Talulah Time

Talulah works in my office with me most days. And by “work”, I mean she lounges in a chair behind me and sleeps most of the day.

I’m not sure about your dog(s), but Talulah makes the grossest sounds when she’s licking herself. It’s like taking the kiss soundtrack off a movie sex scene and multiplying the nausea factor by 39,020.

Today she started hiccuping while licking. Is dog strangulation legal under these circumstances?

I turned to look at her today while she performed her autonomous love session with her left hip, when suddenly she farted. Her nose darted straight for her asshole, and the lick noises turned into the repetitive sniff noises we’re all very familiar with.

I am convinced that if most humans could lick their own hips, they would have done the same thing.

 

Christian blogger throws temper tantrum, screams, “We’re right! Stop picking on me!”

Christian blogger Charles Lewis wrote a reaction to the Blair/Hitchens debate that took place recently. You can read it here.

His response can be summed up as a temper tantrum of a little boy screaming, “You can’t touch faith, because faith is exempt from criticism. Just because you don’t get it doesn’t mean you can tell me I’m wrong.”

Lewis touts holding up his fist at non-belief and crying for 750 words as a virtue.

I don’t get it.

This is someone who willfully writes for and represents belief?

Lewis says things like, “They find the flaw in the painting and say it is all now ruined.” Yet Lewis fails to realize that the very position he defends claims perfection, and when errors in gross numbers are found in religious scholarship and namely the bible itself, it defeats its perfection.

And the faithful need to stop stealing our notes. Atheists are atheists because they want to deal with life head on. They want to take what’s here on earth and not add to the mix a mysterious supernatural level. In Lewis’ rant, he writes, “Faith is not the avoidance of trouble, it is facing it head on and then finding holiness.”

I’ve argued before. Atheism and Christianity is difference in vocabulary. You say holiness, I say peace or equilibrium.

And no, Lewis, we don’t think if you call out to god, help is on the way. Help is not on the way until another human comes to help you. Help usually comes from reaching out to get help. Help is on the way only when humanity gets involved. If god helped out at all, it’d be an amazing resumé builder for the old man in the sky.

Lewis wraps up his diatribe with the whiniest statement of all: “Faith is not up for debate.”

We get it, believer man. Take the take the path a child would take. What a whiny son of a bitch, this Lewis guy.

And while you’re showing the true colors of the church, we’ll go ahead revel in the fact that you’ve turned off another batch of future admitted atheists!

 

 

Viewpoint: Coffee Reintegration

Many of you know that last year my doctor told me I needed to get my blood pressure down. I did.

I took things seriously. I changed my diet. I cut salt almost completely. I cut down on alcohol. I started sleeping more. I started working out much more and much longer.

And I cut coffee completely.

My blood pressure has since leveled out to normal register. I keep a BP monitor beside my bed and check it intermittently throughout the day.

I’m re-integrating coffee back into my diet on occasion. When I drink a cup of coffee, I feel it. I feel it like a coke addict must feel cocaine.

I don’t know that I ever felt caffeine like this before. I ask myself, “What was I thinking by drinking 3 or 4 cups of coffee?”

Now I can drink one cup, and it registers in my head more effectively than a punch to the jaw.

My body became accustomed to the caffeine over time, just like any drug can. It feels good to have a cup once in a while. It gives new meaning to moderation.

My viewpoint is increasingly focusing on “equilibrium.” Where I thought I was balanced before, I feel a more distinctive balance now.

What are you doing to maintain or achieve balance in your life, body, mind these days?

Must watch: Religion – The Bad Parent

I admit, if I were a believer, this video would be a difficult watch. I hope that my religious readers give it a try. This is a very accurate way that we view religion, and it’s very well-thought out with plenty of visuals.

To the unbelievers, it’s kind of preaching to the choir, but there is a lot of good information in here.

