Merry F@#!king Christmas

I hit the daily double this Christmas. Not only was I wished a Merry Fucking Christmas but I was also called an idiot, all in the space of 12 short hours and by two different women. Normally I try to be proactive enough to ward off any potential holiday problems. I know how she is and after 20 years of eggshell walking at this time of the year I've gotten pretty good at anticipating when I am about to touch off a Christmas Apocalypse. Christmas Eve, the grandchild was sleeping, visions of ipods and nintendos dancing in her head, and I popped the Death Race dvd in the player and was sorting out my 10 thousand or so stocking stuffers when she and the child's father came in the door. Right away I offer to turn off the movie and put on some sort of sappy Christmas music.

"No, no. Go ahead and watch your (as opposed to our) movie."

Uh oh. "Um, ok." (I paused it anyway, I'm not completely stupid)

She walks in the kitchen, walks back out with the digital camera and proceeds to replay the hundred or so pictures she took during the Christmas festivities at Granny's house. Now, in my defense, I was there only two hours before and I even remembered what everyone looked like. Not being a fish, I was unable to keep one eyeball on the camera and one on Death Race without tipping her off. She is the Christmas Queen, after all. She knows when I've been bad or good and particularly when I am feigning interest. Turning off the camera, she stomps out of the room wishing me a

"Merry Fucking Christmas!"

"But I paused it........"

The boy laughs and laughs and laughs. Yeah, real funny.

The second incident occurred at my Dad's house during Christmas dinner. My sister-in-law was trying to make some point about the empty chair of Elijah (although I hardly think that setting aside a seat for God's invisible dick shortening enforcer is appropriate for Christmas dinner) but she made the mistake of framing it as some sort of question.

"What do the Jews do during seder...........?"

" I think they start out with the Feliz Navidad prayer."

"You idiot!"

That hurt. It hurt bad. I was just trying to help.

Holiday Tip

Do not say, "For Christ sakes, it's only a tree!"

Happy Birthday Bro

All these years have got me to reflecting:

Things I am sorry about:

1. Shooting you in the chin with an arrow.

2. Hitting you in the head with rocks (all occasions)

3.Talking you into taking your tricycle down Dead Man's Hill

4. Not talking you out of wearing those plaid pants in high school or combing your hair like Michael Caine on crack

Things you should be grateful for:

1. Setting the bar so low that you could shuffle over it on your life's journey.

2. Teaching you a valuable lesson: Don't ever, ever, ever listen to anything I tell you.

I do not regret jacking your jaw and launching you into the skittles table at the Otesaga Inn. If it did count, it shouldn't have. You had it coming and don't pretend you didn't.

The Christmas Magic Continues

I didn't particularly care for having my artistic efforts derided as retarded. Although my wife has backpedaled somewhat and told me that what she meant by retarded is that I was full of the spirit. WTF? How does that make any sense at all? That's like saying what I meant by calling you stupid is that your shoes fit well.

This constant criticism has only served to motivate me further and I have redoubled my efforts to put on a wholesome and tasteful Christmas display and make this the best Christmas ever.
What's Christmas without a manger scene? I realize mine is a little, well, mangy, as over the years the stable has gotten sat on a few times and most of the original figurines have disappeared. I think the only originals left are 2 sheep, the camel and Baby Jesus (or Baby Genius as my grandson calls him). I was short two Wise Men this year and the only ones I could find at Dollar Tree were a little, uh, tall. I think they bookend the display nicely, don't you?

My favorite is a little something called Bruce the Spruce that I picked up a few years ago. He's motion activated and unless I'm mistaken, made by Amish craftsmen.

My Very Special Christmas

Very special as in very retarded. That was how my wife characterized my outdoor display after I spent all afternoon freezing my ass off on a rickety step ladder. Just trying to please her. She's since tried to take it back, changing it to "design challenged". But once the R word is given, it cannot be taken back. Last year was my Blue Period. All blue, all the time. That didn't go over too well, so this year I tried to mix it up with a little color. I left the blue perimeter lights up. That was a lot of stapling so I doubt if they are ever coming down. The rules for outdoor ornaments: they have to be cheap, on sale and with instructions written in Chinese. Christmas is no time for retail. I think I outdid myself this year. Check out the display above in all its glory. Pretty sweet.

To be truthful, my wife is not very high maintenance. She drives a 10 year old car (OK, 11 years old) and we live in a 100 year old house stuffed with a mishmash of, uh, period furniture and within spitting distance of a major rail line. She puts up with my 5 year remodeling projects and my Dr. Seuss construction techniques. She doesn't spend a lot on clothes, or her hair, or pedicures or any of that stuff. Her only vices, besides Starbucks and making fun of me, are high end electronics. Makes it easy to buy for her every year. Right now in her purse are an iphone, kindle, digital camera and GPS locator. She carries around more hardware than the Space Shuttle. So life as a married man is pretty easy for me except for this particular time of the year when she turns into the Christmas Queen and I am her incompetent subject. I just can't get anything right.

For five years now she has been bugging me to get an artificial tree. I've always been a natural tree kind of guy, I like the way it smells (at least until the dog pees on it) and I like the fact that it keeps the tree farmers in business and encourages more open space. Maybe pesticide and herbicide soaked, but open nonetheless. We had an artificial tree when I was a kid and as my dad was an OCD engineer, the tree had to be erected practically needle by needle in a precisely defined and methodical way. A real pain in the ass Christmas tradition. I swore I would never do this to my family. I lied. She finally wore me down this year. I'm too old and tired to put up the good fight. Why she tasked me with this purchase and sent me out solo, I'll never know. She has only herself to blame. So at Ollie's Bargain Outlet I found a 9' kinda real looking tree with, yes, fiber optics! Not only that, the base is an MP3 player. I set it up, loaded the MP3 player with the Carpenter's Christmas Album (yes, I know, it makes me want to purge, too - but she loves it) and surprised her when she came home from work.

Why does she keep looking at me like that?

