Bible, Schmible

I usually find that I am more familiar with what the bible actually says than most Chrisians I've talked to. In fact, most of them don't seem to care. I've come to the conclusion that Christianity is really a verbal tradition, just as primitive cultures passed on their cultural traditions through storytelling. It seems that most Christians learn their religion from what they are taught by their families, and later by their pastors and other church members. That is why it is usually so futile to try to argue biblical theology with the average Christian. What is actually in the bible has very little to do with their beliefs, which are strongly tied to family tradition and social culture.

The Last Abortion Doctor

This article is long, but should be read by everyone who cares about a woman's right to choose. Here's an excerpt:

Only fourteen, she came with her mother. What brings you here? he asked. I have to have an abortion. Why? I'm not old enough to have a baby. But you told the counselor we should all be killed? Yes, you should all be killed. Why? Because you do abortions. Me too? Yes, you should be killed too. Do you want me killed before or after I do your abortion? Before.

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/features/abortion-doctor-warren-hern-0909

Where I lose the dog and freak out

I just popped 2 Xanax, and I'm chasing them with a wine cooler. Hopefully they'll kick in before I have an anxiety-induced heart attack. I almost lost my dog, Michoud, at 4:30 this morning.

Michoud & Jasmine needed to go out, and a thunderstorm was just passing, so I took them out in the carport on their leashes. There's an area where they can pee in the weeds under the overhang of the roof. There are also saplings coming up there, and Michoud keeps going around them so that I can't get her back without letting go of the handle of the retractable leash & pulling it around the tree. The other night this worked okay. This morning it didn't. As soon as I let go of the handle of the leash, she took off.

Here you need some background. First, I'm disabled. I have to walk with a cane, a slow walk is my fastest speed, and I can easily fall down. If I fall down away from something to grab onto, I might not be able to get back up.

Second, I live two houses from the corner of a busy, four-lane street. Also, Michoud is not traffic-savy. There would be no reason for her not to run straight out in front of a car.

Third, and this is the lucky part, I guess, I live directly across the street from an elementary school, and the grounds are mostly fenced. The few times that Michoud has dashed off, that's where she's always gone. This time was the same.

If I hadn't panicked, I might have thought to grab a few doggy treats & my car keys, but instead I just pushed Jasmine inside the door and took off after Michoud. This was incredibly stupid, but there it is.

I mostly kept her in sight as she ran all around the school, but I had to take my shoes off & wade through lots of ankle-deep puddles. The school is also being worked on, and the grounds are full of big parked semi trailors, so I had to thread my way around those.

I followed Michoud about 2/3 of the way around the school, whistling and calling, before I realized she was heading around to an area that's too rough for me to follow. I gave up at that point, and used my head. I started back for the house to get treats, the car, and my walker. Yes, I need a wheeled walker to walk very far or very fast, and to keep from tripping over stuff & falling down.

While I was headed back around the opposite side of the school from where she hopefully was, a big garbage truck pulled in on that side and emptied the dumpster. I didn't hear her bark, I was almost back to the street as it headed back to the main street, but I didn't see her following it.

I finally got back to the house without falling down, grabbed my keys and stuffed some treats in the pocket of my housedress. I threw my walker in the back seat and drove around to the school's back drive, where the dumpster is. I got lucky again, because the gate was open, so I could drive down next to the school. I rolled all the windows down & whistled several times. About halfway down the length of the school, I finally saw her. I called, "Michoud! You wanna go for a ride?" and she ran right over, wagging her damned tail. I gave her a treat and put her filthy, muddy ass in the back seat.

Right now she's in the doggy time-out room (the storage room that lets onto the back yard). I figure I might be able to look at her in the morning without strangling her. Especially if these damned Xanax ever kick in.

Oh, for some reason, the gecko that lives in my carport apparently decided to jump onto the back window of the car and go along for the ride. I didn't notice him until I was pulling back down my driveway. This is a terrible picture, but here he is:

What a fabulous & concise commentary on religion. Be sure to read the whole post at http://tinyurl.com/n4wmcn.

I was lucky to never really have been indoctrinated into religion, except as much as it’s simply ubiquitous in our culture. Even so, I went through my own awakening as a result of being in a relationship with someone who was involved in AA’s 12-step program.

I also became involved in Al-Anon, and therefore started really thinking about the question of a higher power. I just could never resolve that satisfactorily, and I couldn’t get around it, so I left Al-Anon and continued my searching and analysis of religion in general.

It’s become a subject I’m endlessly fascinated by, but purely from a psychological, sociological, and historical perspective. Basically, the more I find out about the major religions, the more horrified I am that people continue to propagate these archaic & delusional beliefs.

