Rape Prevention

Ways to Prevent Rape

I. Know what rape is. Understand that any sex act, with someone who does not want it, is Rape; and that even though sex may be one motivation, the act itself is an abuse of power.

II. Treat rape with the seriousness it deserves. Learn who rapes, how, and why, and the damage they cause: not in the locker room but from professionals and survivors.

III. Don't think you are entitled to sex because you're horny, or you spent money, or this person dated you, or married you, or had sex with you before, or any other reason.

IV. Stop when you're asked to, either verbally or physically, even if it's in the middle of the hottest sex you've ever had.

V. Toughen up. Be man enough to take disappointment, frustration, and rejection instead of taking them out on others.Step up and work to change your gender's behavior so that  rapes will not happen, instead of depending on women to do it for you.

VI. Walk the Walk. DO SOMETHING about it when you know someone is a rapist or a danger. Turn them in, warn any women who may be endangered, or do whatever you can to stop that person. DO NOT tolerate, excuse, or ignore.

VII. Speak up. Defend a woman's unconditional right to choose when and where to have sex, and who with, and insist your friends recognize that right. Don't laugh at rape jokes or catcalls, object to them.

IX. If you have raped anyone, get help, figure out what is wrong with you, and fix it. Make reparations if possible.

X. Send this to every man you know, and when you get chain letters telling women what to do to avoid men who rape them, substitute this list.

Not a Women's Issue

It's still International Women's History Month.

My posts have mentioned and mentioned maternal health, and by coincidink so has Al-Jazeera, bless their little hearts. They've had this awesome special feature up, and if you haven't seen it then may cooties infest your armpits.

Click on the link, then that little arrow

For some reason it comes up all blurry till you click that arrow to load it. Get clicking, and check out the videos. Lots lots more at this link. 


US Invades Brazil

Some years back,
Japan attacked the US, so
the US formed an alliance with Japan
and invaded Brazil.

No, that's not quite right

Saudi Arabians attacked the US, so
the US formed an alliance with Saudi Arabia
and invaded Iraq.

Close enough. Anyhow, then

the US invited
hundreds of Japanese Arabian bomber pilots
to come live in the US so
they could train them to blow up buildings and kill people.



the Pro-Orphan Movement

Has to be seen to be believed

No stem cell research. They want all those blastocytes to grow up ...

No abortions. They want all those blastocytes to grow up ...

No birth control. They want all those blastocytes to grow up ...

… and be adopted, by a loving Christian couple.

Number of Christians in the US:

Number of children awaiting adoption in the US:

Every blastocyte deserves to know that when they grow up, to be orphans, each one of them will have two thousand extra Christians not taking care of them.

Why do the Christians want all those orphans?*

*(Well, we know why the Catholics do)


a Salute!

Rachael Hale

of Vermont, 

for becoming the

Rachael is the first girl to ever achieve this title, and only the third girl to win a state HS wrestling title in gender blind competition,  following

 Hope Steffensen of Alaska, last December, 
Michaela Hutchison, also of Alaska, in 2006.

Rachael is a freshman at Mount Anthony Union High, Vermont, who got interested in wrestling after her brother Zak wrestled.  Only five states separate divisions by gender, and Vermont is not one of them, so she just fought the boys, and obviously, was better.  :-)  She was one of more than 6,000 girls who wrestled last year, and every state but one has had a girl make it to state.

You've come a long way, baby.  People who think girls shouldn't wrestle are going the way of the dinosaurs, and it's a good thing, and it's thanks to you guys. 

I've been punked, have you?

I was one of thousands of people who watched videos of this little guy, and didn't have a clue.

Now I do, and I feel awful.

Slow Loris

Conservation of Slow Loris

Boing Boing

More here from the Int'l Primate Protection League.


Mai poam, let me show u it

this is just something I wrote a long time ago, had it laying around ...
... think the Doors, Spanish Caravans (I said a long time ago)

Narwhals are playing
beneath northern lights
round calving glaciers
that soar to blue heights
stars overhead in
their half year of light
I hear the song of
these wonderous sights.
me to go and see
arctic majesty

Beautiful houris
dance on their knees
in gorgeous palaces
over the seas
serving rich caliphs
neath silk canopies
I hear their sweet voices
borne on the breeze.
me to far off lands
mystic desert sands

Riches from Khitai
and far Hindustan
Bactrian borne crosst
the Taklimakan
bargains in bazaars
of old Samarkand
pyramids of skulls
left by Tamerlane's hand.
Asian fantasy
won't you come to see

Tropical islands
dance in the haze
coconut palms fringing
sunspattered bays
white powdered shores
of a watery maze
beaches where sand
covered tortoises laze.
in sweet harmony
for my company

Toucans in sweet rotting
jungles of steam
skyscraper trees choked
 with mantles of green
cannibal headhunters
lurking unseen
pythons and leopards
consort with their queen.
me to heed their drum
and for me to come

I'd go to see them
the rest of my life
abandon my children
my home and my wife
always be looking
out further along
never know peace
in a place I belong


I can hear them sing,

and I have everything.

