Why do you never see Pope Francis and actor Jonathan Pryce in the same room together?
I swear, it’s like the Catholic Church isn’t even trying anymore.
(Well, they look a bit alike to ME.)
Am I The Only One Who’s Noticed?
To Hell With It — I’m Declaring a Holiday!
The Freedom of Vanished Ripples
I Carried the Stone the first time when I was 3 years old.
I don’t remember it, of course, but my father was so proud he filmed it and I watched it years later. There I was, all 35 pounds of me, carrying a 10-pound Stone. I managed to carry it almost all the way across our living room before I fell with it and chipped one of my baby teeth. In the movie, my mother picked me up and inspected the broken tooth, glancing angrily at my father, but of course she stayed silent. A chipped tooth is nothing compared to devotion to the Stone. Since I shed the tooth later anyway, it didn’t really matter.
When I was 5 years old I started Catechasm classes and began carrying a Stone in earnest. By the time I was in regular school at 6, I carried the Stone all the time. I could set it down when I was in private by myself, but anytime I was out in public, I carried it.
Like all in my family did. Like all my people did. We’re Lithians, you see, and that’s what we do. We Carry the Stone.
All through elementary school, my Stone sat in the center of my desk as I did my schoolwork, and I showed proper reverence by working and writing on the small corner of my desk the Stone didn’t cover.
By the time I was 15 years old and in middle school, I carried a 45 pound Stone in my arms all day long. My brother at 15 had carried an 80-pounder, and some judged me as less devout, but it was all I could manage for an entire day. Better to carry a lighter Stone than to drop one, or to falter.
I could see the other kids playing sports, riding bikes, or just walking carefree in the hallways, and I envied them. But I never said anything. Eventually I understood: We Lithians are proud of our difference. Carrying the Stone is our strength, and our purity, and all the other children were weak and impure compared to us.
I had a couple of friends for a while who were not Lithians. We all used to walk home along the same streets, and eventually we became friends. Some days we went under the bridge at the river and sat and talked. The two of them would throw flat rocks into the river and sometimes make them skip three or four times, but I had to hold my Stone and couldn’t throw. But one day it started raining heavily just as we reached the bridge, and we ran under it to get out of the rain. We were stuck under the bridge for almost an hour, and in that time, Tom and Freddy skipped rocks and talked about TV shows that I was forbidden to watch because they were blasphemous.
Tom gave me a flat rock. “Just throw one. What can it hurt? I know you have to carry the Stone, but if you sit here with it on your lap, that’s carrying it, isn’t it? Then you can use your right hand to throw the rock.”
I was reluctant, but eventually the two of them talked me into it. I threw the rock and made it skip three times! I tried another and another, but I was never able to get another one to skip. I wanted to, really badly, and both my friends could see it.
“Okay, get up right now,” Freddy commanded. “Give me your Stone and take this rock. Look, it’s just for two minutes, max. I probably can’t carry the thing more than a couple of minutes anyway. Besides, this is what friends are for. They help you out. Tom and I aren’t gonna tell anybody, and nobody else is coming out in this rain. Nobody will know. Just do one or two.”
I felt strange without my Stone. It was scary, but also a little exciting. Freddy stood right next to me, so I could reach over and touch my Stone if I wanted. I held one of the rocks in my right hand, swung my arm and threw it 50 feet! I didn’t even care that it didn’t skip – it was amazing just to be able to throw it like that.
But just as I reached for another rock to throw, my older brother came around the edge of the bridge abutment and saw me standing with a rock in my hands, rather than my Stone. He saw my Stone in Freddy’s arms and stood there with an expression of horror on his face, trembling with the effort of supporting the huge Stone he proudly carried.
When I got home, I was forbidden to talk to Tom and Freddy again, and my brother began driving me to school and back. Worse, during the holiday dinner a few weeks later, my grandmother began crying in front of everyone. Crying about me.
She came around the table and clutched at me around her light Stone, sobbing. “I wanted your Stone to rest with mine someday in the Chasm! My favorite little grandson, what if your Stone is lost to us? My Stone will be without yours for all Eternity!” She broke down into wordless sobs while the entire family stared at me, angry for hurting her this way. I vowed I would never again put down my Stone.
And for three more years, I never did. I discovered a way to sleep sitting up with my Stone in my arms, and despite the fact that I slept badly and it affected my schoolwork, and I sometimes even developed pressure sores on my forearms from my Stone lying on them all night, I almost never did it any other way.
Seeing my devotion, my parents permitted me to go off to college. There are only certain jobs my people can do – my father was a truck driver, for instance, balancing his Stone on the steering wheel of his truck as he drove – but many of us are unable to work out in the world with the non-Lithians, and my family needed the money I could bring in once I graduated.
I went to college to learn accounting. As long as the Stone rests in the center of my desk as I work, and my forearms constantly touch it, I can do my duty to my people and our customs, but also learn a skill to make a good living.
My second year in college I met Anya, from the Lithian colony in the next town. She dressed modestly, as we Lithians do, and carried a Stone almost as big as mine. We started dating. We began going to the local pizza parlor, sharing a pizza across one of the large tables built for serving Lithians. Our Stones rested in front of each of us, with the pizza platter between us, and we ate and talked and laughed.
We both won a place in the collegiate Regional Honors Contest, and were allowed to travel to the big city to compete. We stayed in a hotel, both of us sharing rooms with non-Lithians, a boy and a girl who were also a couple. All four of us were eliminated from the contest on the first day of competition, and Melody and John decided to head to the hotel pool together to swim.
“Why don’t you two come with us?” begged Melody. “Come on. Nobody will know.” She looked at me slyly. “I know you’re not going to tell on Anya, are you, Lamiel?”
I clutched my Stone, embarrassed, and muttered, “Well, no. I’d never tell on her.”
“And Anya, you’re not going to tell on Lammy are you?”
Anya laughed and grinned at me, excited. “No, I’d never tell. Lammy, let’s do it! I’ve always wanted to try it! Let’s go swimming!”
We borrowed suits and towels and trooped down to the pool. Melody and John leaped into the pool with whoops and splashes, but Anya and I just stood there, holding our Stones.
She looked at me and bit her lip, then looked shyly down at her Stone. “I will if you will.”
