..it could cost you $140,000.
Man bets life savings that world will end on May 21, 2011.
I wrote about stuff like this earlier this week, too. It practically writes itself, really.
I have to really question the motivation and mental state of anyone who gets involved in any religious organization for the express purpose of 'saving' themselves when the world comes to an end. Many do this, it seems, not for love of God, or not because they want to become a better person in some way, but because they are so fucking disgustingly selfish that their personal salvation -- whether here or in The Great Beyond -- becomes the driving force in their lives. In fact, it often becomes the only thing in their lives, this pre-occupation with the Next Life and Their Place In It, and this makes them susceptible to all sorts of douchebags ready to take advantage of them.
Like a doofus (who calls himself an Evangelist) who mixes 'numerology' and religion to predict the end of the world...every few years. I wonder how one squares this sort of 'prophecy' with the Bible's prohibitions against witchcraft and false prophets and so forth, but then again, there I go applying logic to 'matters of faith'.
Prophecy is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it's a load of bullshit. If you don't believe me, consider this: how many self-professed Nostradamus scholars do you know that became Billionaires utilizing his prophecies, rather than by selling books about their opinions on Nostradamus? Do you think Warren Buffet gets up in the morning and starts pouring over the Book of Isiah looking for stock tips? What do you reckon is the percentage chance on any given day when a prediction given to you by a medium you called on your telephone and paid $1.99 a minute to turns out to be correct? How often does your horoscope make any fucking sense, let alone give you any useful information?
Why is it that no prophecy ever seems to make sense until AFTER something has happened?
Giving Prophecy it's one prop, it is this: given enough time and the vagaries of history and circumstance, literally any prediction can come true. When Jesus says of the Temple in Jerusalem "not one stone will stand upon another..." it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that his real meaning is that "nothing is permanent".
Today's 'prophecy' is tomorrow's eventuality, sometimes, but the Prophet's defense when his prediction proves false is always "God doesn't take orders from me...". Yeah, but some idiot with cash to burn is.
Having said these things, some may ask "But Matt, isn't this dope spending his life savings in order to save and warn other people; Isn't that evidence of a selfless motivation?"
And my response would be: Nope, he really isn't. What he is doing is stroking his own ego. He's attempting to score Brownie Points in Heaven. His religion tells him that he has been selected (the key phrase is the bit in the article about how God has 'appointed watchmen') for some important job, and it's that thought that drives him, because he believes it. He needs to believe it because otherwise his Life would be small, threadbare and pitiful, probably. Taken at first glance, I'm certain there's really nothing extraordinary about Mr. Fitzpatrick (not that I can make any claim to superlative accomplishment, myself), but he needs to think there is, because deep down he probably doesn't feel himself special. Religion -- especially extreme variants -- preys upon people like this the same way lions prey on crippled wildebeests.
The fact that he's managed to find a special brand of stupidity that mixes religion, prophecy, and numerology tells me that this is someone who has spent his entire life searching for...something...anything...that takes him out of his preoccupation with his crappy life. He's quite probably bounced around from one philosophy or discipline to another, and never showed any sort of constancy in his lifetime until someone came along and consolidated the disparate threads of his thinking and personal philosophies (if he ever developed any), and wove them into a tapestry that would guide him through the rest of his (soon to be over, if he's correct) Life. I know plenty of people like this, scattershot thinkers with no self-esteem, absorbed by astrology, numerology, and "the healing properties of crystals", and they almost, invariably, always wind up in a Church somewhere.
Now, whether they wind up there because religion makes some sort of sense to them, or because they have no place left to go, is open to debate. I just know that religions, historically, are very good at identifying the lost, the slow, and the stupid, and manipulating them. These people find no comfort or satisfaction in Life, and so they become pre-occupied with the Afterlife, and religion makes it easy for them to do so by telling them that all they have to do to gain their just reward is to follow the nonsense shouted at them from Scripture.
No one seems to realize that you first have to be dead in order to receive that reward, and that when it's described to you, it's always in allusions to the esoteric. At least Islam says there's 72 Virgins: Christianity either spins out a tale of a certain-to-be boring eternity of sitting upon clouds playing harps, or it describes the Afterlife in purely emotional terms, i.e. a state of continual bliss in the All-Encompassing Love of God.
Sorry,but I never saw Bob Barker give that away on the Price is Right.
The fact that it's Jerusalem which appears in the center of Mr. Fitzpatrick's apocalyptic poster tells you all you need to know. Not London, Not New York, Ankara, Beijing, or Wheeling, only Jerusalem. Even when these ultra-Evangelical douchebags support Israel, it's only because Israel is a necessary ingredient in the formula that will bring about the Rapture. So, support of Israel is, conversely, something the religious doofus only professes for the sake his own personal salvation. Once Christ returns, these idiots will tell you -- often with great glee -- the Jews won't be saved, anyway. Their only purpose is to, ultimately, be the rungs on the ladder of Christian Salvation.
Under different circumstances, Mr. Fitzpatrick would have probably become a suicide bomber, or would have poured gasoline over his head and ignited it on a public sidewalk. If he had tits, he would have become a 'Feminist Scholar'. Fifty years ago, this sort of soft-headed mindset and single-mindedness of purpose would have made Mr. Fitzpatrick the perfect Leftist Revolutionary. Instead, his religion just tells him to waste his money, which I guess makes him harmless enough.
At least his money didn't go to another one of those destructive douchebags that society pays far too much attention to: the psychiatrist. Somewhere there's a pill-pushing defective with an M.D. who's pissed off that he won't be able to get the leather upholstery in the new BMW this year.
And on the remote, slight, lottery-like, off-chance that Mr. Fitzpatrick and his Evangelical Numerologist just happen to be right, I'll be happy to apologize to him. I just hope I can find the right cloud in all the ruckus.
I expect to get a shitload of e-mail from the I-don't-take-a-dump-without-permission-from-my-Pastor Crowd, and it's entirely predictable what it will say; I can't prove that God doesn't exist, I can't prove that the Rapture won't happen, and I can't prove that Evangelical Numerology is an invalid predictor of the End of Times. You're right, but then again, your argument for these things is no better; you can't prove that any of these things actually do exist, or will happen, either, and simply believe that you don't have to. They're "matters of faith" (and credulity), after all, and it never ceases to amaze me that people who will argue for concrete proof of my assertions and beliefs, insist that I take everything they say seriously without them ever having to offer any of their own, secure in the smugness-bordering-on-arrogance-of-the-bulletproof-stupid hypocritical belief that they don't need to offer any.
P.S. I wonder how many people will leave this brand of stupidity in absolute disgust if Mr. Fitzpatrick and his Evangelical Numerologist turn out to be wrong? I'm guessing the actual number will be really small, because in the end this isn't about reality or truth, it's about people's feelings.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Because We're Not Allowed to Kill Them...
...I'd brand sex-offenders right on the forehead. And the backs of both hands. And on the naughty bits. That way, everyone would know who they were, and there wouldn't be any need for a Manhunt; they'd stick out like sore thumbs.
Additionally, I'd keep them in fucking jail, where they belong, preying upon each other, or better yet, seriously weigh the benefits of grinding them up for use as fertilizer. If there's one thing in life that's certain, it's that psychiatrists and therapists are usually wrong (their 'science' is subjective, and doesn't often deal with realistic themes) and notoriously easy to fool, so their recommendations as to whether someone is'cured' of their penchant for rape, molesting little children are often far too unreliable.
After all, the majority of people who take up psychiatry and it's related fields are often really just trying to find out what's wrong with themselves.
As for the Penal System, when it returns to a model in which people are severely punished for their crimes, rather than 'rehabilitated' (which almost never works) society will be that much safer. The touchy-feely approach to sexual offenders doesn't work, we know this, but somehow they're still allowed to run around free.
Additionally, I'd keep them in fucking jail, where they belong, preying upon each other, or better yet, seriously weigh the benefits of grinding them up for use as fertilizer. If there's one thing in life that's certain, it's that psychiatrists and therapists are usually wrong (their 'science' is subjective, and doesn't often deal with realistic themes) and notoriously easy to fool, so their recommendations as to whether someone is'cured' of their penchant for rape, molesting little children are often far too unreliable.
After all, the majority of people who take up psychiatry and it's related fields are often really just trying to find out what's wrong with themselves.
As for the Penal System, when it returns to a model in which people are severely punished for their crimes, rather than 'rehabilitated' (which almost never works) society will be that much safer. The touchy-feely approach to sexual offenders doesn't work, we know this, but somehow they're still allowed to run around free.
Pakistan: The Turd That Fell From India's Ass...
A retrospective look at perhaps the worst failure of British Imperial Policy: the creation of Pakistan, and why it should now become a focal point of the War on Terror.
Of Synagogues and Hand Grenades...
RE: The NYPD stopping a string of Synagogue Attacks in New York City.