Nonviolent Self Defense

at its best.


Ear Circumcision

In Acts 6-7, Stephen, who was supposed to be waiting on tables, gives a speech, mostly a history lesson about the fugitive murderer Moses, but he hasn't got the knack, he insults his audience, calls them


Uncircumcised ears! Uncut hearts! Gosh, no wonder they resist The Ghost, if it wants to chop up their ears. Not to mention putting a god shaped hole in their hearts, like the Aztecs. This is where we get the expression give your heart to Jesus, I spose, coz 'give Jesus your foreskin' just doesn't quite cut it.

His speech bombs. Hardly any wonder after he insults their foreskins and blames them for killing Jesus. So they stone him, but do it with big Nerf Stones, because after his last words,

7:60 … When he had said this, he fell asleep.

Now that gets my respect. It takes some serious self control to nod off while you're getting brutally killed: “Ho hum, this stoning to death, so tedious, mmmzzzzz ZZZZ ...” Wow.

Then it tells the story of Saul Paul on the road to DamnAssCuss, and how Peter was such a lousy houseguest, and then it gets to the good stuff, precedent we can follow as a moral guideline. Hooray! What should we do, for example, in a situation like this?

Acts 11:3“You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them.”

Oh, snap, that is a moral quandry isn't it? First of all, before entering a house, always ask if the men there are circumcised. It's simple courtesy, and can save you from later embarrassment. But let's say you are foolish and go in this house. How you find out these men are uncut I'll leave to your imagination, but Peter outlines the problem you face.

Acts 10:28 … “You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile.

And he explains the reason why it was ok for him to break that law.

10:5 “... I saw a vision.”

The vision had jack to do with foreskins or houses or Jews or gentiles, but there you go. All you have to do is dream something, interpret it to mean you don't have to obey the law, and you're off scot free. Keep that in mind, for traffic court.


WORMs and Surfing

Today was the vernal equinox. I was out planting grass, things are springing up all, on over this beautiful new spring Sunday.

Stuck my head inside, the people were all gathered around the teevee, listening to some White, Old, Rich, Males ramble on about a guy who died thousands of years ago. These W.O.R.M.s live their lives in old moldy books, shutting themselves off from the sunshine, the light and the wind and all the living things and natural forces, the handiwork of the gods they say they honor.

Meanwhile, I'm outside to see and appreciate the wonders that surround us. Not only is it the 1st day of spring –for me anyway—we had a supermoon.

We should celebrate these events our solar system presents for us. This one was FTW: a full moon when it's at perigee, the closest in 20 years, plus Mars crashed the party. He was in the neighborhood and popped up right next to that 'wolf moon'.

It rained so I missed Mars, but the lightning gods took the stage in his place, shooting parallel bolts across the sky horizontally, four at time! Woot!

People ignore all these special events Mother Nature puts on, and say they're observing the Sabbath? Boo Hiss, they should be out here with her, joining the party. Like these guys;

Surfin' U.K.: British boarders in Gloucestershire on March 2, 2010, brave the Severn Bore, ...
Around the vernal equinox surfers, boaters, and nature enthusiasts flock to the Severn Estuary (map), which has one of the world's greatest ranges between high and low tide. During a rising tide, the funnel shape of the estuary squeezes ocean water upriver, resulting in waves that can reach 4 feet (1.2 meters), as in this picture, or higher.
That my idea of what a religious celebration oughta look like. Before that psychotic old pervert Abraham came along people used to pay attention to these things.  We don't get to make fun of Pagans very often, so go ahead and make fun of that first paragraph, but here is a list of how some people used to do it.  The Ancient Germans had the best idea, I'd say. Notice the Ancient Romans--ROFL. Now excuse me, I'm off to the spring mating rituals.

Heroic Woman 2

I'm reading Half the Sky, which you HAVE TO read.  A review is here.