Every Day is the End of Days

Obviously, someday, somewhere, somehow someone is going to get it right and actually predict the time and place when it all comes to an end, at least for humanity. The trouble is, when it does happen, there won't be anyone around to say I told you so. Revelation reads like the author (John the Whoever) expected it to all come tumbling down in some sort of blood soaked revenge fantasy. He had real issues with women, not to mention the Romans and his fellow Jews. Apparently a combination of paranoid schizophrenia and never getting laid can put a hurting on one's mental stability. John fully expected the end of times in his life and must have faced his own personal apocalypse a bitter and frustrated man. Since then, every semi -charismatic psychotic with a hair up his ass and a gaggle of weak minded followers has been predicting the Second Coming. From Savonarola to David Koresh, so far, no dice.

Which brings us to the problem with this way of thinking. It becomes us against them. When the "other" is excluded by God's will, anything that happens to them is also God's will. If you're chosen you make it, if not, well, you just burn forever. Although the planet would be a better place if the wingnuts that believe this sort of stuff raptured off into the heavens and left the rest of us alone. Maybe they could take the Islamists, Moonies and Scientologists with them. What is more disturbing is that we have had two presidents and one vp candidate who have ascribed to John the Revelator's fever dream. Now I'm not sure these religious beliefs influenced policy decisions but they couldn't have helped. I might be alone in this but I prefer my government leaders with a least of veneer of rationality. According to Jonathan Kirsch in A History of the End of the World Ronald Reagan was batshit crazy even before the alzheimer wagon came to pick him up sometime during his second term:

"That's a sign that the day of Armageddon isn't far off, everthing's falling into place. It can't be long now"

Thanks, Ron. No wonder you didn't give a shit about going toe to toe with the Soviets. You figured you'd drop your pants and ascend to heaven before the first nukes went off. And arms for hostages? Why not? Whoopee, we're all going to die. And your buds were as batshit crazy as you (by the way, blogging a personal note to a dead president is eccentric, not crazy):

I have read the Book of Revelation and yes, I believe the world is going to end - by an act of God, I hope- but everyday I think that time is running out."
Caspar Weinberger - Secretary of Defense

"I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns."
James Watt-Interior Secretary

Explains a lot, doesn't it? And we have the current, soon to be former, occupant of the White House who has done his best to usher in a period of Tribulation. And, of course, Sarah Palin, demon free since 2005, proclaiming the need to move our embassy to Jerusalem. We Apocalyptitians know what that means. You betcha.

So, in my preparing to believe, I'm going to have to leave this whole Revelation thing on the back burner. I think I'll do it last in my traipse through the Bible. Which is as it should be, I suppose. I just can't get past the seven headed beasts coming out of the sea and I certainly can't, uh, swallow that whole thing with the Big ole Babylonian Whore with her cup of fornications. Just too gross.

Expelled - No Entertainment Allowed

I'm going to put preparing to believe on hold for a little while in order to appropriately review the blockbuster documentary Expelled - No Intelligence Allowed. Since Ken the Ham doesn't have much truck with the Intelligent Design guys I think I can honestly critique this mess without losing ground in changing my worldview to a more fundamental perspective.

The whole thing is fairly well done in a Michael Moorish way, complete with badly lit, heavily edited, sweaty, atheistic "Darwinists" with bad teeth and I'm sure equally heavily edited, glowingly lit, earnest, reasonable young scientists whose only crime is that they apparently can't do science. And the reason they can't "do" science is not because they lack a coherent testable hypothesis but because they are being suppressed by some sort of monolithic Darwinist establishment. What is Intelligent Design? Beats me. It is apparently a mystery to its practitioners, too. Along the way someone mumbles something about Intelligent Design being the theory that some structures are better explained as a result of actions by an Intelligent agency. Which structures is left unsaid, not to mention how or when. Dembski assures us he has a reliable design detector and it's only a matter of applying engineering principles to ferret out the details. Let's get crackin', Bill. We see novel structures emerge all the time in bacteria. We should be able to catch that pesky designer in flagrento designo. Using engineering principles, of course. Nowhere are we given a review of modern evolutionary theory except for a cartoon version of mutation and selection. At one point, someone (I think it's Berlinski) says evolutionary theory is so inconsistent that it can't even identify what a species is (which would seem to be a point in favor of common ancestry to me) . A little later, Jonathan "the Rev. Moon wants me to destroy evolution" Wells defines evolution as change within species. It is almost as though these Discovery Institute guys have been beaten about the head so severely by Darwinists that they have forgotten everything they ever learned about evolutionary theory.

My favorite part of the movie involves Ben Stein flying to Paris to interview Super Dave Berlinski. As usual, Ben meets him in the street and they wander over to Dave's pad to get the lowdown. This is one major quibble I have with the film's production values. It seems for every two minute interview we get a five minute preliminary of Stein wandering around the scenery looking either confused or, later in the film, doggedly determined and even later, determinedly confused. This all had me doggedly looking for the fast forward on my remote. On the stroll over we learn what a giant cranium Berlinski has. Princeton, Stanford, Rutgers. This guy has done it all and, to listen to him, knows it all. He also lives in the oldest house in Paris and he can even say "After you" in French (I guess). Stein can say "Thank you." (I'm sure of that one). Being a douche bag in one language isn't enough for these two Type A intellects. During the interview Berlinski reclines in this bizarre futuristic papa-san chair which gives us a great look up his nose while he's looking down his nose at evolutionary biologists. Stein perches at his feet like a puppy, knowing that, at least on this occasion, he has been out polymathed. Berlinski suffers from "Smartest Guy in the Room Syndrome", a syndrome which I myself have also fallen victim to. Only it was a small room. and it was just me and the dog (badda boom). Leaning back against the chair to increase blood flow and for added support of his huge, overactive melon he pontificates on the hierarchy of the sciences: pure mathematics first, followed by physics, and with evolutionary theory bringing up the rear, somewhere behind phrenology. I guess tens of thousands of lifetimes spent gathering data and thousands of tests and fulfilled predictions don't qualify as rigorous. If only there were someone with a massive enough intellect to spot the problems and turn this ship around before another 150 years are wasted. Maybe Berlinski is the One. Somebody call Oprah.