This is in my own backyard. I'm sooooo pleased to see that the at the FBI was uninterested in investigating, but that's okay: we have the NYPD and they do a better job with these things than the Feds do, and they don't have to fondle your junk or get written permission from Eric Holder to wipe their asses when they need to. Naturally, Holder's, and his cohort Janet Napolitano's, preoccupation, because both are unqualified fucktards lacking the same brains one would typically find in a retarded German Shepherd, is in prosecuting FBI, CIA and other Law Enforcement types who go out and look for terrorists before they do any harm.
In this Age of the Bizarro Presidency, when one day we're executing Bin Laden and the next dragging the people who made it happen before the courts, we're supposed to wait until someone gets killed before taking action....unless taking action gives President Frequent-Flyer-Miles a bump in the polls.
We've had some issues here, post-9/11, in recent years with the Koran-and-Exploding-Underwear crowd, and mostly these revolve around the citizens of this city (i.e. The mostly-Civilized People) taking exception to the Exploding Scumbag's repeated attempts to build Victory monuments (they call them 'Mosques' and 'Islamic Community Centers') in neighborhoods that have suffered great loss on 9/11, or within buildings/upon the grounds of properties that used to belong to the Archdiocese of New York. After all, this is what Islam does; it rubs it's enemy's noses in their defeats, to wit:
* Conquer Jerusalem (have other people under threat of death), build the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount so that the Jews not only know they've been defeated, but that the conquerors consider their God, their Holy Sites and their Culture to have been wholly erased in the bargain.
* When the Turks overran Constantinople they turned the Hagia Sophia, one the greatest churches in Christendom and an architectural marvel, into a mosque, symbolizing both the defeat of Christians and the utter humiliation of their God and Culture. It has now been relegated to the role of Islamic museum.
* When the Moors occupied Spain, they built (and by that, I mean they forced the Jews and Christians to build it for them, because Islam doesn't create anything) the Alhambra (The Red Fortress) in the city of Granada, both as symbol of the defeat of Christian Spain and to intimidate the locals. It's purpose was to make clear that what once was would never be again.
* Knock down the World Trade Center, (have the Infidels) build a Mosque a few hundred yards from the site, make sure it's done with Federal Funds, so that the infidel is not only reminded -- daily -- of his humiliation, but forced to pay for your Victory Monument, on top of it.
Islam doesn't build anything; it relies upon other, smarter, more skilled people to expend their smarts, capital, labor and expertise to do it for them. After all, this is a people who can't seem to get a black, oozy liquid which naturally percolates upwards out of the sand without great efforts from Western technicians and investors. When it isn't getting it's enemies to build them shit, and pay for the privilege, too, it's doing it's level best to destroy it's enemies' cultural and religious heritages; a Coptic church burned here, a synagogue dynamited there, a pair of 110-story office towers devastated wherever they might be found.
This destructive impulse permeates the Muslim religion, which like Communism, cannot abide the existence of any alternative system. Israel must be wiped off the map because, even more than the competing religious system it represents, it is an example of a different way of life -- one that is far more egalitarian, successful, fair, dynamic, wealthier and progressive, and one in which, if they were truly allowed to, Muslims would flock with indecent haste towards, leaving the Imams and Ayotollahs standing there with their thumbs up their asses.
This destructive impulse only gets worse in the aftermath of some great Islamic calamity or 'insult' because when the likes of a Bin Laden is finally brought to justice, it isn't the simple (and logical) matter of an arch- criminal getting his just deserts -- it's a cultural and religious affront that needs to be avenged in any way possible, by any means necessary. God demands revenge, the culture requires blood in order to salve it's shattered ego.
To a Muslim, defeat does not occur because of bad planning, poor morale, a shortage of brains or bullets, but is instead the natural consequence of a lack of faith. God permitted your failure because you were not sufficiently pious. The response, as it has always been throughout their history, is not to get smarter, it's to get more faithful (i.e. More 'Fundamentalist'), each new iteration of the 'reformed' faith becoming ever more extreme -- and ever more violent.
Which leads us to two doofuses attempting to attack a bunch of synagogues in Manhattan. As for one of the asshole's 'excuse' that he turned to terrorism because he's sick of seeing Muslims "treated like dogs: perhaps if he and his fellow Muslims could arrest their murderous impulses and get used to the fact that there are billions who don't buy their load of bullshit dressed up as a religion, they might find that people are willing to tolerate their special brand of retardation, and leave them all alone to stew in their inbred stupidity. It's also telling that when it comes to Islamic Destruction the tools it uses are products of the active imagination and dynamic culture of it's enemies: airliners, flight schools, international airports, chemical explosives, firearms, box cutters, hand grenades, credit cards, cell phones, the Internet, mass media, and most of these 'Lone Wolves' don't even realize that since they cannot obtain these from 'safe' (or indigenous) Islamic sources, it must go to Westerners (or agents, thereof) which usually puts them smack-dab in the center of a police investigation -- and under arrest.
All Islam is able to provide in it's 'struggle' against the West -- and reality -- is a steady stream of sexually-frustrated losers who want to die. It's not surprising at all that when the CIA started going through Bin Laden's 'treasure trove' they found enough porn to keep the enitre Middle East doing the Old Knuckle Shuffle on the Pelvis Bazooka for the next two centuries.
I fail to see why it is that we're so afraid of these people, and so momumentally frightened of offending their sensibilities; they're cowards who attack those who are unable to fight back, trying always to catch their victims at unawares, picking targets that are deliberately soft so as to instill fear. People like this are incapable of achieving 'Victory' in the sense that Westerners would understand the term, because their 'victories' are those of the small-minded, vindictive and vicious, and detached from any sense of the strategic. They kill indiscriminately in the name of immediate goals, most of which have nothing to do with improving their ultimate lot in life, none of which drags their culture out of the 7th Century sewer in which it festers, and for reasons that border on the psychotic. They talk 'Peace' but do nothing but make enemies. They bluster about their cultural superiority, but have to buy (inert) hand grenades from undercover cops.
Conversely, we will not achieve a Victory until we -- and by that I mean the political leadership, and so-called intelligencia of the West -- finally come to the proper conclusion about our foes that any 5th grader is capable of reaching; these are seriously sick, seriously deluded, seriously frustrated scumbags who cannot be acommodated, bargained with, or dealt with by diplomacy. They have to be jailed, and better still, killed, in great numbers in the holes where they live.
Maybe, when enough of them have died in horrible ways, they'll get the same message the Japanese, Nazis, and Carthaginians got: we will not tolerate your bullshit, and we're quite capable of removing you from the stream of history. Whether this encourages the greater mass of theMuslim world to get with the program of the 21st century is open to conjecture, but it is an historical fact that cultures usually do not change unless they've had some irreversible and unmistakable defeat laid on them.
"Peace", to the Islamonazi, means they get to Lord over us all, that we are enslaved, and everything we do, own, make, think, or aspire to, is somehow subordinated to the perceived will of their phoney-baloney God, as they understand the words of a deranged, 7th-Century, child-molesting nomad. For all my Libtard friends out there who want to talk about tolerance and multiculturalism, I say this: if the Islamonazis have their way, there will only be a Monocultural Society in which Islam holds sway. Tolerance will mean that your Islamic overlords will tolerate your continued breathing, so long as you toil for his benefit, and according to his will. There will be no Civil Rights, there will be no Progress, there will be no Freedoms extended to anyone, except Muslims, who will have the Freedopm to Rape, Pillage and Murder, so long as they do it to The Other.
This is already their credo. They can't be bought off, or negotiated with. That's why we have to WIN and they have to LOSE in a way that makes it impossible for them to miss the facts of their defeat.
Those who cry the loudest for accomodation with Islam will merely be the first victims, or at least the most-compliant slaves. In the meantime, all your posturing for 'Peace' will avail you nothing because there's millions of these little mental defectives running around looking to inflict whatever petty nastiness they can and you're the easiest victims to bag. It's how they get to Heaven, after all.
Good going, NYPD. People like this need to be found and brought to justice before their festering stupidity gets any more of us killed. For those of you who believe that the War on terror ended with the death of UBL, guess again; he was just the figurehead. The footsoldiers are still on the march.
This is in my own backyard. I'm sooooo pleased to see that the at the FBI was uninterested in investigating, but that's okay: we have the NYPD and they do a better job with these things than the Feds do, and they don't have to fondle your junk or get written permission from Eric Holder to wipe their asses when they need to. Naturally, Holder's, and his cohort Janet Napolitano's, preoccupation, because both are unqualified fucktards lacking the same brains one would typically find in a retarded German Shepherd, is in prosecuting FBI, CIA and other Law Enforcement types who go out and look for terrorists before they do any harm.
In this Age of the Bizarro Presidency, when one day we're executing Bin Laden and the next dragging the people who made it happen before the courts, we're supposed to wait until someone gets killed before taking action....unless taking action gives President Frequent-Flyer-Miles a bump in the polls.