Putting the two together, I would like honor some particular woman by telling her story here. From Half the Sky comes the story of

Simeesh Segaye of Ethiopia

She had her life in order, married at nineteen, she became pregnant and went into labor. There her happy story takes a turn beyond Hell. Her labor went on for two days, at which point the neighbors picked her up and carried her, for several hours, to a bus stop so she could get help. The bus trip took two more days, still in labor, till she finally reached the hospital and they delivered a dead baby.

The baby's head pressing on the pubic joint shuts off the blood supply and can cause necrosis, which happened to Simeesh.  Seven cm (about three inches) of her pubic joint just rotted away, and she developed a fistula.

She went back home, with piss and shit dribbling out of her body 24/7 and nothing she could do about it.  Her parents saved up money and got on a bus back to the hospital. Once she was on board though, the other passengers complained about how bad she smelled.  Imagine a combination of piss, rotting flesh, and shit: trust me, it's not good. They refused to put up with such a stench, and the driver kicked her off the bus. 

Back home again, her husband left her. Her parents stood by her, but even they couldn't stand her smell so they built a little shed out back for her to stay in. She went in, curled up in a fetal position and just laid there.

For two years.

She was gradually starving, because one, the more she ate the more feces and urine ran out of her body, and two, she had not much to live for. She just laid there hoping to die. Finally, her parents sold everything they had in order to get money to charter a private car that would take her to the hospital. 

By then her legs had atrophied so they were stuck bent at right angles and she couldn't straighten them out. When she could finally walk again, after lots of physical therapy, she got stress fractures in her feet, but she ultimately recovered.  Here is her story in more detail.

Unbelievable as it sounds, Simeesh is one of the lucky ones. Her parents didn't disown her; she lives in Ethiopia, which has one hospital that can help, unlike a lot of other countries; and she didn't die shunned and alone.

What can I do to help?
Not a lot from here, it seems like, but you can give a tax-deductible donation to the Fistula Foundation.
There's another thing. They have a program called the Circle of Friends, it's kind of like holding a Tupperware party, only better. You could gather a bunch of your friends together and show a video or something to spread awareness. These events can have tremendous effect, and aren't hard to do. One person (link) kicked things off by asking “What was your most embarassing moment?” You can imagine the responses—laughing, mis-sent emails, fashion disasters—American stuff. Simeesh wasn't there to tell about getting kicked off the bus.

For more information, Fistula Foundation encourages you to email them at info@fistulafoundation.org.

Looking for a Pet?

How about one of these guys?

From Ugly Overload


a Victory

This email popped into my inbox and made me feel good.  It always seems like your one little voice can't accomplish much, but

A small group of lesbian activists from the poverty-stricken townships of Cape Town walked into South African parliament on Monday and convinced their government to finally start fighting the country’s decades-old scourge of "corrective rape" -- where men rape lesbian women to "turn" them straight. You made that moment possible. 
Late last year, these activists called on the world to help them pressure their leaders to take action on corrective rape. We answered their call, and more than 170,000 Change.org members from 163 countries joined with them, making this the largest campaign of all time on Change.org.
Three and a half months later, they succeeded. Teaming up with 23 major South African organizations, they got some of the most powerful officials in the country to agree to bring together various government arms and civil society groups to develop and implement a national action plan to combat corrective rape.
The ministry officials asked for details of specific cases in need of immediate attention, committed to a series of meetings beginning in six weeks, and promised to present concrete proposals to prevent corrective rape by the next meeting.
It’s an astounding victory, far beyond what we ever could have imagined when we set out late last year. Now these activists need your help holding the government accountable for its commitments.
If there was any question about the effect you had, the chief of staff himself confirmed it: At one point in the session he explicitly said, in a pleading voice, "Please don't petition us again."

Wow, I helped!  The email is from Change.org. who makes all these petitions.  This being International Women's History month, we should support another one related to women's rights.

They have just the thing---a petition to Defend Planned Parenthood.  Go ahead and sign it; they're not obnoxious, it only takes a second, and apparently it does some good.   

Acts of Entitlement

These apostles are the biggest freeloaders I ever heard of. First there's Jesus, saying don't even take a clean pair of socks (Luke 10:11), just mooch off the people you're preaching to. Then in Acts 9:43 Peter moves in with some guy named Simon, still doesn't get a job, just lounges around letting people wait on him hand and foot (10:10). Three strangers show up, and Petey-boy invites them in to spend the night. At Simon's house.