We start the film with a complete non-sequitor from Stein as he smugly asks "How did life begin?" (a chemistry question in an evolutionary biology class), transition to a series of outright lies concerning Sternberg and Crocker losing their jobs (Sternberg was never employed by the Smithsonian which makes losing a job at the Smithsonian kind of problematic and Crocker didn't have her contract renewed for refusing to teach what she was hired to teach), wander off the rails a little bit with more smug non-sequitors directed at the religious beliefs of famous biologists and somehow end up with Darwin and his damned finches being responsible for the Holocaust. Not a mention of Collins, Miller, and countless other scientists who seem to find room for religion and evolutionary biology in their lives. Along the way Ben becomes increasingly concerned and emotional (I guess, hard to tell) and ends up burying his head in his hands when he realizes it was Darwin, not Hitler, who killed off his relatives. Not only does this propaganda piece hit all the logical fallacies, it adds a patina of misinformation so subtle that it takes quite a bit of digging around to get the real story. Goebbels would be proud.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. "

America Gets Group Hug from Obama Nation

If all politics is local, effective politics is personal. The local paper is scratching its head trying to explain the precipitous decline in support of the Republican nominee from 77% in 2004 to a mere 66% in Tuesday's election. For a party that has had a stranglehold on our local elections since Lincoln, the lack of any sort of ground game, especially a face to face outreach to any undecideds, is astonishing. The Republican effort seemed limited to an ample supply of yard signs, one Sarah Palin's Traveling Circus rally just north of here and the annual chicken corn soup picnic. At no time was I ever contacted by an actual person acting on behalf of the McCain campaign. What I received was an unending series of robo-calls from anonymous voices telling me why Obama is wrong for American. I can't recall receiving any telling me why McCain was right for America. I even got suckered into participating in what I thought was a voter's survey. I should have realized right off that something was fishy when the lead question was whether I was more concerned about the economy or partial birth abortion. Being one of the duller knives in the drawer, I played along until I realized any answer to any question led to a canned negative statement about an Obama position. Wasting a couple of minutes until I had my "Hey, wait a second...." moment just ended up pissing me off. I imagine I was not alone in this. I got exactly one robo-call from the Democrats, a message from my buddy Bill Clinton urging me to vote and telling me where and when the polls opened.

My wife volunteered for the Obama campaign. She took the day off work to help get out the vote, work the polls and volunteer at the headquarters. Since the convention she would receive text messages from the campaign, asking what she thought of the debates or telling her where rallies were going to be held. Multiply that by thousands of districts, with tens of thousands of volunteers being made to feel that they count and are part of something bigger and more importantly, that they are making a difference. This happened all over the country, in latte sipping burbs and hillbilly heavens alike.

That was the brilliance of the Obama campaign. They used high tech communications to advance old style politics. They humanized the process. My district may never become one where Democrats can compete but there is a big foot in the door now. And it can't bode well for the future of the Republican party that, for the first time ever, the local high school went for the Democratic candidate. People will remember the smiling lady with the Obama button who offered them coffee while they were standing in line at the polls or the polite young black students who came to their door to offer them some literature. The "other" has a face now and somehow they seem not so very different.

Where are you, Joe?

How's he gonna catch bin Laden if he can't even keep track of Joe the Plumber? Maybe Joe was out using his new found celebrity to lay some pipe.

An Open Letter to John McCain

Dear John,

We both know the road to the White House goes through Pennsylvania so let me give you a few tips about convincing a key demographic that you need to win over, semi-literate, working class white boys. As a card carrying member, let me clue you in as to how we think and how to get our votes in these last few days before the election and, more importantly, target ad campaigns to different areas of the state. I've lived in eastern , western and now central Pennsylvania. You need to figure a 5 point IQ drop from east to west per zip code as you move across the state, a 5 point drop south to north, and then a 50 point drop off when you hit the West Virginia border. But you probably already have WVA sewn up. Here's my tips:

1. Scare the white people! This is absolutely essential for success. It is a time honored Republican strategy and one you have to embrace yourself rather than simply farming it out to Sarah. Bill Ayers ain't going to do it. Wrong shade of terrorist, if you catch my drift. We sure aren't going to be scared of some skinny white hippy, even if he's got a bomb. We know you got Rev. Wright in the bag. Time to let him out. Now there's a bogeyman that will get us worked up.
2. Don't worry about calling us racists and don't ever apologize, ever, for anything (unless you get drunk and are gone all weekend and have to explain it to Cindy). Calling a coal cracker a racist is same as telling him he has a nice truck. It's a given and he don't care. Murtha will be reelected by a landslide. Learn from him. And don't get tangled up in the punchline. It makes you look like John Kerry.
3. Keep up with the Joe the Plumber stuff. And, for Christ sake, don't get all huffy about the media digging up dirt on him. The more we find out about his unlicensed plumbing adventures, his failed marriage and his back taxes, the more we can relate. And the more you can talk about Obama taking Joe's dough (even if he doesn't really pay any) and giving it to crackheads the better it will be. Even though we can't balance our checkbooks we feel qualified to expound on the merits of Obama's tax plan, just like Joe. And even a guest appearance on "The View" is better than unclogging toilets. We all figure he found his ticket out and we don't blame him for that. Next stop is "Who Wants to Marry a Plumber".
4. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT MENTION SOCIAL SECURITY! If you want to set up private accounts save it for after the election. A lot of us got our 401K statements and we're wondering why we didn't just buy a truck when we had that money. The free market system has let us down. We are not used to having money that we put away disappear. And don't mention Medicare. If Mom and Dad get wind of your health care proposals you will lose the all important cranky old people vote.
5. Don't mention your enlightened stand on immigration. It's all about the brown people, bro. We're more scared of them than anything. We think they're after our jobs. I mean they would be if we had any jobs left out here.
6. Send Sarah to every godforsaken bingo hall in every godforsaken borough in this godforsaken state. Just keep that red leather jacket halfway zippered and if someone asks you about her qualifications just wink and say "Would ya?".
7. Here's the tricky one, but the one that will put you over the top. Distance yourself from everyone in the current power structure. Blame the president, the congress, the democrats, the republicans, even your running mate for the problems we are having. Remember that you have to convince the majority of Pennsylvanians to vote against their own self interest. This will take a certain amount of creativity. Have a highly placed yet anonymous party operative feign fury at your betrayal of the Republican party. Let the media smugly and gleefully out him as Karl Rove. A masterstroke: you will be able to publicly sever the tie to Bush and at the same time carry on the same Bush policies unnoticed. People who feel kind of bad about being suckered into 2 terms of a Bush presidency will have a reason to believe that you will be different. While the media is doing a post mortem on the Republican Party you slide right into the White House. It'll work, dawg. Trust me.

