Another of my favorites is American Dad! – which is supposed to be a caricature, but is so close to a Poe it’s almost not funny. And yet, it still is…..
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Saturday, September 26, 2009
The Genitalia Police Are At It Again: The War On Porn – And Guess Who’s Behind It?
Cross posted @ God is 4 Suckers!
Virtus in media stat.
Pursuant to an ongoing online conversation at Pharyngula, it turns out that some groups have declared a War On Porn. This is no surprise: not since Edwin Meese issued that ridiculous report fatwa in 1986, and guess who was on that allegedly ‘objective’ commission? Why, none other than our old buddy James Dobson, a diehard ‘family values’ fanatic. Guess who else was on it? Why, none other than Rev. Bruce Ritter (and what a surprise! Turns out old Brucie had a Haggard style relationship with a male hooker! What is with these guys anyways?)
And of course, they were able to spin up some evidence via a fellow named Victor Cline. In fact, he released this report, outlining his findings on the matter of porn addiction. However, while his credentials look sound, when someone actually starts pulling out the ‘serial-killer-inspired-by-porn’ credo, my eyebrows narrow with suspicion (because I’ve heard this nonsense before, only it was blamed on evolution).
And sure as shitting, this guy obviously has an agenda to promote:
The Church views sexuality positively-as a sacred gift from God with the primary purposes of reproducing life upon the earth and bonding the husband and wife together in an eternal, affectionate, committed relationship. High standards of personal morality and sexual conduct, including chastity before marriage and fidelity in marriage, are taught as norms for Church members. These standards are perceived as reflecting God's will and counsel for his earthly children.
Not to mention his signature on this little ditty that he signed with NARTH to the APA. Also, he’s a member of the Lighted Candle Society, which claims to be non-religious, but in a newsletter dated May of 2003 quotes “For those whose religious tenants regard the human body as sacred, or in the words of the Apostle Paul, as “...the temple of God, which temple ye are,” any presentation of willful violence against another human being is obscene.” And among the Genitalia Police is one Judith Reisman who is a raging anti-Kinsey anti-porn advocate, who has formulated a most…interesting theory (definition #6):
Reisman says that there are chemicals in the brain, which she has dubbed "erototoxins," that are produced by watching pornography and that have toxic influences on the brain. Reisman lists these "erototoxins" as testosterone, adrenaline, oxytocin, glucose, dopamine, serotonin, and phenylethylamine. While some of these chemicals are related to arousal or orgasm, none are specifically associated with toxicity or the viewing of erotic images.
Anyone surprised that the backbone of the anti-porn movement is religious? No? Me neither.
This perturbs me on multiple levels. Firstly, that this particular crusade is spilling well into the realm of thought control. That a group of people would subject millions of people to their draconian criteria is very much Orwellian by any definition. Also that it would deprive people of the right to choose what they do with their time as well as their bodies – something that never ever works in realtime.
It is no secret to the observant, that this is payback for centuries of tight-fisted religious control of human sex drives. When an inhibition (individually or collectively) is broken, the floodgates open and the instinct is to wallow.
Is the sex worker industry in serious need of reform? Of course it is – but it needs to be regulated, not driven further underground, not relegated to the sewers. These are human beings that are supplying a demand – and while it is image-driven, there are indeed folks out there who cannot make a living outside their good looks. And it’s a 200 million a year industry, so I think the likelihood is slim that those self-perceived guardians of our genitalia are going to have any luck in this endeavor at all, unless they impose a theocracy.
The major problem is sex, and our perception of it. The American culture is still burdened with overtones that vacillate between Puritan, Victorian and Dorian Gray. Sex is many, many things. It is dangerous; it is fun; it is something to be approached with some sanity; it is exceptionally messy; but it is something integral to our fundamental nature, something to be accepted and not stigmatized. An expression of ourselves in our individual glory.
But as long as we have these self-appointed privates-police, there’s always going to be some crazed contingent that fears the power and mystery and majesty of our most primal drive, who are more than willing to substitute the chains of behavior for the clear light of reason, these are the people we must guard against, speak against, shout down and marginalize, otherwise, we will be marching lockstep back into the Dark Ages.