Imagine Jehovah's witnesses come knocking on your door but instead of giving you crappy literature, they want a place to stay. Then imagine you're on powerful drugs so you let them, and head on off to work, cuz hey, somebody has to. Then when you come home the place is full of riffraff Jesus freaks, eating your bread, drinking your wine, and praising the Lard. Wouldn't you be a little pissed? I would, I'd go all Old Testament on their asses.

Listen to these overentitled bigheads dissing the help.

Acts 6:1-2 “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables.

Wasn't too long ago their boss was washing their feet (John 13), looks like they learned the wrong lesson: “Lookit me, I'm such hot shit I've got God washing my feet for me. I'm way too important to sink to the level of this lowly waitress here.” Then he didn't leave a tip and pinched her ass on the way out. 

This  must be the source of the old Christain tradition of  being lousy tippers.

That whole chapter 6 put a knot in my panties. In between murdering people for not giving them all their money, and stiffing the widows on the food rations, Peter's mob elected seven guys as waitstaff. One of them was a flake named Stephen, who couldn't have bussed many tables because the whole next chapter is about him running around preaching. First Peter walked off his job as a fisherman, now this one bails. Bunch of Spongebubs, too good to work for a living.
Not all the apostles prospered

**the bug is a kind of grasshopper from Ecuador. Via Ugly Overload.

My Comment Policy

Don't piss me off.


Heroic Woman

This is Women's History Month, and

I'm reading Half the Sky, which you should read. Right now. If you haven't already, go and get it


Mahabouba Muhammad 

Think of your typical thirteen year old kid. That's how old Mahabouba was when she got a first job, as a maid. Or so she thought: it turned out she was a second wife—to a 60 year old man. The first wife beat her, and the old goat beat her and raped her. She kept running away, but they caught her, brought her back, and beat her some more. She finally managed to escape, but by then she was seven months pregnant. The people in town wanted to take her back to her “husband”, so she ran again, back to her native village. No one there would help her either.

She went to drown herself in the river, when an uncle offered help, and gave her a hut to stay in. Before long she went into labor, but no baby came, and the labor kept on, for SEVEN DAYS! Then, she passed out, and someone called a birth attendant. When she came to, the baby was dead, she couldn't walk or even stand because of nerve damage, and she couldn't control her bowels or bladder because parts of her pelvic tissues had rotted away and created a fistula.

With all this bad luck, all the villagers, including the uncle's wife, said she was cursed and they didn't want her around. They took her to a hut on the edge of town and left her there. They even took the doors off so the hyenas could get in to kill her. When it got dark, they came. She couldn't move her legs, but for the whole night she yelled and hit at them with a stick to keep them away.

She was fourteen years old.

She had heard that there was a western missionary in the next town over, so when daylight came, she CRAWLED to there.

If that doesn't fill you with admiration and respect, you're not a human being. Unlike thousands of other girls, at least a hundred thousand PER YEAR, Mahabouba's story has a happy ending. She found the missionary, they helped her, she got reconstructive surgery, one of the measly 6500 every year (do the math) and she is now a Senior Nurse's Aide in the hospital that saved her life.

These things don't happen here, we have C-sections.  They don't, so stuff like this happens to them.  Once it does, if there's a hospital to do it, 90% of fistulas are repairable, and it costs a measly 300 bucks.

What can I do to help?



A Star is Born

It's a baby Aardvark! Cuz why not?

Name's Roxanne.

Ellison vs Terrorist

While I'm over here bashing Keith Ellison for his stupid book, the kangaroos are gathering the first meeting of the House of Unchristian Activities Committee, and that's more important. This meeting could have been something good, but it's headed up by Steve King (R-Agribusiness), a lying sack of shit who sees terrorists everywhere, because he's one himself, see.


Now, King's standard of good versus bad terrorism seems to have a lot to do with whether King supports the cause in question, but has also specified some characteristics of acceptable terrorism. Here's what he told the Times:
Of comparisons between the terrorism of the I.R.A. and that of Al Qaeda and its affiliates, Mr. King said: “I understand why people who are misinformed might see a parallel. The fact is, the I.R.A. never attacked the United States.”
Of course, neither has the Taliban. The IRA killed Americans in Ireland, and the Taliban kills them in Afghanistan, but hey—brown people. King, he's a Rich White Male Catlick, who loves his country so much that for the first time in American history citizens are being hauled in and questioned about their religious beliefs.

