Okay, Let Me Get This Straight

According to Christian mythology, God is omniscent. God created Adam and Eve (not Adam and Steve, as we’re so often reminded). Eve was tricked by Satan (in the form of a talking snake) into eating of the Tree of Knowledge.

Because of that, we lost our immortality and were cast out of the Garden of Eden to live out our lives in pain and suffering. (And apparently snakes were also stripped of the gift of gab as part of the punishment…just because.)

Let’s stop right there for a moment.

The Christians’ invisible friend-in the-sky is perfect and all knowing. Yet he created beings who—by being omniscient—he knew from the very beginning would be flawed. In other words, humans were built broken (and therefore created imperfectly) to begin with. So if God is incapable of making mistakes, that means he intentioinally created humans imperfect and subject to sin.

WTF? I mean seriously. WTF?

He created imperfect humans so they’d sin and “force” him to cast them out of the Garden.

What kind of sick fuck would do this?

Good ol’ Yaweh, that’s who.

This Christian God sounds like a real asshole.

And if Adam and Eve (and later, their two sons) were the only people on Earth, where the fuck did Cain and Able get wives? Were they screwing Eve? So they married their own sisters? Where in the Big Book of Traditional Marriage does that option appear? (Turns out, more often than you’d think.)

But hah, not this time. Instead they went east into the Land of Nod, where there were apparently already a large group of people living quite contentedly without any knowledge whatsoever this wondrous Garden and its psychotic keeper to the west.

W…T…F?  Where the hell did these people come from if there were only supposed to be four living people on the entire face of the planet up until this point?

If you ask any man of the cloth this question (when he’s not busy raping pre-pubescent boys) the answer is generally, “Some things are just taken on faith.” In other words, shut up and don’t ask questions.

My brain hurts.

But let’s back up even further.

Perfect, all knowing Christian sky-fairy creates everything—including another product of the fevered Christian imagination—angels.  But one of them rebels and is “cast out.” So once again we’re shown that God isn’t perfect, or that he just intentionally creates imperfect things that he enjoys torturing, like a kid with a magnifying glass encountering an ant hill on a sunny day.

Why does the word “psychopath” keep coming to mind?

Later on in the Big Book of Lies (aka the BuyBull), God says “Whoopsie!” and decides that humanity—after being fruitful and multiplying—didn’t turn out exactly like he’d intended again and should be killed…except for one small family who is then tasked with saving a pair of every living creature on earth. Or at least within walking distance of their home.

What’s the matter? Isn’t this God quite capable of saving all the animal life he wants on his own? Or is Norman Bates already growing impotent? And what about the plants, for chrissake? If the planet needs a reboot to rid it of the sin that Mr. Invisible created in the first place, why not just send it careening into the sun and start again from scratch? Or is that now beyond his power? I mean seriously…a flood?

And one more question: If all current humanity sprang from that one little family, where did all the races come from?

But going back to the Garden of Eden for a moment. Let’s play a little game and say that Eve didn’t eat of the Tree and humanity was never cast out from the Garden or lose its immortality. Can you imagine what a sty that place would be with fifteen to twenty billion of us trying to squeeze in there now? (Remember, people don’t die, but they sure don’t stop reproducing either!)

Anyway…

Later on, magic sky fairy realizes that he’s fucked up again and Noah’s descendants turn out just as bad their predecessors. You’d think that by now the idiot would realize this, right? (Definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results.) But this time, instead of flooding the place (or sending it careening into the sun) he’s going to go down there as himself…as his son…to torture and descend into hell so that whoever believes in this ultimate sacrifice latest bit of crap doesn’t have to go to that make believe place themselves.

These fairy tales are fine for iron-age savages who don’t have the deductive reasoning—or scientific history to back them up—that modern men do, but c’mon guys…it’s the 21st Century. We’ve landed men on the moon and have just put a probe the size of a car on Mars. If ever there was a time for the “All Powerful” to come down and say “Great job, guys!” it’s now. But since he’s been conspicuously absent from the goings on of our daily lives going on 2000 years now and from all accounts is a major DICK, I think it’s high time for him to put up or shut up.