It really encourages me to see that people can overcome this kind of indoctrination and begin to think for themselves. Maybe there’s hope for the world, after all.

clipped from thebeattitude.com the BEattitude Happy are those who ask questions. Losing my religion. Why I recently walked away from Christianity. I was planning to write up a detailed story about my Christian life and the recent rejection of my faith. But my goal is not to build a case to prove I believed in God or to demonstrate how good of a Christian I was. I did truly believe in God for most of my life and worshiped and prayed to him daily. I believed he was at work in my life at all times and using me to touch other people’s lives. So you might be wondering what changed. The change was a culmination of things that I could no longer ignore. Faith is belief in the unseen and unprovable, but still requires a foundation for that faith. With the countless religions of the world, I began to question why the god of the Bible is more believable than all other gods worshiped on earth. With the mountain of evidence staring me in the face, my faith began to die.

Fag Fear

Let's abolish Don't Ask, Don't Tell. If the U.S. military isn't afraid of anything else, why should they be so afraid of The Gay?

Baby Hoarding

Someone commented on CNN that if Nadya Suleman (the octomom) wanted to be loved, she should have bought a puppy. The sad thing is that if they were puppies, the Humane Society would have stepped in and taken them away from her for placement in better homes. There's a term for this where it concerns animals - it's called "hoarding." I think Nadya has proven that we need to broaden the definition for that disorder to include people who obsessively have numerous babies beyond their capacity to care for them.

Civil Rights Beggar

Apparently in Siberia, even little old crippled Bolshevik women must walk the streets with their peddler carts, begging for civil rights.

MISSING: Freedom of Speech

Some lowlife scum suckers stole the Obama sign out of my front yard this past Sunday morning. Probably one of my neighbors on their way home from church. So, I did this:

Yeah, my carport is junky. Whatsit to ya?

A Step Back

I've been watching this week's economic catastrophe with quite a bit of anxiety. I've worried about something like this happening for about seven months, ever since the Bear Stearns collapse. So, when I heard about the proposed seven BILLION dollar bailout, my first thought was that it was something that needed to be passed immediately. But then I began to slow down and think.

First, as I said, I've known we were in a serious economic crisis since mid-March. Why is this emergency bailout just now being presented? There's no way the administration's economic advisors didn't know more about what was coming than I did. Also, why is it being presented with such a short timetable for review and approval? One thing I learned in Contract Administration is that you should never negotiate from a position of fear.

The real kicker is the clause that gives unregulated power to the Treasury Department. The whole thing has started to remind me very much of how the Patriot Act got passed, and how the Iraq war got launched. Both events were pushed through in an atmosphere of panic, as "the greatest crisis ever to face our nation." I'm hearing that exact phrase from the lips of both Democrats and Republicans this week.

Finally, not to go too far out on a limb of conspiracy theories, but several months ago I was sitting around with some friends talking about the upcoming election. We were speculating that if the race started to shift in the Democrats' favor, the Republicans would manage to pull out another one of their distractions, and change the focus to their benefit. Some of my friends predicted that it would be something like an invasion of Iran. However, I predicted that it would be some kind of bogeyman, like the endless "terror threats" that went on leading up to the 2004 election.

I have no doubt that the "One Market Under God" philosophy has brought us to the brink of catastrophe. However, I also know that there is an established strategy called "Disaster Capitalism" that we must exercise extreme caution against. This administration has demonstrated several times in the past their ability to cry "Wolf" and get the nation to hand over anything they want. No matter how much the President asks us to panic, we must remember where such panic has gotten us in the past. Every one of those situations has turned out to be a huge mistake, and so far, irreversible.

I don't know what needs to be done. I am the farthest thing from an expert on the economy. I do know, though, that when some guy on an infomercial screams, "Hurry! Act now! Don't wait! Limited time offer!", I know better than to pick up the phone and give them my credit card number.

Emotiplumbing

The Homosexual Agenda

Over on Ravelry there's been a humorous thread on the so-called Gay Agenda. Several folks asked if people weren't kidding about this whole gay agenda business, or referred to it as a myth. The thing is, there actually is something that the whole idea of a "Gay Agenda" is based on. I wanted to clear that up, since I think it's important for people to be aware of what they're talking about, and especially what's being applied to them without their knowledge. This is my post to the Ravelry thread, in response to someone posting, "OMG is this ‘gay agenda’ thing for real??":

Yes, it is very much for real. In 1989, Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen wrote a book called After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90’s. In this book, the authors proposed “a massive media campaign designed to correct stereotypes and neutralize anti-gay prejudice.” Instead of protesting for gay rights, they advocated using marketing strategies, and working from within the system to promote positive change.