One of the people questioned was our pal Keith Ellison. He did a hella good job too, so props. Now I can hear all the haters screaming WHAT ABOUT YOUR LAST POST TALKING SHIT ABOUT THIS GUY, you fucking hypocrite? OK.

Ellison is deluded about the koran, he thinks it's milk and cookies, and that's stupid. He was stupid for getting on TV and saying stupid shit to defend that stupid book. News Flas: doing one stupid thing does not mean that you spend your days pooping yourself and drooling and everything you ever do is stupid. Sometimes I do stupid things. So do you. That's human.

It doesn't matter much if you're stupid. What counts is HOW you're stupid. Lucky for us, most religious people are stupid in a way that lets them read “KILL AND DESTROY EVERYTHING” and think it means “SPREAD LOVE AND SMILES”. I'll never understand how they do that, but I'm damn glad they do. It's fun to laugh at their dumbness, until they start BELIEVING that shit, then it gets serious.

If muslims really wanted to improve their image, they'd STFU about mohammed and his scribbles, and talk like Ellison did at the hearing. He told the story of Mohammed Salman Hamdani, an EMT who shagged his muslim ass back into the WTC to rescue his fellow Americans. Is he our enemy, Peter King? Remember who spotted the Times Square Bomber? A Couple of Muslim guys. Remember this guy?

These guys might have some stupid ideas, but that doesn't make them the enemy. Fanatics like Bin Laden, and Scott Roeder, and Marc Lepine, and Shawna Ford, they're the enemy.

Spring Break

Just a shoutout for this poster the SAFER Blog spotted, giving advice that for once doesn't suck. YAY!

(If it's hard to read go to the source, SAFER Blog)

No victim-blaming, no fear mongering, emphasis on consent, FTW.


Maher vs Ellison

Bill Maher had Keith Ellison on his show last Friday, Ellison being the only Muslim we've got in congress. He says he converted because he went to the mosque and he liked what he heard.

“about a message of inclusion, social justice, all races all colors in the room”

That put me right off my feed, it did. He sees inclusion where half the audience is fenced off in the back row and covered with gunny sacks? Maybe he'd hear it at a KKK rally too, what with all different types of white male christians in the room. Or maybe he just hears what he wants to hear?

Maher is kind of a dick, lays out a whole book's worth of stuff for Ellison to refute in just the few seconds he gives him, and then quotes Sam Harris

Bill Maher 
"On almost every page, the Quran instructs observant Muslims to despise nonbelievers."
Rep. Ellison
That's absurd, ridiculous, and untrue.
Bull Shit, dude, I've read it, and it fucken does. Dwindling in Unbelief lays it all out here, in the first of two posts on this interview.  But Ellison, he hoists the 'Context' flag and sails right off  the  horizon of reality
“Why don't you read the part where it says that anyone who takes a life, it's as if he'd killed the whole world, and anyone who saves a life it's as if he'd saved the whole world?”
Well, Kieth, that's because there is no such part. It says that just like the pledge of allegiance says "I pledge allegiance to God." The words are in there, sure, but sorry,  you have to include the words in between

That's Holy Mo quoting God telling the Jews what to do, in the Talmud. And the Koran says Jews are apes and pigs Apepigs? Pigapes? Swinesimians? Simswinians? the scum of the human race, so if this applies to Muslims, they must be scum too.

It doesn't say it would be bad if this Jew slew a whole people (never assume!) but let's say it would be---Doesn't say a Muslim can't. And even if Muslims are scum too, it's not always: Hey Keith, I saw what you did there, leaving out that “unless”.

You get a pass if it's revenge for a murder. Illinois just became civilized and outlawed the death penalty, your own state of Minnesota banned it in 1911. Maybe you can draw up new legislation to take us back to the twelfth century.

It's not just murder Jews can bump you off for, either, it's ok for somebody who spreads mischief. Watch it there, Kitty.

OK, OK, the movie wasn't perfect, but killing the distributors seems a little over the top. Here's what islamic experts have to say:

As-Sudi, “one of the most reliable commentators”, and a bunch of other guys, tell us what mischief is.

mischief is disobeying Allah”

Wait, Whut? Why would a Jew kill anybody for disobeying Allah? It doesn't make any sense. (IDMAS) Oh that's right, Muslims are scum too, they get to kill anybody who disobeys Allah. And that's that part Ellison wants us to read? So we don't think it's being mean to us? IDMAS. Context, moar, pleeez. Next line.