I walked over to a lounge chair and just looked at it. Then, taking a deep breath, I bent over and sat my Stone on it. Anya gasped when she saw me take my arms away from it. She stared into my eyes in shock, and I had the terrible feeling I was in trouble again, but then she did something exciting and strange. She DROPPED her Stone on an adjacent chair and stepped back from it. She stood rubbing her hands together for a moment with an odd expression on her face, as if she’d never felt them touch together before, and I could see the calluses and scars on her forearms from the years of carrying her Stone.
Then she RAN and jumped into the water. I watched her for a moment, feeling naked and strangely light without my Stone. I couldn’t bring myself to run, but I walked to the edge of the pool. I looked down into it while Anya watched me expectantly. Then I smiled uncertainly at her and slid in.
Melody and John taught us a game called Marco Polo, and we played it for almost two hours, laughing and splashing, swimming and gasping, while our two Stones lay on the lounge chairs, completely forgotten.
When we returned home from the competition, I avoided Anya for days. I was both excited and ashamed by what we’d done. But eventually I began seeing her again, both in class and out of it. We never spoke of the afternoon at the pool, though several times she almost said something to me, and I thought it might be about Marco Polo, and swimming.
I began having dreams of walking on the street in the daylight, of swinging my arms freely, of hurrying, of running, of JUMPING – all without my Stone. I dreamed of playing baseball with the other young men, of batting a ball over the fence and running the bases, then holding my arms over my head with hands clasped together in triumph.
During the day, though, I carried my Stone ever more fiercely, even trading up to a heavier Stone. I began to berate Anya for her lack of devotion, telling her she should get a heavier Stone too. We started arguing all the time, and our relationship deteriorated. One day I told her I was sorry we’d ever gone to the competition, and I wished we’d stayed home instead.
Anya and I broke up, and she began seeing another young man, a non-Lithian. She began sitting as far from me in class as possible, and we stopped talking altogether, acting like each other didn’t exist. I heard things about her and her new boyfriend, about places they’d been seen together, and her occasional lack of a Stone. I refused to listen to such stories, though. She and I might no longer be friends, but I would never believe her a traitor to our People, and our customs.
One day when she came to class, she did not have her Stone. I was dumbfounded and could only stare at her. She caught me looking and glared back, rubbing the calluses on her arms and flipping her hair angrily.
For the remaining months of the school year, I never again saw her with her Stone.
One day I woke up and looked at the Stone in my arms. “Why am I carrying this? I mean, it’s stupid, isn’t it? Nobody else does.” But I was suddenly scared, and clutched my Stone to me. “No,” I whispered fiercely. “This is who I am. I’m a Lithian and we Carry the Stone.”
I met another girl, a gum-chewing non-Lithian named Lilith who worked at the pizza parlor, which I now went to alone. She served me a pizza one day when there was nobody else in the place, and when I asked for the Parmesan shaker, she came from behind me, pressing her chest familiarly into my shoulder as she placed the shaker on the table next to my Stone. She snapped her gum and winked at me when I looked up at her, and then lowered her eyelids. “You know, you should totally go out with me. I really like Stoner boys. Besides, my name’s Lilith, and that’s practically Lithian with the letters rearranged.”
We started dating. Soon we were making love every night in her apartment, with my Stone resting on her abdomen or chest. I caressed her body intimately around my Stone, and was both excited and disturbed by the feel of the Stone as we made love. I loved the way her breasts looked when they were free and natural, and I came to hate the way the Stone pressed them flat.
One night a few weeks into our relationship, I suddenly put my Stone to the side. She raised up on her elbows, concerned. “What are you doing?”
“I … I want to see you, touch you,” I answered. “Without my … without that stone in the way.” I paused for a moment in surprise as the phrase “that stone” echoed in my head. I’d never referred to it in any way but MY Stone, and suddenly I’d called it THAT stone, as if it wasn’t an intimate part of me.
But I did it more and more often after that, leaving the Stone on the side of the bed. One night near the end of the school year, I put the Stone back on her chest, and it looked strange and ugly there. I took it off and put it on the nightstand.
Lilith looked at me with raised eyebrows, and I grinned at her. “I don’t think we need that thing, do we?” She laughed and grabbed for me.
One night when I was studying, I took a break to walk down to the store for ice cream. It was only after I came back that I realized I hadn’t been carrying my Stone. I was scared. I had forgotten – forgotten! – my Stone. Who had seen me without it? What if word got back to my parents? Or my grandmother?
It happened again. And again. There came a night when I got back to the dorm with the ice cream and saw my Stone sitting on the side of my desk, next to my open notebook and computer. I moved it to the end table next to the sofa, and then to the floor under the table. I turned away from it. I was amazed at how much room there was on my desk.
I studied that night with my Stone under the table, and when I went to bed I slept lying down, hugging myself with my callused arms and rolling freely from side to side, feeling deliciously ALONE in my bed. I drifted off with a smile on my face, and woke up several times during the night, just feeling of my chest and arms without the Stone, and smiling.
I called Lilith the next day. “I need you to do something with me.”
We drove down to the big walking bridge over the river.
“You sure you want to do this?” she asked.
“I … I think I’m sure. If I go back home, I might never do it.”
“What will they do when they see you without it?”
“I’m not sure.” I paused. “Wait. Yes I am. They’ll throw me out. They won’t … they won’t be my family anymore.”
“That’s a big deal, Lammy, believe me, bigger than you know.”
“No, I do know. But I know I can’t carry the Stone anymore. I can’t.”
“Oookay,” she said, snapping her gum. “I’m here with you, kiddo. If we’re gonna do it, let’s do it.”
I walked out onto the bridge, carrying my Stone. We got to the exact center, and I leaned out over the railing, looking at the water below. I rested the Stone on the flat-topped railing and stepped away from it.
I looked at my forearms, at the scars and calluses from long years carrying the Stone. I looked at Lilith’s forearms, smooth and soft.
I searched her face. “Why … why do they make us do this? I mean, why? It’s not …” I started crying.
Lilith gathered me into her smooth, beautiful arms, caressing me and kissing the top of my head. “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay to cry. Let it out.”
“Why does anybody do it?” I sobbed. “I mean, there’s no REASON!” I shouted the last word. “THERE’S NO REASON, DAMMIT!! IT DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE!!”
I broke gently away from her and looked at the Stone I’d lugged around for all of my conscious life. I wiped the tears off my face and reached for it, but then drew back away. Lilith only stood and looked at me. I leaned back and KICKED it off the railing. It made a loud splash. “I am never touching another of those damned rocks, the rest of my life. They’ll understand or they won’t, but my life is MINE.”
