons, by Jack T Chick.

Funny I should mention that, but I, too, have a parody of Dark Dungeons. And you, you lucky reader, will be able to hear it for free, unlike everyone else who has to pay about a dollar for it over in our Freethought Media Store. Cool, eh?

So, without further ado, I give you


Dark Dungeons

Pin Me, Baby

Hellbound Heretics | Add yourself!
Photos | Forums

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PLUGINSPAGE="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer">

Behold, the Atheist's Nightmare

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Dear Internet Diary,

Have you heard that the banana proves creationism? It's true! Listen to Ray Comfort:

Behold! The Atheist's Nightmare!

Yes, that was the one where the banana wearing a tie knocked on the doughnut's door and said "Do yo like working so hard every day? Have you heard about Amway, God's new covenant of wealth?" Terrible dream.

Now if you study a well-made banana you'll find...

What--God fucks up some of His bananas?
Actually, "God" doesn't make bananas. Man does. It's called "horticulture." A God-made banana--you wouldn't want to eat it.

The banana and the hand are perfectly made one for the others.

Actually, the glove is made for the human hand. Maybe the natural banana was made for the chimp--our cousin's--hand. The banana was made bigger, by us, because people like their fruit bigger.

You'll find the maker of the banana, Almighty God, has made it with a non-slip surface.

Can't say as much for the other side of the surface. You know another fruit that almighty God made with a non-slip surface? The Prickly Pear. Tastes like strawberries. It actually tastes better than the banana. Not exactly made to fit the human hand, eh?

You'll find a wrapper which is biodegradeable, has perforations.

Fruit skin is generally biodegradeable like that. Is your designed soda-can you were just demonstrating bio-degradeable? As far as the easy-to open thing, if the banana proves creationism, the coconut disproves it. And it doesn't easily fit...

Notice how gracefully it sits over the human hand. Notice it has a point at the top for ease of entry, it's just the right shape for the human mouth

I saw how you looked at Kirk Cameron when you said that. You old dog, you.

So lets sing the praises of artificial selection: that people tend to select toward the traits that people want. Because, if you ever had to try and live on so-called "god-made" fruits and vegetables, you'd have to wonder about how much this God person knows about his own children.

Teaching about Govt to Kids

I read this great post on Anti-State.com and I had to share it with you:

I think it is very important that we teach our children about the true nature of government. ... In my own experience as a father, I have discovered several simple devices that can illustrate to a child's mind the principles on which the modern state deals with its citizens. You may find them helpful too...... (continues)

Betty Butterfield

Fun with Vox Machina

Vox Machina

Welcome to Vox Machina, the voice of the machine. Vox Machina is a web application that can convert your text input into a spoken word MP3 file. This conversion takes place on-the-fly using Apple's Mac OS X speech synthesizer and the open-source LAME audio encoder. A Mac OS X desktop application is also freely available.

I tried it out and it is indeed a joy. Listen to what it can do to my newest addition to the Living Bible, from the Book Of Peter....Cottontail:

Take the Peeps to the People

Feedback for "A Civil Discussion"

So here I am having a civil discussion on "A Civil Discussion." My comments to a commenter were too long for the comments section, so I'm leaving them here.

Mdtomn: Humanity is there now. We're IN Hell. We're apart from God. And while we don't always realize it, it's hell. It's a horrible way to be.

Alleee replies: : I find your interpretation of scripture curious. Where does Jesus say that hell has chocolate, orgasms, Mozart, and rollercoasters? I don't understand why a God would kill himself (and that's not even debatable, he didn't kill himself at all) to "save us" from chocolate, orgasms, Mozart and rollercoasters. It seems to me that you're selling life a teensy bit short. (And just so you don't jump on me, life also includes love, morality, values, family, motherhood and truth--and you're not going to find that in death, sucka.)

Think about kids beaten by their parents, and minorities suffering mistreatment by the majority. Keep in mind that despite everything we try to do, those things will all be that way tomorrow - maybe less so, maybe better, but still there.

There you go again. You mention child beating and suffering--which God made--but you fail to mention the fact the he's supposed to save us from orgasms and Mozart. God has a funky way of saving us from Parasitic childhood deformity--which he made, and orgasms, which he also supposedly made. He forgot that he could have just made a world without those things.

It's about a man willing to say "love thy enemy as thyself" turn the other cheek, give up everything you ever had and follow him, etc

..which is pretty screwed up. I already explained the first part, but there have been many people in history who said "give up everything you value and follow me." These folks are called cult leaders. Might I remind you of the scripture where Jesus said to fathers to fuck their families and leave them? To turn against everyone they love, and in fact, you aren't worthy of following him if you don't do that?

Regardless of what your beliefs are, my post was not about whose the true christian. I am quite aware of what christianity is. I wish I could take its basis--original sin--and flush it away so that it was as if it never existed. Chritstianity, for all of its solicitousness in trying to sell itself as a religion of love and selflessness, is a religion of death, misery, and hatred for life.

The best Christians (very rare, now days), are already in heaven in every meaningful way. In their experience of God's love, they can love everyone else so completely that all distinctions, all limitations, fall away.

Now, I sure as heck am not there. And few are. But that's what some of us are trying to reach. And, if you want to try to reach it too, you can drop by some of the cool Mainstream Churches - Episcopalians, Methodists, Luterans, etc.

No, thanks. What about Lutherans makes them so enlightened? Or "the best Christians?" (The best wouldn't be the best if they weren't "rare.)

I was a Presbyterian for my whole conscious childhood. You have to wonder why the Wesleyans would warn against following Calvin, and vice-versa. That doesn't seem too enlightened to me. as far as "being in heaven" is concerned, your ideas cannot be found within Calvinistic or Wesleyan teachings, but I know a few new-agers who dabble in what they call "the eastern religions" who might agree partially. I don't really care much that you don't agree with your own scripture, especially with "cool mainstream" denominations, but fella, I'm sorry: you're just not consistent. And I still have love, passion, Mozart, orgasms, chocolate, morality, and the warm fuzzies. And a little bit of enlightenment. I suppose that's pretty "rare nowadays," too. (But the way I say it sounds better). Basically, I don't need more than the world. The world is good enough for me.

Anyway, keep in mind that Christian theology and history are a lot more complex than many modern "Christian" adherents know, particularly those who make television and politics. There's a lot more there there than this stuff.

I know. It's pretty complex. But it's not complex enough to make the belief in the justness of hell a good moral principle.