Ass-Sudsi again:
"'Wage war' mentioned here ... includes disbelief”

So what it says is, the punishment for those who disbelieve Allah and Mo (Allamo?) is ...Ewwww.

5:32 it would be bad to slay a person--unless it be for disobeying Allah:
33 The punishment of those who disbelieve is execution,
and gory stuff.

OK, Kieth, you sure convinced me.
What is it with you god junkies, why can't you see how this stuff looks to normal people?


Jesus has the Answers

Thanks to Kriss the Sexy Atheist for alerting me to this school in Baltimore that has the answer to our failing schools and is preparing for the Maryland School Assessments in the best way possible.  Illegally, that is, by holding a thirty minute prayer meeting during school hours.

How better to teach the students to be good law abiding citizens of our great Theocracy?  Soon, with God's grace we will eliminate  useless math and science courses, steer our charges from the wayward path of "thinking for themselves", and get back to the basics--memorizing God's Holy Book that has all the answers they will ever need. Stench Tilghman Tchool, you give us hope.

**(I could tell this this ain't gonna work. Been lots of times on a test I said "Jesus, let this be the right answer"; the fucker never came through for me.)


Quote of the Day

“It is frightening that the highest executive in our state suffers from the delusion that God dictates his every move”

Annie Gaylor of the FFRF, talking about Gov. Scott Walker(R- Koch)of Wisconsin.


Hanging Jesus

Well, I had some notes on the Bible I'm reading, but then … A miracle! The toddler has discovered that when he toddles on the keyboard, things happen. It's magic! Look, things disappear, look ... NO, NO, DON'T PUSH ... too late, Letters Allgone. Wheee!

I'll just start over, at ACTS 5:12. The apostles go around healing everybody in sight, so the high priests arrest them, but an angel busts them out. No, srsly:
This reminds me of the naked man in the garden. I picture a big burly guard, with his glistening pecs, unlocking the cell door with his strong manly forearms, ideal for fisting, and the apostles planting a kiss on his stubbly cheeks as they file out,

Thanks dearie, you're an angel.”

They get busted again, being as how they're too dumb to keep a low profile, and Peter---holdit, keep in mind how Jesus lectured the judges when he got arrested, and what happened to him---Peter lectures the judges, blames them for killing Jesus. Man, talk about not learning from history! Peter gets off easy, though, they just had him flogged. Along with all his buddies, who didn't appreciate his genius move of insulting the judges and getting them all whipped for it.


Whoa, that's some serious personality disorder there.

Peter says they hung Jesus, instead of a crucifying him, and I was all wtf?

5:30 The God of our ancestors raised Jesus from the dead—whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree.
10:39 … They killed him by hanging him on a tree,

Can we get rid of all those disgusting bloody crucifixes and replace them with cattle rustler icons? It would scare the children less.

So I looked it up, the KJV says a tree too. My NIV says a tree, but the NEW New Int'l Version © 2001 (the NNIV?) changed it to a cross. Can they do that, playing fast and loose with the immutable Words of Gawd? In the original Greek it was xulon, which means 'pole', not staupos 'cross'. Is this a contradiction in the immutable WOG? Of course not, Christains say, he was killed first and then hung on a tree, like it describes in the Bible no old manuscript ever found on this planet.

Bottom line, the book describes a crucifixion in fascinating gory detail, and the “witnesses” say he was hanged. Case dismissed, for Christ's sake.


the Goddess of English

She looks like the Statue of Liberty, she's made of Bronze, about two feet tall and she's standing on a computer. How cool is that? This is one up-to-date Goddess here, she's new, she'll probly tweet. I'm not quite sure how this works though, if you need a god you just make one up out of thin air? Are there forms to fill out?

Chandra Bhan Prasad knows, he's the guy who thought up the Goddess English and gave her the job of being the symbol of Dalit renaissance. If anybody needs a renaissance it's the Dalits: the Hindus treat them like shit, and when they convert to Christianity they still get treated like shit, even after they're dead. Prasad feels that the way up is to know English. Not the Goddess, and not in the Biblical sense, so get your mind out of the gutter, the language. I like the idea, and I like the goddess, I like how she's kinda feminist.

"She holds a pen in her right hand which shows she is literate. She is dressed well and sports a huge hat - it's a symbol of defiance that she is rejecting the old traditional dress code.
"In her left hand, she holds a book which is the constitution of India which gave Dalits equal rights. She stands on top of a computer which means we will use English to rise up the ladder and become free for ever."