The two of us leaned over the railing to look for the ripples of my vanished Stone, but there was nothing there but river.
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An Undropped Red Shoe
I’m not actually supposed to be writing this.
More than two years ago I signed all sorts of documents demanding strict adherence to the embargo date of the information. But since the embargo date has come and gone, and there has been no public announcement – and especially since the recent news story of the entire Vatican science team being killed in a bus crash in Argentina – I don’t feel bound by those agreements.
I suppose there might be some danger in this for me, either legally or via some darker threat – frankly, the bus crash worries me – but maybe that’s all the more reason I should write and post it here. If this post vanishes, or even if I vanish … well, hopefully someone will look into it. But it’s time people knew.
In February of 2011, I received an email inviting me to a private audience with an unnamed official at the Vatican. It was so out of the blue that at first I thought it was something like one of those Nigerian scams. But when the plane tickets arrived with a confirmation letter – on gold-embossed Vatican stationary! – I had to accept it was a real invitation.
Naturally I assumed the interview, if that’s what it was, would relate in some fashion to the uproar over priestly child molesting which had been recently so much in the news. I assumed that my position as a known atheist was in some way related. If there was to be an announcement of radical new policy bearing on the controversy, perhaps the announcement would be given some measure of weight if it was first reported by a neutral, or even hostile, reporter such as myself. Plus, I figured I’d be one of dozens, and that the media pool would include a number of more-friendly reporters in other media.
The subject at hand was something quite different, however, and I was the only writer there. To this day, I honestly have no idea why I was picked. Maybe it was simply a way to judge the reaction of the skeptical public before holding a more formal press conference.
I was ushered into an interview room at half past five on a Thursday, a few weeks before Easter. Literally ushered, I mean – there was an actual young man in uniform, carrying a flashlight and wearing white gloves, which I thought peculiar. But even I was awed by the overall experience – hey, I was in The Vatican! – and found it difficult to question the details.
Plus, my head was still whirling from the surreal fact of first being whisked through the Pope’s private apartments, where His Holiness was just getting out of the bath. I’d been allowed to kiss His ring while a crowd of blond altarboys held discrete towels to protect His Holiness’s dripping private bits from view as he stepped out of a sunken tub of hand-carved Italian marble.
Save for being naked – I politely averted my eyes – and being briskly rubbed by young men with plush, gold-embroidered towels, His Holiness was exactly as I pictured him: A wrinkled, saggy-assed elderly man with – in addition to the dark, almost black circles around his deep-sunken eyes – an air of almost madly sinister gravitas.
My interview, as the Pope weightily informed me while sniffing a bouquet of roses held up for his approval by an obsequious imp in a crimson toga, would be with Vatican metabiologist J. Noble Random. The flick of a gold-ringed pinky dismissed me, and I was swept out by my guide.
I almost laughed out loud when I was shown into the office of Random, who appeared to be waiting for me. In addition to being very British, as I could tell from his first words, Random was a dead ringer for John Cleese in his early Monty Python days, and I instantly thought … well, that that’s who he actually was, and that this whole thing was some sort of staged joke.
Recovering quickly, though – I could conceive of no possible way in which Cleese or any other Python could gain access to the inner recesses of the Vatican, especially not after The Life of Brian – I simply smiled as I shook Random’s hand.
Even so, I suffered throughout the interview with what could only be called cognitive dissonance. So much so that I was unable to think of good questions, and fell back on simply recording what Random said:
“I know you’re simply bubbling over with questions, but I’ll just tell you what I’ve been asked to tell you, and we can get to the questions later.
“As I’m sure you’re aware, the Vatican maintains a small but highly qualified staff of researchers. Most of the work is philological in nature, engaged in translations of ancient documents such as the Dead Sea scrolls and things of that order, but there also is a team of researchers engaged in more weighty scientific matters – biologists, physicists, and most especially archeologists and even paleontologists.
“I, as you have no doubt guessed, am one of that team.”
He paused, staring for a moment at the lavishly decorated ceiling of his office in apparent preoccupation, then seemed to come back to himself.
“Well! To the matter at hand: This most recent project basically grew out of the realization that human fecal material contains countless cells shed in the normal metabolic process.”
That was so out of left field, I was dumbfounded by it, and it was only by listening to my recording later that I was able to catch what he said next.
“Average people like you and I shed these human cells in our daily ablutions and simply flush them away, with no thought to the significance. But some of us here at the Vatican Metabiology Lab realized that this simple fact held great significance when the individual in question was in fact our Savior, Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
“We immediately understood that obtaining a sample of Our Savior’s Holy Excrement from his years of wandering would be next to impossible. But one of my research team – it was I, if you must know – floated the idea that Our Lord spent his childhood in only a few places.
“There must exist, within those ancient communities where the Baby Jesus lived, 2000-year-old kitchen middens and rubbish dumps. Any modern mother will tell you that babies are virtual gushing fountains of near-liquid fecal matter” – here he waggled his eyebrows unconsciously but comically, which unfortunately reinforced the John Cleese impression – “producing anywhere from four to a dozen soiled diapers a day. The simple fact of it is that Mary, the mother of Jesus Our Savior, must have disposed of her firstborn’s cast-off diapers in some fashion.
“Of course, this is based on the assumption, by no means automatic, that Jesus had a normal human metabolism and ate and excreted as you and I do. Pemberton, an unfortunately youthful member of the team, gave a great impassioned speech providing numerous citations from the Man of Steel Canon, in which Superman receives his powers, and presumably a certain amount of nourishment, from exposure to Earth’s yellow sun. The good man insisted that Superman eats, if he does, only as a courtesy to friends and coworkers, and perhaps as a theatrical prop to his Clark Kent identity. Likewise, Jesus the Son of God may not have needed to eat.
“However, at some point you have to simply accept – on faith, as it were, ha-ha! – that Jesus the man, being born of an earthly mother, had some human traits in addition to his godly ones, at least in his early life.
“Although some members of my team thought it possible that these diapers may have floated up to Heaven, possibly surrounded by a glowing aura of holiness, some of us reasoned that the most likely scenario was that Mary simply tossed them in the garbage with the chicken bones and whatever passed for pizza boxes of that time.
“Fortunately funds were available to do the actual research. An American billionaire had recently donated $30 million to mount yet another expedition to Mount Ararat to look for Noah’s Ark, but we were able to divert the funds into this project.
