I’ve always adored the wonky humor of The Kids In The Hall – but the Head Crusher was always a favorite staple:
Enjoy.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Saturday, June 12, 2010
The Vagrant Oddities Of The Religious Mind – Is There An Off-Switch Called ‘Religion’ In Our Brains?
Cross posted @ God Is 4 Suckers!
(Hat tip to the Dribbleglass for these…stultifying glimpses into the religious mindscape.)
MUSLIMS RIOT OVER SANDAL
Riots in Bangladesh killed one and injured as many as two hundred when Muslims reacted violently in protest of a new sandal which carried a design that they said resembled the Arab script for Allah. Executives of the Canadian-based Bata Shoe Company were ordered into court to explain the design.
I’m guessing here, they don’t want to walk a few feet, let alone a mile, in those shoes…
RETRIBUTION
The Reverend W. N. Otwell, Texas gubernatorial candidate in 1990, declared that the floods and other natural disasters that had bedeviled Texas since 1986 were the Lord's retribution for all the attacks on Otwell. Said Otwell, "We've been keeping stats on this."
So…the imaginary sky daddy is focusing solely on some whackadoo in Texas, cataloguing all the ‘attacks’ on this guy, and besieging Texas? Can you say ‘narcissist’, boys and girls?
IRS USES 666
During 1980 and 1981 the Internal Revenue Service asked taxpayers to enter the number 666 as a code on a form reporting individual retirement accounts. The IRS said that the Social Security Administration chose the number because scanner could read it easily. After complaints from fundamentalist Christians, the IRS changed the number on 1992 forms to 555.
Bad news, fundies: IT’S JUST A NUMBER! And all that crap in Revelation? Pure fiction.
MAN CHANGES NAME TO GOD
Californian Enrique Silberg changed his name in 1985 to Ubiquitous Perpetuity God after a judge refused to allow him to change it to simply "God."
Yes, because the universe is all about YOU, Enrique…are you kidding?
KITTY DIES, END OF WORLD NEARS
Late in July of 1989 a kitten with eight legs and two tails was born in the village of Machala in Ecuador. Rejected by its mother, it died within hours. The devout Catholic population there saw it as a bad sign. "We are nearing the end of the world because people are so decadent," said one.
And yet the world persists, 21 years later…
CATHOLICS BRAWL OVER LATIN MASS
A fist-fight broke out when 60 traditionalist Roman Catholics tried to take over the main altar at Saint Maclou Cathedral near Paris so that they could celebrate the mass in Latin. The brawl lasted over an hour until a priest agreed to move to a side chapel for his Latin service.
Yeah, religion shore do improve pay-pul, dunnit?
FARRAKHAN SHARES WORD OF MOTHER WHEEL
Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, says he experienced a vision in which a UFO took him from a Mexico mountaintop to a "mother wheel" where the voice of Elijah Muhammad, founder of the religious sect, told him to tell the world that then-President Ronald Reagan was planning a war. Farrakhan said that the later air attack on Libya was partly foiled by the Mother Wheel. "The Wheel was, in fact, present and interfered with the highly sensitive electronic equipment of the aircraft carrier, forcing it to return to Florida for repairs."
Things like the paragraph above give me a conclussion – that is to say, when an otherwise intelligent and rational individual is exposed to an insane conclusion, it gives them a concussion.
BIBLE LESSONS TAKE SHOCKING TWIST
Grand Rapids, Michigan, Baptist minister Dwight Rymer used electric shocks to help him teach the Bible to children. He asked for young volunteers to sit on a stool wired to a six-volt lantern battery in order to demonstrate that sometimes God "can shock you into hearing His word."
My question is: were there any volunteers at all?
MYSTIC NAILED FOR WORLD PEACE
On nationwide television in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, a mystic named Patrice Tamao had himself nailed to a cross "as a sacrifice for world peace and understanding." An unforeseen snag developed when Tamao's foot became infected the following day and physicians ordered him pried loose and taken down. His wife Marita then volunteered to be hammered up in his place.
Let’s see: world peace? No. And Marita – that’s your husband’s cross to bear.
The ability of the human mind to turn a blind eye to obvious idiocies still stuns me, after 51 years on this earth. I love humanity, but holy crap, are we dim or what?
I wonder, sadly, I wonder…
Till the next post, then.
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
Tuesday Funny – The League Of Gentlemen
I’ve been watching this online on Netflix – and it’s pretty funny. Albeit it’s an extremely dark series, full of all sorts of bizarre grotesqueries.
Enjoy.
Saturday, June 05, 2010
Allegories Gone Wild: Comstockery Was No Laughing Stock…
Cross posted @ God Is 4 Suckers!
"Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it” - Macbeth, Act I, Scene IV
In a recent post, Mr. Garton expounded upon the sexual horrors that some would perpetrate upon us. Sadly, American history is rife with those who would gird our loins for war against our wills. Anita Bryant, for instance, led a vicious movement against gay rights that was religiously motivated. The AFA (American Family Association – what a gentle name that hides the insanity of its members) to this day is virulently anti-gay and labors mightily to foist other violations that run contrary to the (many) principles upon which this country was founded.
As outrageous and horrid as these recent efforts to deprive the few of the liberties granted to all, a brief history lesson will chill the blood and clench the knuckles white with rage. We can breathe a sigh of relief that these days are past us, but we must always be on guard lest the past come back with foaming jaws to bite us in the ass.