Via Atheist Media

Obligatory re-blog of the day: Zwarte Piet

Over at Cynical-C, Chris posted a wiki article about the tradition of Black Pete used in Belgium and Holland. Growing up, I was exposed to these stories as my old man is from Holland. The wikipedia article is a fun read.

Excerpts:

In the folklore and legends of the Netherlands and Belgium, Zwarte Piet (pronunciation(help·info)) (meaning Black Pete) is a companion of Saint Nicholas (Dutch:Sinterklaas) whose yearly feast in the Netherlands is usually celebrated on the evening of the 5th of December (Sinterklaas-avond, that is St. Nicolas Eve) and the 6th of December in Belgium, when they distribute sweets and presents to all good children.

The characters of Zwarte Pieten appear only in the weeks before Saint Nicholas’s feast, first when the saint is welcomed with a parade as he arrives in the country (generally by boat, allegedly travelling from Spain). The tasks of Zwarte Pieten is mostly to amuse children and to scatter pepernoten and candies around at children, who come to meet the saint as he visits stores, schools etc.

According to myths dating to the beginning of the 19th century, Saint Nicholas (Sinterklaas) operated by himself or in the companionship of a devil. Having triumphed over evil, it was said that on Saint Nicholas Eve, the devil was shackled and made his slave. A devil as a helper of the Saint can also still be found in Austrian Saint Nicholas tradition in the character of Krampus.

Some sources indicate that in Germanic Europe, Zwarte Piet originally was such an enslaved devil forced to assist his captor, but the character emerged in the 19th century within the Netherlands as a companion of Saint Nicholas resembling a Moor.^[1] Saint Nicholas is said to come from Turkey. The relation of Zwarte Piet with Haji Firuz is incredibly close, Haji Firuz is a traditional herald of Nowruz, the Persian New Year celebration, exactly black in the face and comes with Amoo Nowruz a white beared old man who brings gifts for the children counter part of Western Santa.

The introduction of this new Zwarte Piet was paired with a change in the attitude of the Sinterklaas character that was often shown as being quite rough against bad children himself and thought unbefitting of a Bishop by teachers and priests. Soon after the introduction of Zwarte Piet as Sinterklaas’ helper, both characters adapted to a softer character.^[2]

Zwarte Pieten are often portrayed as mischievous but rarely a mean-spirited characters. Parents used to tell their children that if they have been good, a Zwarte Piet will bring them gifts and sweets, but if they have been bad, a Piet will scoop them up, stuff them in his huge dufflebag and spirit them away to Spain as punishment. Though this is increasingly uncommon nowadays, he can still carry some type or scourge (called a “roe”), especially a a bundle of birch branches, which could be used for birching or in modern words, to chastise children who have been too naughty to deserve presents. The character is believed to have been derived from pagan traditions of evil spirits. Also told for decades is a story that the Zwarte Pieten are black because of chimney soot and/or in mockery of the darker Spanish occupiers of the Low Countries in centuries past.

The traditions of the Saint Nicholas feast are in part at least of medieval origin, if not much older. St. Nicholas himself, as described in the Dutch tradition shows some similarities to Wuotan/Odin, which suggests that the duo have a pre-Christian origin. Possible precursors to Zwarte Piet can be found in Odin’s ravens Hugin and Munin.

Church youth group leader repeatedly raped boy, 11

A former Anglican Church youth group leader who repeatedly raped a boy, 11, over a two-year period told his victim the assaults were okay because they were not against God’s word.

Simon Antony Jacobs, 58, from North Sydney, has pleaded guilty to four charges against two boys while he was a leader in the Church of England Boys Society, or CEBS, at two churches on the north shore during the 1970s and 1980s.

The charges – one count of buggery and three counts of committing an indecent act – relate to offences committed while he supervised the boys, who were both 11, as a CEBS leader at Christ Church, St Ives, and St Swithuns, in Pymble.

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Jacobs is also accused of molesting another two boys, both 10, during the same period.

Read on

For a reference on god-approved, biblical rape, see Judges 21: 10-24.