Till the next post then.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Because Humanity Can’t Be Trusted With Its Own Genitalia – On Any Side Of Any Ocean
And no, it’s not enough that we have complete fucknuts in our government trying to re-fund ‘abstinence only’ programs that are proven not to work –and it’s not enough that Indonesia apparently has some serious modernist issues – it seems that the Middle East also has these self-appointed guardians of people’s nether regions as well. Only in this case, they’re actually clamping down on immoral mannequins (did anybody tell these twats that the film Mannequin was fictional?)
Iranian police have warned shopkeepers not to display female mannequins without a hijab, or showing bodily curves, Irna news agency reports.
Display of bow ties and neckties, and the sale of women's underwear by men are also banned, the police said.
The move is part of a crackdown on Western influences and enforcement of dress codes in recent years.
"Un-Islamic behaviour" has been targeted since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's first election in 2005.
"Using unusual mannequins exposing body curves and with heads without hijabs [Muslim veils] are prohibited to be used in the shops," police said in a statement carried by Irna.
Correspondents say that in the past such campaigns usually only lasted throughout the summer, but last year's crackdown, including on tight trousers for women, was still continuing in the winter.
Iranians who violate dress codes for the first time are generally cautioned, but repeat offenders can face court action and "guidance classes".
It’s getting harder to believe that we live in the 21st century, that’s a fact.
And again (no surprise), Iran is also cracking down on anything resembling critical thought:
A hard-line deputy of Iran's supreme leader announced steps Sunday to purge Iranian universities of Western influences even as the government faced accusations of "fascism and totalitarianism" leveled by the country's former president.
Hamid Reza Ayatollahi, head of a government body that oversees universities, announced a plan to revise humanities curricula to bring them more in line with Islamic principles.
"Many of the syllabuses taught to students majoring in humanities are not in line with Iranian and Islamic culture and therefore their revision is a must," Ayatollahi said in a statement published by Iranian news agencies.
A committee has been established to "eliminate certain curricula and replace them with Islamic materials," he said.
The effort stemmed from a speech last week by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who said that humanities courses result in "disbelief in Islamic and divine teachings" and are mostly based on "materialist philosophical concepts causing misgivings about religious principles."
Critics derided the purge as another in a 30-year series of ill-fated attempts to impose on Iranian society the puritanical values of hard-liners who dominate political life.
"Certain individuals reject liberalism, but their opposition is based on fascism and totalitarianism," former President Mohammad Khatami, a prominent reformist, said in comments published on his website Sunday. "Assailing an aspect of the Western experience by insisting on a more dangerous and worse view is doomed."
And Iran’s policies clearly hit 10 out of 14 points as listed by Umberto Eco’s Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt points 1-6, 8-9, 12 and 13.
So I can say clearly and without prevarication, that Iran is a theocracy, and a fascist theocracy at that.
Tuesday Funny – Harvey Birdman, Attorney At Law
Another of my favorites from Adult Swim is Harvey Birdman, Attorney At Law. Among the highly hysterical characters, the favorite of most viewers (myself included) is Mentok The Mindtaker. What follows is a montage of his best moments from the show.
Enjoy.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Allegories Gone Wild – Psychoactive Sacraments And The Mushroom Man
Cross posted @ God is 4 Suckers!
”Religion is the dream of the human mind. But even in dreams we do not find ourselves in emptiness or in heaven, but on earth, in the realm of reality; we only see real things in the entrancing splendor of imagination and caprice, instead of in the simple daylight of reality and necessity.” – Frederick Feuerbach, The Essence Of Christianity
As an ex-stoner type, I still find myself fascinated by the constant struggles and efforts to instill an altered state in oneself. Whether it be fractal elves or magnetic helms, humanity has this ‘grass is greener on the other side’ mentality no matter how luscious the metaphorical vegetation may be.
And in my fractured ‘pilgrimage’ of the Internet, I stumbled across this little blossom, and thought to share it with you.
An entheogen ("creates god within," en εν- "in, within," theo θεος- "god, divine," -gen γενος "creates, generates"), in the strictest sense, is a psychoactive substance used in a religious or shamanic context. Historically, entheogens are derived primarily from plant sources and have been used in a variety of traditional religious contexts. With the advent of organic chemistry, there now exist many synthetic substances with similar properties.