This is why I’m an Atheist. Because all these magic stories are pure, unadulterated bullshit.

TMI, Continued…

1. You accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what’s even cooler is that they endow you with the super-power of your choice! What is that power?

Personal invisibility and the ability to turn any object I touch invisible at will. Wouldn’t you want to slip into a closed-door meeting of government officials to hear what they’re really thinking? Or expose all the religious hypocrites for who they really are? (And capture it on video!)

2. You can re-live any point of time in your life. The time-span can only be a half-hour, though. What half-hour of your past would you like to experience again?

Assuming that I retain full memory of my present life and actually go back to the age I was at the chosen time, pretty much any Friday or Saturday night circa 1978/1979 at HisCo Disco in Phoenix. I would revel in the company of long-departed friends and dance. my. ass. off.

3. You can erase any horrible experience from your past. What will it be?

I don’t know what it is with these memes and their obsession of things in the past. I’ve had unpleasant experiences throughout my life, but each of them set me on a path that brought me to where I am now. And I wouldn’t change that for the world.

4. You have the opportunity to sleep with the music-celebrity of your choice. Who would it be?

Ew. Why would I want to do that? I’d rather sleep with my Bubba.

5. You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere. You have to depart immediately. Where are you gonna go?

How long could I stay in the destination? If this was just for a short getaway I’d probably say San Francisco. I could sorely use a big fat injection of that city’s energy right now.

6. Do you have any relatives in jail?

Not that I know of.

Honey, Just Because…

…you sit on the other side of the cubicle wall from me and I can hear you bitching about your computer problems day in and day out doesn’t mean I’m going to do anything about it. My predecessor may have hopped up the moment he heard your whining, but those days are long gone. Get off your fat, lazy, self-entitled ass and put in a ticket—or if that’s just too difficult for you to handle—pick up the goddamned phone and call.

Otherwise, you can just stew in your shit.

I'm Getting REALLY Tired of the Stupidity

The head of HR sent me an email this morning stating that since I use my car occasionally to travel between our two offices I need to supply them with proof of insurance.

I copied my insurance card and emailed it to her.

She wrote back and said, “That card is expired. Do you have a more recent one?”

I wrote back and told her to look again. (BTW, I’ve removed all identifying information from this screen shot, but everything was on the one I sent her.)

I WORK WITH FUCKING IDIOTS!

Done With It. Again.

The amount of stupid on Facebook has reached epic proportions. I understand it’s entertaining and fills a need in a lot of people’s lives, but I’m done with it. I graduated high school nearly 40 years ago, and yet on Facebook, it’s like I never left.

So I’ve disabled my account. (Because deleting your account seems to be impossible.) And have vowed to never log in again. We’ll see how long it lasts.

Just Askin'

Ever have one of those days where you want to tell every single person you come across to go fuck themselves, but you can’t because you’re an adult and supposed to be “courteous and professional” to everyone, no matter how fucking stupid they are?

It Gives a Whole New Meaning to "Cock Eyed"

Finally comes the scientific study confirming a long-held belief. Via Science Daily:

For the first time, researchers at Cornell University used a specialized infrared lens to measure pupillary changes to participants watching erotic videos. Pupils were highly telling: they widened most to videos of people who participants found attractive, thereby revealing where they were on the sexual spectrum from heterosexual to homosexual. [snip] The new Cornell study adds considerably more to the field of sexuality research than merely a novel measure. As expected, heterosexual men showed strong pupillary responses to sexual videos of women, and little to men; heterosexual women, however, showed pupillary responses to both sexes. This result confirms previous research suggesting that women have a very different type of sexuality than men. Moreover, the new study feeds into a long-lasting debate on male bisexuality. Previous notions were that most bisexual men do not base their sexual identity on their physiological sexual arousal but on romantic and identity issues. Contrary to this claim, bisexual men in the new study showed substantial pupil dilations to sexual videos of both men and women.

Remember, according to the religious wingnuts, you choose to dilate your eyes at all those menz…

Let's Discuss the [INSERT SHOOTING TRAGEDY HERE] Tragedy

From AMERICAblog:

It’s time to have a somber national discussion about the [insert shooting tragedy here] tragedy.