We've had some issues here, post-9/11, in recent years with the Koran-and-Exploding-Underwear crowd, and mostly these revolve around the citizens of this city (i.e. The mostly-Civilized People) taking exception to the Exploding Scumbag's repeated attempts to build Victory monuments (they call them 'Mosques' and 'Islamic Community Centers') in neighborhoods that have suffered great loss on 9/11, or within buildings/upon the grounds of properties that used to belong to the Archdiocese of New York. After all, this is what Islam does; it rubs it's enemy's noses in their defeats, to wit:
* Conquer Jerusalem (have other people under threat of death), build the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount so that the Jews not only know they've been defeated, but that the conquerors consider their God, their Holy Sites and their Culture to have been wholly erased in the bargain.
* When the Turks overran Constantinople they turned the Hagia Sophia, one the greatest churches in Christendom and an architectural marvel, into a mosque, symbolizing both the defeat of Christians and the utter humiliation of their God and Culture. It has now been relegated to the role of Islamic museum.
* When the Moors occupied Spain, they built (and by that, I mean they forced the Jews and Christians to build it for them, because Islam doesn't create anything) the Alhambra (The Red Fortress) in the city of Granada, both as symbol of the defeat of Christian Spain and to intimidate the locals. It's purpose was to make clear that what once was would never be again.
* Knock down the World Trade Center, (have the Infidels) build a Mosque a few hundred yards from the site, make sure it's done with Federal Funds, so that the infidel is not only reminded -- daily -- of his humiliation, but forced to pay for your Victory Monument, on top of it.
Islam doesn't build anything; it relies upon other, smarter, more skilled people to expend their smarts, capital, labor and expertise to do it for them. After all, this is a people who can't seem to get a black, oozy liquid which naturally percolates upwards out of the sand without great efforts from Western technicians and investors. When it isn't getting it's enemies to build them shit, and pay for the privilege, too, it's doing it's level best to destroy it's enemies' cultural and religious heritages; a Coptic church burned here, a synagogue dynamited there, a pair of 110-story office towers devastated wherever they might be found.
This destructive impulse permeates the Muslim religion, which like Communism, cannot abide the existence of any alternative system. Israel must be wiped off the map because, even more than the competing religious system it represents, it is an example of a different way of life -- one that is far more egalitarian, successful, fair, dynamic, wealthier and progressive, and one in which, if they were truly allowed to, Muslims would flock with indecent haste towards, leaving the Imams and Ayotollahs standing there with their thumbs up their asses.
This destructive impulse only gets worse in the aftermath of some great Islamic calamity or 'insult' because when the likes of a Bin Laden is finally brought to justice, it isn't the simple (and logical) matter of an arch- criminal getting his just deserts -- it's a cultural and religious affront that needs to be avenged in any way possible, by any means necessary. God demands revenge, the culture requires blood in order to salve it's shattered ego.
To a Muslim, defeat does not occur because of bad planning, poor morale, a shortage of brains or bullets, but is instead the natural consequence of a lack of faith. God permitted your failure because you were not sufficiently pious. The response, as it has always been throughout their history, is not to get smarter, it's to get more faithful (i.e. More 'Fundamentalist'), each new iteration of the 'reformed' faith becoming ever more extreme -- and ever more violent.
Which leads us to two doofuses attempting to attack a bunch of synagogues in Manhattan. As for one of the asshole's 'excuse' that he turned to terrorism because he's sick of seeing Muslims "treated like dogs: perhaps if he and his fellow Muslims could arrest their murderous impulses and get used to the fact that there are billions who don't buy their load of bullshit dressed up as a religion, they might find that people are willing to tolerate their special brand of retardation, and leave them all alone to stew in their inbred stupidity. It's also telling that when it comes to Islamic Destruction the tools it uses are products of the active imagination and dynamic culture of it's enemies: airliners, flight schools, international airports, chemical explosives, firearms, box cutters, hand grenades, credit cards, cell phones, the Internet, mass media, and most of these 'Lone Wolves' don't even realize that since they cannot obtain these from 'safe' (or indigenous) Islamic sources, it must go to Westerners (or agents, thereof) which usually puts them smack-dab in the center of a police investigation -- and under arrest.
All Islam is able to provide in it's 'struggle' against the West -- and reality -- is a steady stream of sexually-frustrated losers who want to die. It's not surprising at all that when the CIA started going through Bin Laden's 'treasure trove' they found enough porn to keep the enitre Middle East doing the Old Knuckle Shuffle on the Pelvis Bazooka for the next two centuries.
I fail to see why it is that we're so afraid of these people, and so momumentally frightened of offending their sensibilities; they're cowards who attack those who are unable to fight back, trying always to catch their victims at unawares, picking targets that are deliberately soft so as to instill fear. People like this are incapable of achieving 'Victory' in the sense that Westerners would understand the term, because their 'victories' are those of the small-minded, vindictive and vicious, and detached from any sense of the strategic. They kill indiscriminately in the name of immediate goals, most of which have nothing to do with improving their ultimate lot in life, none of which drags their culture out of the 7th Century sewer in which it festers, and for reasons that border on the psychotic. They talk 'Peace' but do nothing but make enemies. They bluster about their cultural superiority, but have to buy (inert) hand grenades from undercover cops.
Conversely, we will not achieve a Victory until we -- and by that I mean the political leadership, and so-called intelligencia of the West -- finally come to the proper conclusion about our foes that any 5th grader is capable of reaching; these are seriously sick, seriously deluded, seriously frustrated scumbags who cannot be acommodated, bargained with, or dealt with by diplomacy. They have to be jailed, and better still, killed, in great numbers in the holes where they live.
Maybe, when enough of them have died in horrible ways, they'll get the same message the Japanese, Nazis, and Carthaginians got: we will not tolerate your bullshit, and we're quite capable of removing you from the stream of history. Whether this encourages the greater mass of theMuslim world to get with the program of the 21st century is open to conjecture, but it is an historical fact that cultures usually do not change unless they've had some irreversible and unmistakable defeat laid on them.
"Peace", to the Islamonazi, means they get to Lord over us all, that we are enslaved, and everything we do, own, make, think, or aspire to, is somehow subordinated to the perceived will of their phoney-baloney God, as they understand the words of a deranged, 7th-Century, child-molesting nomad. For all my Libtard friends out there who want to talk about tolerance and multiculturalism, I say this: if the Islamonazis have their way, there will only be a Monocultural Society in which Islam holds sway. Tolerance will mean that your Islamic overlords will tolerate your continued breathing, so long as you toil for his benefit, and according to his will. There will be no Civil Rights, there will be no Progress, there will be no Freedoms extended to anyone, except Muslims, who will have the Freedopm to Rape, Pillage and Murder, so long as they do it to The Other.
This is already their credo. They can't be bought off, or negotiated with. That's why we have to WIN and they have to LOSE in a way that makes it impossible for them to miss the facts of their defeat.
Those who cry the loudest for accomodation with Islam will merely be the first victims, or at least the most-compliant slaves. In the meantime, all your posturing for 'Peace' will avail you nothing because there's millions of these little mental defectives running around looking to inflict whatever petty nastiness they can and you're the easiest victims to bag. It's how they get to Heaven, after all.
Good going, NYPD. People like this need to be found and brought to justice before their festering stupidity gets any more of us killed. For those of you who believe that the War on terror ended with the death of UBL, guess again; he was just the figurehead. The footsoldiers are still on the march.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Check Out My Crap...
...over at the Insane Asylum, where I'm still guest-blogging.
Today's fare includes:
A sordid tale of a Mother-and-Daughter Sexual Abuse Team, and A Naked Subway Maniac. It's all an extravaganza for the eyes and brain, I say.
As long as I'm at it: I'm available for guest blogging at your site, upon request, and I also do children's parties and all-night smokers. This sort of stupidity needs more outlets, if you ask me. I work cheap, too. In return for the opportunity to smear my mental feces across your webpage, you can get a cross-link here at the Lunatic's Asylum and have the deep-down, warm-and-mushy feeling of knowing that you've provided your readers with only the very finest commentary from a certified nutjob.
Today's fare includes:
A sordid tale of a Mother-and-Daughter Sexual Abuse Team, and A Naked Subway Maniac. It's all an extravaganza for the eyes and brain, I say.
As long as I'm at it: I'm available for guest blogging at your site, upon request, and I also do children's parties and all-night smokers. This sort of stupidity needs more outlets, if you ask me. I work cheap, too. In return for the opportunity to smear my mental feces across your webpage, you can get a cross-link here at the Lunatic's Asylum and have the deep-down, warm-and-mushy feeling of knowing that you've provided your readers with only the very finest commentary from a certified nutjob.
With Some Fava Beans and a Nice Chianti...
Okay, and we allow people this sick to continue to live....why?
And I'm not just talking about the would-be cannibal, but the asshole who answered the ad in the first place, too.
I'd put them both before a firing squad, and probably their offspring, also, just to be on the safe side.