There's really a lot to this. It's drawing on history, how the British transformed India with their guns and English lessons. Tradition is that the Brahmins are the big shots, and they're all about speaking Hindi and looking down their noses at people who don't. But LULZ, the modern world is passing them by with people learning English from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe: Hindi, not so much. If this empowers the Dalits and lets them thumb their nose at tradition, well, too bad preachers,Welcome to the Pantheon, English!

The Brahmins won't even let Dalits go in their crummy old temples, so Prasad and the Goddess are building their own. They're having trouble getting a building permit though. It ain't like the old days when us Goddesses could just smite the crap out of people and get them to worshiping. I miss those days.


A Sermon

God's representative on Earth here has words of wisdom for us all. Heed them well (don't laugh your ass off like I did)


It's March 8th!

Jesus, Master of Kung Fu

There's a bunch of places in the bible where people try to grab Jesus and they can't do it. Here's one in John 10:39.


Why is that, I wondered, is he some kind of Kung Fu Master, that can wiggle out of any hold? Well, he coulda been. After all, where'd he hang out for thirty years?

In the Bible, he gets born, turns up once as a kid, then all of a sudden he's a grownup preacher. Where was he all that time, and how did he get to be all wise and shit? Answer me that, yo.

According to this book, he went to Asia and studied Yoga all that time. The word yoke is basically the same word as Yoga and this makes sense. So Jesus said stuff like

Matt 11:29 Take my yoke yoga upon you and learn from me,

Pfft, you say, whatsit got to do with Kung Fu? Well, in India martial arts and yoga are all mixed together. In fact, some MA traditions are just called Yoga.

You got yer Judo in Japan, yer Gong Fu in China, yer Tae Kwon Do in Korea, and in India, you got Yoga. So if JC was studying Yoga in India for twenty years, that explains the yoke comment, and how he could wiggle so good.

Here's something else that's odd. Remember when Jesus went all Old Testament on the bankers?

He made a whip to do it with, wtf a whip? If you were going to wade into a brawl, wouldn't you draw a sword or at least grab up the nearest 2X4, or whatever they used in those days, maybe a thumb-by-palm? Would your weapon of choice be a crummy whip?

Well, I only know of one martial art that uses an actual whip as a traditional weapon, and that's Kalari Payat. Guess where it's practiced? That's right, the state of Kerala, in Southwest India. No trick at all for the baby Jesus to hitch a ride on the monsoon winds, sail over there, enroll in the local temple, learn how to kick ass, take names, and give sermons. Then he had a mid-life psychotic episode just like Mohammed did, sailed back and the rest is history. Sorta.

So if there was a real Jesus person, that's what he was up to. This answers all your Bible questions:

What'd he mean by a 'yoke'?
Where was he all those years?
Why couldn't people grab him?
Why'd he use a whip?

Now you know. Kind of neat, huh?


Now that wasn't so hard, was it?


A Navy guy dies. His spouse shows up wanting a traditional military funeral, all the usual trappings.

But his spouse is a man!

These guys are gay!  So what does the Navy do?

They treat them just like anybody else, do the same thing they always do.


How about that?


How to get beat up in a bar

Psst, wanna to make some quick money? Here's what you do: go down to the local watering hole, strike up a conversation, mention dolphins, and ask the guy if dolphins are fish or mammals.

“They're mammals.”
“Naw, they're fish.”
“Bullshit, dolphins are mammals”
“Put your money where your mouth is. I'll spot you ten bucks they're fish.”
“You're on, sucker.”

Then you show the mark this picture

Dolphin, in front
and this dolphin-fishing website.

Be prepared though, in case he gets down off his bar stool, wraps his belt around his knuckles, spits out his chaw, and proceeds to say “I believe you have possibly committed a fallacy of equivocation.”
Then he beats the shit out of you.

Dolphin, on right

He'll be wrong though.  You didn't bet that ALL dolphins are fish, or that they couldn't be something else too, you only bet that there are fish that are called dolphins, and there are, like that one up there in the picture.You can console yourself with the knowledge that you actually won the bet and he's just a poor sport, as you lie bleeding in the alley. 

C'mon, you didn't really expect a guy to admit he's wrong did you? Voltaire really tried this, y'know, that's where he came up with his motto, in the hospital:

If you want to argue, first define your terms”

Gnu atheist antallan didn't get the memo.