The Straight Rights Movement

A Message From Dan Savage, of Savage Love:

Earlier this month Republicans in South Dakota successfully banned abortion in that state. Last week the GOP-controlled state house of representatives in Missouri voted to ban state-funded family-planning clinics from dispensing birth control. "If you hand out contraception to single women," (and, apparently, married ones--alleee) one Republican state rep told the Kansas City Star, "we're saying promiscuity is okay." On the federal level, Republicans are blocking the over-the-counter sale of emergency contraception and keeping a 100 percent effective HPV vaccine—a vaccine that will save the lives of thousands of women every year—from being made available.

The GOP's message to straight Americans: If you have sex, we want it to fuck up your lives as much as possible. No birth control, no emergency contraception, no abortion services, no life-saving vaccines. If you get pregnant, tough shit. You're going to have those babies, ladies, and you're going to make those child-support payments, gentlemen. And if you get HPV and it leads to cervical cancer, well, that's too bad. Have a nice funeral, slut.

What's it going to take to get a straight-rights movement off the ground? The GOP in Kansas is seeking to criminalize hetero heavy petting, for God's sake! Wake up and smell the freaking Holy War, breeders! The religious right hates heterosexuality just as much as it hates homosexuality. Fight back!

I'd like to add that the GOP is making it clear that it hates female heterosexuality. When it bans female contraception specifically, you know what they mean. They want us to blow them, they want to fuck us, they want to slap us in the face, call us sluts and get the hell out. If you think for one minute that those Old Boys in congress--whether it's a state or federal congress--aren't going out to strip bars, and later in the evening hiring themselves a slut on whose face they can blow their republican wad, then you're seriously naive, and probably think that a "wad" is a roll of dollars.

And that's what a congressman really calls "birth control."

Savaged in South Dakota

By now, you've heard about the South Dakota abortion ban.

From The Raw Story:

Resisting calls by moderates from both sides, as well as public statements by President Bush, South Dakota lawmakers have rejected the idea of allowing exemptions for cases of rape or incest to the state's abortion ban. One backer of the bill, State Senator Bill Napoli, argued on PBS's Newshour that if a victim had followed strict religious guidelines, her life would be endangered by the pregnancy. Under this scenario, she would be eligible for an abortion.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Napoli says most abortions are performed for what he calls "convenience." He insists that exceptions can be made for rape or incest under the provision that protects the mother's life. I asked him for a scenario in which an exception may be invoked.
BILL NAPOLI: A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.

Here is my musical interpretation Download Savaged in South Dakota

The War on Easter

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Dear Internet Diary,

St. Paul City Office Boots Easter Bunny

A small Easter display was removed from the City Hall lobby on Wednesday out of concern that it would offend non-Christians.

The display _ a cloth Easter bunny, pastel-colored eggs and a sign with the words "Happy Easter" _ was put up by a City Council secretary. They were not purchased with city money.

Get out your bibles and turn to the Book of Peter......Cottontail.

And the Rabbit, which cheweth the cud, didst lay down its Egg-of-Many-Colours, when The Lord came upon him. Immediately the Lord did find another opportunity to make unto man an object lesson:
And the brightest and stripiest of eggs are those that are the hardest to find. For Lo! Thereupon the Blessed Holy Forsythia Bush that shineth with the glorious Yellow, for there, there LOOK! For there lyest the crystaline MArshmallow Peep, tempting all with its sugary goodness. Take not the Peep, but takest it to the People. And all who take not the Peep to the people will burn as the branches of the bare bush.

Let us pray,

Easter Bunny, please leave me some chocolate, or at least a non-toxic facimile created in a factory off the New Jersey turnpike, several beautiful eggs that I will dye myself sitting at the kitchen table with my Paas egg dyes, excluding the one egg that I experiemented on by dipping it in all 6 colours and it turned out brown--give that to my sister, O Jack of the Rabbit, O Oskar Hase. Leave me some Peeps, a new ridiculous easter hat, and most of all, giant white scary Harvey rabbit, leave me a stuffed bunny made in your image. One more thing: I'll pass on the baby chick, because I don't want my little sister to have to go through the same Bad Boy Bubby incident we went through last year. Amen.

Praise his soft and fluffy name.

Thanks for listening.

(story via J-Walk Blog)

Hi!

Hi

I am interested in this phrase

I am privileged with the knowledge that everything that happens in the universe, from my mundane, day-to-day life, to the beginnings of life itself, to the end of the lives of countless heavenly bodies in space, is all due to natural processes. Everything that happens is natural, and everything that exists is natural.

By natural processes I take it you mean matter behaving according to the laws of physics and chemistry ...........but how do you explain on one beautiful watery planet the laws of entropy are reversed and the miraculous complex and diverse life exists ....we are living proof of something strange ocurring .....look out into the cold recesses of space ...........here on this planet a miracle has occurred .....now either that miracle is a result of chance .........astronomical chance........or an intelligent creator.......as a christian I dont pretend that I became one as a result of rational thought but by Gods intervention.....but I do veiw it as a rational point of veiw , one of several atheism being one of them,given the evidence..

HI!

Unfortunately you are mistaken about the laws of entropy on earth being broken! The good news is we are still looking at natural processes, because of that big ol' ball of energy in the sky called "the sun!"


Sincerely,
Alleee

Hi

thank you for your polite answer. Evolutionists use the addition of energy to try to explain away a remarkable event. If you dont beleive in God you have to. Why is it good news ...only if you dont wish to beleive in God .....science isnt a static thing.....in the pure sciences ...physics and chemistry ....you can do experiments the variables are more limited ....they are less affected by the design of the experiment....the subject is less complicated .........but biology is so complex and the experimenter is a creature himself so the outcomes are much more affected by the design of the experiment and the outcome the scientist desires ......the concept that the energy input from the sun allows the earth to be not considered a closed system and therefore allowing a simply proven law to be controverted (is that a word?should be) ....is just an unproven throwaway line ....the truth is no one knows ....and evolutionists should say they dont know ....it could be a natural process or it could be a creator ....and this point should not be a stumbling block to those becoming convinced (supernaturally) of the reality of a personal God .

If you believe your questions to be so important, why don`t you contact a scientist? If your questions have not been pondered and answered before, then they would be very important to science. If your challenges are good enough to change our current understanding of science, then you could be a very important person indeed. What I suggest is you try to find out more about what the second law of thermodynamics is. Perhaps you could write to a science magazine.

Do you believe in everything? Is the reason you don't believe in certain things or just because you don't want to?