Anthony Comstock was a sexually repressed control freak, who left vivid scars on the sexual psyche of America:
Comstock was born in New Canaan, Connecticut. As a young man, he enlisted and fought for the Union in the American Civil War from 1863 to 1865 in Company H, 17th Connecticut Infantry. He served without incident, but objected to the profanity used by his fellow soldiers. Afterward he became an active worker in the Young Men's Christian Association in New York City.
In 1873 Comstock created the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, an institution dedicated to supervising the morality of the public. Later that year, Comstock successfully influenced the United States Congress to pass the Comstock Law, which made illegal the delivery or transportation of both "obscene, lewd, or lascivious" material as well as any methods of, or information pertaining to, birth control. George Bernard Shaw used the term "comstockery", meaning "censorship because of perceived obscenity or immorality", after Comstock alerted the New York police to the content of Shaw's play Mrs. Warren's Profession. Shaw remarked that "Comstockery is the world's standing joke at the expense of the United States. Europe likes to hear of such things. It confirms the deep-seated conviction of the Old World that America is a provincial place, a second-rate country-town civilization after all." Comstock thought of Shaw as an "Irish smut dealer." The term comstockery was actually first coined in a New York Times editorial in 1895.
The actual content of Shaw’s play was quite benign by today’s standards. It was more of an effort to humanize an otherwise ‘taboo’ topic.
Of course, this ass-clown rivals even the modern-day Taliban in their ludicrousness:
Comstock's ideas of what might be "obscene, lewd, or lascivious" were quite broad. During his time of greatest power, even some anatomy textbooks were prohibited from being sent to medical students by the United States Postal Service.
I suppose that gynecologists had to use guesswork in those days? Of course, he had a great many detractors:
Comstock aroused intense loathing from early civil liberties groups and intense support from church-based groups worried about public morals. He was a savvy political insider in New York City and was made a special agent of the United States Postal Service, with police powers up to and including the right to carry a weapon. With this power he zealously prosecuted those he suspected of either public distribution of pornography or commercial fraud. He was also involved in shutting down the Louisiana Lottery, the only legal lottery in the United States at the time, and notorious for corruption.
Frightening, no? It gets worse:
Comstock is also known for his opposition to Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin, and those associated with them. The men's journal The Days' Doings had popularised lewd images of the sisters for three years and was instructed by its editor (while Comstock was present) to stop producing images of "lewd character". Comstock also took legal action against the paper for advertising contraceptives. When the sisters published an expose of an adulterous affair between Reverend Henry Ward Beecher and Elizabeth Tilton, he had the sisters arrested under laws forbidding the use of the postal service to distribute 'obscene material'–specifically (and ironically) citing a mangled Biblical quote Comstock found obscene–though they were later acquitted of the charges.
And worse:
Less fortunate was Ida Craddock, who committed suicide on the eve of reporting to Federal prison for distributing via the U.S. Mail various sexually explicit marriage manuals she had authored. Her final work was a lengthy public suicide note specifically condemning Comstock.
And even more sickening:
Comstock claimed he drove fifteen persons to suicide in his "fight for the young". He was head vice-hunter of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. Comstock, the self-labeled "weeder in God's garden", arrested D. M. Bennett for publishing his "An Open Letter to Jesus Christ" and later entrapped the editor for mailing a free-love pamphlet. Bennett was prosecuted, subjected to a widely publicized trial, and imprisoned in the Albany Penitentiary.
“Weeder in gawd’s garden’ my homesick ass. He was a morality monster, one of those beasts that is so afraid of human sexuality, it warps the weft of the mind.
Some comeuppance was en route, but unsatisfactory:
Comstock had numerous enemies, and in later years his health was affected by a severe blow to the head from an anonymous attacker. He lectured to college audiences and wrote newspaper articles to sustain his causes. Before his death, Comstock attracted the interest of a young law student, J. Edgar Hoover, interested in his causes and methods.
Wait – JEH? Not that old Lola of FBI fame?
During his career, Comstock clashed with Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger. In her autobiography, Goldman referred to Comstock as the leader of America's "moral eunuchs". Through his various campaigns, he destroyed 15 tons of books, 284,000 pounds of plates for printing 'objectionable' books, and nearly 4,000,000 pictures.
Yes, because of course freedom of speech only applies when good church-going folk decide that it does, right?
Comstock boasted that he was responsible for 4,000 arrests and 15 suicides.
That anyone claiming to be human could ‘boast’ about driving people to suicide, illustrates what an evil, evil little man Comstock was.
His legacy obviously continues today. It should end here, in the 21st century, where religion is losing its invidious grip on hearts and minds, where science has expanded our intellects to the juncture that these anachronistic atavistic throwbacks are more a cause of comic relief than mystic dread.
Carry on the fight, my friends, lest the old days returneth with blood and shouting and pain.
Till the next post, then.
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
Tuesday Funny – MST3K
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Fun Films For The Non-Believer – Whatever Works
Cross posted @ God Is 4 Suckers!
I have to admit, I rather enjoy Larry David, regardless of whether he’s on one of my all time favorite shows (Curb Your Enthusiasm), or in one of my favorite films, Whatever Works. I’ve a keen eye for what I call religions-slammers, and I recommend this film highly. It takes unabashed slams at religion that people would have been aghast at 20 or 30 years ago.
Up in the top ten of course, is Dogma – one of the choice scenes (with the redoubtable George Carlin as a cardinal – talk about nice touch!):
And of course, what discussion about ridiculous religious beliefs in film would be without the funniest all time scene in Life Of Brian?
And of course, Monty Python And The Holy Grail:
I’ve only shared four of my own favorites here – please feel free to suggest more.
Till the next post, then.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
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