Vote No On 1!

If you have friends or relatives in Maine
Who are sane
Or whom you can convince to do what is clearly right for us all
Give them a call.
Whether they are mobsters
Or stereotypical caricatures in slickers and sou’westers fishing for lobsters
Whether they are calm or jittery
Whether they live as far north as Madawaska, or as far south as Kittery
Today is the day, for every woman and every man
To do what they can
To promote
The vote.

Seriously… I know I have a few readers in Maine. I am fairly certain they are already going to vote. Anyone else, take a minute or two and search through your email address book; if you have friends or family in Maine, take an additional minute to make sure they are not going to sit this one out. If they won’t vote for themselves, maybe they’ll vote on your behalf. Vote No On One.

If your friend happens to be a member of one of the churches opposing gay marriage, simply remind them that there are churches today that already approve of gay marriage, and that their vote could set a precedent for control of church policy by the state. It is in their own best interest not to set that precedent. Vote No On One.

If your friend decides to argue with you, call them up. Let them rant and rave as long as they want to… preferably until just after polls close.

Vote No On One.

I’m Cuttlefish, and I approved this message.

The Bells! (Arizona Courts Side With Neighbors, Silence Church)


I

Hear the churches with the bells
Recorded bells!
What a load of excrement their melody fortells!
How they started up one morning
As the neighbors tried to sleep!
With an utter lack of warning
And no beauty there adorning—
A recording! Clearly cheap!
Crying, “Hear, hear, hear!”
To the folks who live too near
To the audio recoding that malevolently wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells—
From the Christ the King Cathedral and its bells.

II

Hear the neighbors’ busy bells—
Telephone bells!
Hear the litigation their cacophony foretells!
Though the effort was a waste,
Hear them speak to their distaste,
To the Bishop of the church
And to the cops;
As for quietude they search,
Though the heavenly loudspeaker on its perch
Never stops!
At annoyance it excels!
Nearly causing epileptic seizing spells!
How it swells!
How it smells
Like dead Fish! It compels
The neighbors to hotels,
From the staying there and playing
Of the bells, bells, bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells—
From the taping, no escaping from the bells!

III

Hear the loud, disgruntled bells—
Bishop’s bells!
What a tale of persecution, Here where Jesus dwells!
In the sermons every week
An exemption’s what they seek!
Special treatment for their acts
For the facts are not the facts
In this case!
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the court
In a mad expostulation, even prayer as last resort!
Digging lower, lower, lower,
Though it’s louder than a mower,
And the senses it’s assaulting,
More annoying than exalting
To the neighbors they have to face!
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale the Bishop tells
Of despair!
Hear him brattle, bleat, and roar
Till his vocal cords are sore!
As he’s breathing in the sacrilegious air!
Yet the congregation’s ears
Filled with twanging
And with clanging
Will ignore the neighbor’s fears!
Yes, the congregation stays
With the jangling
And the wrangling,
And no mercy it displays,
For the begging and the pleading of the neighbors to the bells
Of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells—
To the painful and disdainful Christian bells!

IV

Hear the judgment of the bells—
Judicial bells!
With the judgment of a Solomon, their legal might compels!
The opinion of the court
Now, the Bishop’s will, will thwart,
With legitimate authority to bear!
In every case they see
They require you and me
To be fair
And the people—ah, the people—
Like the Bishop with his steeple—
See him there!
See him twisting and denying
With his sanctified hot air
Parsing words that border lying
They are neither true nor holy
They lie partially or fully
All to fools!
And his church it is that tolls,
His recording, there, that rolls
Rolls
Annoyance from the bells!
And the Bishop fairly swells
From the pride of ringing bells!
At the pulpit, now he yells;
Wasting time, time, time
Now convicted of a crime
For the ringing of the bells
Of the bells—
Wasting time, time time
Now convicted of a crime
For the tolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells—
For recordings of his bells,
Wasting time, time, time,
And the bells, bells, bells,
Which he sullied with his crime,
In the playing of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells—
For the blasting of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells—
For the playing of the tape-recorded bells.

With humble and sincere apologies to Edgar Allan Poe.

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How Not To Treat A Book

To pick and choose from Origin,
Although it feels like libel,
Is only treating Darwin’s book
The way Ray treats the Bible;
Omitting chapters here and there
And redefining “fitness”?
He does the same with Holy Writ
And gladly bears false witness!
He makes his way through every book
A picker and a chooser;
With equal treatment everywhere–
Consistently a loser.

Over at the US News & World Report blogs, the God and Country blog is giving much too prominent a soapbox to creationist liar Ray “bananaman” Comfort, arguably giving him much more authority than he deserves by pairing him with Eugenia Scott.

Bananaman takes advantage of this disproportionate pairing by asking “If I am (as Professor Dawkins says) “an ignorant fool,” why are so many feeling threatened by what I’ve written?” Nice spin, actually. I suppose that a gnat is likewise all puffed up with importance when it can stir a lion to casually bat at the annoying little pest. “If I am such an insignificant little nothing, how is it that I can force a lion to–*squish*”. And Scott obligingly renders the little creature into its component parts, pointing out that Bananaman had removed several chapters of Darwin’s writing, then claimed in his “introduction” that Darwin had not sufficiently addressed points that were covered in those chapters! It appears that the gnat has been shamed into including those chapters in upcoming printings, but his “introduction” continues to mislead, something which I was almost certain there was a commandment prohibiting.