It is good news that the earth runs on natural processes because we can know things. If the world was controlled by a magical thing, then we could never rely on our senses, or our knowledge. We could never know that what we see, or what we remembe,r is correct or incorrect. If the world ran on a magical, jealous, and violent character, we could not rely on information like "look both ways before you cross the street," "washing helps kill dangerous germs," and "most plants need a lot of sun and good soil in order to grow." In a magical world, you could not know whether or not you are acting on free will, especially if the Christian bible stories are true. If God can harden a pharaoh's heart, or make a devil go into a person to make him do bad things, then you can never know that what you do is your choice, or that cause and effect are real.

That is why it is good news. You do not have to believe in such a bad character, and you do not have to be so intellectually inconsistent that you have to rationalize away why you believe in a christian or Jewish god, and not a Hindu or ancient Norse one.

Alleee

test

A Civil Discussion

Have a seat. Would you like some coffee, tea?

I asked you here today to discuss the fact that you deserve to be beaten, tortured, and humiliated. Your thoughts are crimes worthy of sexual humiliation and agonizing pain, for as long as the torturers can keep it up.

In fact, it's not just your thoughts. It's what your ancestors thought. Don't blame me; that's just how it is.

It's not my fault, you see, because, by thinking those thoughts, you have chosen to be branded with hot metal and repeatedly, brutally sodomized. You have said, through your thoughts and actions, that you want to be chained down on a splintery rack, stretched, and shat upon by rabid livestock, while buzzards peck out your eyes. You said, "hey, mister. Would you mind putting me in an episode of twilight zone, where I slowly go into a psychological horror, despair and despondency, never to receive comfort from another human being? That would be great." Hey--that was you talking. Not me.

But you can take it all back. You can escape from your shame. All you have to do is to agree with me, and your unforgiveable thought-crimes will be erased. Admit that your thoughts are vile, and that you are vile, and that you deserve to sit in a hot tub full of feces and vomit, and handed a large spoon, and you will escape the fate of someone peeling your skin off and forcing you into an iodone and lime juice shower.

But the best part of all this, is if you admit you deserve to slide down a giant razor blade into a pond full of pirhana and Amazon Urethra fish, you will be able to hang out with me. Isn't that great? What good news that is!

Now, aren't you glad we could have this talk? If more people realized that people as different as we can have a civil exchange of ideas, we wouldn't be having these problems. I just wish that the other people, the ones like you, weren't so unreasonably hostile.

Thanks for listening.

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The Greatest Song and Video Ever Produced

Jandek on Corwood

I`m posting this because I`m fucked up today and can`t get much out. SO enjoy this trailer to a movie we watched last night. I knew somewhat about Jandek--not much--but was surprised by all the Evergreen State College connections in the Jandek fanbase. Well--actually I would have been surprised had there NOT been an Evergreen connection. I`ve stood in that radio studio shown as a big bright wondow in the trailer. I commented, during the film, that this movie HAD to be shown by my music profs at Evergreen. If they didn't use up several hours of seminar and lecture time on Jandek, I'd be floored. After all, Evergreen was the home of Cage and Laurie Anderson for a time.

Enjoy.



Download his surprise live appearance (audio) in Glasgow from Rapidshare.

The Amazing Jesus, part Two

Dear internet Diary,

From The Essentials of Eternal Life:

Believe in Jesus Christ
When we repent of our sins, we realize that we cannot save ourselves and that we are in need of a Savior. That is why Jesus Christ came and died for our sins and took the punishment for sins that we deserved on the cross. We must believe, from our hearts (not just our minds) that Jesus died for our sins and that He rose again three days later to show His power over death.

How is this moral? Let's forget, for a moment, that we certainly do not deserve to be crucified for any of our deeds, let alone our thoughts. Where, in any human circumstance, is it moral for one person to take the punishment for another?

Certainly some, in America, at least, have been put to death for the crimes of someone else, because of bad council, or mistaken identity. This is a tragedy. It's possible that some do not care if the wrong person was accused, and died, for a murder, as long as someone "paid." This is also immoral. The killer has not "paid" for his crime, and may go on killing. If the loved ones are satisfied by someone, anyone, dying for the crime, this is due to insanity, not morality.

Do you watch police shows, or action movies? Have you ever heard the line, "don't hurt the girl. Take me, instead." The noble sacrifice of the hero. Is this a good analogy for Jesus' so-called "sacrifice?" Well, who is doing the hurting? An all-good, all-moral God, or a desperate and evil kidnapper? The criminal wants a victim to hold hostage in order to get something from whomever he wants to hurt. Is this the kind of individual we worship? Is God satisfied, as long as someone dies? Is this moral?

Patty Smith sang, "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine." This is like the idea that Jesus was maybe real, but not a divine savior. He was a victim, but maybe he nobly sacrificed his body, maybe he took the punishment for someone, but generational curses don't exist. Gloria is a free spirit. But the group CRASS made a much more accurate statement in Asylum:

Jesus Died for his own sins, not mine.

Many Christians like to point out that with Jesus' sacrifice, came the end of sacrificial religion. Before Jesus' sacrifice, we had to slaughter a lamb or something valuable that had lots of blood in order to pay respect to God. How primitive, but how great of God to send himself, his son, to bring light into the world. Therefore

Jesus died for his own sins, not mine.

In this interpretation, God diverts attention from the fact that His commands were so primitive and ugly by pulling a Penn-and-Tellerlike fake suicide stunt. This is a more "evil tricks to play on your friends" routine that followed the little parlour tricks he played, like turning water into wine. This would be the big, showstopping trick, full fo blood and emotion, a trick for the more sophisticated, jaded, modern mind. He appears as a human sacrificial lamb, pure, and sinless like the unicorn. Then--get this, he allows himself to be humiliated and beaten, and left hanging in the sun to dry and die, for eight-Blain-a-riffic days, only to magically emerge from the sealed cave, clean and white, evewn allowing someone from the audience to examine his wounds! You'd think that this would be THE finale--but wait! The Amazing Jesus then flies over the audience and disappears into the clouds! Wow! (Applause)

Jesus didn't die for our sins. He died for our entertainment.

Sorry for heading off into an unexpected tangent. Hope you enjoyed it, anyway.

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Nino Ferrer - Le téléphon Scopitone

Christopher Laird--Moi, Et Ma Petite Amie

This one sounds like Harry Nilsson, whom I love.

The Amazing Jesus

Dear Internet Diary,

I've just been reading the FAQ on the site of the Fellowship of Christian Magicians, who edited "Magic for Dummies."

Remember the episode of King of the Hill where Bobby Hill played the Amazing Jesus in front of a speechlessly offended group of parents? He was turning water into wine, making loaves and fishes, that kind of thing. If you don't get it already, I'll make it unfunny for you: he was implying that Jesus could have been nothing but a sleight-of-hand conjurer, since he had no trouble doing Jesus' "miracles" of the bible.