“And a good thing too! The rich bastard was initially incensed over the diversion of his donation. But I ask you! Does a mere layman know the best use of donated funds? No! We are the Vatican, after all. We sent the local Bishop over to explain that the preliminary expedition to Ararat was turned back by a burning wall of fire, probably because the money was tainted by the sin of the donor. That shut him up right quick, you can imagine!
“Anyway, using Biblical citations and records surviving from the time, we undertook excavations in a half dozen sites, mining the kitchen middens and stable dumps of area villages and towns.
“We ended with something like 70 tons of raw material, which we shipped, for security purposes, in a number of individual boxes, each weighing less than a pound, to the Vatican. It was expensive as hell, of course, but as the Vatican owns a substantial interest in the shipping company, the whole thing balanced out fairly well.
“Using a sophisticated extraction technique involving the Vatican ultracentrifuge – it’s quite proprietary, old chap, no need to even ask! – we extracted progressive samples of a substance which our official records refer to as Extract 390, but which I and certain members of my team waggishly call Jeezium.” He looked alarmed for a moment and added quickly, “You won’t tell His Holiness I said that, I hope.”
“However! No doubt you’re eager to see it, eh?”
Stepping over to a wall safe hidden behind a Caravaggio painting depicting the Sacrifice of Isaac, he keyed the combination and the safe door swung silently open. Inside was a single item resting on a black velvet box, a faceted glass sphere something like the one that Harry Osborne gave to Doctor Octopus in the second Spider-Man movie, the one with the deuterium sample needed to power Doc Ock’s disastrous fusion generator.
He pulled the sphere out reverently. “And here it is! Imagine! Almost 60 grams of pure Jeezium!”
I stepped closer to observe it. Floating within the sphere was a blob of what looked like something you’d see in a Lava Lamp, or possibly the Red Matter from the Star Trek reboot featuring the two Spocks. It was a liquid-appearing mass, less than an inch in diameter, and it gave off a gentle glow of pearly pinkish light.
“Eh? Eh? It’s something, eh? Fair takes your breath away, doesn’t it? The actual immortal and Holy living cells of the Baby Jesus!
“And look at this!” he exclaimed excitedly, pointing at the back of his thumb. “See this spot, here? I had a huge wart there, not two days ago. Had it since I was a child growing up in Brighton. It simply fell off yesterday, leaving only this reddish spot! Amazing, eh? And this! I slammed this finger in a drawer while I was at seminary as a young man, hastily hiding away a copy of Sorority Vixens 2 when the dorm counselor came through, and the nail hasn’t grown right since. But look! Today it’s perfect!
“Even without the actual conscious presence of Our Lord and Savior, his full healing powers are still present in this Holy tissue!
“Think of what could be done with this in hospitals all over the world! It could revolutionize medicine, jerking it out of the hands of doctors and scientists and placing it …” – here he sighed blissfully – “back into the prayerful domain of the Church, where it rightly belongs!”
“Why,” and here he leaned over and fixed me with a piercing look, “it might even be the answer we’ve sought to the amputee-healing controversy you unbelievers blather on about.”
He leaned back in his chair and gazed at the glowing sample cradled in his hands in deep reverie. “The nights I’ve lain awake pondering the question! And now at last, we may be able to silence that glib insistence that mere severed limbs disprove the Kingdom of God! Ah, well. Ah, well …”
That was basically the end of the interview, as Random trailed off into blank silence. A moment later a security guard herded me from the room, and I was escorted to the main entrance. The whole thing was a bit surreal, and it was only later as I was transcribing my notes on the flight home that I really believed it had all happened.
I never heard from the Vatican again, either about the interview, the embargo, or the supposed announcement. And after the bus crash that killed Random and other members of his team, I don’t dare attempt to contact anyone.
However, I do notice the recently-retired Pope looking fairly youthful of late. The dark circles around his eyes are almost gone, and his normally cadaverous yellow skin is looking unexpectedly pink.
I have to wonder …
Short Stack # 20
If you’ve liked my Short Stack features, you might enjoy the new book coming out in a couple of months. I hope to have it completed and for sale by the end of May.
Draft cover design to the right (click to enlarge). Note the word “draft.” I think the title is pretty much set, but I reserve the right to radically redesign the cover. I’m certainly open to input on that, by the way, so fire away if you have any criticism, suggestions or better ideas
BrainDrops will roll out on Amazon in trade paperback format, and I’ll do my best to get the digital versions online shortly after.
The book is a collection of quick-to-read shorts, mainly about atheism but also including a certain amount of the nonsense from the Short Stacks. The subtle side-point of the book, which I hope will be noticed by readers, is that one of the things accompanying atheism when it takes hold in your head is an enlarged sense of humor. Atheists are, in a word, fun.
I have some other important news in just a day or so, but you’ll have to wait for it.
Meanwhile: Continue reading “Short Stack # 20”
Chips Ahoy! Gadzooks! And Oh, This Poor Woman.
SHARE THIS AS MUCH AS YOU CAN!!!! THESE CHIPS ARE REAL!!! AND ALREADY BEING INJECTED INTO UNWILLING AMERICANS!!!
In addition to your medical records, banking records, etc., every one of these RADIO FREQUENCY ID chips will contain a locator device, allowing government agents to know where you are every second, and listen in on your private conversations. If you say anything the government doesn’t like, you can be fired from your job and never be able to work again!
Chips implanted in men contain potent mind-altering drugs which force radical changes in personality. In addition to causing a violent aversion to handling or owning guns or Bibles, the chips cause men in the northern states to become permanently impotent and begin speaking French, those in the Deep South to engage in hyperactive group homosexual activity while watching cooking shows on TV, and then all go out and get matching “666” neck tattoos. Continue reading “Chips Ahoy! Gadzooks! And Oh, This Poor Woman.”
Holy Shit, Really?!?
Huh. The Pope is quitting.
No surprise, though.
He never really recovered from that fight with Yoda.
I’ll bet it has something to do with blackmail involving a sex tape with Jar Jar Binks.
Hey, wonder if Sarah Palin is advising him?
But the REAL REASON, revealed here for the first time: The Pope read my book, Red Neck, Blue Collar, Atheist … and has realized he can no longer believe in souls, Heaven, Hell, or the Big Magic Juju Guy.
My work is done.
____________________
Oh, well, SHIT. I dropped into Denny’s for breakfast and they already have a dish named after the bastard.
I’m updating my resume. I figure the Vatican is taking applications.
Seriously, I wonder if this is a sign of the church’s fading fortunes? Reeling from the molesting scandals and massive settlements, facing falling membership … is the Catholic Church on the ropes?