Uzza, how do you conceptualize a unicorn? Does it have hoofs like a horse’s or like a goat’s? Does it have a tail like a horse’s or like a lions?
    But I don’t believe that unicorns exist. So my conception is, I suppose, a kind of quantum superposition of all these states that describe some people’s (historical?) beliefs of what a unicorn looks like. To criticize me for not choosing any single “eigen-conception” (e.g., goat’s hoofs, lion’s tail) is largely irrelevant when unicorns don’t exist! All of them are wrong.

Nobody's criticizing your choice of conceptions, you can think anything you want about unicorns. I would criticize if you made claims about things you don't know anything about. Like say, claiming all the states that other people attribute to unicorns, or god, are wrong when you don't even know what those states are.

You know something doesn't exist, but you don't know what it is. Well, I do. My conception of a unicorn is a backhoe. Being a backhoe is the only necessary state for something to be a unicorn. You say this state, of being a backhoe, describes something that doesn't exist, but see,
backhoes do exist;
and you look like an ass;
because you let me define your term for you.

Backhoe, in trouble
Nnnnnnnnow, you'll probly say I'm crazy, nobody thinks unicorns are like that. Mebbe so, but you didn't specify non-crazy people, you said all the people's beliefs are wrong, whatever they are. You just assumed other people are not crazy, just like you assume they're wrong. Not a safe assumption, pilgrim.

You can change your story and argue that my idea of a unicorn is wrong, but that's a whole different issue. Your claim was that no unicorns exist, no matter how defined. Now that they've been defined, as backhoes, if you keep arguing that backhoes don't exist, you'll be wrong. And stupid.

Ok, that's an extreme case. What state might a non-crazy person come up with? Mariann Webster comes up with: an an animal that looks like a horse and has a straight horn growing from the middle of its forehead. Could somebody claim such a beast exists?

Cage Match!

In this corner, defending his title, Antallan, champion of the claim that (an animal that looks like a horse and has a straight horn growing from the middle of its forehead) doesn't exist.


In this corner, Unicorn, the challenger from Prato, Italy.

Unicorn, in Italy

Remember the rules: no arguing about what's a unicorn or not, we have to use Mariann's definition, because you didn't have one. Too late now, buddy.

See what happens when you don't listen to Voltaire?

Give your Heart to Jesus


Acts of Giving

Busted! Peter and John are both arrested for healing people. Lolwhut? They were preaching against the local theocrats, so yeah, that sounds likely, sez Julian Assange.  But The Man couldn't trump up any charges so they let them go. We're better at it now, if it had been the CIA they'd still be shivering in an isolation cell somewhere, sez Jose Padilla. Charges? We don't need no stinking charges! Rank amateurs, those Sanhedrin, letting potential terrorists go free.

And look what happens, there's a section titled “the believers share their possessions”. ZOMG, Socialism! It tells how all the cultists shared, some of them even donating money when they sold their house. Gosh, that's nice, isn't it?

Like Ananias and Sapphira, they sold some property and gave most of the money to Peter. Peter thanked them profusely bitched him out for not giving him ALL the money. Now that's the kind of preacher we know and love today, and then it gets weird

Acts 5:5 When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard what had happened.
Wait, what? He just keeled over dead in the middle of a conversation? And then Peter expressed great sorrow and held a service in his honor and gave back all the money to support the widow. Didn't say shit, buried the guy on the spot and when his wife turned up he told her her husband had died and offered condolences bitched her out for keeping her own money. Here is how you inform a person their spouse has just died, when you're a Man Of Gawd(TM) :

5:7 About three hours later his wife came in, not knowing what had happened.

All sympathy and compassion, that's our Peter. And then guess what?

What, again? Goddam, people are dropping like flies around this Peter guy. Why is that, is anybody suspicious, what killed them, what The Fuck?

Here's how it looks to me. Nobody was there to witness these deaths, it says the young men came in later, politely ignoring the dagger sticking out of the deceased's chest, it does not say, and immediately hid the body. No funeral, no mourning period, no three day waiting, definitely no autopsy. No sirree, three hours later our boy is dead, gone and buried and even his wife doesn't know it. Nothing suspicious there, boy. Then she shows up and the same thing happens again. About these young men, was one called Winston Wolfe? About the rest of the money, who ended up with that? Why does the book keep saying
5 … and great fear seized all who heard,
11 Great fear seized the whole church
Not “That's really a weird coincidence that two people would just die for no reason like that”, more like “Man, DON'T FUCK WITH PETER.”

Could this have anything to do with the notorious growth of the early Christian Church? Does a fish shit in the sea? Am I too cynical? NAAWWW.