This book is the basis for the homophobic religious right’s claim that there is a homosexual agenda. You really should go look at that link to see just how serious they are about it. While most people who talk about the “gay agenda” really don’t have any idea what that supposedly means, there are a lot of people who will give you a list of exactly what’s on that agenda, and that list comes directly out of that book.

If you look at the Amazon page, you’ll also see a list of 67 books that reference After the Ball, such as The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today, Same sex Marriage: Putting Every Household At Risk, and The Politics of Deviance.

So to answer the question, yes, there really is a gay agenda. I’m sorry you all didn’t get the memo.

And now, for something completely different

I was trying to maintain this blog as just a place to post all the funny things I thought of. The problem is, sometimes I just can't think of anything funny. Sometimes I just want to rant on something political, social, religious, or otherwise snarky. I've actually had another blog or two where I've posted some of my more prickly thoughts. I've finally decided enough of that. I'm just going to keep this one blog of all my thoughts, rants, bitches, complaints, whining, and yes, humor. Except for my knitting & crochet blog, Knitfishy, this will be it. Oh, and the other super-secret blog that I never let anyone see. Nyah!

World Philosophy Day 2007

In honor of World Philosophy Day, I offer this for your edification:

The Philosopher's Song

(Monty Python)

Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume
Both Schopenhauer and Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.
There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya
'Bout the raising of the wrist.
Socrates himself was permanently pissed.

John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away
Half pint of whiskey every day.
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
Hobbes was fond of his dram,
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart:
"I drink, therefore I am"
Yes, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed!

Fortune Cookie

My Fortune Cookie told me: If you do not yet have a moose, take pains to acquire one. Get a cookie from Miss Fortune

"Family" Resemblance?

Yeah, right.

Blog Action Day

Monsignor So-not-gay

The So-Not-Gay community now has a priest to add to their next Un-Pride parade. Naturally, he was only pretending to be gay. Like O.J. Simpson only pretended to bust into a hotel room and hold up some guys at gunpoint. Just a misunderstanding.

clipped from www.cnn.com VATICAN CITY (AP) -- A Vatican official suspended after being caught on hidden camera making advances to a young man said in an interview published Sunday that he is not gay and was only pretending to be gay as part of his work. He said that he pretended to be gay in order to gather information about "those who damage the image of the Church with homosexual activity." "It's all false; it was a trap. I was a victim of my own attempts to contribute to cleaning up the Church with my psychoanalyst work," La Repubblica quoted Stenico as saying. Stenico was secretly filmed making advances to a young man and asserting that gay sex was not sinful. In the Repubblica interview, Stenico said he had met with the young man and pretended to talk about homosexuality "to better understand this mysterious and faraway world which, by the fault of a few people -- among them some priests -- is doing so much harm to the Church."

My Magnificent Friends and Their Flying Machine

I was so wiped out last night after I got the pictures posted that I just went to bed without posting any text. The opportunity to fly in this little plane literally came out of the blue. I went to my ex-father-in-law's 90th birthday party. (Yes, my ex-husband & I have been divorced for years & years, but we're still family.)

A couple friends of the family came up for the party in their WWII bi-plane. When the party was over and my ex was taking them back out to the airstrip, he asked if we'd all like to go out & see the plane. I love planes, trains, motorcycles, etc., so I went out to see it. After we all got out there, they asked if anyone would like to go up in it before they left. A couple of people said yes, but I was thinking there was no way in hell I'd be able to get up into it. There's no stairs or ladder - you just have to climb up on the wing, then pull yourself over the side into the cockpit.

My ex-sister-in-law went first, and after they left I looked around and saw the flimsiest folding chair I have ever seen next to the little concrete block hut which is the terminal building. I drug that out and sat on it until they got back. My ex-brother-in-law went next, so he could take his father home, who is the biggest birthday Scrooge in the world.

I went next. With the chair and the help of my friends, I got into the plane. It was the most awesome experience! I'm so glad I decided to go for it. As you can see from the pictures below, it's an open cockpit, so the wind just rushes into your face. My lips are still chapped & sore from grinning into the wind.

My friend who flew the plane (from the backseat) had me put my fingers on the edge of the windscreen and then push my hands up so that they were deflecting the wind above the screen. Just doing that makes the plane go up and down. It definitely teaches you not to stick your arms over your head and wave them all about! Anyway, it was a an absolutely gorgeous day, and an incredible experience. I never in a million years would have thought that morning that I'd be flying over the countryside in an open plane that afternoon. What a marvelous day.

My Bi-Plane Adventure