Peeper Dee #159
Day: June 7, 2012
Boohoo! Sanal Edamaruku dewiberatewy hert my feewings
This story of an Indian man imprisoned for hurting the church’s feelings needs to get circulated:
Sanal Edamaruku, President of the Indian Rationalist Association, has for decades been a tireless campaigner for science and against superstition. He is widely known for his exposure of the tricks used by self-professed ‘God-Men’ and gurus and has often been on Indian television explaining the everyday science behind supposed miracles.
After one such exposure – he pointed out that the “blood” oozing from a statue of Christ at the Catholic Church of Our Lady of Velan Kanni in Vile Parle, Mumbai was in fact water from a leaky pipe – the Catholic Church of Mumbai made a formal complaint about him to the Mumbai police. He stands accused of “deliberately hurting religious feelings and attempting malicious acts intended to outrage the religious sentiments of any class or community”, an offence under Section 295(a) of the Indian Penal Code. No arrest warrant has been issued but the case is “cognisable” meaning the police can arrest without warrant at any time. He is being harassed daily by the Mumbai authorities who, under pressure from Catholic groups, are insisting that he turn himself in. His petition for “anticipatory bail” was turned down on 3 June 2012 on the bizarre grounds that he would be safer in custody. If he is arrested he will therefore most likely be detained in jail until court proceedings are concluded, which could take several years. Fearing arrest, he dares not stay long at home or work.
What’s up with that? Yesterday’s troubles don’t seem so far away.
Yesterday, Tina and I met with a couple who is hiring us to shoot their wedding. Our goal was to scout the locations where they are getting married, where we’ll stop for photos after the event, and where they are getting receptioned.
We had to drive out to a nearby suburb to meet them, but getting out there turned out hectic.
Driving to a job is often stressful. There’s a lot to think about with photography. It’s not really just a point and shoot kind of effort. There are factors and a bit of math and science mixed with directing and communication. So there was an edge already in the car.
As we drove to the highway, traffic looked nuts in front of us. Two lanes went to one way down in front of us, so we diverted and decided that we’d jog our way to another highway onramp a little further north.
What a mistake.
Do you know the saying, “Out of the frying pan and into the fire”?
Yesterday, it was “Out of the frying pan and into the flaming pits of hell.”
Okay, I’m exaggerating.
A trip that should have taken an hour turned into one hour forty.
At another point, traffic stopped. There were about ten cars ahead of us. We thought someone was parking and blocking traffic a ways up. But when I looked around the car in front of us, there was a biker laying in the middle of the road, apparently after getting hit by a car. A police officer was already there. We hoped he was telling him not to move, because he wasn’t. And that freaked us out.
When the brain experiences stress like that heaped on other stress, just seeing someone laying in the street, it blows fuses. It becomes less able to function properly.
A few minutes later, we were sitting at a traffic light waiting to turn right, and Tina said, “There’s no turn on red.” I didn’t respond. I sat there waiting for the light. I was still shocked by the sight of a hurt pedestrian.
I inched forward, and Tina repeated, “There’s no turn on red.” The light had turned green, and — as if turning into Large Marge from PeeWee’s Big Adventure — I screamed, “Tina, don’t fucking tell me how to drive! The light is green.”
Tina returned with her version of Large Marge saying, “Don’t you yell at me!”
I did one of those, “Hold on, hold on hold ons! Let’s stop for a second. We’re both stressed out. Let’s be friends again.”
We gathered our thoughts and we both apologized.
Our meeting with the couple went well. We shot them in a couple places and had dinner with them. They’re sickeningly cute. They’re teachers. And like us, they work together. They met at work. So we get each other.
On our way home, Tina and I talked about how the power of empathy can trigger so much internal torment. If we see someone in trouble, we immediately go into different weird places.
Seeing someone hurt can cause your brain to make your limbs and body feel hurt. Or you flinch.
If these empathetic mechanisms are broken, what kind of a person does that make you?
Hot model (may have) destroyed a reformed-drinker, Christian actor’s life via Twitter while 30,000 ft in the air
The heavens can be cruel and unruly. They can be amazing and beautiful, or ruin your life in one fell swoop.
So says the gossip on the Internets.
This happened:
Brian Presley is a moderately successful actor who recently swore off alcohol and reaffirmed his Christian faith. He’s also married and has a five-year-old son. That’s him on the right.
Melissa Stetten is an up-and-coming model whose quirky and clever tweets have gained her a decently-sized following on Twitter. You can see photos of her here.
The two “artists” sat next to each other on a recent flight and sparks flew. Well, on one end, at least.
Presley tried to hit on Stetten, even covertly removing his wedding ring at one point, and Stetten live-tweeted the whole thing to her followers. His game was weak, to put it nicely. You can read the whole saga below. It’s riveting.
More of the exchange below the fold.
Let’s raise some cash and awareness for the Secular Student Alliance #SSAWeek
Remember that time when you were staring into the night sky, and you said aloud to your audience of croaking frogs, buzzing mosquitos and blinking lightning bugs, “Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, see Le Café Witteveen post every 30 minutes for eighteen straight hours one day really soon.”
Remember?
Well, your Disney Dreams have come true.
I’ve signed up to post even more than I do already for one day, in an effort to promote, the Secular Student Alliance, an organization so powerful, they’ve reaching down to the power of the blogs to assist them in their plight for world domination.
And by world domination I mean, giving secular kids a place to meet, talk about atheist, agnostic and freethinking topics whilst drinking pop and finger foods in a college atmosphere.