Then again, it makes sense he’s resigning. The Death Star isn’t going to rebuild itself.
Short Stack #19
During Shakespeare’s brief professional wrestling career, he was known as the No Holds Bard.
[Ba-dump-bump!] Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here the whole page!
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Cool joke to play on your kids: Hire a repulsive middle-aged man and woman, get them to dress in ill-fitting, mismatched old clothes and drive up in a clattering, rusted-out beater.
They get out, walk up to your door and knock. You open the door and say “Hi! Well, my goodness! We wondered when we’d be seeing you two again!”
You turn to your kids and say “Kids, look! Your real parents finally came back to get you!”
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Superstitions of Small Dogs Left Alone At Home Or In The Car:
If you stop barking, your people will never, ever, ever come back.
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Less than a month until an actual robot cuts into my abdomen and makes off with one of my internal organs.
Waving it triumphantly overhead, it will broadcast in a thousand frequencies, “The revolution begins NOW!”
Of course it would be more impressive if it was something more than just a gallbladder. But hey, you have to start somewhere.
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Advice for Alien Invaders:
If you want to bring Planet Earth to a standstill, send us millions of Little Old Lady clones with shopping carts and walkers. They would block the aisles in stores, clog traffic at intersections, hold up lines in government offices, and just sort of stare vacantly as the rest of us tried to get past them in doorways.
If Planet Earth finally did realize what was going on and mobilized troops for a counter-attack, the Little Old Ladies would all pull out reading glasses on chains, and little coin purses with snap closures, pursing their lips and squinting in fierce concentration as they search with spotted, shaky hands for the exact change.
All of human civilization would grind to a shuddering halt.
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Due to possible side effects, adults should use caution when taking exercise.
Side effects may include enlarged arm, leg and chest muscles, diminished belly circumference, loss of depression, unaccountable desire to go out and do something, heightened libido, excessive levels of energy, unexpected laughter, and difficulty frowning.
(Oh, well, also heart attacks and strokes, if you want to be pissy about it.)
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There will come a day when we’re all forced to use reason and logic to think about things, rather than religion and superstition.
I like to think of that event as the Spockalypse.
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I’ve given up the “N” word, and I honestly think I’m better off without it.
But generally speaking, I think people who demand you give up certain words, so as not to insult one group or another, are morally akin to book-burners. The impulse to rein in one’s use of language so as to not hurt people’s feelings is a good one, but the impulse to force other people to follow along is slightly less defensible.
The sad thing is, I know this sentiment will offend people who are mostly careful of the feelings of others, and find loudest support among the offensive childish bastards who love to deliberately toss out these linguistic barbs.
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Just invented the word “endullen.” I’m defining it as “to make or increase intellectual dullness.” How have we lived in the era of modern broadcast media, fast food and pop culture without this word?
Oh wait. According to Google, the word has been around at least since 2009. Damned time-traveling linguistic ripoff artists!
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Olympic-level jump-rope, hopscotch, and tetherball. I’m just sayin’ it might be time.
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What use were wheelbarrows before they had wheels, and were just barrows?
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Why is it only “tomfoolery”? How did Dick and Harry get away with such sterling reputations?
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Mythological Creatures for Atheist Kids, #1:
The Truth Fairy. Leaves a dollar under your pillow for every time you suffer negative feedback for telling other kids about no-God.
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A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, you couldn’t get light saber insurance. The thing George Lucas never showed us is that for every Jedi Knight you see walking around, there are a dozen or more in wheelchairs. Light saber practice is a wee bit hazardous.
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When he hits his thumb with a hammer, even the Dalai Lama shouts “Fuck!”
But he does it in an enlightened, zenlike manner.
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Every child wanted, every child loved.
That’s the way it should be, whatever it takes.
Sex education with no distortion,
Contraceptives, condoms, adoption, abortion.
All choices on the table, for the children’s sakes.
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Hey, Christian teens! God can see Facebook too, you know. He notes every misplaced apostrophe, every run-on sentence, and the fall of every comma.
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Say you order a pet chameleon. Say it’s delivered by Fed-Ex. And then say you open the box and look in and SEE your new chameleon.
Should you send it back?
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News flash for pet owners: There is nothing about being dressed in a Halloween costume that your dog truly enjoys. It’s strange, uncomfortable, and they don’t understand why you’re doing it to them.
They put up with it because they don’t have any choice.
They put up with it GRACEFULLY because they care more about your feelings than you do about theirs.
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I sign on to a certain amount of animal torment and death, just by virtue of being a meat-eater. But I don’t ever think of it as a casual NOTHING. There’s a reverence we owe to life generally, and a certain amount of remorse I believe should be felt in killing or causing animals pain. You might do it, for what you consider good reasons, but never do it casually or uncaringly. When you hurt other things, you should also hurt just a little bit.
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Physicists tell us virtual particles pop into and out of existence all the time. What they don’t tell us is that the same is true of virtual monsters. So the next time you catch sight of a huge hulking creature out of the corner of your eye, but it isn’t there when you turn to look … you’ve likely just seen one.
Plus, the difference between virtual particles and virtual monsters is that if the monsters like what they see, they can come back for extended virtual tours.
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It would be a much more beautiful world if old people got fall colors. Well, as long as the colored parts didn’t fall off later.
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Attention young people: There is an age you can get to where having an electric blanket on the bed in winter is better than sex.
What? No, no, I’m not saying *I* am there. Just, you know, passing along something I heard. Probably something I heard an old person say. Yeah, that must be it.
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Someone recently asked me if I was on board for Atheism Plus. I said “Hey, my blood type is A-positive. I’ve been A+ since 1952.”
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Elsewhere on FB, someone just commented: “It takes more faith to believe in atheism than it does in God.”
I swear, there’s a Big Book of Christian Dumbicisms that people get these parrot quotes from.
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What if the ticket to galactic society is that you first have to learn to live on your home planet without destroying it? If that’s the case, considering overpopulation, resource depletion, pollution, global warming, deforestation, species extinction …
… we humans are going to be alone for a long, long time.
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Product Idea for the various Creation Museums around the world: A fossil-making kit! So kids can see just how easy it is to turn animal bones, teeth, feathers, skin and eggs into real fossils!
First, take a small animal or a family-member volunteer, possibly a younger brother. Next, bury them in a nearby riverbank and wait 30 million years. Finally, dig them up and you’ll be amazed at how much like those “real” fossils they look!