Of course, Bobby wasn't "doing" the miracles at all. The job of magicians is to make it look like they are doing something that they most certainly are not.

I recall Penn Jilette talking about his experiences doing his show in Vegas with Teller, and this was confirmed by the personal experiences of Criss Angel. No matter how clearly you explain to the audience that "this is a trick, and this is how it's done," there are always people that believe deeply that Penn, Teller, or Criss Angel have magical powers. Maybe that's why it only took a few cheap quarter tricks for Blaine or Uri Geller to believe them.

But the Fellowship of Christian Magicians knows that this deception is the key to spreading the Gospel. They see that, instead of proving that Jesus was doing cheap parlour-tricks, they are being very much like God:

The second part of a Biblical basis for Gospel magic is God's own use of the spectacular as an attention-getting device. He could have dealt with people without using the miraculous, but with Moses He chose to use a bush that burned without being consumed, with Balaam He used a talking donkey; with Joshua He used a destructive trumpet blast to bring down the walls of Jericho, and with Belshazzar He wrote on the wall with a giant hand.
...
But perhaps most spectacular of all are the descriptions of the events surrounding the death and resurrection of Jesus. It could have happened without a lot of fanfare, but Christs death was accompanied by darkness and earthquake. The resurrection was accompanied by a blast of light that left the guards stunned and dazed.

I have seen some very impressive and effective use of "magic" to illustrate principles from the Scripture. When sleight of hand and illusion are harnessed for the purpose of explaining Gospel principles, it can be very powerful from a psychological point of view.

The FAQ makes the distinction between the magic gospel-spreader, and the magician-for entertainment:

The Gospel magician could easily be confused with the secular entertainer, or worse, with the occultist, just as the Christian singer could be identified with the acid-dropping Satanist, or the preacher could be linked with the immoral talk-show host.

We would never. But here is the big compartmentalization:

Some Christians are very superstitious and assume that anything they cannot themselves understand and explain must be supernatural. Hence they see negative effects as being produced by demons, and every positive event must be a miracle of God. There is, however, great room for neutral events which can be used either for good or for evil.

See how, instead of calling them natural events, they call them "neutral?" Like I said: someone find the irony switch on these people! Is it possible that they could ever fix that short in their system and realize that the "miracles" performed by "God" are also these "neutral events" and/or "positive deceptions?" (We call that "pious fraud.") I suppose they will--when Uri Geller admits he's using sleight-of-hand. Which will be never.

Thanks for listening, and thanks to Marek for the idea.

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Come to The Netherlands, All Ye Amish

Dear Internet Diary,

I read an article today about a new immigration policy in The Netherlands. Part of the test requires immigrants to watch a film showing gay men kissing and bare-breasted women. The intent seems to be to educate immigrants that Dutch culture is liberal, and that they have to accept that to live in the country. It doesn't say you have to agree with those things--you just have to buy and watch the film.

So far, so good.

However, according to the article, not only is the Iranian version edited and censored, but Americans are exempt.

Do the Dutch have illusions about what Americans are like? Have they not heard about the national fury over the wardrobe malfunction of Janet Jackson? Do they know about the "War on Drugs" and the FCC with its bogus standards of decency? Have they never heard of Pat Robertson, TBN, or the Republican Party? Has the immigration minister ever heard of someone called George W Bush?

They might need to rethink their American exemption. Better think about the Canadian exemption too.

But I'll have to pas on this one. I know that fundamentalists are making life in Holland harder, but I don't think more government regulations will help much. After all, if the Netherlands didn't have a government, Muslims couldn't affect its policies, could they? Sorry, Sharia.

The Netherlands doesn't exist in a vacuum. That's like saying the state of Washington isn't affected by Oregon, Idaho, or California. But I can't blame them. The film reminds me of a travel brochure, more than immigration policy. Instead of advertising their tolerance for other religions, they should advertise what people really go to the Netherlands for: drugs, prostitution, windmills and Anne Frank. Get all of that on some posters, and you'll get the immigrants you really want, Holland.

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Oh, and the whole St Patrick's Day thing. How did YOU contribute to being Irish, and are you really a Catholic? And what's so bad about snakes?

The Brave Patriots of Missouri

Dear Internet Diary,

From The Cushing Daily Citizen:

Lawmakers look to recognize Christianity
Critic: Religious declaration political ploy
By Sadie Gurman
THE JOPLIN GLOBE (JOPLIN, Mo.)
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo.
A lawmaker who signed on to a resolution affirming Christianity as the state’s majority religion said he isn’t trying to turn Missouri into a theocracy, but he just wants Christians to feel free to publicly express their faith.

Rep. Barney Fisher, R-Richards, said the recently filed resolution was met with backlash from critics who, he said, have distorted the resolution’s intent.

“They feel minority rights have been threatened, which they haven’t,” Fisher said. “They feel we’re trying to create a state religion, which would be impossible to do. Some people feel threatened by this.”

The House resolution, recently approved by the House Rules Committee, champions prayer in schools and public venues, and recognizes a “Christian God.”

It states that the majority of Missourians are Christians, and that elected officials should “protect the majority’s right to express their religious beliefs while showing respect for those who object.”

It also calls upon the Legislature to “exercise the common sense that voluntary prayer in public schools and religious displays on public property are not a coalition of church and state.”

I would just like to applaud the courage of Missouri politicians like the brave Barney Fisher. Imagine. A politician, risking his job to stand up for Christianity, a threatened religion. He knows very well, according to his quote, that publicly expressing his faith is political suicide. Yet, there he stands, protecting the threatened majority by spending taxpayer dollars to affirm that Christianity is the majority religion in Missouri. I hope that the majority of citizens don't hold it against these patriots by not voting accordingly.

Thanks for listening.

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The Fabulous "Feast of Fools"

So far, I only listen to a couple of podcasts, as there just aren't enough hours in the day to listen to everything I want. But there are some that deserve mentioning, so I've decided to showcase each of them on my blog, when the spirit hits me.

Today's podcast is the fabulous and entertaining Feast of Fools, with Fausto Fernos and Marc Felion. I would have to say that this is definitely a gay podcast--gay in a good way, of course--as they tend to have lots of drag queens and sexual innuendo--and Marc and Fausto are a couple. (A couple of...nuts. Ha ha.)