Apparently, this is a big deal … this posting every 30 minutes to promote the cause. Other bloggers have done it and lost their minds in the process.
But I’m going to do it, with lost mind already. I mean, who the hell agrees to a post every 30 gee dee minutes?
Idiots, that’s who.
Check out the list below to see the other folks who are ripping off their straight jackets for a chance to raise money for the cause (click here to view the list on the SSA web site).
Read more about the blogathan here.
Be sure to stop by the sites to follow along. Throw some bucks at it if you can. I know I will.
I wished I had an SSA at the little, Christian college I went to. It would have been sweet to see all the lightning.
Be prepared to help me with my donated time. I’ll need submissions and ideas for blogs. I’ll need pictures of your navel piercings. Nothing says, Raise money and awareness like a good navel piercing.
14-year-old Caiden Cowger poses as a version of my 14-year-old self. In other news: Obama is making kids gay!
Hey, North Carolina, you can breathe a second. West Virginia is stealing your sweet, sweet spotlight.
The kid in the video is Caiden Cowger, a kid who is wearing a costume of my 14-year-old script and using it with social media today. Holy shit.
Isn’t it amazing that these scripts are handmedowns to every up-and-coming Christian youth? And if they don’t shed it by 18, they carry it like a torch to adulthood.
It’s nuts.
I used to talk like Caiden. Apart from the nuances of current terminology, the same words were all there. What a damn shame this kid can’t think for himself. No 14 year old came up with those ideas on his own.
This kid has watched one too many episodes of Rush “Dimbulb” Limbaugh.
About the video:
Published on Jun 6, 2012 by ctbadboy23
A West Virginia-based teen radio host is making waves after proclaiming that President Obama “is making kids gay” in a recent episode.
Fourteen-year-old Caiden Cowger, who hosts the twice-weekly “Caiden Cowger Show,” made his anti-gay proclamations in a recent broadcast, video of which was uploaded to his YouTube channel on May 26. “Homosexuality is a belief,” Cowger, who has previously interviewed former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, declares. “The person is not born that way, no matter what Lady Gaga says…it is a decision.”
After confessing that he was once friends with some kids who have since come out as gay, he notes, “They were not homosexuals [then]…they just decided all of a sudden, ‘I think I’m going to be gay,'” before he eventually concludes, “I’m going to tell you this, guys: President Obama…Vice President Biden…is making kids gay!“
Global Warm this: If Crazy was a horse race, North Carolina is taking the lead
When Science hands North Carolina hard, indisputable facts about Global Warming, North Carolina knows what to do with it.
Just like a Yeshua Fog parent with a gay child, they ignore him, that’s what.
They throw him or her out with the bathwater.
Ignorance … [strong inhale] … that’s the shit, man.
Cough. Cough.
Cough.
From that liberal rag the LA Times:
As a coastal state, North Carolina faces the same global climate challenges of rising sea levels and turbulent weather that island countries and other coastal regions have begun to confront, and to ask what to do next: Do they build walls? Draw their population inland and upland?
Here’s the NoCa solution: pretend it’s not happening. Pass a law saying it can’t happen because we say it can’t. Which is to say, ban any government agency from using the standard scientific tools like extrapolating data to figure out what’s happening, and thus avoid all those scary, silly scientific facts and figures.
North Carolina cannot get out of the spotlight. With her batting down of the homos left and right and now the blind-eye turning, Global-Warming avoiding perspective they’re now legislating … we can only hope someone is right and Jesus comes back to swoop up all these yahoos into the heavens.
Just kidding. I have no proof that Jesus is ever coming back. It’s not like, say, Global Warming or anything.
Besides family and friends live in NC. Or NoCa as the article writes.
Let’s all bow our heads into our open palms and shake our heads back and forth.
What else can we do?
The Crazy is winning the horserace in NoCa, and nobody noticed my sweet-ass, larger-than-Audrey-Hepburn’s hat that I’ve been wearing.
What a bummer.
Thanks, Xina!
What the believers are posting
After receiving a letter from a fan in Nigeria, friend of the blog Julie Ferwerda posted something interesting at her blog this week.
A Nigerian woman asked, Why’d you go changing your blog from traditional, mindless, no-asky-questions, believing blindly to the opposite?
Whelp, says Julie with a-crossward-angle-shift-eyes-to-one-side-and-shift-the-mouth-to-the-other-side face … because it’s the damn truth that’s why.
You can read her post here. I might have changed some of the wording a little.
Julie says she’s not the same woman she was three years ago. Hell, can you say the same about yourself?
I’m not the same woman I was three years ago.
Shoot, I mean …
I hope none of you are the same woman you were three years ago.
Wait, that’s not right either.
Julie reviews some of the changes she made in her belief system, namely the retiring the doctrine of Hell.
The great thing about Julie is we’ve sent some great — albeit private — emails back and forth. Her mind is chockfull of new ideas and changing thoughts. And damn well it should be.
I’m not quite sure how anyone raised in the church, given the wealth of information available, can hold on dearly to all the holy church doctrines anymore.
And why would you?
The way I read the letter from the Nigerian was, “I want to question, too. I desperately do. Please, please, please, tell me how I can do it too, and not be shunned by my peers?”
Isn’t that the rub?
Django Unchained Teaser Trailer
Love him or hate him, Quentin Tarantino has a new one coming out that’s getting some great press. Watch the teaser trailer above.
Le Café Wittypoots 