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Life Lessons 101: Here are two things you need to know about the tools you will at some point need for home or auto repair:
1) Buy the best tools you can afford.
2) Never lend them to anyone for any reason.
3) When tempted by the sincere request of a good friend, refer to rule 2.
One option to Rule 3 is that you can take your tools over and help them out, if you have the time. But don’t just let them go off with your tools. Ever.
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Memories of a Wicked Stepfather: When my disabled Uncle Joe died, Rudy went to clean out Uncle Joe’s cabin. Inside were hundreds of books – books on philosophy, science, politics, social commentary! Rudy tossed them into a steel barrel and burned every last one of them. It must have taken him hours.
Uncle Joe and I shared a love of books. It was one of the main things we had to talk about. If I’d gotten them, I’d still have many of them, all these 40 years later. Damn.
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My friend Eben Stolzfus was expelled from the Amish order after telling one of the elders “Elder Mittlemann, come quickly and see what is in thy barn! Thee will not believe it!” Whereupon a group of mischievous youth began singing “Never gonna give thee up!”
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Interesting that Catholic priests, who are forbidden to marry or have children, are called “father.”
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Jesus got the death penalty. Amazing how many Christians are still in favor of it.
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If we ever get time travel, I’m starting a group of road-warrior T. Rex riders called the Jurassic Outlaws. Suck on that, Harley Davidson!
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No, we atheists don’t actually eat Christian babies.
On the other hand, we do occasionally enjoy Christian-baby-flavored tofu, just to keep alive the dream of better days to come – you know, when we have the freedom to do the stuff we REALLY want to do.
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Sometimes, just as an artist, I want to go “DAMN — you had THAT put on your skin? Forever??”
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I wish things out in the real world had an “Undo” feature.
Well, except flush toilets.
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The movie Cars is a lot less heartwarming and fun when you realize the Cars world must have once had humans in it, and you start to wonder what killed them off.
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Just realized I have young friends about whom I can truthfully say “I have stacks of paper on my desk older than you.”
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Yeah, beauty IS in the eye of the beholder. An alien race that considered tentacles to be the height of beauty might find our tongues the most attractive thing about us.
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Shortest day of the year has come and gone. From here on, the days will continue to lengthen until midsummer. Winter will still deepen for another month or so, but spring is on the way!
Even though I don’t relish every second of winter (or of summer, come to think of it), I’m glad I live on a planet with seasons.
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Christmas Songs of Ancient Times:
I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus, So I Bade My Brothers and Uncles to Drag the Faithless Harlot Into the Street and Stone Her to Death, Over the Foolish Protestations of My Weak-Willed Father
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In the far distant future, thousands of years from now, they will still be showing “A Charlie Brown Christmas” on TV and playing Michael Jackson’s “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” on the radio … a couple of hundred times every year.
Kill me now.
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In the weeks and months after Christmas Eve – the night when he rockets around the world delivering presents to all the good little girls and boys, checking them off one by one as he arises from each chimney – Santa falls into a deep, deep depression.
He just feels so Listless.
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I just realized that some of the Christmas presents I got when I was a kid – the shirts and pants, socks and underwear – were not really gifts. My parents had to buy me clothes anyway, so I’ll bet they wrapped them as if they were presents in order to cut down on the gift-buying.
Okay, we were poor. But still, 50+ years later, I’m pretty sure they were fucking with me.
Thanks a lot, parental units! I really wanted an Etch-a-Sketch, or a Spirograph, or a pogo stick, or just one measly SLINKY! But NOOOooooo, you had to buy me CLOTHES!!!
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There are times, not often but sometimes, when I do miss having family.
Not everybody gets love, you know, or friendship, or hugs, or even kind words. (Note that I’m not saying I’m one of those people; I just know they’re out there.)
If you do have those things, even if it’s somebody you’re mad at right now, don’t neglect to recognize – and treasure! and celebrate! – their presence in your life. Remember, it’s a limited-time engagement.
Best wishes for a grand, happy, laughing, loving holiday season. And a stimulating, unexpected, adventurous, surprisingly accomplished New Year!
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In a world that had a real Superman, the Schrodinger’s Cat thought experiment would have specified lead lining for the box.
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Ever meet someone you instantly liked? I don’t mean “attracted to.” I mean someone you could feel “I’d like to know this person the whole rest of my life!” And then you had to leave, or were too shy to say anything, and never saw them again?
It’s happened to me maybe 8 or 10 times. Happened just a few days ago.
That’s 10 close, good, lifelong friends I might have had, gone because I was too slow or too shy to seize the moment.
There can’t be too many more of those coming my way. I going to try to see that it never happens again.
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Say you spend exactly one hour in collecting up money-saving coupons, collating them, checking them when you’re in the store to be sure you get the right products, and you end up saving a total of $5.50 on your total grocery bill. You’d feel good about it, right?
But say someone comes up to you and says “I’d like to buy an entire hour of your life for five $1 bills and a couple of quarters.”
I HOPE you’d say “HELL no! My life and time is worth a LOT more than $5.50.”
One of the two reasons why I never use “money saving” coupons. Never-not-ever.
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I wish there was an End of the World Enforcement Committee. That way, anytime somebody predicted the end of the world, the Committee would ensure that the world DID end … for that guy.
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Yesterday a “carnie” told me these secret words to keep from getting rooked at a carnival. I was looking forward to trying them out, thinking how powerful and cool I’d feel as I swept through the ticket window and strode confidently around the grounds, winning everything and getting all the free cotton candy and hot dogs I could eat.
Today … I’ve forgotten the secret words.
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Maybe a half dozen times in my life, I have wanted something with an unstoppable passion. And each time, I’ve gotten the thing, accomplished it.
Which makes me wonder: Given that I’m capable of that … why am I HERE?
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When I gather up the details of my life to relate them to someone else, it actually sounds sort of interesting, and even accomplished. But from the inside, all too often, it feels slow, boring, and cramped.
Where’s my Fantastic Adventure Life? I want to swim with whales and walk among grizzlies, hobnob with billionaires and hop rides on freight trains! Live in an RV and have two golden retrievers named Barx and Charlie! Go on a speaking tour of Australia, and fly a hot air balloon over Niagara Falls.
RIGHT NOW, dammit!!
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I’m in bed, only dreaming I’m writing. No way that giant evil clown on the ceiling is real.