Good luck and bless your heart,

Scripto

A Glossary of Palinese

First the results of the poll:

57% of you feel that Sarah Palin's witch hunting ways disqualify her for the presidency.

43% of you are stupid.

I predict that in the last 10 days before the election stupid will trend up to around 48%

What she says:---------------------------------What she means:

Bless your heart -----------------------------------------Fuck you
Bless his heart -------------------------------------------Fuck him
Bless her heart ------------------------------------------Fuck her
You betcha ----------------------------------------------Damn straight
Doggonit -------------------------------------------------God damn it
Can I call you Joe?----------------------------------- Fuck you, Joe
Real Americans------------------------------------------Rednecks

Elites------------------People who try to figure out what I'm saying

Yeah, we get it

"Sarah Palin was on the verge of inciting a race riot in Northern Florida yesterday. At her rallies, the Republican faithful mob hurled a racial epithet at a black sound man, and screamed "kill him" and "treason" at Barak Obama.
"Boy, you guys just get it." Palin responded."

From the Nation on
Sarah Palin's Florida appearance

Suck It Up - America!

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Quit yer whinin'. The political process is not irretrievably broken. It's just bent a little. How bent it is is inversely proportional to how well your guy is doing. And right now I feel pretty good about the process. It ain't over yet and I'm sure there is a lot of swift boatin' coming our way but gosh darnit, I'm going to enjoy this fleeting moment of bliss. It's been 8 looonnng years in coming. I don't know if Pennsylvania is the next big state to be abandoned by the McCain campaign but I've noticed a curious lack of 527 style attack ads coming our way. Maybe T. Boone Shitkickins has decided to invest his money in trying to save our country instead of destroying it. We are the land of the second chance.

Look at the bright side. This time we don't have to choose from two rich guys from Yale. We got an aged war hero and his babelicious running mate and a black senator with a Arabic name and his running mate, the man who should be President. How cool is that? And how bad has the current administration fucked things up to make this even a possibility? The potential for measured political discourse is always there. We saw it in the two interviews on September 11. Both men gave thoughtful, insightful answers and I came away with the feeling that either one was capable of holding the office. Of course, the feeling went away when McCain realized he could really lose this thing and begain pulling out all the stops in a hysterical attempt to turn the tide. Palin? Sweet Jesus in the morning! What was he thinking? Of course, I also came away from the last vice presidential debate impressed by Cheney's calm demeanor, so I am no judge of character. I thought even if Bush wins maybe this guy can keep him from doing something really stupid. Little did I realize he would become the Dark Lord of the New American Imperium and preside over the wholesale destruction of the american economic system. Oops.


Everybody complains about the quality of the candidates but I believe those that survive vetting by an aggressive press are for the most part brighter and more able than their predecessors. Even our thieving politicians are a little smarter. Boss Tweed, Jimmy Walker and Huey Long wouldn't have lasted 10 minutes in the public arena nowadays. Secret ballots didn't come into use until the end of the 19th century, blacks were effectively disenfranchised by Jim Crow laws, women didn't get the right to vote until 1920, you could get beat up by club wielding poll watchers for coming out of the booth with the wrong colored ballot stub. And things aren't better? Where was this mythical land of sturdy Cinncinatuses (Cinncinati?) casting well reasoned votes free from rancorous party politics?

Results of the Sarah Palin Fit to President Poll are just in:

14% felt that she did not have sufficient grasp of the issues
14% thought that having a nice rack and being demon free was not sufficient qualifications
42% thought it was a joke
28% prayed it wasn't happening
and 2% must have disappeared somewhere into the interwebs.

I took a lot of flack for not including a positive response in case some of you are actually brain damaged enough to think that she is presidential material. So I be running a new poll just for you.

Preparing to Believe - Man Arrives

I'm stuck on Jesus. On songs about Jesus, anyway. The 14 year old Sony receiver in my pickup will only scan the Word FM. As the manual tuner is inaccessible I'm going to have to take this as a sign. To my tin ear the songs sound like any other top 40 station, only they're right with Jesus and every hour or so Ken Hamm breaks in with a short creation science moment. There's rap about Jesus, country about Jesus, alternative about Jesus. It's all good and very positive. There are even lists of businesses that are right with Jesus. So it occurred to me that this change in worldview will be easier than I thought. There seems to be a whole other independent American way set up. I can get my car fixed by Christians, shop for groceries at Christian stores, buy a house from Christians, get my science at the Creation Museum, send my kids to christian schools and then to Liberty Baptist University. If they're smart enough, they can go to Patrick Henry and help rule America. It's a whole big blanket of God insulating the believer from the things of this world. Once I manage to weasel my way into the community of believers it will be very hard to fall away. Everything's right there. Far better than the so-called "community" of non-believers. I don't see any atheist auto body shops in my area. Bunch of bitter drunken know-it-alls. Hitchens, bah! I bet Ken Ham wakes up feeling better on Sunday morning. Today Ken said that if there was a worldwide flood we would expect to find millions of dead things buried in the ground. And what do we find? Millions of dead things buried in the ground. Take that, Stephen J. Freakin' Gould. Hope you get Around the World with Ken Ham while you're roasting in hell!

While wading through Genesis I found one thing that puzzles me:

"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them."

"Our" image. I kind of wanted to join a monotheistic religion. Who's this "us"? And are just men created in God's image? Or is it women, too? Is God trans or maybe supra gender? I'm confused.

