STFU

The KASES forum has had some discussion of Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" and Dawkins' contention that we should quit appeasing the religious. I responded with a "call to arms" for atheism. One guy kind of responded, but overall response has been negative. My friend Patrick has accused me of militarism. Then I looked at the forum description, which ends:

'God OR evolution'is a false dichotomy. There is much conflict between science and religious fundamentalism, but there is no NECESSARY conflict between science and religion."

Appeasement all the way. Traitors. Heretics. PUT THEM ALL TO THE SWORD!!! (Just kidding ;->)

Meanwhile, two more republican "joke" forwards, the 2nd of which implies that Hillary Clinton is a lesbian.

Probably I should just pull a Nero and fiddle while Rome burns. Jam tonight was very good, we got into some really nice grooves, I played pretty well. My pedal steel is going back in the shop tomorrow, I have concluded that the only thing that could be wrong with the high E string is that the pickup is bad -- so, we'll see if a bar pickup fixes the problem. I have been having fun playing the pedal steel, if I can get the high E fixed, I'm taking it out in public.

The Republicans Suborn The Mission

Grrr. The elections are, what, a couple of weeks away, so what do I get over the weekend?

1. Two jokes from my conservative older brother, in separate forwards, one on how many prominent Democrats were born 9 months after roswell, the other on people donating gasoline rather than money to terrorists threatening to burn up prominent Democrats if a ransom is not paid.
2. A "Halloween" web site with an animated short of a bat hanging from a lamppost and flashing pedestrians, who are disgusted, upset and knocked out -- by the Hilary for President poster being flashed.

Any doubt that the creation and initial distribution of these was paid for by Republicans? They clearly understand viral marketing and memetic warfare.

Grrr. What is going to take to get some liberal policical leadership who can reverse this endless butt-kicking?

Jebus Was Gay

While we are in such a jolly blasphemous mood/mode:

For years I have told a story about one of the kids whom I coached in U8 soccer. He was on my oldest daughter's (27 YO) team. U8 soccer was still 11-on-a-side then, which made it easier for this boy to employ his special soccer talent -- which was to never be involved in the play at all. If the ball would start his way, he would magically melt away to somewhere else. He had a totally sweet nature, but, as a U8 soccer coach a big part of my job was to try to make these 6-7 year olds aggressive. Several times with this boy, I had the thought: "What am I doing? Here is this sweet, christ-like child and I'm trying to turn him into an agressive animal like the rest of them." Whenever I have told this story, I have always referred to the child as christ-like.

So, a couple of Sundays ago, there was an interview with this boy in the paper. He is a member/founder of Scissor Sisters, a glam pop group doing very well in the UK, and starting to get some traction in the US. In the article, it was mentioned that he was gay.

So, I got to thinking. Turn the other cheek, love those that oppress you, do these sound like anything that would come out of the mouth of your standard, heterosexual male (asshole)? Not very likely. A gay man tho -- it makes a lot more sense.

There you have it, QED. And I didn't even have to bring up the 12 "apostles" jebus hung out with all the time.

Technical Difficulties and a Status Report

Work, work, work. I was working Saturday and made the same logic error three times and took 15 minutes of debugging to find it each time -- pretty lame. Getting tired, I've written so much code in the last few months I think that I am in a cache overflow situation, and it's definitely slowing me down. The worst should be over soon.

Re technical difficulties, I have had a report from one of my devoted readers -- devoted because he always calls me by my honorific, "Dumbass" -- that the archives are unavailable. I have found out this is true then you access the blog via the Atom feed. I sent an e-mail to support@blogspot.com with this info, to have it returned as undeliverable 4 days later. So, for now, please access the archives by going to the main blog link: http://portraitofthedumbass.blogspot.com/ -- they are accessible from there.

I received an outpouring of support for The Mission. Many submissions of God humor.

First from my brother the author:

1. Did you hear about the dyslexic agnostic? He didn't understand all the fuss about whether or not dog really exists.

Q. Why isn't God circumcised?
A. Because he doesn't have a dick.

Very nice. And, from his daughter, also a writer:

Q. What do you call God's crap?
A. Holy shit!

A good first effort! From my baby sister:

God, Santa, and the Easter Bunny walk into a bar ...

This is very promising. I have a background job running to finish this one.

From my friend Patrick, a line of t-shirts:

One idea I had was to do a series of t-shirts, black with white letters with funny anti-religious statements, sort of vaguely based on that ole fuckwitted billboard:

We need to talk.
-- God

So along those lines, something like:

God?
Is that the best you can come up with?

God?
Just ignore Him; He'll go away.

God?
You've gotta be fucking kidding me.

We need to talk.
-- Nietzsche

And so forth. I think they would be sorta funny t-shirts, if "God?" or whatever was printed in big letters, and the "punch line" were printed a little smaller. And a t-shirt from his lovely, intelligent and charming wife:

Got Jesus?
They make a pill for that now.

Patrick also sends a link to George Carlin on God. Carlin has had some great rants here, clearly a good source for The Mission.

Finally, a reader points out:

Unfortunately, the world's funniest joke has already been created, and it does more than purge religion -- it's fatal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IysnS5wO60g

Once again thanks to all for the tremendous support for The Mission. I still need to find a static web site at which to distill The Work.

Finally off the magazine stack. Reading the new The Year's Best Science Fiction, woo-haa!