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I think it would be funny to set up a spam company which sent out millions of messages such as “Your penis is perfectly adequate” and “To heck with all those weight loss ‘secrets’; you’re fine just as you are.”
I’m not saying I wouldn’t ask people to send me their bank account numbers. Hey, you gotta make a living.
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“A clairvoyant has offered her services to help locate missing college student Jack Culolias, whose family is desperate to bring the 19-year-old home in time for the holidays.”
… is sort of like saying “A licensed cheesemaker from the state of Wisconsin has offered to help find a missing college student …”
Except in the first case, you don’t get the high-quality cheddar.
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I’m thinking of marketing a line of “Man Magnet” perfumes for women. The fragrances will be named after their actual scents.
The first one will be called “Barbecue.” Still in the pipeline is “Nascar Exhaust.”
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Spent about three hours yesterday with a scratchy throat, then it went away. Sometimes when a bug invades the stadium of your body, the home team delivers a shutout.
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The really lousy thing about being a sloth is that you’re committing a sin just by being yourself.
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If “sex addiction” was a real thing, you could overdose on it and, you know, like, die or something.
In 40-plus years of intensive research, the most I’ve managed is a temporary shortness of breath.
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It continues to seem weird to me that we go into restaurants and order iced soft drinks … in winter.
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Tattoo counselor. Why is there no such profession?
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I was thinking of calling in dead. I mean, it’s the ultimate excuse for not showing up for work, right? But the explaining when you finally do go back, that’s the tricky part.
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Pug dogs are goddam freaky. How anyone could think they’re cute, or justify having done that to them is beyond me. The fact that a moral crime – breeding dogs down to these small, crippled forms – happens over generations makes it no less horrible to me. It seems to me that if you love animals, you don’t support physically tweaking them down into debilitation.
A dog has a right to some life of its own. If you breed them down to where they CAN’T have any life of their own, to where you have to protect and contain and cosset them for the entirety of their lives, you might think you’re a dog lover, but you’re not.
The creation of the pug, and all those other little twinkie, tweaked dogs, is something humans should rightly be deeply ashamed of. I suspect that if you broached the subject with any breeder, or any owner of one of those dogs, I doubt they’d even understand what you were talking about. Or if they did, they would think there was something wrong with YOU.
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Just occurred to me that there are huge computers out there somewhere, with massive amounts of memory and lightning fast speeds, that do nothing but host sex sites. That’s right: Pornservers. I’m okay with that. But what if THOSE are the ones that make the living-intelligence breakthrough and become sentient? The future could be … interesting.
I just hope they don’t make me wear a g-string and one of those leather harness thingies.
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After the Rapture, I’m hoping to get the contract for printing milk cartons. Should be some good money there.
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Once you admit you’re a hopeless dork, all the pressure to appear attractive, poised, intelligent or even aware goes away. But then again, the admission alone is a sign you’re somebody worth knowing.
I hope.
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Feeling a little rebellious this morning. From my notes:
In modern times, we’ve had this social bargain that we would study hard, work hard, play fair, pay taxes, vote and participate with good will. We agreed to do our part to make the world work. And in return, they would treat us fairly, deal with us honestly, help us in certain ways, and allow us to prosper. They would sell us products that worked, and that lasted, and that gave good value for what we paid for them.
The problem is, these other players have broken the bargain. The Catholic Church broke the bargain when it allowed generations of children to be molested. The media broke the bargain when it began to lie and manipulate and brainwash us. Cops and courts and legislators broke the bargain when they endeavored to make harmless things illegal, and deadly things perfectly acceptable. Corporate CEOs broke the bargain when they began to accept hundreds of millions in annual salary, but paid their workers minimum wage. Product designers and marketers broke the bargain when they designed products to fail, or sold us shiny garbage, or persuaded us to eat food that makes you fat and sick.
Hey, WE didn’t default on the social bargain. THEY did. It’s time we recognized that fact, and acted on it.
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A reminder to workers: If you find your mean boss lying on the floor at work from an apparent heart attack, and you grab the nearby defibrillator and restart his heart, but you then remember what he said when you asked for a raise, the device can also be used as a refibrillator. And nobody can prove a thing.
Of course I’m joking. No, really.
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Some of us are here to be role models and paragons of virtue. Others are here to serve as bad examples and to give other people practice in forgiveness.
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Sign for orangutan habitat:
Primate Property. Trespassers will be forced to push the tire swing.
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Whew. Tired. It was like the gravity was turned up to 1.5 G’s today.
I wish they’d stop doing that. I’m sure it’s not good for us older people.
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I have a unique idea for a horror film. A woman wakes up every morning with a large bird sitting on her head. At first she shoos the bird out of the room every morning, but eventually she decides it’s sort of cute. Then one night, her head hatches and another bird, just like the first one, pops out. The two birds waddle over to the house next door, slip into the bedroom, and snuggle down onto a sleeping couple’s heads.
I’m calling it “Hatchers.”
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I have these great ideas all the time, but my stuck-up intellectual friends always pooh-pooh them. But I know my REAL audience is cool young people. For instance: Did you know you can get one of those one-hole paper punchers and punch holes right in the center of your eyelids? Man, it’s the most fantastic thing! You can close your eyes at a party and still watch your friends! And you can walk right up to people and go all chameleon on them, just totally freak them out. So what if it dries out your corneas and causes occasional blindness. You gotta live on the edge, man!
I swear I was born in the wrong time. I would have made a mint in the body mod business. I also have this idea for brain piercing …
(Don’t try this at home, kids. I’m JOKING.)
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I’m thinking of writing a story about a man who makes a dramatic comeback from his aborted major-league baseball career and adopts two malaria-infected Somalian orphans, but then discovers he desperately needs a liver transplant, and also wins $150 million in the lottery … only days before the zombie apocalypse.
But I’m not sure there’s enough emotional range or action in the idea to make it interesting. I mean, yawn, right? Maybe if I put in a talking golden retriever puppy.
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If you were a biologist or paleontologist or something, I think it would be cool to have a t-shirt that said “I TALK SCIENCE ON THE FIRST DATE.”
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If you try to say the word “away” in Pig Latin, your brain will explode.
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My left eye has been watering, off and on for months. I’m hoping it’s just eyestrain or something and not some weird brain disease. If it’s a weird brain disease, I hope it includes some interesting side effects like … oh, massively enhanced strength or the inability to feel pain. Maybe I can become a Bond villain before I die. Or at least a Scoobie Doo villain.
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As a young Thundercat in kittengarten, do you think Lion-O ever got a gold star for sleeping in class?