More Cornpone, Please

Doggone it, what can I say? Maybe I watched a different debate. Grumpy old politico Pat Buchanan and pretend everyman Joe Scarborough are convinced that Palin nailed it. Biden was "boring" (i.e too many factual presentations of actual policy proposals) and Palin spoke directly to the people. She sounded to me like Ned Flanders channeling Ronald Reagan. Hot diddily doo. Every wink into the camera reminded me of an Amway presentation selling guaranteed pure products like "freedom", "jobs" and "lower taxes". And just like Amway, it's a sales technique to get us to pay too much for a product we don't need. Trickle down economics is a pyramid scheme and a McCain election will guarantee most of us staying at the bottom. Sarah Palin's job is to sell these Republican products and get us to vote against our own self interest. I found the whole folksy, wink-wink Mr. Deeds bullshit belittling and condescending. We are not that stupid and we have had enough of that shit with Bush and I'm hoping we don't fall for it again.

I am a working class guy and I can tell you guys like Buchanan and Scarborough don't get it. Their contact with working people is limited to picking up the dry cleaning or dropping their car off for an oil change. If you are a waitress or a nurse or a mechanic or a construction worker or a factory worker you know what I mean. I used to deliver redi-mix to homeowners, usually lawyers or doctors or accountants, and this was their big once in 10 a year moment to do some really heidi-ho blue collar manual labor. I'd hear how great this kind of work is. No, it isn't. Try it for 15 years. Otherwise you don't have a clue. And quit feeding us bullshit, we're full.

Preparing to Believe - The Beginning

" In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

That seems reasonable. Maybe not necessary, but reasonable. I can get behind this.

"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."

These have got to be the most hauntingly beautiful sentences in the English language. Gives me chills. I don't quite understand how you can have Earth without form and waters without an Earth but in deference to the poetically beautiful language I'll be moving on.

"And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day."

OK. That's handy. Then he separates the water from the water with a "firmament" which I guess is heaven and which also begs the question of where he was hanging out before he created heaven. Then he creates the dry land, oceans, grass (thank you, Jesus), herb (again, thank you), and fruit trees on the second and third days. Then we have this:

"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
And the evening and the morning were the fourth day."

WTF? I thought he already did that on the second day. If I was of a skeptical bent and not willing to change my worldview I would call that some sort of contradiction. Maybe it was some sort of universal blanket of light and dark and he didn't ball the light up and create the sun until the fourth day. I can't seem to find the answer to this conundrum in AIG, my source for all things Genesis (Genesitial?). They seem to be a lot more worked up between some sort of apparent contradiction between Genesis 1 and 2 regarding man/plant or plant/man creation timing. At this rate, I"ll never get there. God, I'm so ignorant about this Bible stuff. Thanks a lot for bringing me up Catholic, Mom. Hell, I didn't even know there was a Bible until I left home. But I'm really trying. In the Catholic tradition of doing penance, I've got the Christian Rock station playing in my truck. Although they don't identify themselves as Christian Rock, I believe they
label themselves as Positive Rock. I don't know if these sappy soft rock love poems to Jesus are bringing me closer to God but they definitely got me to believing that there is a Devil . They also break away for Around the World with Ken Ham every hour or so. Today I learned that what scientists call "sea monsters" are actually dragons which are really dinosaurs and they lived until a few hundred years ago. Now, that's what I'm talking about. That gives me the warm fuzzies knowing that everything is already worked out.

Will the Real AntiChrist Please Stand Up?

The anti-Christ will be a man, in his 40s, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with persuasive language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal.... the prophecy says that people will flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace, and when he is in power, will destroy everything. Is it OBAMA??

Why wasn't I copied on this before? If I had known this earlier, I would have taken the sign out of my yard. I hate being out of the loop.

Is Obama the Antichrist? I have narrowed the list of likely candidates to the three pictured above. We can discount the one on the left. The Bible tells us the Antichrist will be a man and this creature is obviously something else. Loathesome and putridly bloated like a demon toad from hell, yes. But the Antichrist, no. Too repulsive. And, while the one on the right is perhaps some sort of male, the blond hair counts it out as being of Muslim descent. Perhaps a Beast from the Abyss, but not the Antichrist himself.

During my research I found this from Revelations:

13:1 And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.

As you can see from the image above, that pretty much clinches it. Obama is the Antichrist. Now the question is whether to vote for him. Do we help the End Times along by electing him and trading a few years of tribulation for a thousand years of good times or what? Help me out and fill out the poll.

Bosses Say the Darndest Things

Actual quotes from the seventh circle of industrial hell:

Do you have a minute to come back here for a second?

That's why what didn't happen happened.

What it is, is..

The main thing is...don't get excited.

You're right, it's wrong.

If I told you that, I shouldn't have.

I hate redundancy and I don't like doing the same thing twice.

If they don't do that, tell me what they do do.

When I was hired 23 years ago:

You look kind of scrawny for this type of work but I guess we'll give you a try.

What I heard from the garage supervisor pretty much every week for about ten years:

How the fuck did you do that?

Preparing to Believe

On the cover of the Creation Museum pamplet that a friend mailed me is a big ole multi-pigmented dinosaur eye with the words CREATION MUSEUM -Prepare to believe. OK, I will, but this Preparing to Believe is going to take quite a bit of unlearning. For 30 years now I've been writing dozens of letters to newpapers, attending school board meetings and ICR dog and pony shows, as well as arguing endlessly on internet forums against the Creationist theory hypothesis model position. And for what? So that more people would believe in teaching Creationism than believed thirty years ago? What's the point? It's not working. I give up. It's time for a change.

First I suppose I will have to unread some of the books shown in the picture above. I can't quite read the titles but I'm pretty sure it includes On the Origin of Species. I'll have to get my hands on one of those God's Word scrolls. I wonder if there are still some original manuscripts floating around? (Note to self: check Ebay). I guess I'll have to learn Hebrew. Ancient Hebrew. Is there a difference? Which translation? I was raised a Catholic, is our Bible demon inspired? Better check with Ken. I'm confused. It would be a lot easier if God would just stuff his word in my head tonight while I'm sleeping. I will prepare myself.

I read the blogs of the Believers who have made the pilgrimage to northern Kentucky. They had a blast but they were pre-prepared. I am not, but it's time for a world view overhaul. I can't wait to wrap myself in the warm fuzzy logic of Young Earth Creationism. First stop - Genesis!

My God - It's a Cookbook!

"I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this country."

