The Predictable Comment

What a pointless waste of money!
What a frightful waste of time!
This is lame, disgusting drivel
And it isn’t worth a dime!
What a waste of a reporter
When this clearly isn’t news!
Your priorities are foolish—
Give us something we can use!
This misguided bit of effort,
Lacking substance, style, or taste,
And my time it took to read it
Are an utter, total waste!
That’s ten minutes of my lifetime
That I’ll never, now, get back,
Spent deciphering the writing
Of a clueless, brainless hack!
All this focusing on nothing
When there’s suffering and pain—
What’s the point in what you’ve written?
How does anybody gain?
You should give your unearned paycheck
To a charity, this week,
So someone else can benefit
From something, when you speak.
Editorial discretion
Means the choice was yours to make
But your choices are deplorable
This time, for goodness’ sake!
You must have though it worthy—
I, of course, must disagree
And even brain-dead idiots
Would surely side with me!

My time is very valuable;
You’ve wasted it, you know.
Without a trace of irony
I write to tell you so.

(more, after the jump–) [Read more…]

(The War On) The War On The War On The War On Christmas

It’s Christmas! It’s war! We are under attack!
Though the media try to deny it—
Those liberal bastards are all high on crack
If they think they are worthy to try it!

The War Against Christmas, of course, is quite real—
It’s the fault of the liberal news—
When exposed, it’s a fact that they’d rather conceal,
But that battle is one they will lose!

They’re waging a war on the war against Christmas,
To keep it from gaining attention—
If any war must be remembered, then this must;
For reasons too many to mention!

Where Christians had always controlled the town square
There are atheists trying to change it!
Now all sorts of heathens—it’s too much to bear—
Think it’s equally theirs to arrange it!

The nativity scene by the courthouse was fine
In a land where majority rules
And the chorus could sing of a savior divine
In a pageant, in all public schools

But our place at the courthouse—our place at the top
Was attacked by the atheist horde
And when activist judges said Christians must stop
It was like they were slapping the Lord

They tell us it isn’t attack, but defense—
They’re defending our dear constitution!
The must think we’re really incredibly dense
To believe hating God’s a solution.

We’ll accept nothing less than complete recognition
That Christ is what Christmas is for!
Till then, I’m declaring, this season’s great mission:
The war on the war on the war!

Context, after the jump: [Read more…]

Pity The Atheist…

Pity the atheist, bitter and cold,
Who simply refuses to look
Ignoring the beautiful things to be found
In the pages of one special book.

Pity the atheist’s closed little mind
Which denies any mention of God
Where faithful see castles, and streets paved with gold,
He sees nothing but hollow facade. (continues after the jump…) [Read more…]

If You’re Looking To Give…

The charity of atheists has been in the news a bit, after the tremendous generosity shown toward Doctors Without Borders recently (I link to the Montreal Gazette story because they identify the group as “Atheist redditors”, whereas the Reuters story used the identifier “Irreverent atheists”, despite the fact that the story made no mention of irreverence as a meaningful variable…)

So if you missed out on that chance, and are looking for a charity to support, I’ve got one here that’s good as Gold. It is Gold, actually:

My name is Gold. I’m from Christchurch, New Zealand but currently live in Wellington. I’m planning on travelling a bit and everything I own currently fits on my back. I’m a web developer with a particular focus on Drupal. Despite losing an old school friend after the Feb 22nd quakes in Christchurch I still consider the place home and want to do something to help. I’m at a point in my life where it’s the right time to do that.

I have some friends in common with Gold, and have shared a small handful of emails with him, and he strikes me as the sort of person who leads with his heart. He saw the earthquake devastation in Christchurch firsthand, and could not sit back and do nothing. So if you’re looking to give…There are three separate charities Gold is raising money for. Take a look.

Believers, Or Story-Tellers?

Over on NPR’s 13.7 Cosmos And Culture blog, a couple of recent posts caught my eye. Marcello Gleiser, theoretical physicist (which I add, in part, to show that his expertise is not in, say, psychology or biology) writes that “To be human is to believe“:

Humans are believing animals. Perhaps that’s even a way of defining our species: we are the high-functioning primates from planet Earth who have achieved consciousness and, with it, the ability to believe.

We seem to be incapable of living our lives without believing that there is something bigger than us, something beyond the “merely” human. Okay, not all of us, but clearly the vast majority of humans.

Barbara King, on the other hand (Biological Anthropologist), describes us as “Homo narrans: Humans as story-tellers (and listeners)“, emphasizing “the deeply ingrained human propensity for story-telling.” (The blog post itself is brief, but King joins in the comments, which are so far removed from “comments” on, say, Fox News, that I really think they are a separate species.)

Are we believers because we are storytellers? Are we storytellers because we are believers? I suppose, in part, it’s all chickens and eggs, and the origins of this aspect of humanity doesn’t fossilize (although King suggests cave paintings as the first illustrations to stories).

My musings, after the jump: [Read more…]

Fashionable Nonsense

I tried on a new piece of clothing
It was fuzzy and silken and red
It looked quite a lot like a sweater
But there wasn’t a hole for my head.
I struggled to put it on anyway,
But no matter what angle I tried
My arms found their sleeves without problem,
But my head stayed completely inside.
There’s something that’s wrong with this picture
And I’m quite at a loss, what to do—
So I talked to the guy at the counter…
He suggested I try it in blue.

It may be the style, or the fashion
But it keeps me from using my head
So instead of just wishing it fit me
I’ll try something different instead.

Context.

Weird Dream

I dreamed last night, of termites—big and nasty, black and red—
They poured out from a shoebox and they crawled beneath my bed
A sea of bulbous bodies that was looking for their queen
I dreamed, last night, of termites; what the blazes could that mean?

I (perhaps fortunately) remember my dreams only very rarely. This one was just…icky. Fortunately, I (usually) don’t have to torture myself trying to figure out what my dreams mean, cos they just fade away. I did have one once that I spent three days convincing myself was just a dream.

What’s the strangest dream you’ve ever had? And no, it doesn’t have to A) mean anything, or B) rhyme. (reminds me, I did dream an entire dream in ballad form once, in high school.)

Now, This Is A Holiday Tradition I Can Get Behind!

The days have grown shorter; the nights have grown longer—
Our spirits are weaker, and have to grow stronger
We think we’re all right, but we couldn’t be wronger
It’s Christmas—it’s time to beware!
The Krampus is coming—he’s horribly scary!
His job is quite simple; he’s coming to carry
Bad children away, so we’d better be wary
And only go out if you dare!

More, after the jump: [Read more…]

The New Journalism

Our story needs some punching up—perhaps a pithy quote—
But there’s no one here to interview—well, none of any note.
Could we maybe find an activist to share his point of view?
Oh, but one would be unbalanced, so we’d better look for two.
Yes, the more extreme, the better, cos we really need the scoop,
And it doesn’t really matter if it’s just a splinter group—
Just as long as they’re identified by something in their name
We can pretty much be certain that their views are all the same.

So extremists show up everywhere to share extremist views
And it’s “wingnut versus wingnut” as a substitute for news.

Context, after the jump: [Read more…]