But it's not the drag queens and sex and pop-culture obsession that I find the most entertaining. It's Fausto's brilliant misinformation, and Marc's patient correction (most of the time). Fausto is clearly a very intelligent guy who reads--but doesn't check his facts. He's always presenting these brilliant theories on life, religion, psychology, you name it--but he always is missing some extremely pertinent fact that may or may not topple his entire theory. He takes a great idea up the side of a mountain, but his facts...just...don't...quite....get him there. I might have dismissed this whole podcast, but he's so refreshing and insightful, and I kind of miss all my gay friends back in Seattle who talked about sex so breezily, that I like listening.

Here's a madcap theory (maybe that's why I like Fausto) that I'd like to share. The way gay men talk about sex (in my experience) is with humour and charm, and this kind of feeling tends to be missing from conversations with straight men about sex. For one thing, they tend to not want to include a woman in the conversation. When they do, I find the humour has a rougher edge, devoid of the irony and social criticism I used to get with my gay friends. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Sure, there's darker themes in these "gay conversations." But it's the Marx Brothers to the straight guy's Three Stooges.

To put it simply: it's more fun--for me--to objectify men.

Isaac Hayes: Taking a Stand for Religion After Only 9 Years

Dear Internet Diary,

Chef Isaac Hayes made a completely expected move when he announced he was leaving the show South Park. IN an interview with The Onion, he said

“There is a place in the world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs of others begins,” Hayes said. “As a civil rights activist of the past 40 years, I cannot support a show that disrespects those beliefs and practices.”

Apparently that time ends when South Park makes fun of his religion. The creators of South Park say that he had no problem poking fun of Christianity, such as South Park`s episode where a statue of Mary gushes menstrual blood, or when Cartmen sang sexual love-songs to Jesus, or when Mel Gibson is portrayed as a sado-masochistic Nazi. But after South Park satirizes Scientology, now Isaac Hayes has to make a stand for religion!

Hayes says,

“But I understand what they’re doing. I told them to take a couple of Scientology courses, and understand what we do,”

Take a couple of courses, he says. That would be sweet. Imagine Trey and Matt at "Clay Table Processing," where they illustrate concepts in clay. That would be entertaining, indeed. But they can't do clay until they do the OT TR0s: sitting in a chair for hours, not moving or twitching. If you do, you have to start all over again. And pay again, presumably.

Of course, Isaac Hayes, as a celebrity Scientologist, is not privy to the same information any one of us laypeople can find on the internet or in the library. Looking at this information, the Church tells its adherents, is a serious infraction and can be very dangerous to your path towards Total Freedom. It's another way of saying "get out your checkbook." Because of this, it is very unlikely Chef knows about what his beloved L Ron Hubbard said about black people, that they were too unintelligent to register anything on the e-meter. Does he know about Hubbard's famous support for Apartheid in South Africa? His statement about uncivilized savages? Or what he said in a letter to his first wife, Polly?

You shouldn't be scrubbing the floor on your hands and knees. Get yourself a nigger; that's what they're born for

.

So go ahead and stand up for what you believe, Chef. You're a hero, just like Hubbard, who posthumously received a NAACP Doctor W.E.B. Du Bois Outstanding Leadership Award a few years ago, thanks to you.

Thanks for listening.

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Classic Robert Tilton

Via God is For Suckers!

Brokeback On Ice?

Yeah, we're all tired of Brokeback Mountain parodies, right? But this has Elvis...and ice!



Via the fabulous Feast Of Fools

The Delicious Curse

Dear internet diary,

I just listened to a recording put out by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) by Father John Dear, explaining why Chritsians should be vegetarians. It goes like this:

In God's initial ideal world, represented in the book of Genesis by The Garden of Eden, there was no suffering, no exploitation, and no violence at all. People and animals were vegetarians. As we read in the first chapter of Genesis, God said, "See, I have given you every plant-yielding seed that is upon the face of the earth. and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food." Immediately after creating this non-violent, non-exploitative world, God describes it as very good. This is the only time in the narrative that God calls creation "very good.," instead of merely "good." And this immediately follows God's command for vegetarianism. But after the Fall, people waged war, held one another as slaves, ate meat, and committed every atrocity imaginable.

Not only did man become wicked when--or because--he ate meat, but something completely miraculous must have happened as well. The moment Eve bit into the fruit, animals became predators. Christians who believe in the literal Garden of Eden story should ask themselves this: was predation spontaneously created by the sin of Eve, or did God create it? Was it Eve or God that caused venom and fangs to spontaneously grow on snakes and venom immunity to spontaneously occur in some mammals? Did Eve's or God's actions spontaneously create microorganisms that feed solely on other microorganisms? Is man's sin so powerful as to create flesh-tearing teeth in the lion, that once laid with the lamb?

I have to ask: what does a vegetarian Lion look like? How could there have existed any such big cat? The very definition of big cats requires that they be carnivores. The large lung capacity and high haunches of the cheetah are there in order to run down prey. The powerful claws, teeth, and speed of the lion are there to chase, catch, and tear into antelopes, and fight other lions for their mates. It makes the image of a lion lying with a lamb not so remarkable, considering the lion would look pretty much the same as a lamb.

The answer, according to pro-meat christians is clear. God did it. Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis has said that God of course knew that man would fall, so he inserted a backup plan in the DNA of animals (so that's why we have DNA). All the venom and teeth necessary were in the genes of animals, including the T-Rexes and Velociraptors that roamed the garden, so that the animals could be the successful predators that they are today. In other words, God set evolution in motion on the day of the Fall. That gives 6,000 years to evolve lions and eagles and all the assorted scavengers. If only God had decided to let man evolve. If 6,000 years can make a tiger out of a goat, imagine what humans could be today!

Getting back to vegetarianism: if God decided to evolve efficient carnivores,and not change man at all, then He intended for us to become ruthless meat-eaters. If the church is telling us to humbly accept the curses God placed on Adam and Eve's descendents--curses such as hard labour and childbirth pain, then we should also humbly accept the the only decent curse God gave us: the curse of meat-eating. The curse of backyard barbecues and Hot-Wing nights at the corner pub.

Bon appetit!

Thanks for listening.

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Catholic "Charity"

Dear Internet Diary,

From the AP:

Boston Catholic Charities Halts Adoptions

(AP) The Boston Archdiocese's Catholic Charities said Friday it would stop providing adoption services because of a state law allowing gays and lesbians to adopt children.

The social services arm of the Roman Catholic archdiocese, which has provided adoption services for the state for about two decades, said the law runs counter to church teachings on homosexuality.

"The world was very different when Charities began this ministry at the threshold of the twentieth-century," the Rev. J. Bryan Hehir, president of Catholic Charities, said in a joint statement with trustees chairman Jeffrey Kaneb. "The world changed often and we adapted the ministry to meet changing times and needs. At all times we sought to place the welfare of children at the heart of our work.