Sarah Palin

With parsley potatoes and a nice white sauce. Mmmmm. Tastes a lot like moose.

Slaveboating Barack

Playing the race card by claiming your opponent is playing the race card. Preemptive I know you are but what am I? strike. I smell a Turdblossom blooming and I think we all know who's pudgy little fingers are tickling the prostate of the average white working Joe. You got to give it to the little fucker, he knows how to steal an election. On a more stupid note, self proclaimed everyman and regular guy Joe Scarborough (speaking for everymen everywhere; Joe, you complete us) parses Obama's character, encouraged by an occasion head nod from Pat Buchanan. God help me, I like Buchanan - I just know sometime he's going to start a segment with the words "Now listen, you fuckheads..." and every once in a while he looks like he's wondering how he landed in this talk show special olympics. Joe's take is that Obama "comes across" as arrogant, elitist, condescending, uppity - oops, speaks in complete sentences and eats some sort of foreign soundin' lettuce. Now, of course, Joe himself doesn't feel that way. He's just afraid a lot of regular Joes feel that way. That's some good slick cracker shit, Joe.

Let the fun begin: terrorist fist pumps, will tax your dog, Michele hates America, Obama hates America, Obama's kids hate America, Obama disses the troops, no flag on the plane, no flag on the suit, no flag on the boxers, educated in a madrassa, secret Muslim, uppity -oops, two white women for every brother and he's fathered not one, but two black children. You got to love the Republican spin machine - there is no end to their creativity. Corsi, author of Obama Nation (oh hell, I just got it. Abomination! Like the anti-Christ, that's some Biblical stuff there) doesn't fact check, taking the position that the rumours are worth reporting (you know the drill -"Some say...", "It is thought that...", "Is it possible that...", "Sources tell us...").

Then again, I suppose we all ought to be grateful for our toothless libel laws.

Run Away - Movies that Blow

Sitting around the pool last evening with my brother and his friends discussing films. During an arcane discussion on the relative merits of various vintage Danish gangster films I mentioned that the Prom Night remake is next on my Blockbuster queue and asked whether anyone had caught the last Resident Evil sequel. Everyone stopped talking, turned and looked at me like I'd taken a dump right there on the deck. Fine. I'll take my opinions elsewhere. Like here. If the following capsule reviews of the kind of lowbrow stuff I usually like save even one of my two readers from wasting a couple hours of his, her or it's life, then I will consider it time well spent.

Prom Night

The story:Crazed former high school teacher, obsessed with blond high school senior babe of suspect complexion and even more suspect acting skills, breaks out of mental institution and slashes his way through a bevy of twenty-something high schoolers before they even have a chance to get it on. No fair.

What blows:No sex. No gore. Healthy young people that flop to the ground and allow themselves to be stabbed to death. Less suspense than a Teletubbie adventure. Totally anticlimatic climax.

The Eye

The story: New peepers give rise to deadly premonitions and, by golly, we can't tell what is real.

What blows: Plods along to predictable conclusion you will see coming from a mile away if you haven't already plucked out your own eyeballs.

So PZ Wants a Cracker

Thanks a lot Dr. Myers. What's next? Pulling kids off Santa's lap at Macy's? Burning the flag outside the Marine Corps League at closing time? Setting the Easter Bunny on fire? Some of us live out here in the world trying to convince our religious communtities that they have nothing to fear from educating their kids in adequate science and along you come with this substandard piece of performance art. Trying to supplant Dawkins for Boogeyman of the Year? The Koran, the God Delusion and a banana skin for Ray Comfort. Nice touch. We get it. Belief bad, rationality good. Although I'm afraid we'll have to give you a C for composition.

Bringing up an 800 year old depredation of the Catholic church to justify unnecessarily pissing off 40% of the American electorate in the present? Drawing the attention of those idiots from the Catholic League. Sweet. Your rightous indignation concerning the treatment of that wafer smuggling student reminds me of another group of self appointed monitors of public morality. And just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Irrationality in defense of the rational is no virtue, sir. Love your blog, but in the future, please don't be such a dick.

RIP PID

PID has got me PO'd. It wasn't Satan, or the Dominionists, or the Nephilim, or the Roman Catholics, or the Bildeberg Group, or the Transhumanists, or the Grays, or the Masons or any one of a number of shadowy groups operating beyond the thin veil of reality that did in my favorite podcast. It was Derek and Sharon Gilbert, the Regis and Kathy Lee of paranoid eschatology, who pulled the plug themselves. Evidently the Lord has called them on to other things. Stupid Lord.

So check out the archives and find out the real reasons behind everything from the rising price of milk to the war in Iraq to the earthquakes in China. Good stuff.

Top Sekret!

IDORC has announced the winner of the prestigious Casey Luskin Graduate Award. Named in honor of the respected paleontologist marine biologist lawyer guy from the Discovery Institute. Unfortunately, because of the numerous assassination attempts on high ranking figures in the Intelligent Design movement and the wholesale roundup and imprisonment of ID sympathizers, the winner of this award must remain anonymous. We cannot even reveal the winner's sex. All we can tell you is that they have one, or the other. The lucky winner received a certificate of achievement in a plain brown wrapper, a $100 award in small untraceable bills and a signed copy of Dr. Behe's new book, The Edge of Evolution. The second place winner received two signed copies of Dr. Behe's new book.

Billy the WAD Strikes Again

Below are some excerpts of Bill Dembski's breathless announcement of his new work, Understanding Intelligent Design . (I don't know if the cover art showing the Jolly Green Giant's left ass cheek was intended to target the gay Christian youth vegetable farmer niche market or not). For your benefit I have translated from the original Discoverese. I will post a further review when I can figure out how to get a copy without putting a dime in Dembski's pocket. I'll check Dollar Tree in a month or so.

"The book is geared at Christian young people (junior high and high schoolers) as well as for Church groups (e.g., Sunday Schools) to help get the word out about ID"

translation: Attention Home School Parents - Buy This Book!. I've pretty much given up trying to pretend that Intelligent Design is not at its core Christian ideology or trying to convince those who actually know what they're talking about that my eliminative filter can detect design.