This is what society has degenerated into; people who think that cannibalism is a fucking game, and others who are so shamelessly emboldened by society's apathy to the point of advertizing for potential victims. Is there no shame anymore? Are there no rules to which a civilized society may resort to keep things relatively sane and safe for the rest of us? If you want to point to the seminal event in the long slide into cultural destruction, it was probably the day when the West, seemingly en masse, decided it was a good idea to let the mentally ill walk around without supervision because the process of institutionalism was either bad for their self esteem or too expensive.
Once freed, the Maniacs Amongst Us became free to run for public office, teach in the Universities, unleash mayhem on our streets, and post ads seeking other maniacs willing to be killed and eaten.
Save the gene pool, and the expense of a trial, and and put the crazy bugger down now.
And I'm not just talking about the would-be cannibal, but the asshole who answered the ad in the first place, too.
I'd put them both before a firing squad, and probably their offspring, also, just to be on the safe side.
This is what society has degenerated into; people who think that cannibalism is a fucking game, and others who are so shamelessly emboldened by society's apathy to the point of advertizing for potential victims. Is there no shame anymore? Are there no rules to which a civilized society may resort to keep things relatively sane and safe for the rest of us? If you want to point to the seminal event in the long slide into cultural destruction, it was probably the day when the West, seemingly en masse, decided it was a good idea to let the mentally ill walk around without supervision because the process of institutionalism was either bad for their self esteem or too expensive.
Once freed, the Maniacs Amongst Us became free to run for public office, teach in the Universities, unleash mayhem on our streets, and post ads seeking other maniacs willing to be killed and eaten.
Save the gene pool, and the expense of a trial, and and put the crazy bugger down now.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Herman Cain and the American Outsiders...
Interesting article in the American Spectator about why (most of) the Republican field -- but especially Herman Cain -- for 2012 is truly representative of what the Nation Stands For.
Quite frankly, I rather doubt most of our political establishment knows just what the fuck this Nation Stands For, and nothing short of dynamite will give most of them a clue.
There's only three (minor) problems with this article, as I see it:
1. Anything that has a picture of a young, chipmonk-cheeked, short, and tattooed Tom Cruise, and an oh-so-pretty Ralph Macchio deliberately trying to look like tough urban bad boys strains credulity. It makes me want to laugh my ass off, frankly, because let's face it: Tom Cruise is (probably) gayer than figure skating, and the last time I heard, Ralph Macchio was one of Beverly Hills' best hairdressers.
2. It's about time for the myth of the Pilgrims coming to America to seek religious freedom to finally fade away. The Pilgrims were sent here by the English Crown to die, because their anal-retentive brand of Taliban-style Christianity made them a political threat to the Realm. If the treacherous sea voyage didn't get them, the wilderness full of savages surely would.
I realize that this is part of the National Foundation Myth, but it's a trite little bit of propaganda which has far outlived it's usefulness.
3. I tend to ignore anyone who treats anything ex-British Prime Minster Tony Blair has to say, on any subject -- let alone on 'what it means to be an American' (with a gushy-girly-crush-type enthusiasm) -- as if it the very utterance were representative of some mythic genius. If you believe that Tony Blair was even Irish-Setter-smart, and that anything he says bears repeating (let alone writing down), either your standards in such things are excessively low, or you need psychiatric help.
Then again, two-thirds of the article is devoted to a book/movie with seven girly-men in it, written by a manly-girl, and dealing with the acne-scarred angst of a teenaged gang conflict with an undertone of High-School class warfare, so there you go. The more I read, the more I kept expecting a Judy Bloom reference, but was, alas, sadly disappointed. Maybe next time, Mr. Lord can get around to comparing Americans to Dr. Seuss' elephant in "Horton Hears a Who" ? But, I digress...
Read the damned thing, anyway, because once you stop giggling and get through all the 'Dear Diary' bullshit tone of it all, there is a kernel of truth.
Quite frankly, I rather doubt most of our political establishment knows just what the fuck this Nation Stands For, and nothing short of dynamite will give most of them a clue.
There's only three (minor) problems with this article, as I see it:
1. Anything that has a picture of a young, chipmonk-cheeked, short, and tattooed Tom Cruise, and an oh-so-pretty Ralph Macchio deliberately trying to look like tough urban bad boys strains credulity. It makes me want to laugh my ass off, frankly, because let's face it: Tom Cruise is (probably) gayer than figure skating, and the last time I heard, Ralph Macchio was one of Beverly Hills' best hairdressers.
2. It's about time for the myth of the Pilgrims coming to America to seek religious freedom to finally fade away. The Pilgrims were sent here by the English Crown to die, because their anal-retentive brand of Taliban-style Christianity made them a political threat to the Realm. If the treacherous sea voyage didn't get them, the wilderness full of savages surely would.
I realize that this is part of the National Foundation Myth, but it's a trite little bit of propaganda which has far outlived it's usefulness.
3. I tend to ignore anyone who treats anything ex-British Prime Minster Tony Blair has to say, on any subject -- let alone on 'what it means to be an American' (with a gushy-girly-crush-type enthusiasm) -- as if it the very utterance were representative of some mythic genius. If you believe that Tony Blair was even Irish-Setter-smart, and that anything he says bears repeating (let alone writing down), either your standards in such things are excessively low, or you need psychiatric help.
Then again, two-thirds of the article is devoted to a book/movie with seven girly-men in it, written by a manly-girl, and dealing with the acne-scarred angst of a teenaged gang conflict with an undertone of High-School class warfare, so there you go. The more I read, the more I kept expecting a Judy Bloom reference, but was, alas, sadly disappointed. Maybe next time, Mr. Lord can get around to comparing Americans to Dr. Seuss' elephant in "Horton Hears a Who" ? But, I digress...
Read the damned thing, anyway, because once you stop giggling and get through all the 'Dear Diary' bullshit tone of it all, there is a kernel of truth.
Check This Out: Seriously Funny Videos...
I have been terribly remiss in not turning y'all on to this. I scoped it out, and had a blast;
Seriously Funny Videos.
Now added to the Blogroll. Enjoy!
Seriously Funny Videos.
Now added to the Blogroll. Enjoy!
Monday, May 09, 2011
Usama Bin Laden: Sorry Little Narcissist...
Some really creepy videos accompany this piece by the New York Post's Andrea Peyser.
It is almost axiomatic that the world's most notorious murderers and tyrants are insatiable narcissists, and incidentally, it's also true that many happen to be frustrated artists.
Adolf Hitler was a failed painter, Mussolini and Napoleon wrote extremely bad plays, Frederick the Great wrote execrable poetry, Nero fancied himself a playwright and master musician, Saddam Hussein wrote romance novels. Usama Bin Laden apparently fancied himself as a modern-day, Islamic Cicero, giving political speeches on the evils of Capitalism and Western Culture, all the while watching himself of television (a product of Western Culture), and up to his armpits in perhaps one of the most iconic symbols of Western Culture; huge stores of Coca-Cola were found in every nook-and-cranny of his guilded Pakistani-suburban slum/ hideout.
The contradictions would be lost on Bin Laden, but then again, what do you expect? A Narcissist is usually the last person to get the joke, especially when he's the butt of it.
We know of Bin Laden's last days because he did us the dubious favor and had them videotaped for us. Like a Muslim John Kerry, who had himself followed about by movie cameras while collecting enough self-inflicted gunshot wounds to be sent home from Vietnam, Bin Laden was never far from the glare of the lights and the video camera, creating a perpetual image of himself as something he wasn't. In the end, Usama Bin Laden wasn't the towering figure of cold, calculating, pious rage and fear that he had so carefully portrayed himself to be; he was a sick man, dyeing his beard, all hopped up on Viagra and past glories, hiding for fear of his sorry little life. When his end came, he did not, as he had once vowed, gone down fighting in a glorious martyrdom; he hid behind is wife and children, and then was gunned down like a dog.
The Great Hero of the Islamic World, shot to death within the borders of the Islamic World's only nuclear power, living under the protection of the Pakistani military, immersed in the very swamp water of the Western World that he hated so much; television, mass media, Coca-Cola, Viagra, the 24-hour news cycle, Al'Jazeera, the Remote Control, making speeches about the dangers of Global Warming and Capitalism like a college freshman with a 960 SAT score after a kegger. Bin Laden had been captured long before by the very culture he so despised, and he had never even noticed it. Dipshit.
His little world, the one in which he was never out of range of the sound of his own voice, never very far from his own self-constructed image, was all that was left to him, and it consumed his last days on Earth.
Now, after a decade of being the biggest boogeyman in History, Usama Bin Laden became little more than a punchline to a very bad joke.
I have no sympathy for the man, and if there's one complaint on my part about this whole capture and execution routine, it's that Bin Laden wasn't hung by his heels in Times Square to get the full Mussolini Treatment, in front of the very television cameras that he craved so much.
It is almost axiomatic that the world's most notorious murderers and tyrants are insatiable narcissists, and incidentally, it's also true that many happen to be frustrated artists.
