Sorry, but this is just creepy. I am a very small cuttlefish in a big internet pond, and I very rarely get the sort of nasty emails that some of my FtB colleagues do. So it was a bit shocking, today, to check my stats and see (to be utterly honest, I get very few links, so even one shows up as significant) the search term “Kill Atheists” leading here.
Kill atheists? In what context could that possibly be acceptable?
It appears that the searching site is Dutch, which actually makes me even more creeped out. Nobody hates the Dutch, and the Dutch hate nobody (and my sister-in-law is Dutch!)… but Kill Atheists? What is more, it would appear that on this particular search, my blog was the number one hit!
Anyway, for whatever reason whoever it was searched “Kill Atheists”… this is what they found. Under the title “Why don’t atheists just kill themselves?” (you can see the context there at the link, or just read on for the verse). It is a verse I am actually particularly proud of, inspired by Warren Zevon and a ton of internet comments asking “why don’t atheists just kill themselves?”. I’ve been thinking about it quite a lot recently, for reasons unrelated to today’s post. Here it is:
I’d constructed the ultimate sandwich
Perfection in bread, cheese, and meat
But there’s something I don’t understand, which
Has been making it harder to eat
See, although it is surely delightful
There’s a truth that I cannot suspend
That at some point, I’ll reach the last bite full
And the pleasure will come to an end
And my life, too, is not everlasting
And the Reaper will pay me a call
It’s the same, whether gorging or fasting
So why am I eating at all?
Since nothing in life lasts forever
There’s one life, all too brief, here on earth
The argument’s not even clever
That a transient joy has no worth
There are joys in this life to be tasted
There are days filled with utter delight
There is too little time to be wasted
There’s a sandwich—enjoy every bite!
So… That’s your choice–a bad poem about sandwiches and life, or Kill Atheists.
Maybe I should have written about pie.
Hey, seriously, if someone wants to say “it was me, sorry, this is the perfectly reasonable reason I used that search term, this is what I was looking for, no need to worry”, I would be the first person to be happy about that.
Just sayin’ .
The Internets is a very strang place.
e
Chigau, your comments left me giggling for quite some time. I had started out trying to parse a pun on Sturm und Drang, but transmogrified. Strang und Durm? Couldn’t place it. Then the penny dropped. Ah. “e”.
Ahhhh yes. We cannot be elected to office, nor accepted when we come out of the closet because we are so evil. I am often astounded by how hated a person is who merely seeks a different view. At least you were only threatened with death and not forced to join that person’s church.
Sincere apologies from this here Dutchman, who would not want to see anyone killed for whatever reason.
That’s hyperbole of course (don’t know what the current mood in the Netherlands is, but a lot of Dutch have expressed active hatred towards the Germans for a long time). Does anybody hate us? Maybe the Belgians/Flemish dislike us… Indonesians? Surinamese?
I wonder which site it is you’re talking about. Or perhaps I don’t want to know. The comments on various Dutch newspaper sites can be disheartening enough.
@ chig and Cuttle
‘Strang’ too.
A form of ‘Strong’, seems to be mainly ME
e.g.
c1400 Rule St. Benet lxiv. 43 Sisters þat er strang and of gude lyuyng.
?c1200 Ormulum l. 7896 Forr cnape child bitacneþþ uss Strang mahht i gode dedess.
etc. etc…
:-)
I dinna think anything inspired by The Zevon could be bad. The bullshit idea that faith in the sky monster is the only reason to be is all too common.
It’s a search engine mash-up of search terms,
Not a meaningful context at all.
The questioner’s digging, like earth worms,
Blindly crawled near to where the words fall.
It’s probably just an anomaly. For instance, I originally learned of your site when I inadvertently typed ‘ cephalopoet’ in the search field when researching something about squid.
Your experience probably came about when someone wanted to examine how small non-believing crustaceans cope with being at the bottom of the food chain.
Theo Van Gogh was murdered for believing much like yourself by a Dutch man of Moroccan heritage. They are still looking for Hirsi Ali to do the same. Europe has changed a lot.
Cuttlefish
I’m happy I gave a smile. Thanks for the sammich.
On my (now defunct) blog, I once did a post on my deconversion from Christianity. Somebody commented on that post, claiming that that a google search of “how to get an atheist saved” brought my site up as the first result. They said they’d pray for me to find Jesus again.
Lesson learned: Google can apparently be weird sometimes.
I, for the record, hate the dutch. I hate their flat lowland terrain. I hate their love of bicycles. I hate their profound height. I hate that bar where an older dutch woman told me I look like her son and sexually propositioned me at 2AM. But most of all I hate that combo of mushrooms and spiced beer that had me seriously considering her offer, and those products were dutch too.
“Nobody hates the Dutch, …”
{from the Merry Minuet…}
Italians hate Yugoslavs
South Africans hate the Dutch <——
And I don't like anybody very much.
As a bit of a contrarian and pessimist, that song has always resonated with me in a probably unhealthy way.
And we know for certain that some lovely day
Someone will set the spark off
And we will all be blown away!
Eat well, stay fit, Die Anyway