"specifically WHAT IS IT? WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?"

translation:Attention Home School Parents - Buy This Book! If the kids are wising up to the crap you've been feeding them from Answers in Genesis, I've got some more sophisticated inaccuracies I'd like to sell you.

"and WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT?"

translation: WHY AM I SHOUTING? It's so lonely on the cutting edge of the New Paradigm. O'Leary's lost it and the rest of my douchebag acolytes can't seem to stay on message. Home-skool, go to Liberty or Patrick Henry, buy a sweater and join me. Please?

"I was particularly concerned in writing the book to inoculate young people not only against the atheistic poison of Dawkins and Co. but also against the theological and scientific confusions of theistic evolutionists (like Ken Miller and Francis Collins). If this book does its job, both these camps will lose much of their traction with young people."

translation: Attention Home School Parents - Buy This Book! Free anti-reason vaccination and suspension of disbelief brain traction device included. I get my ass handed to me by these guys everytime I show my face in public so rather than mixing it up with the big boys, I'm preaching to the choir, the boys choir.

Some ringing endorsements:

“Bill and Sean have written a superb book that I wish I had when I was in high school — it would have spared me decades of believing in Darwinism!..."
-Michael Egnor

Too bad it won't spare him from being continually spanked by Steve Novella.

...Understanding Intelligent Design is the best book of its type.”
–J.P. Moreland

In the land of the blind...

"In my book Godless, I showed that Darwinism is the hoax of the century and, consequently, the core of the religion of liberalism..."
-Ann Coulter

WTF? I thought it was the religion of Darwinism which led to fascism, liberalism, communism and perhaps even onanism. Of course we liberals based our political philosophy on a hoax. There was no other way. The tough part was burying all those damn fossils. It took the keen insight of a sociopathic lawyer to undue 150 years of faked research. Coulter was tutored in evolutionary theory by Dembski and Behe. That's a three-way made in hell. I'll bet she made them beg for it.

Louisiana's Stupidity Freedom Bill

Dissatisfied with Louisiana being in 47th place in student competency and hoping, no doubt, to lock up that prized bottom spot, Gov. Bobby "cast out the demons" Jindal signed Senate Bill No.733, authored by Ben Nevers or his staff of special ed interns. A few choice tidbits:

B.(1) The State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, upon request of a city, parish, or other local public school board, shall allow and assist teachers, principals, and other school adminitrators to create and foster an environment with public elementary and secondary schools that promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.

They left out the Germ theory of disease, General Relativity, String Theory, Atomic Theory, Cell Theory, the Big Bang, Gravitational Theory and Plate Tectonics. Human cloning? That's a potential procedure, not a theory. Origins of Life? There are theories concerning the origin of life but I think we can safely say that life originating is pretty much a fact. Global warming is another hot button issue that makes no sense as a theory unless you are throwing in the human component. So that leaves Evolutionary theory. Surprise. And you might think that if you were going to pass a law promoting critical thinking concerning commonly accepted scientific theories you might want to look into exactly what constitutes a scientific theory. No doubt most of the Louisiana legislature are the beneficiaries of a Louisiana public school education.

And what organization stands ready to step into the breach and supply the poor overwhelmed State Board with a supply of misinformation (the new text is called Definitely Not Of Pandas and People) vast enough to totally befuddle the children of Louisiana? Hmm.

D.This section shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or nonreligion.

Honest. We threw that in the bill so there would be absolutely no misunderstanding as to our purely secular and scientific motives. Singling out evolution is purely a coincidence. Really. Move along, no Creationism or Intelligent Design to see here.

Of course, it can always be worse. Here's a choice morsel from the original bill:

Neither the Louisiana Department of Education, nor any public elementary or secondary school governing authority, superintendent of schools, or school system administrator, nor any public elementary or secondary school principal or administrator or teacher, in the course and scope of his duties in such capacity, shall censor or suppress in any way any writing, document, record, or other content of any material which references topics listed in Paragraph A(4) of this section

Now that's scary - paragraph A(4) singles out the same "theories" named in the final version of the bill. No peer review, no scientific consensus, no statewide educational review, no nothing. I read that to mean that even psuedo-scientific crap from the Discovery Institute or Answers in Genesis is acceptable. Hell, even I, who has expertise in exactly nothing, could contribute to the dumbing down of Louisiana. Maybe I ought to. There's money in that thar alternative science.

What I Was Wrong About (a multipart series)

"Acid is good for you"

Wrong.

Back when drugs were good for you I used to think that if only everybody would drop a little acid the world would be a better place. There would be no more wars, no strife since everyone would feel the interconnectedness of being that makes us all one. I didn't figure on Moonies, Manson, Hare Krishnas, Jesus Freaks and Scientologists arisng out of the drug addled brew of the Sixties. You loose your anchor to reality often enough and any kind of structure starts to look pretty good. I used to say that everyone should try acid "at least once". I'm not so sure. Some people have natural schizophrenic tendencies and are already halfway round the bend and a little drug induced pareidolia might just send them all the way around the benderer. I think all the great religious traditions started with a little charismatic paranoia, maybe helped along with a few mind altering substances.

As for me, I figured that if a little acid, once in a while, could give me a little insight, a lot of acid, all the time, would give me a lot of insight. A word of warning for you late blooming hippies out there: if you drop acid 3 or 4 times a week for an entire semester, your school work may suffer. Do you know what it means when you walk into a room and turn around and watch yourself walk into yourself, when the sky splits open in the middle of the day and you see stars and the devil's in the tree and your friend is Jesus and you're St. Paul and you look into the eyes of your soul mate and realized you are tied together for all eternity in a neverending ascending and descending mirror universe, living out all your past, present and future lives simultaneously with the backdrops changing as you move through time caught in the instant of perfect love?

Well, it means you got ahold of some pretty good acid. It also means that you might want to tone it down a bit, for you might find, as I did, that when you start to emerge from that chaotic internal funny farm that you have created for yourself, that your friend isn't Jesus, you're not St. Paul and your soul mate just isn't that fond of you after all.