Adolf Hitler was a failed painter, Mussolini and Napoleon wrote extremely bad plays, Frederick the Great wrote execrable poetry, Nero fancied himself a playwright and master musician, Saddam Hussein wrote romance novels. Usama Bin Laden apparently fancied himself as a modern-day, Islamic Cicero, giving political speeches on the evils of Capitalism and Western Culture, all the while watching himself of television (a product of Western Culture), and up to his armpits in perhaps one of the most iconic symbols of Western Culture; huge stores of Coca-Cola were found in every nook-and-cranny of his guilded Pakistani-suburban slum/ hideout.
The contradictions would be lost on Bin Laden, but then again, what do you expect? A Narcissist is usually the last person to get the joke, especially when he's the butt of it.
We know of Bin Laden's last days because he did us the dubious favor and had them videotaped for us. Like a Muslim John Kerry, who had himself followed about by movie cameras while collecting enough self-inflicted gunshot wounds to be sent home from Vietnam, Bin Laden was never far from the glare of the lights and the video camera, creating a perpetual image of himself as something he wasn't. In the end, Usama Bin Laden wasn't the towering figure of cold, calculating, pious rage and fear that he had so carefully portrayed himself to be; he was a sick man, dyeing his beard, all hopped up on Viagra and past glories, hiding for fear of his sorry little life. When his end came, he did not, as he had once vowed, gone down fighting in a glorious martyrdom; he hid behind is wife and children, and then was gunned down like a dog.
The Great Hero of the Islamic World, shot to death within the borders of the Islamic World's only nuclear power, living under the protection of the Pakistani military, immersed in the very swamp water of the Western World that he hated so much; television, mass media, Coca-Cola, Viagra, the 24-hour news cycle, Al'Jazeera, the Remote Control, making speeches about the dangers of Global Warming and Capitalism like a college freshman with a 960 SAT score after a kegger. Bin Laden had been captured long before by the very culture he so despised, and he had never even noticed it. Dipshit.
His little world, the one in which he was never out of range of the sound of his own voice, never very far from his own self-constructed image, was all that was left to him, and it consumed his last days on Earth.
Now, after a decade of being the biggest boogeyman in History, Usama Bin Laden became little more than a punchline to a very bad joke.
I have no sympathy for the man, and if there's one complaint on my part about this whole capture and execution routine, it's that Bin Laden wasn't hung by his heels in Times Square to get the full Mussolini Treatment, in front of the very television cameras that he craved so much.
I Told You So...
Herman Cain Kicks Ass.
Newt Gingrich, you are now, officially, off my Christmas Card List. I'm gettin' me some Herman Cain campaign gear!
And Mitt Romney? You're still a pussy.
Some will tell you that one debate does not a Presidential Candidate make, and others, less honest and with some other agenda to push, will point out that Herman merely beat the second string of GOP nominees. Well, I'd like to think he would have easily held his own had the first string actually had the guts to show up in South Carolina.
No Gingrich. No Palin. No Romney. No Huckabee. No Bachmann. The stunning lack of commitment, even this early, by the people generally agreed to be the front-runners in 2012 is appalling. And I'm sorry, but if I have to listen to one more Conservative flapping rectum trying to convince me that Rick Santorum and Tim Pawlenty are Presidential timber, I might be forced to shoot you. In the face. Like Usama.
You're either stupid, or someone's paid flack.
I wrote a bit about Herman a couple of weeks ago, and not only was my opinion of the man vindicated by last Thursday's performance, he's risen in my estimation by leaps and bounds.
A word to the Conservative punditocracy: you dismiss Herman Cain at your risk.
Newt Gingrich, you are now, officially, off my Christmas Card List. I'm gettin' me some Herman Cain campaign gear!
And Mitt Romney? You're still a pussy.
Some will tell you that one debate does not a Presidential Candidate make, and others, less honest and with some other agenda to push, will point out that Herman merely beat the second string of GOP nominees. Well, I'd like to think he would have easily held his own had the first string actually had the guts to show up in South Carolina.
No Gingrich. No Palin. No Romney. No Huckabee. No Bachmann. The stunning lack of commitment, even this early, by the people generally agreed to be the front-runners in 2012 is appalling. And I'm sorry, but if I have to listen to one more Conservative flapping rectum trying to convince me that Rick Santorum and Tim Pawlenty are Presidential timber, I might be forced to shoot you. In the face. Like Usama.
You're either stupid, or someone's paid flack.
I wrote a bit about Herman a couple of weeks ago, and not only was my opinion of the man vindicated by last Thursday's performance, he's risen in my estimation by leaps and bounds.
A word to the Conservative punditocracy: you dismiss Herman Cain at your risk.
Blogging Has Been Light, Lately...
...and I apologize for that, but in my defense, I have been extraordinarily busy these last two weeks.
Besides the demands of Real Life-- which require me to try and find a real job, again, and real soon -- I have been busy trying to get some freelance pieces published and keeping the side up over at the Insane Asylum while Mr. Chap suffers through the internet-deprived aftermath of a torrent of tornados.
By the way, you should pop on over to the Insane Asylum and not only see what I've posted there, but you should make an effort to keep Mr. Chap's traffic up during this trying time. We here at the Asylum (Myself, Lefty the Finance Elf, Swifty the Editorial Elf, Tony Guns the Discipline Elf, and Butch, the Elfin Ombudsman) wish him luck. He's one of the Good Guys.
The nose will, indeed, be back to the grindstone in the coming days.
Incidentally, I would like to welcome my new followers who have joined this blog in recent days; I appreciate it greatly that this mental dribble spread upon the electronic page is beginning to gain converts to my diseased way of thinking. I'd also like to thank those readers who have pushed this blog into the 3,200- views-a-month Club. By the standards of the Great Blogs this is not an earthshaking achievement, but it's far more visits than I ever envisioned when it started as the journal of a diseased mind. Welcome, and I hope you like what you're reading here!
Besides the demands of Real Life-- which require me to try and find a real job, again, and real soon -- I have been busy trying to get some freelance pieces published and keeping the side up over at the Insane Asylum while Mr. Chap suffers through the internet-deprived aftermath of a torrent of tornados.
By the way, you should pop on over to the Insane Asylum and not only see what I've posted there, but you should make an effort to keep Mr. Chap's traffic up during this trying time. We here at the Asylum (Myself, Lefty the Finance Elf, Swifty the Editorial Elf, Tony Guns the Discipline Elf, and Butch, the Elfin Ombudsman) wish him luck. He's one of the Good Guys.
The nose will, indeed, be back to the grindstone in the coming days.
Incidentally, I would like to welcome my new followers who have joined this blog in recent days; I appreciate it greatly that this mental dribble spread upon the electronic page is beginning to gain converts to my diseased way of thinking. I'd also like to thank those readers who have pushed this blog into the 3,200- views-a-month Club. By the standards of the Great Blogs this is not an earthshaking achievement, but it's far more visits than I ever envisioned when it started as the journal of a diseased mind. Welcome, and I hope you like what you're reading here!
Sunday, May 08, 2011
The World is Coming to An End: Film at 11...
I was talking to my friend Mike the other day, and he told me about something that was so uproariously stupid that I feel compelled to write about it, and share it with you all. It's what we do here at the Asylum; point out the stupidity of others and laugh our asses off over it.
Mike, it turns out, has been listening to Evangelical Christian radio. Not because he fears for his immortal soul, or because he believes in an Invisible Man in the Sky Who's All-Knowing and All-Powerful, yet somehow managed to create violent, irrational human beings, the platypus, the camel, and ABBA, but because he finds it so funny.
He was telling me about one of these radio Evangelists (you will not get his name here, because this is a seriously dangerous douchebag) who has told his retarded audience that the World Will End by May 31, 2011. I guess if you have any hope of being Raptured to the Right Hand of the Father, you'd best start packing now. Anyways, it appears as if people call this idiot for last-minute advice on all manner of things; people ask if they should take new jobs (the answer: No, dispshit, because the World will explode in a couple of weeks), should they still go ahead with that June wedding they had planned (answer: No dipshit, because the World will explode in a couple of weeks), and, naturally, How Do I Save Myself When the World Explodes in A Couple of Weeks? (answer: Go pray a lot...and send me money, Dipshit).
Now, apart from the obvious stupidity of people seeking life-altering guidance from someone who makes his living telling them they'll all be dead unless they pray real hard, the real stupidity lies in the premise that when the World Explodes that anyone is going to be 'saved'.
Mankind, in case no one ever told you, is ultimately doomed. Thousands, maybe millions even, of other life forms that have inhabited this planet have all gone extinct at some point in history,and there is no reason not to think that we too, in our turn, will also go the way of the Wooly Mammoth, the Triceratops, or the Dodo Bird. One of the consequences of Life is the Possibility of Extinction. How we ultimately meet our final fate, I think, matters not: the planet could be hit by a comet or asteroid, the Earth's crust might burst asunder under the strain of volcanism or tectonic forces, some minor flu will evolve into a super-strain that kills us all, we'll extinguish life with nuclear war, or our Sun will go nova and bake this tiny planet in an instant. There is little that we can do to stop these things. Our science and our intelligence only takes us so far, and short of Men making the great leap across the Universe to other worlds, we're going to be extinct, and little to no trace of us will be left.