More broadly, the term entheogen is used to refer to such substances when used for their religious or spiritual effects, whether or not in a formal religious or traditional structure. This terminology is often chosen to contrast with recreational use of the same substances. These spiritual effects have been demonstrated in peer-reviewed studies, though research remains difficult due to ongoing drug prohibition.
What it means by ‘spiritual effects have been demonstrated’, is that the substances in question have induced altered states.
And there’s some history:
R. Gordon Wasson and Giorgio Samorini have proposed several examples of the cultural use of entheogens athat are found in the archaeological record.[3][4] Evidence for the first use of entheogens may come from Tassili, Algeria, with a cave painting of a mushroom-man, dating to 8000 BP. Hemp seeds discovered by archaeologists at Pazyryk suggest early ceremonial practices by the Scythians occurred during the 5th to 2nd century BC, confirming previous historical reports by Herodotus.
Interestingly enough, it turns out that psychoactives were prolific in religions throughout all the world, from India to the Americas, and even the ancient Greeks used them in their initiation rites:
The Kykeon that preceded initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries is another entheogen, which was investigated (before the word was coined) by Carl Kerényi, in Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter. Other entheogens in the Ancient Near East and the Aegean include the poppy, Datura, the unidentified "lotus" eaten by the Lotus-Eaters in the Odyssey and Narkissos.
And of course, our old buds, Judaism and Christianity, partook (albeit the latter denies it strenuously):
According to The Living Torah, cannabis was an ingredient of holy anointing oil mentioned in various sacred Hebrew texts. The herb of interest is most commonly known as kaneh-bosm (Hebrew: קְנֵה-בֹשֶׂם). This is mentioned several times in the Old Testament as a bartering material, incense, and an ingredient in holy anointing oil used by the high priest of the temple. Although Chris Bennett's research in this area focuses on cannabis, he mentions evidence suggesting use of additional visionary plants such as henbane, as well.
Hey, don’t bogart that oil!
The Septuagint translates kaneh-bosm as calamus, and this translation has been propagated unchanged to most later translations of the old testament. However, Polish anthropologist Sula Benet published etymological arguments that the Aramaic word for hemp can be read as kannabos and appears to be a cognate to the modern word 'cannabis', with the root kan meaning reed or hemp and bosm meaning fragrant. Both cannabis and calamus are fragrant, reedlike plants containing psychotropic compounds.
Huh – I always thought cannabis mellowed people out and made them more ‘existential’.
Although philologist John Marco Allegro has suggested that the self-revelation and healing abilities attributed to the figure of Jesus may have been associated with the effects of the plant medicines [from the Aramaic: "to heal"], this evidence is dependent on pre-Septuagint interpretation of Torah and Tenach, and goes firmly against the accepted teachings of the Holy See. However Merkur contends that a minority of Christian hermits and mystics could possibly have used entheogens, in conjunction with fasting, meditation and prayer.
‘Firmly against the teachings of the Holy See’. Yeah, hard not to see that one coming.
Allegro was the only non-Catholic appointed to the position of translating the Dead Sea scrolls. His extrapolations are often the object of scorn due to Allegro's non-mainstream theory of Jesus as a mythological personification of the essence of a "psychoactive sacrament", furthermore they conflict with the position of the Catholic Church in regards to transubstantiation and the teaching involving valid matter, form, and substance—that of bread and wine, which do not contain psychoactive substances. Allegro's book, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, relates the development of language to the development of myths, religions and cultic practices in world cultures. Allegro believed he could prove, through etymology, that the roots of Christianity, as of many other religions, lay in fertility cults; and that cult practices, such as ingesting visionary plants (or "psychedelics") to perceive the Mind of God [Avestan: Vohu Mana], persisted into the early Christian era, and to some unspecified extent into the 1200s with reoccurrences in the 1700s and mid 1900s, as he interprets the Plaincourault chapel's fresco to be an accurate depiction of the ritual ingestion of Amanita muscaria as the Eucharist.