"But now, we have encountered a dilemma we cannot resolve," they said.

The children lose again. If they have to consider gay people, they won't help the children at all. Of course, this is terrible, stupid, and unjust, I have to wonder if kids being removed from the care of catholic nuns is such a terribel thing. If any organization modeled its childcare on biblical teachings, they should be shut down immediately.

I can understand why the Vatican doesn't want children raised in gay homes. Most of those gay families might be christians, and a lot of them are catholic, but they are pretty unlikely to raise a child in the christian way they want. Christian organizations want quiet, passive, sex-fearing congregants who hate gays and love Our Lady. To make such a congregant, the child must be raised with strict, ritualistic corporal punishment with an emphasis on sexual shame. Spankings should be an event involving nudity and humiliation, a good way to make a shamed adult with plenty of sins to confess. If the dad isn't doing it, there's sure to be clergy that can help. But clergy can't do it if you haven't made a catholic out of the kid.

I just don't think well-adjusted, out-of-the-closet gay families are any good at passing on sexual shame to their kids.

But lets all hope the orphans are freed from the state workers hands as soon as possible, and into the hands of a nice, moral, secular home where they will screw up the kid a lot less.

Thanks for listening.

It's Time Again for: Duping Young Women, with Hellbound Alleee

Dear Internet Diary,

It looks like I've been living in a different world than everyone else.

I've been playing podcasts about libertarian and market anarchy issues on my station,, and the last few days, the podcasts were about feminism, and how it has duped the modern woman into thiking she can "have it all, and that she doesn't need men.

Now, I respect the hell out of Stephan Molyneux, of Freedomain Radio, "The logic of personal and political liberty," and I have to admit I was not able to listen to the entirety of his 4 podcasts about this, and I haven't even discussed it with him. But this blog is all about writing what has been bothering me, so off I go.

I don't know what he's talking about. Women entering the workforce in the seventies? Women being fooled into thinking they can have it all by "feminism?" Who is this feminism person, and why did she lie to me? And how come I can't find any women in my family tree who weren't part of the workforce? Bothmy grandmothers worked outside of the home, and once you get beyond that, they worked their tails off plowing and pitching hay. And, where were the women in my life who knew nothing about their own reproductive systems and weren't aware that babymaking time is prime when you're still young and stupid? What planet do I live on?

If you heard my last entry, you may have noted that the pastor of my church said women should "never go to college, because that would make them think, and we don't want women who think." My mother was discovering 2nd-wave feminism in those years. I wish she had made a tougher stand against our pastor, but it seems the social pressures were too much for her. In 1979, my family needed a new car. They wanted in to be my mom's car, but the dealership did not allow her to be the name on the title. Of course, everything had to be in my father's name. Just thinking the thought that this was unjust made a person a "women's libber" back then.

I never read the literature. I never took women's studies. But this is what that imaginary "feminism monster" taught me: that I could make independent choices. I could take birth control. I could be in charge of my own sex life. Silly things, like I could go to a restaurant alone, or play the electric guitar. But the important fact is that if you don't want your greatest achievement to be making babies, you don't have to. If you want to do the family thing, you can do that to, but most importantly, if you want to be a bachelor, you have every right to be one, and it doesn't make you a terrible, low-quality person. Fact is, having a baby because you're "not getting any younger" seems like a pretty stupid reason to me. I'm glad more women are waiting until they are older. Science is adapting, and people are adapting. More people are deciding not to have children at all, and if you've been to a warehouse store lately, you'd be thankful. How many babies do we really need to be having right now? Please don't think it's your duty to poop puppies because the smarter people are opting out and dumber people are populating the earth. We're talking about a human being here, people, not a cause.

I think my problem is that I am allergic to people talking about "finding quality men while there's still time." This was not much of an issue for me. I was a bachelor until I was 37 years old. I never wanted children. I married a man 11 years younger than me. (And no, I was not an "eagle," lying in wait to entrap a younger man to harvest his sperm. Where do people come up with these things?) Anyway, we might have never officially married had it not been for the border issues. I am still waiting to find out what my greatest achievement is. But regardless of what everyone else is apparently doing, according to what I'm hearing, roles are for plays, and I'm not playing. I have a feeling there are more of us in the audience than people think

And that's no lie.

Thanks for listening.

Call Your Mother

Dear Internet Diary,

I talked to my mother on the phone for an hour the other day. She's a really intelligent woman, and we always have a good time talking. For some reason, we seem to end up talking about Christianity a lot. Lately, thoguh, I have taken these opportunities to find out some things about my childhood, to put the pieces back together, as I think sometimes I can't trust my own memories. Sometimes I hesitate to ask, because I'm not sure I'm ready to process information like she gave me the other day.

"I stopped going to the Mother's Day sermons," she told me, when I was asking about some incidents in the seventies. "He would say that women shouldn't be allowed to go to college, because then they would think, and we can't have women who think."

This is strange to me, because they left that church a few years later because the minister who replaced him was "too conservative." How much more conservative can you get than this man, a friend of my family. We used to go to their house a lot and have dinner. My brother was friends with his son, I'll call "Greg." I remember my brother, greg, and his other friend Joey playing vibration football on the floor. You know, the seventies equivalent of an electronic game.

"He got his later, though," my mom said.

"What do you mean?" I said.

"His son committed suicide. He was gay, and they never accepted it. Then his wife went out and got a job."

"Which was worse?" I heard myself saying. I thought about the afternoons in their house, with the aqua blue shag carpeting, and the pastor's wife, her elegant 60's clothes and hair. I tried to remember Greg. I don't remember what he looked like. I can only hear my brother saying his name, the way he always said his first and last name together. There were a lot of Gregs back then.

"Why did you stay there, in that church, for all those years?" I asked.

"Because we had friends, and because you dad was directing the choir" she said. I think there's more to it than that. I want there to be more to it than that. To make my brother and me stay there in that church and that school. I wanted to say something about how that church affected me and my brother, but I remembered we already had that conversation. About how it affected our friends, who were children of the friends she was referring to. About how they were so bitter, she said, that they would never darken the door of a church again. I had tried to explain that there was more to it than that, but I couldn't bring myself to go into it. We had talked for an hour already. Besides, I thought, my mom was reading a Humanist magazine. She's smart enough to figure those things out herself.

Thanks for listening, diary.

Losing My Religion

I thought this might merit another look. It's been a few years, but I think it holds up nicely.

Watch Some Bullshit on My Blog!

Dominoes Pizza Land: Making More Unwed Marys?