If it makes you feel better to believe that your soul, spirit, ghost, essence, chakra, ki, whatever, will persist after death, then by all means, be my guest. Far be it from me to tell you that I have all the answers, or that you shouldn't believe what you want to believe, but it seems that nowadays everyone is obsessed with the End of Everything.
It's gotten so bad that the History Channel now produces a show called Life After People, which is all about what happens to the world after mankind disappears, which is pretty stupid if you think about it: the History Channel is running a show about a time when History --as we perceive it --comes to an End. Go figure. Then again, it's probably better -- and more topical -- than Ice Road Truckers, or Swamp People. It's certainly more interesting.
Apocalyptic Christianity has become a big business, and is mostly a scam, in my opinion. It's purpose is to frighten people into the fold, and in the process, pry their cash from them. I'm certain when Pastor Asshole- on-the-Radio's prediction fails to come true on June 1st, he'll still be on the air, if only because people are truly dopey, and he has a ready-made excuse for why what he said will happen didn't; God will destroy the World Only When God Sees Fit To, and he cannot be prodded into it before he's ready to by Man, or, he was really just trying to get people to repent and make their peace with God before God really does Her thing with his Chicken Little routine. Or my personal favorite, the one that's supposed to end all debate or stop all questions; God Works in Mysterious Ways. No matter; the Ends justify the Means, especially if the Ends were several million bucks in donations and commercial fees and a higher public profile for Pastor Dickhead, and a few more fannies in the pews. I'm sure that will comfort the people who called off their weddings, or didn't take that lucrative job offer on his advice, to no end.
What people tend to forget is that the Bible was written by people -- and it might not be the best thing to take literally -- because as is often the case, people make mistakes, they misinterpret things, they let their biases creep onto the page, or they have agendas that they're pushing. Lately, there's been much talk about 'Bible Codes' in which it is said that there are coded messages hidden within the text of the biblical passages that can foretell future events, but I believe this about as much as I believe in my Lucky Astrology Mood Watch. The Bible is not the Word of God (beings that do not exist do not leave Words behind); it is a history --and a heavily-biased one, at that -- of the Hebrews and early Christians which seeks to provide a divine justification for what they have done. Mostly that was to kill and disposses Caananites and Phillestines and all the rest, because God 'promised' the land to them. You would think that an All-Powerful, All-Knowing God would just promise them an uninhabited place to live in, seeing as She (if there is a God, it must be a She) had just told them five minutes ago in the desert that Thou Shall Not Kill, Steal, Lie or Covet Your Neighbor's Goods (wouldn't that mean his land, too?), and all that.
The New Testament, as we know it today, is very much a political document; it was supposed to authenticate and legitimize Christianity, and thus, give it's great champion, Constantine, the divine cover he needed to explain his otherwise treasonous activities, i.e. leading a civil war and usurping the power of the Emperor of Rome. It had to be compiled and rewritten in such a way as to ensure that Christ could always be seen as the ultimate expression of ancient Hebrew prohpecy concerning a Messiah. The fact that the Christ myth as we know it seems an awful lot like the Roman adaptation and worship of the Persian god Mithras is conveniently forgotten... or mostly unknown.
If you're going to depend upon an ancient document, full of 'prophecy' as your guide to the End of theWorld, you could at least pick an ancient document that hasn't been (mis-)translated four billion times from seven thousand languages, and which has not been subjected to the requirements of political and cultural propaganda, I would think. The Bible as predictive tool is useless, in my opinion, because it has been so-obviously manipulated.
Another Apocalyptic theme that has gained much popular attention these days is the Mayan Prophecy, in which it is said that the ancient Mayans of Mexico have pinpointed the exact date of the End of the World, supposedly sometime in December of 2012. Which would really suck if a Republican managed to beat Barack Odumbass in November. The 'proof' that theMayan Prophecy will come true is that the Mayan Calendar comes to a complete halt in December 2012. Now, there could be a number of reasons why this should be so that don't necesarily mean Apocalypse; perhaps the astrologers/mathemeticians engaged in the project saw no need to go any further. Perhaps they were tired of making calculations. Maybe, there's another Mayan Calendar that picks up where the last one left off that we haven't found yet?
All I know is that people who suposedly had the smarts and the capabilities to accurately predict the future in such fashion should, logically, have been able to foresee their own demise; you would think they would have predicted the arrival of the Spanish...and smallpox. You have to wonder just how accurate and efficacious their predictive powers were if they couldn't even use them to save themselves.
Then there's the Nostradamus Idiots who constantly tell us that their hero has predicted every major event in modern history. The problem with Nostradamus, however, is that we never seem to hear of his 'predictions' until after something has happened. If Nostradamus was of any use, you figure someone would be able to tell you about it beforehand. So, we're told that Nostradamus 'predicted' the rise of Hitler (a claim long since disproven as Nazi propganada), the assassination of JFK, and 9/11, but always the announcement that Nostradamus 'predicted' this, that or the other comes only after the fact. Some prophet. Nostradamus is about as useful as a broken condom, or those Astrologers in your local newspaper. The Champions of Nostradamus will tell you this is because if they told people about one of these traumatic events beforehand, no one would believe them, but this is pure horseshit; I can say to you today that one day someone will have monkeys fly out of their rectum, and it's quite possible, given the vageries of time and history, that it might actually happen. Will I be celebrated as visionary prophet when that day comes? I rather doubt it.
This, incidentally, is one of the problems with some modern scientific methods, too, like the Theory of Evolution; given a time scale of billions of years, and pure random chance, literally anything is possible. It doesn't make it true.
Still, I find it fascinating to watch people knowingly worry themselves stupid about something they have absolutely no control over. If the world comes to an End (as it surely must) just what, if anything, do you, the individual, expect to be able to do about it? Will you, personally, deflect that asteroid headed our way? Will you be able to keep the Earth's magnetic poles from shifting? Can you identify and find a cure for that Super-Virus that's out there waiting to kill us all? Probably not. And your government will probably be unable to do much of anything, either, and certainly not your Church; religions usually get people to do things which only benefit the religion, as an institution.
As for me, I keep a six-pack of Heineken's in the fridge, so that when the fateful day finally arrives, I can sit on the front porch with my Holocaust Heinies, and watch the fireworks, secure in the knowledge that when it's all over, one way or another, I will at least not have to pay another goddamned credit card bill, or scratch an income tax check, or sit through another Barack Obama use-lots-of-words-to-say-absolutely-nothing speech.
The Apocalypse, you see, isn't all bad news.
Mike, it turns out, has been listening to Evangelical Christian radio. Not because he fears for his immortal soul, or because he believes in an Invisible Man in the Sky Who's All-Knowing and All-Powerful, yet somehow managed to create violent, irrational human beings, the platypus, the camel, and ABBA, but because he finds it so funny.
He was telling me about one of these radio Evangelists (you will not get his name here, because this is a seriously dangerous douchebag) who has told his retarded audience that the World Will End by May 31, 2011. I guess if you have any hope of being Raptured to the Right Hand of the Father, you'd best start packing now. Anyways, it appears as if people call this idiot for last-minute advice on all manner of things; people ask if they should take new jobs (the answer: No, dispshit, because the World will explode in a couple of weeks), should they still go ahead with that June wedding they had planned (answer: No dipshit, because the World will explode in a couple of weeks), and, naturally, How Do I Save Myself When the World Explodes in A Couple of Weeks? (answer: Go pray a lot...and send me money, Dipshit).
Now, apart from the obvious stupidity of people seeking life-altering guidance from someone who makes his living telling them they'll all be dead unless they pray real hard, the real stupidity lies in the premise that when the World Explodes that anyone is going to be 'saved'.
Mankind, in case no one ever told you, is ultimately doomed. Thousands, maybe millions even, of other life forms that have inhabited this planet have all gone extinct at some point in history,and there is no reason not to think that we too, in our turn, will also go the way of the Wooly Mammoth, the Triceratops, or the Dodo Bird. One of the consequences of Life is the Possibility of Extinction. How we ultimately meet our final fate, I think, matters not: the planet could be hit by a comet or asteroid, the Earth's crust might burst asunder under the strain of volcanism or tectonic forces, some minor flu will evolve into a super-strain that kills us all, we'll extinguish life with nuclear war, or our Sun will go nova and bake this tiny planet in an instant. There is little that we can do to stop these things. Our science and our intelligence only takes us so far, and short of Men making the great leap across the Universe to other worlds, we're going to be extinct, and little to no trace of us will be left.
If it makes you feel better to believe that your soul, spirit, ghost, essence, chakra, ki, whatever, will persist after death, then by all means, be my guest. Far be it from me to tell you that I have all the answers, or that you shouldn't believe what you want to believe, but it seems that nowadays everyone is obsessed with the End of Everything.