Cars Are People, Too

More brainstorming from Casey Luskin, ringmaster of the circus known as the Discovery Institute:

"Bailey makes the simplistic (and inadequate) argument for neo-Darwinism based upon the fact that the fossil record shows that species have changed over time and younger fossils more closely resemble living species than older fossils. But this argument makes three mistakes:

(1) 2001 car models more closely resemble 2008 car models than do 1922 car models, but no one is arguing that cars evolved without intelligent design;"

Good point. Left to the forces of mutation and selection, automotive technology would not have advanced much past the wheel (Question for Darwinists - How did the wheel evolve, anyway?). It took a hundred years of selective breeding by Intelligent Agents to give us the diversity of automotive species we see today. I know from bitter experience the devolution that can occur when unguided natural forces are at work. I had a frisky 72 Toyota Corona Mark II wagon that jumped the fence one night and got to humping with my 53 Chevy Sedan Delivery. The resultant offspring looked like an unholy cross between a Cushman motor scooter and a 62 Volvo P544. I couldn't give them away. I knew I should have had that damn Toyota fixed.

Help Jessica Find Britney's Vagina

Concerned that Britney's vagina hasn't been seen in public in days, Jessica has launched a nationwide search to find the missing organ. Britney's vagina disappeared shortly after being eliminated in the first round of the American Idol competition after Simon Cowell accused Britney's vagina of lacking "range". Producers at Dancing With the Stars had no comment on the rumoured report of Britney's vagina attempting to enter the popular dance contest paired with John McCain's penis. Brad is baffled, "I generally have no problem locating vaginas but Britney's vagina has proved to be particularly slippery." Angelina Jolie offered no comment. Madonna has filed suit in a Nigerian family court to take possession of Britney's vagina maintaining, "She obviously is in no position to care for it herself, while I have the means to care for Britney's vagina as if it were my very own.

So Jessica is pleading with her fans and vagina lovers everywhere to spread the word and search high and low for the runaway organ. Britney's vagina may be in trouble. Please help it find its way back.

(hat's off to Doc S for this shameless attempt to increase traffic)

Queen of the Damned

Dr. D. James Kennedy (the D stands for dead), a Presbyterian minister whose avuncular pronouncements on culture and science left him one purple robe and one rich congregation short of handing out the rattlesnakes at some backwoods hillbilly church, has risen from the grave with a new effort from Coral Ridge Ministries, Taking a Second Look at Dover. The clip is short but packed with enough misinformation to have Dead James' clumsy thumbprints all over it. If the Lord loves a liar, D. James made it to the big time. If not, I can imagine the Lord slapping him upside the head when he reached the Pearly Gates; "Jesus Christ, Jimmy, I left you all the fossils. What the fuck were you thinking? By the way, I also made the homos." Whereupon he was sentenced to an eternity of slow dancing with Jerry Falwell in a gay bar in hell, never to consummate the love that dare not speak its name.

We start with the obligatory Scopes trial and a preacher yellin' and an explanation that preachers don't really yell like that, an interview with some clown who said the Dover decision was wrong but didn't matter anyway, an interview with some other clown who has a Masters in Science(?) from (wait for it)........YALE. I looked it up. It's a degree in forestry science, which is fine, but they ask him a legal question, which he, of course, blows. Interspersed with this is about 87 snaps of the letters ACLU carved in stone like some sort of Nazi emblem and a shot of Eugenie Scott on her way to drown some puppies. All leading up to the guest of honor; yes, ladies and gentlemen, that blond bombshell of bullshit, the girl that grabs any limp dick idea that comes down the pike as long as it hangs to the right, the girl who was personally tutored in the intracacies of evolutionary theory by Bill "Patches" Dembski himself, yessir, I'm talkin about none other than Ann "The Man" Coulter.

The iron must have gotten a little too hot and a little too close to her head when she was straigtening her hair. Although the interview is mercifully short it is totally incoherent. She starts out by saying that Einstein would've been prevented from teaching 8th grade earth science because he was looking for God in the universe, that all great scientists were looking for God in the universe, calls Eugenie Scott a "hack" (which is like Hitler calling Mr.Rogers a murderer) and flinging her head around like the crank just kicked in, says, "keeping God out of the science classroom is":
"Prepoth-teroth"

Thuffering thuccotath, Annie, Grab a perm and a cheeseburger and shut the fuck up.

There Will Be Boredom

There is a reason I usually limit my online rentals to the hillybilly-cannibal/zombie genre and There Will Be Blood starring the uber-actor Daniel Day Lewis is one of those reasons. Zombies are ususally good for an hour and a half, I know what I'm getting, and unless I get suckered in by the pretty box to re-watching one of those SciFi channel retreads, I come away reasonably satisfied. Once in awhile, to get my wife to sit down and watch a movie with me, and considering the fact that her tastes are several magnitudes more refined than mine, I rent a heavily Oscar nominated effort, or worse yet, a Lite Romantic Comedy. What I was hoping for was a film that had enough pointless violence to amuse me (hey, there was blood in the title) and an emotionally engaging character study sophisticated enough to make her think I care.

What I got was an eternity of Daniel Day-Lewis as a wacked out construction worker, endlessly chewing the bleakest scenery in western North America. OK, I get it. He has inner demons. An all consuming ambition. He's not a people person. I just wish he wouldn't take all day letting the demons out. What did he do to prepare for this one? Wear wool trousers 24/7 and shave with a shovel? Somewhere around 3 or 4 hours into this expedition, where the high point was a guy getting conked on the head (to be fair, it was a fatal conk) with various pieces of industrial equipment, she turned to me and said (direct quote time):

"Well, I'm certainly learning a lot about oil drilling."

Uh oh. About 5 hours in I looked over and she was asleep. By this time I had too much invested to back out, although the fingernails on the chalkboard score had me wishing I was deaf like the poor kid who was caught in the gusher blast. She woke up about 6 1/2 hours in, fell back asleep about 8 hours in and woke up about 10 hours in for the exciting 4 hour conclusion. (Direct quote time):

"The great thing about this film is that everytime I woke up I didn't
feel like I missed anything."


So my advice is if you are really interested in oil drilling you can catch up in a half an hour on the Discovery Channel and, if brutal naked ambition is your thing, watch Survivor.

How Can You Tell If Casey Luskin's Lying?

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