Before we get started, let’s go over a few basic ground rules.

1. In the wake of the __________ tragedy it’s time for us all to come together as a nation and not assign blame. This is not the time, for example, to talk about how it’s easier to purchase a gun in America than it is to vote (or buy French cheese).

2. And we won’t tolerate any second guessing of the Second Amendment right to carry assault weapons, or questions about how the Framers could have possibly envisaged an assault rifle over 200 years ago, or why a “hunter” needs six thousand rounds of ammunition, or kevlar, or smoke grenades to kill a pheasant.

3. While the shooter may have been inspired by political fliers showing the victim in cross hairs, or may have come unhinged by inflammatory rhetoric about how said victim was coming for the shooter’s guns, discussing such motivation at this sensitive moment would be completely inappropriate. Not to mention, disrespectful to the __________ victims.

4. If the tragedy involved someone flying an aircraft into a government building, or for that matter blowing up a government building, now is not the time to discuss people like Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity (no names, please), or Republicans generally (no political parties, please), incessantly trying to convince their audience that the occupant of the White House, or any government official, agency,  or entire branch of government is evil and/or “un-American” and/or out to get them or our country or our freedom.

5. And definitely don’t mention the Republican party’s frequent claim and/or insinuation, including suggestions from the GOP candidate himself, Mitt Romney, that the sitting Democratic President is a socialist, which in American parlance actually means “communist,” which actually means “Soviet,” which was America’s deadliest enemy out for our utter destruction.  Sure, it would be entirely understandable why someone would take up arms against a Soviet takeover of the United States, but a Democrat said something mean once about a Republican’s dog, or something, so aren’t both parties really to blame, thus making the charge moot?

6. Never, ever mention the NRA.  Sure, they’ve proven themselves, time and again, incapable of passing laws that effectively keep guns out of the hands of crazy mass murderers, but that’s no reason to blame them for the _______ tragedy because it’s just too early to cast blame on anyone other than the shooter, who was obviously crazy, and thus this month’s anomaly.

Now, let’s discuss for a moment the race of the shooter and the victims.

7. If the ______________ tragedy involved angry white men opening fire on brown people of faith, this is definitely not the time to replay clips of bombastic commentators and politicians getting white men in places like Kansas whipped into a frenzy over Manhattan’s zoning criteria for non-Christian houses of worship.

8. But feel free to discuss if all brown people, and thus the shooter, or his victims, were Muslims – sorry, I meant to say “radical Islamists.”  And even if neither was a Muslim, make sure you discuss that point incessantly – Muslims, Muslims, Muslims, Muslims – so as to eventually sow suspicion in the public’s mind as to whether there really is a Muslim angle to this story.

9. Speaking of which, this is not the time to discuss the more general fear mongering around words like “Muslim,” including the ongoing, successful, attempt by Republicans to convince their base that our dark-skinned President is one.

Okay, I think we’re ready now to discuss the ______________ tragedy.

First off, it is entirely acceptable for a Republican to opine that the tragedy could have been averted had the victims all been armed (please disregard previous tragedies where armed police officers themselves were injured by the shooter).

Second, poignant, but ultimately meaningless, gestures such as lighting tragedy candles at nighttime vigils, and posting anti-gun petitions on Change.org, are to be encouraged.

Finally, clutch your pearls, and all together now, ask the purely rhetorical question: “How could this happen?”

Forty-eight hours later return to talking about the Olympics and the latest Kardashian wedding until the next shooting occurs, then refer to point 1 above.

PS If the victims of the ___________tragedy were black, ignore the above restrictions and take up a collection for the shooter’s defense fund.

Science is Sexy

“the internets heartbeep signals are off the charts”

I don’t usually go for guys with mohawks, but daay-um! This guy (Boback Ferdowski) definitely caught my eye—and apparently a few million others—last night as Curiosity was touching down on Mars.

And he’s already become an internet meme.

Congratulations NASA

And thank you for making me—if only for a few brief minutes last night—a wide eyed ten year old again.

I honestly didn’t think the sky crane was going to work, but I confess when it was confirmed that Curiosity had touched down on Mars as planned, I was as giddy as any of the engineers I saw on JPL’s video feed.