It's gotten so bad that the History Channel now produces a show called Life After People, which is all about what happens to the world after mankind disappears, which is pretty stupid if you think about it: the History Channel is running a show about a time when History --as we perceive it --comes to an End. Go figure. Then again, it's probably better -- and more topical -- than Ice Road Truckers, or Swamp People. It's certainly more interesting.
Apocalyptic Christianity has become a big business, and is mostly a scam, in my opinion. It's purpose is to frighten people into the fold, and in the process, pry their cash from them. I'm certain when Pastor Asshole- on-the-Radio's prediction fails to come true on June 1st, he'll still be on the air, if only because people are truly dopey, and he has a ready-made excuse for why what he said will happen didn't; God will destroy the World Only When God Sees Fit To, and he cannot be prodded into it before he's ready to by Man, or, he was really just trying to get people to repent and make their peace with God before God really does Her thing with his Chicken Little routine. Or my personal favorite, the one that's supposed to end all debate or stop all questions; God Works in Mysterious Ways. No matter; the Ends justify the Means, especially if the Ends were several million bucks in donations and commercial fees and a higher public profile for Pastor Dickhead, and a few more fannies in the pews. I'm sure that will comfort the people who called off their weddings, or didn't take that lucrative job offer on his advice, to no end.
What people tend to forget is that the Bible was written by people -- and it might not be the best thing to take literally -- because as is often the case, people make mistakes, they misinterpret things, they let their biases creep onto the page, or they have agendas that they're pushing. Lately, there's been much talk about 'Bible Codes' in which it is said that there are coded messages hidden within the text of the biblical passages that can foretell future events, but I believe this about as much as I believe in my Lucky Astrology Mood Watch. The Bible is not the Word of God (beings that do not exist do not leave Words behind); it is a history --and a heavily-biased one, at that -- of the Hebrews and early Christians which seeks to provide a divine justification for what they have done. Mostly that was to kill and disposses Caananites and Phillestines and all the rest, because God 'promised' the land to them. You would think that an All-Powerful, All-Knowing God would just promise them an uninhabited place to live in, seeing as She (if there is a God, it must be a She) had just told them five minutes ago in the desert that Thou Shall Not Kill, Steal, Lie or Covet Your Neighbor's Goods (wouldn't that mean his land, too?), and all that.
The New Testament, as we know it today, is very much a political document; it was supposed to authenticate and legitimize Christianity, and thus, give it's great champion, Constantine, the divine cover he needed to explain his otherwise treasonous activities, i.e. leading a civil war and usurping the power of the Emperor of Rome. It had to be compiled and rewritten in such a way as to ensure that Christ could always be seen as the ultimate expression of ancient Hebrew prohpecy concerning a Messiah. The fact that the Christ myth as we know it seems an awful lot like the Roman adaptation and worship of the Persian god Mithras is conveniently forgotten... or mostly unknown.
If you're going to depend upon an ancient document, full of 'prophecy' as your guide to the End of theWorld, you could at least pick an ancient document that hasn't been (mis-)translated four billion times from seven thousand languages, and which has not been subjected to the requirements of political and cultural propaganda, I would think. The Bible as predictive tool is useless, in my opinion, because it has been so-obviously manipulated.
Another Apocalyptic theme that has gained much popular attention these days is the Mayan Prophecy, in which it is said that the ancient Mayans of Mexico have pinpointed the exact date of the End of the World, supposedly sometime in December of 2012. Which would really suck if a Republican managed to beat Barack Odumbass in November. The 'proof' that theMayan Prophecy will come true is that the Mayan Calendar comes to a complete halt in December 2012. Now, there could be a number of reasons why this should be so that don't necesarily mean Apocalypse; perhaps the astrologers/mathemeticians engaged in the project saw no need to go any further. Perhaps they were tired of making calculations. Maybe, there's another Mayan Calendar that picks up where the last one left off that we haven't found yet?
All I know is that people who suposedly had the smarts and the capabilities to accurately predict the future in such fashion should, logically, have been able to foresee their own demise; you would think they would have predicted the arrival of the Spanish...and smallpox. You have to wonder just how accurate and efficacious their predictive powers were if they couldn't even use them to save themselves.
Then there's the Nostradamus Idiots who constantly tell us that their hero has predicted every major event in modern history. The problem with Nostradamus, however, is that we never seem to hear of his 'predictions' until after something has happened. If Nostradamus was of any use, you figure someone would be able to tell you about it beforehand. So, we're told that Nostradamus 'predicted' the rise of Hitler (a claim long since disproven as Nazi propganada), the assassination of JFK, and 9/11, but always the announcement that Nostradamus 'predicted' this, that or the other comes only after the fact. Some prophet. Nostradamus is about as useful as a broken condom, or those Astrologers in your local newspaper. The Champions of Nostradamus will tell you this is because if they told people about one of these traumatic events beforehand, no one would believe them, but this is pure horseshit; I can say to you today that one day someone will have monkeys fly out of their rectum, and it's quite possible, given the vageries of time and history, that it might actually happen. Will I be celebrated as visionary prophet when that day comes? I rather doubt it.
This, incidentally, is one of the problems with some modern scientific methods, too, like the Theory of Evolution; given a time scale of billions of years, and pure random chance, literally anything is possible. It doesn't make it true.
Still, I find it fascinating to watch people knowingly worry themselves stupid about something they have absolutely no control over. If the world comes to an End (as it surely must) just what, if anything, do you, the individual, expect to be able to do about it? Will you, personally, deflect that asteroid headed our way? Will you be able to keep the Earth's magnetic poles from shifting? Can you identify and find a cure for that Super-Virus that's out there waiting to kill us all? Probably not. And your government will probably be unable to do much of anything, either, and certainly not your Church; religions usually get people to do things which only benefit the religion, as an institution.
As for me, I keep a six-pack of Heineken's in the fridge, so that when the fateful day finally arrives, I can sit on the front porch with my Holocaust Heinies, and watch the fireworks, secure in the knowledge that when it's all over, one way or another, I will at least not have to pay another goddamned credit card bill, or scratch an income tax check, or sit through another Barack Obama use-lots-of-words-to-say-absolutely-nothing speech.
The Apocalypse, you see, isn't all bad news.
Report: Half of Detroit Functionally Illiterate.
Only half? That sounds to me like maybe no one in Detroit can count, either.
Tell me again why the Public School system -- and the Unionized, tenured, over-paid, lowest-on-the-scale-of-academic-achievement 'teacher' who lords over it -- is a good thing?
Last week, Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Doofus-NY) was pilloried in the press for making a rather stupid remark that the Federal Government should turn Detroit into holding area for immigrants who should be "required" to live in there before they are granted full American Citizenship. Somehow, this plan is supposed to repopulate and rejuvenate one of America's worst cities, although true to form, the details of his 'plan' are very sketchy and probably involve a slew of Upper-East-Side-Solon-approved social experiments, huge tax increases, and an increase in government authority, because that's what people like Bloomberg always do -- when they're not busy changing political affiliations from week-to-week, depending upon which political party is for sale this month.
There are five demented ideas, never examined by the Press because that would mean, like, work, that run through Bloomdouche's ...I hesitate to call it a thought... process:
1. That left to their own devices, the people who already live in places like Detroit, Washington, D.C. or Cleveland are incapable of making life in their cities better for themselves. They require government to 'do' 'things' and direct (i.e. ruin) their lives because they're all knuckle-dragging apemen who see their IQ's drop every time they take a dump. People like Bloomberg love stupid citizens because they're so much easier to control and take advantage of.
2. According to some political idiots, it is only Government action that is capable of making life better for anyone, and the more drastic that action, the better life is supposed to get. Except that we have tons of undeniable evidence that this very formulation has made life in some places considerably worse, if not bordering on unbearable.
3. Government, suitably empowered to 'make life better', should then be able to create racial and ethnic ghettos as it sees fit, if Mike's ideas are taken to their logical conclusion. It's worked so fabulously well here in New York, you know. Oh wait, the government already does this...
4. The Government does things so spectacularly well, according to the Bloomberg set, but it's just that we're too stupid to appreciate all this fine work. We should never, ever think to hold government and it's policies accountable or responsible for the wasteland that is Detroit; it's always the people who live there who are to blame, so why not just replace those doofuses with a whole bunch of new, even bigger doofuses? (in fact, this may be at least half-right; after all, if Detroit is a shithole, the people and the politicians they elected help make it so).
5. What makes anyone think that filling Detroit with people who come from countries where concepts like individual rights, respect for the rule of law, constitutional government, the importance of an education, a work ethic, and tolerance are, literally, inconceivable, is going to save the city? Isn't that indicative of the sort of people they already have in Detroit? And contrary to all the politically correct mushiness out there; immigrants don't come here to 'make a better life for themselves' in the conventional sense, anymore; they don't come here for freedom and opportunity, like the immigrants of old, the New Breed comes here for the no-strings-attached social benefits, which we hand out like candy. The Ideal of the hard-working immigrant who wants nothing more than to become an American and be a contributing member of the greatest society on Earth was sooo last century. Now we attract immigrants who sneak across borders to use our hospitals, suck on the welfare teat, work off the books, use the schools, etc., who avoid contributing to American society (i.e. they don't pay income taxes) like they would bubonic plague.