Shorter version: it’s way easier to believe in wine=blood and bread=flesh, if you’ve imbibed enough. Allegro’s also a parallelist like myself (though maybe not a myther)
The question of the extent of visionary plant use throughout the history of Christian practice has barely been considered yet by academic or independent scholars. The question of whether visionary plants were used in pre-Theodosius Christianity is distinct from evidence that indicates the extent to which visionary plants were utilized or forgotten in later Christianity, including so-called "heretical" or "quasi-" Christian groups, and the question of other groups such as elites or laity within "orthodox" Catholic practice.
That’s a confusing paragraph. It’s barely been considered, but the evidence is distinct in what way? The accompanying references don’t explain it well enough. I think it’s a fair sociological evaluation (my fancy way of saying ‘guess’) that it’s a strong likelihood that plenty of Christians over the centuries have partaken of some of these items.
And, for a fairly amusing capper:
James Arthur asserts that the little scroll from the angel with writing on it referred to in Ezekiel 2: 8,9,10 and Ezekiel 3: 1,2,3 and Book of Revelation 10: 9,10 was the speckled cap of the Amanita muscaria mushroom.
Chewing on the old magical papyrus, ey, Zeke?
This comes as no surprise: history resounds with the echoes of powerful hallucinations, delusions that have wiped the world clean and scoured the perceived scourges from the public eye.
The question for the future is…can our species, with this knowledge, stop accommodating the crazy, and instead of granting them great power, medicate them instead? (And I don’t mean the self-medication we’ve discussed here.)
One can only hope.
Till the next post, then.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
And The Wages Of Accommodationism Are Prices Too High To Pay…
And people wonder why I have a problem with superstition…
Soothsayers arrested for poisoning children after predicting their death
ATTUR (Salem): The police have arrested a soothsayer couple for poisoning children after predicting their death and seized 250 grams of rat poison from their house in Palaya Udayampatti village.
Six otherwise healthy children, aged between three and seven years, had died since January 2008. The deaths created panic in the village and many villagers moved out and settled elsewhere, dreading the “strange illness.” Medical teams that visited the village found no symptoms of any disease in the community.
Those who remained in the village grew suspicious about soothsayer Perumayee (35), particularly after the death of three-year-old Priyadarshini in April 2009. She had succumbed to severe stomach pain. Just before her death, two other children, Vinodh and Dinesh, both aged seven years, had died of similar symptoms.
The woman soothsayer used to “predict” the deaths of children, all eldest ones in their families, at the village temple. “Whenever she claimed that a boy or a girl in a particular house would die, the same would occur in another six to seven hours,” said a sobbing Mallika, mother of Vinodh.
Their suspicions were further strengthened when Priyadarshini, before dying, told her mother that she was forcefully fed sweet rice by Perumayee and her husband. The girl’s father Subramani and Vinodh’s father Chinnasamy preferred a complaint with Attur police.
The Attur police registered cases under Section 174 Cr.P.C and sent the bodies of Priyadarshini and Vinodh for post-mortem and their viscera to the Forensic Scientific Laboratory at Coimbatore. The reports stated that they “appeared to have died of phorate poisoning, which is a poisonous organo phospherous insecticide.” The report on the death of Dinesh is awaited.
Perumayee and her husband surrendered before the Akkichettipalayam Village Administrative Officer on Friday. They are reported to have confessed that they had poisoned two children as they thought the “sacrifices” would help them gain mystical powers. They have been remanded to judicial custody.
The cause of death of Gokulraj (4), Jayakumar (7) and Suershkumar (2), all on January 20, 2008 could not be ascertained as their parents cremated the bodies without informing the police.
Augustine once said, that you could not judge a philosophy by its abuse. I say, that you can judge it by how the adherents treat their children.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Boosh! – Frisky Dingo
It’s no secret I love Adult Swim – I own DVD’s of Harvey Birdman, Venture Brothers, Robot Chicken and Frisky Dingo. Not a big fan of Squidbillies, and Metalocalypse is relatively funny, but humor is a relative term – what makes me laugh may make you queasy or vice versa. The video is a clip of some of the funniest scenes from season 1 of Frisky Dingo:
And my personal all-time favorite is…
Gets me every time.
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