Dear Internet Diary,

A recent CNN online article reports that Dominoes Pizza founderm Thomas S. Monaghan, wants to build a Roman Catholic community to be called "Ave Maria," around the Catholic Universtity of the same name. With "God's Will" and $250 million, the community would allow no abortions, no pornography, no birth control and no free, independant, normal adult life.

Of course, civil libertarians are making the right call that this is unconstitutional. Asinine is what I'd call it. Not that people shouldn't be able to live lives free of joy. The biggest problem I have is that it will never work. Marias they want? Marias they will get. Experience has shown that repressive, religious communities are not only great at producing guilt, they are even better at producing sin.

There's a little part of me that wants this Catholic Disneyland City of Tomorrow to come true, because Las Vegas would have nothing on Ave Maria. This little town could be much better than Garden Grove from Dangerous Housewives. Pregnant teenaged girls. Gay teen suicides. Furtive, shameful gay sexual liasons in parks, stds, a great big black market in birth control, porn, sex toys and worst of all, do-it-yourself abortions.

I know--slippery slope naysaying. But this kind of thing, a little town that forbids these wicked sins, is not new. Remember the middle ages? The Puritans of old and the Amish of today don't have such a great track record in abstinence-only "education" and rates of teen pregnancy. In the closet gay persons tend to engage in riskier behaviors in repressive communities. When gay people were coerced into heterosexual marriages, of course they become adulterous "sinners." Will adults stop having sex, and will adult women stop trying to avoid having litters of children? Ask Catholic priests.

The upside of all this is that pornography and sex toys will increase in value. That's good for business, and it makes the stuff much sexier. But just as prohibition and the drug wars did nothing but create criminals, these prohibitions will create a lot of sinners. This community had better raise enough money to build a great, big Ave Maria jail. It had better have a nursery.

Thanks for listening.

It's Time For Plagues!

I got this in my junk mail this afternoon:

Hello Archie McPhee Shopper,

Bag O' Plagues
If you're a fan of the Old Testament, you'll be familiar with the
ten plagues of Egypt. Well, it's the time of year when we remember God's
wrath with the Archie McPhee Bag O' Passover Plagues! From locusts to
boils to diseased livestock, this sack contains an object to represent
each one of the top ten plagues on God's hit parade. It's not really
Passover until somebody opens a Bag O' Plagues.

Shop McPhee!

Support Nudity on the Web!

The idea is from an article over at Boing Boing.

What happens when the blogosphere uses so much tasteful nudity that the web is unusable for SmartFilter users? What happens when SmartFilter blocks so much content that the web is crippled for its users?

Christianity: The Religion of Moral Relativism

Sorry for my absense lately: I have succumbed to something not unlike seasonal affective disorder--if it's real. I don't know. But it's been so dark and gloomy around here, and I've been craving some photosynthesis in my life. If I can't get into some woods, or at least a flower and garden show, I'll go crazy. That's what you get for moving from the Pacific Northwest to the frozen tundra.

So here is a recording of The Way of the Master Radio, with guest Reggie Finley, The Infidelguy. Listen at your own risk.

First of all, let me sayTodd Friel is an absolute, raving lunatic. I don't even have to tell you if you listen. But something struck me almost at the beginning of the show. At the heart of this brand of christianity, and I dare say, all christianity, is Moral Fucking Relativism.

If you don't already know, I'll say it briefly. Moral relativism is retarded.

If there are any mentally disabled people reading this, I apologize for comparing you to this concept. It's not you.

Take a number of individuals that for some reason define themselves or others (through no fault of their own, sometimes) as a "group." Maybe they live within certain imaginary boundaries. Maybe they like the same amateur pop singer on tv. Makes no difference to me. There is a general consensus to most people that a majority of members of this "group" feel that little girls should be mutilated at 9 years old and/or killed in the event of a family feud (there again, some of the individuals are placed in a group through no fault of their own. But I digress). Therefore, some retards think, mutilating and murdering little girls is "their culture," so you can't judge it; it's moral "to them." So you say. There are also several individuals, imagined to be the minority, that rightly declare this to be evil and disgusting and so on. We don't include the little girls because they have no choice in the matter and don't count. They can't even make the decision that what's happening to them is bad or good because they are completely enslaved. Moving along, the imagined minority is therefore immoral, and "counter-culture."

Remember that term? Moral relativists can't call themselves counter-culture anymore, unless they want to be immoral. I suppose that's possible. You better go along with it, just to be safe. I suppose you can "enter a group" of people called "counter-culture," but then you're not counter-culture anymore, because you're not counter to that culture. Unless you make a concerted effort to dissent from the counter-culture group. But then you're not counter to the culture you countered in the first place. Perhaps it makes more sense to remember you're an individual, and stop basing your morality on majority consensus of a socially constructed imaginary entity called "group."

So how does christianity fall into this nonsense? (How doesn't it?)
The simple answer is that if you believe in this religion, all morality is subject to the will (or whim) of God. here can be no morality that is objective, or based on reality.

The longer, and more entertaining argument is one made by many fundamentalists (and moderates) to justfy torture (I mean, Hell):

Todd: You see, if I squash a bug...just, just stomp on a cockroach, it's no big deal. The police aren't gonna come and arrest me. Now, if I kill a bum on the street, I'm gonna get into a lot of trouble.But if I assassinate a head of state, I am in serious trouble. Why is that? Same crime, but it's against whom it is committed; the offense becomes more serious. You can think that lusting is no big deal; telling a lie years ago is no big deal, but because it is against a holy, righteous, infinite creator-god, your offense is infinitely sinful, and deserving of the highest punishment.

Reggie: Oo, it sounds like God has some sensitivity issues.

Todd: Yes, He does. It's called Holiness, righteousness.

I added that last part because it was funny.

It is true that governments apply this sort of thinking to the law. Punishment is applied based upon the power of the victim. Juries punish based upon the perceived morality of the victim. Make the punishment fit the crime, right? Is this right? We should judge crimes based upon the popularity of the victim? If someone sues, his reward is based upon his likeability factor? A rapist should be punished based upon the sexual habits of the victim? What if she does everything right, but smokes? If we are really going to apply this law, let's do it right. Lets put the victims on trial. If you agree with this, then christianity should be all the more comfortable concept for you.

If we want to present a coherent argument to anyone; if we want to be correct, we must remember: if it is moral, it must apply to everyone in the same way, regardless of their power, their popularity, or their morality (sense the paradox). Otherwise, you're just hitting your head against a brick wall.

Freedom of the press, or Freedom Period?

Here is a great new article from The Stranger:

All the Rage

Islamic Fundamentalists Don't Just Have a Problem with Cartoons, They Have a Problem with Freedom

BY BRUCE BAWER

It began last September.