If you doubt this, come to my neighborhood and watch the Mexican ladies buy groceries with food stamps while their husbands/boyfriends overrun the local (taxpayer-funded) playing fields waving Mexican flags, playing a game most Americans consider gayer than Tim Gunn.
Detroit, and cities like it, will never be 'saved' by an influx of more immigrants. If anything, the problems in those cities will become worse as they become government-sponsored ethnic enclaves full of people who are never encouraged (or made) to assimilate because that would offend everyone's multi-culti sensibilities, and deprive the democratic party of easily-manipulated voters. The solution to the problems of Detroit are not to be found in a mass migration from Afghanistan, Mexico, or Upper Volta; they are to be found in ordinary citizens, exercising their rights in a responsible fashion, auditing their public servants and demanding better services for their tax dollars. The Government -- at all levels -- should either respond to their will, or get the hell out of their way.
This would mean a wholesale rejection of 20th century 'liberalism' (a misnomer; it's really Libertine-ism, when it isn't outright Socialism), and electoral defeat of the entire Liberal establishment, including the parasites that cling to the democratic (small 'd' intentional) party like barnacles to a rusty hull; the poverty pimps, the racial hucksters, the unionized douchebags, the professional bureaucrats.
One of the hallmarks of the 2000 Presidential election (the one Al Gore lost, as he attempted to sue his way into the White House) was the incredible lack of literacy shown by many of the democratic voters in Florida (Al Sharpton and Je$$e Jackass called this stupidity-on-display 'disenfranchisement'); many, (according to the Press reports of the time) having been told to 'vote for Number 2' on the now-infamous 'Butterfly Ballot' -- that would have been Gore, except that he was actually Number 3 -- didn't even bother to read the damn thing, even to make certain they punched out the right chad!
Naturally, Gore only demanded a recount in the districts where a large number of minority voters were present, i.e. where he knew all the illiterate folks were. Gore was, in effect, saying "check these districts because we know that's where all the stupid people are!" Hence all the talk about scratches, and dents, and swinging chads, hanging chads, and 'divining the will of the voter, as if someone who punched out Number Two but left a scratch mark at Number 3 should have their vote overturned. Gore, the biggest pile of Number Two in History, had to find ways to turn all those Twos into Threes, even if it meant stealing an election on national television.
Literacy, or rather lack of it, has far-ranging consequences. Just ask Al Gore; he lost the White House because of it, and he's made billions off of fake environMENTALism on the backs of the illiterate, as well. People who can read would know that if you take away carbon dioxide, you kill plants, and thus, destroy the planet's oxygen supply, thereby, killing us.
If you want to know why Detroit is a toilet that rivals the open sewers of Yemen, Somalia or Tegucigalpa, here's your first clue. It's a pity no one in Detroit will ever read this, because if they did they might become embarrassed and do something about it.
And as for Micheal Bloomberg, he's the last person on Earth you should ever ask for advice on anything.
Tell me again why the Public School system -- and the Unionized, tenured, over-paid, lowest-on-the-scale-of-academic-achievement 'teacher' who lords over it -- is a good thing?
Last week, Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Doofus-NY) was pilloried in the press for making a rather stupid remark that the Federal Government should turn Detroit into holding area for immigrants who should be "required" to live in there before they are granted full American Citizenship. Somehow, this plan is supposed to repopulate and rejuvenate one of America's worst cities, although true to form, the details of his 'plan' are very sketchy and probably involve a slew of Upper-East-Side-Solon-approved social experiments, huge tax increases, and an increase in government authority, because that's what people like Bloomberg always do -- when they're not busy changing political affiliations from week-to-week, depending upon which political party is for sale this month.
There are five demented ideas, never examined by the Press because that would mean, like, work, that run through Bloomdouche's ...I hesitate to call it a thought... process:
1. That left to their own devices, the people who already live in places like Detroit, Washington, D.C. or Cleveland are incapable of making life in their cities better for themselves. They require government to 'do' 'things' and direct (i.e. ruin) their lives because they're all knuckle-dragging apemen who see their IQ's drop every time they take a dump. People like Bloomberg love stupid citizens because they're so much easier to control and take advantage of.
2. According to some political idiots, it is only Government action that is capable of making life better for anyone, and the more drastic that action, the better life is supposed to get. Except that we have tons of undeniable evidence that this very formulation has made life in some places considerably worse, if not bordering on unbearable.
3. Government, suitably empowered to 'make life better', should then be able to create racial and ethnic ghettos as it sees fit, if Mike's ideas are taken to their logical conclusion. It's worked so fabulously well here in New York, you know. Oh wait, the government already does this...
4. The Government does things so spectacularly well, according to the Bloomberg set, but it's just that we're too stupid to appreciate all this fine work. We should never, ever think to hold government and it's policies accountable or responsible for the wasteland that is Detroit; it's always the people who live there who are to blame, so why not just replace those doofuses with a whole bunch of new, even bigger doofuses? (in fact, this may be at least half-right; after all, if Detroit is a shithole, the people and the politicians they elected help make it so).
5. What makes anyone think that filling Detroit with people who come from countries where concepts like individual rights, respect for the rule of law, constitutional government, the importance of an education, a work ethic, and tolerance are, literally, inconceivable, is going to save the city? Isn't that indicative of the sort of people they already have in Detroit? And contrary to all the politically correct mushiness out there; immigrants don't come here to 'make a better life for themselves' in the conventional sense, anymore; they don't come here for freedom and opportunity, like the immigrants of old, the New Breed comes here for the no-strings-attached social benefits, which we hand out like candy. The Ideal of the hard-working immigrant who wants nothing more than to become an American and be a contributing member of the greatest society on Earth was sooo last century. Now we attract immigrants who sneak across borders to use our hospitals, suck on the welfare teat, work off the books, use the schools, etc., who avoid contributing to American society (i.e. they don't pay income taxes) like they would bubonic plague.
If you doubt this, come to my neighborhood and watch the Mexican ladies buy groceries with food stamps while their husbands/boyfriends overrun the local (taxpayer-funded) playing fields waving Mexican flags, playing a game most Americans consider gayer than Tim Gunn.
Detroit, and cities like it, will never be 'saved' by an influx of more immigrants. If anything, the problems in those cities will become worse as they become government-sponsored ethnic enclaves full of people who are never encouraged (or made) to assimilate because that would offend everyone's multi-culti sensibilities, and deprive the democratic party of easily-manipulated voters. The solution to the problems of Detroit are not to be found in a mass migration from Afghanistan, Mexico, or Upper Volta; they are to be found in ordinary citizens, exercising their rights in a responsible fashion, auditing their public servants and demanding better services for their tax dollars. The Government -- at all levels -- should either respond to their will, or get the hell out of their way.
This would mean a wholesale rejection of 20th century 'liberalism' (a misnomer; it's really Libertine-ism, when it isn't outright Socialism), and electoral defeat of the entire Liberal establishment, including the parasites that cling to the democratic (small 'd' intentional) party like barnacles to a rusty hull; the poverty pimps, the racial hucksters, the unionized douchebags, the professional bureaucrats.
One of the hallmarks of the 2000 Presidential election (the one Al Gore lost, as he attempted to sue his way into the White House) was the incredible lack of literacy shown by many of the democratic voters in Florida (Al Sharpton and Je$$e Jackass called this stupidity-on-display 'disenfranchisement'); many, (according to the Press reports of the time) having been told to 'vote for Number 2' on the now-infamous 'Butterfly Ballot' -- that would have been Gore, except that he was actually Number 3 -- didn't even bother to read the damn thing, even to make certain they punched out the right chad!
Naturally, Gore only demanded a recount in the districts where a large number of minority voters were present, i.e. where he knew all the illiterate folks were. Gore was, in effect, saying "check these districts because we know that's where all the stupid people are!" Hence all the talk about scratches, and dents, and swinging chads, hanging chads, and 'divining the will of the voter, as if someone who punched out Number Two but left a scratch mark at Number 3 should have their vote overturned. Gore, the biggest pile of Number Two in History, had to find ways to turn all those Twos into Threes, even if it meant stealing an election on national television.
Literacy, or rather lack of it, has far-ranging consequences. Just ask Al Gore; he lost the White House because of it, and he's made billions off of fake environMENTALism on the backs of the illiterate, as well. People who can read would know that if you take away carbon dioxide, you kill plants, and thus, destroy the planet's oxygen supply, thereby, killing us.
If you want to know why Detroit is a toilet that rivals the open sewers of Yemen, Somalia or Tegucigalpa, here's your first clue. It's a pity no one in Detroit will ever read this, because if they did they might become embarrassed and do something about it.
And as for Micheal Bloomberg, he's the last person on Earth you should ever ask for advice on anything.
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