Danish author Kaare Bluitgen couldn’t find an illustrator for his biography of Muhammad. Fundamentalist Muslims frown on depictions of the prophet and—in one of many European cases of self-censorship since the November 2004 murder of Dutch filmmaker and Islam critic Theo van Gogh—artists feared a reaction.

And there was a counterpoint:

If I, a well-dressed white guy, were to walk into certain black neighborhoods carrying offensive depictions of blacks and jokingly calling people niggers, I would almost certainly be hit, or worse. And the feeling of most Americans (and myself), would probably be that I deserved what I got for being so insensitive. It would not matter if I had only been joking, or if I had been trying to make some high-minded point about race being a social construct. The fact that I had trampled on the understandable sensitivities of black Americans in order to make a provocative statement would be seen as poor judgment, at best.

Is this person serious? apparently, those who criticize wacko violent fundamentalism, even in extremely mild ways, "deserve what they get!"

From what I understand here, fundie Muslims cannot oppress us (especially people like me, people who have vaginas, who might want to,wear shorts, or show their faces in public), so therefore they are oppressed. We should understand their rage at their inability to insinuate their immoral and false religion/theocrasy on us, as an oppressed minority, so we should be sensitive and not criticize them. At least, in their neighborhood.

This is no longer about a couple of bad cartoons. This started well before the murder of Theo Van Gogh. Feel compassion all you want for young men who are not allowed to stone me to death, but don't feel sorry for them. Otherwise, why aren't we feeling the same compassion for the racists who cannot yell Nigger in a black neighborhood? This, the internet, my blog, is not a fundamentalist theocratic neighborhood, and I will freely criticize religion. This is also not a moral relativist neighborhood, and I'm not going to pretend that it's moral to be a racist, or a fundy, or a violent protector of an evil system.

And the neighborhood that stops allowing free criticism of oppressive systems has fallen. And thery sure as hell won't be allowing point-counterpoint, or free weekly alternative newspapers.

More Cartoon Thoughts: Cultural Slavery

"You can't print something that offends a whole nation." That is not true. "Nations" cannot get offended. They do not exist--the word is a description of a group of individuals that are subject to the laws of a government through no fault of their own. As individuals, we have a choice how to respond to stuff that offends us. We should not let ourselves respond dishonestly or unnaturally because of a tribe we belong to (by choice or by force). We should not think "what would my group think?" when making moral choices. That would not be a choice--that is slavery.

I noticed that the UN, Bill Clinton and several other high-ups have made appeasing--and dishonest--statements in this enslaved sort of way. "We share your outrage over these offensive images," etc. "We." Officially, this group pretends to think this in order to aid a system of oppression, when the truth, that the images are not offensive at all , must be stifled. The cartoons are clearly making the only moral statements in this whole fiasco.

If this cartoonist is killed or injured, the governments that lied to appease terrorists will be complicit, and the people of their nations will be poorer for it.

Maybe it's Time Normal Bob Smith Made a Muhammad Dressup

Taken from Religion News Blog:

Danish lawyer shot as fury of Muslims sweeps world
The Scotsman, UK

A Danish lawyer was shot and several Muslim demonstrators died as protests against the publication of cartoons showing the Prophet Muhammad continued around the world yesterday.

The lawyer was wounded in an incident in a Moscow cafe by a man from the Muslim Caucasus region of southern Russia.

Meanwhile, the prime minister of Chechnya announced that Danish humanitarian organisations would be expelled.

Danish troops also came under fire in southern Iraq. Shots were fired at a patrol as it helped children who had been hit by a car near Qurnah. None of the soldiers was injured.

The worst trouble yesterday came in Afghanistan, where hundreds of demonstrators clashed with police and soldiers. Four people were killed and at least 19 wounded, officials said.

The worst violence was outside Bagram, the main US base in Afghanistan, although the US has not been involved in the controversy over the publication of the cartoons. Afghan police fired on some 2,000 protesters as they tried to break into the heavily guarded facility.

Kabir Ahmed, the local government chief, said two of the demonstrators were killed and five wounded, while eight police were hurt. The protesters threw stones at the base and smashed a guard post.

Some of those in the crowd then shot at the base with assault rifles, prompting the police to return fire, he said.

In Tehran, a crowd of about 200 people pelted the Austrian embassy with fire-bombs and stones, and Palestinian demonstrators hurled stones at EU offices in Gaza and pulled down the EU flag. Protesters in four Indonesian cities demanded that Denmark apologise. Police fired warning shots to disperse 300 hardline Muslims protesting outside the Danish consulate in Indonesia's second city, Surabaya.

In France, police evacuated offices of a newspaper which had published the cartoons after it received a bomb threat.

What Muslims Should Be Outraged Over:

Lebanon apologised to Denmark for the burning of its consulate during a weekend protest, and some Lebanese politicians accused Syria of using the furore to stir sectarian tension.

The prime ministers of Turkey and Spain made a joint plea for respect and calm. But Muslims in the Gulf Arab region intensified their boycott of Danish goods.

Iran said it was cutting all trade ties with Denmark.

Danish flags, however, remain in demand. An enterprising shopkeeper in Gaza, Ahmed Abu Dayya, said he had ordered 100 Danish and Norwegian flags when he heard that the cartoons were being reprinted.

"I knew there would be a demand for the flags because of the angry reaction of people over the offence to the Prophet Muhammad," he said.

Angry Muslims have been setting the flags ablaze or tearing them to pieces.

Question For Believers: Noah's Ark

Dear Believers:

What was the use of the worldwide flood, if it happened, or if it's a metaphorical lesson? How did it all work out for God?

Second Part: How does its outcome bode for the Apocalypse and New Jerusalem?

You Can't Just Go Around OFFENDING People!

I heard a Muslim woman saying that "free speech has its limits. You just can't print something that offends a whole nation of people."

First of all, lets dispense with theis "nation" bull. No such thing. There are people. SO, how many individuals is it ok to offend before you have to censor? I want a real number here.]

Nothing is above criticism. Especially not figureheads of religion. Those are exactly the things that should be criticized: after all, people are pretending to base their lives and all their decisions on them. We don't want that basis to be a lie, do we? If your belief system cannot stand strong while being criticized, if you have to use violence to force people to never criticize it, then your system is crap and must be thrown out in the trash--a cartoon is nothing..

It's time to show everyone Muhammad's "face." Lets pull that mask off.

The HORROR!

...the horror...


Use the mouse to experience this abomination: but only at your own risk. I recommend just swiping it over his forehead a few times. If this truly is relevant to Christianity, then the religion is worse than I thought.