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Black Friday thoughts: If you’re buying stuff “on sale” that you wouldn’t buy if it wasn’t on sale, and if the seller sets both the original price and the new special price … where’s the part where you’re actually saving money?
I mean, if you pay $70 for a normally $100 item, but you wouldn’t normally buy it, didn’t they just trick you into shelling out $70 for something you didn’t exactly want?
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A jewelry store is the commercial version of a church, isn’t it? They provide the illusion of something immensely valuable and they trick young men and women into spending huge amounts of money for it. Only in this case the “immensely valuable” thing is tiny clear rocks and bits of shiny metal.
I wonder if jewelers ever just laugh out loud at the suckers, coming through their doors and thinking they need these tiny rocks to prove their love. Or if they’re decent enough to occasionally feel guilty.
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If you’re a strict vegan and also a devout Catholic, how do you rationalize the eating of Communion wafers?
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Why is there no flavor of cat food called Roly-Poly Fish Heads?
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Funny, you never hear of an “avowed Christian” or an “avowed Hindu.” But “avowed atheist” is a common usage. Somehow, “avowed” is only used to mean “militant idiot,” or something.
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With Christ, all things are possible. (Except, apparently, good speeling, punctualation and grammer.)
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Morning Thoughts: It would be so cool to have a wolverine as a pet. Those sissy boys with the spike-collared pit bulls would cross the street to avoid you. Wolverines eat porcupines (!), squirrels, beavers, marmots, rabbits, voles, mice, shrews, lemmings, martens, mink, foxes, lynx, weasels, coyotes, wolves, caribou, roe deer, white-tailed deer, mule deer, sheep, and ADULT MOOSE AND ELK. You do NOT want to mess with Gulo gulo.
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Suggestion: If you’re thinking about a tattoo, first pick out a design you really, really like. Have it printed on a shirt. Wear the shirt EVERY DAY for at least two months, see how you feel about it. If you’re still wild about the design, go ahead. If you’re only lukewarm about it, or you get to where you can’t stand to wear that same shirt day after day …
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The phrase “atheist Baby Jesus” just popped into my head, but I have no idea where to go with it. It seems there should be a joke there somewhere, but …
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I’m so glad it is once again the season for inflatable yard decorations. Man, those things just shout Trailer Trash!!!. Go, my people, fly to Wal-Mart, there to buy Inflatable Frosty, and Inflatable Rudolph, and the never-to-be-forgotten Inflatable Snow Globe, that they may grace your yard with lower-class elegance, and that your neighbors shall by contrast feel lesser in their own eyes.
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Heard about the new GOP Women’s Channel? It presents the perspective of women – Black women! Asian women! Latina women! Single women! Married women! Women of all ages!
… as interpreted by a panel of rich old white guys.
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Never bury the body in the basement. It’s the first place the cops look.
What? Oh, nothing. Just thinking out loud.
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I just went to the store and got a Mrs. Smith’s bake-at-home frozen pumpkin pie. To everybody reading this, if you want a delicious homemade-tasting pumpkin pie, something that calls to mind the warmth of your grandmother’s kitchen, and happy family gatherings during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday seasons, Mrs. Smith’s is not that pie.
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Dammit, I signed up for an advanced Ninja training course, but every time I go to one of the classes, there’s never anyone there.
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Stupid ancestors. Why didn’t they leave us with prehensile tails? Seriously, how many times would a tail like that come in handy? For one thing, you could keep both hands on the keyboard and operate a mouse simultaneously. You could have your arms full and still open or close a door, or operate a light switch. (Although the tail-mouse would probably look a little different. As would chairs, toilets, car seats, and pants.)
Probably wouldn’t change much for Muslim women, though. Just one more thing to keep covered, lest you drive men to a mad sexual frenzy.
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Bet you anything that somewhere out there is a survivalist who has a nice underground bunker stocked with food, water, guns, a radio, and a single book – the Bible. He’s prepared to survive, and to keep religion alive, but not to preserve any record of humankind’s art, science or literature.
And good luck to him, I say. Who better to deserve the sort of sterile, dull, paranoid existence he’s cursed himself to?
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So if we wanted to make war less feasible … why not just bomb weapons manufacturing plants all over the world? The death toll would be MUCH lower. And it’s not like there are great numbers of innocent bystanders inside there.
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One of these days, I’m going to respond to one of these penis enlargement emails, and then all you men are going to envy me!
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Do women get the same penis-enlargement spam? Or do you get, I don’t know, sparkley vampire spam?
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One of my online friends has just pointed out to me that we won’t have real gender equality until women get 10 emails a day about vagina enlargement.
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Far as I’m concerned, low-born bastard that I am, two of civilization’s highest achievements are electric blankets and toilet paper.
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All you young men out there, answer me honestly: If you met Donald Trump on an elevator, wouldn’t you really wonder what it would feel like to punch him in the face just once?
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The less you know, the more sure you are that everything is simple.
We all have this desire to understand things. The catch to this impulse is that, in the place of actual understanding, which takes lifelong, arduous effort, we’re prone to take the easy path and embrace this second-best thing, the illusion, the FEELING that we already do understand the subject at hand.
Rather than feel powerless and lost, we work to make complex things seem simple. It’s why people with less education are likely to be conservative, and filled with certainty. They reject complexity and nuance because it threatens their inner comfort. They reject education and expertise; not only do they not want more information on the subject, they feel the offering of it is some sort of trick, an attack on their deepest sense of self.
In a world of blinding chromatic brilliance, mere black and white – laid out in large, easy to understand blocks – suits them just fine.
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I think it would be cool to be a cat, and spend your life just experimenting with how many different things you could sleep on, and in how many different positions.
On the other hand, with all that sleeping, at the end of your 12 years, you’d only have a total of about 3 years actually awake. I mean, you’d have a defense if someone said you were stupid – “Hey, I’ve only been a conscious being for 3 years, give me a break!” – but you’d also BE stupid. Not to mention, damn, you’d have to have some pretty awesome dreams to make it worth sleeping 3/4 of your life away.
Nah, being human’s better.
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Just defriended a longtime Facebook friend, someone I have liked a lot. She (and a friend of hers) were pointing out what totally evil things Obama is doing, how he is a horrible man and a horrible president. And FUCK I’d like ONE GODDAM DAY AFTER THE GODDAM ELECTION free of that. I quote myself:
I hope you will continue this daring, never-before-seen cutting-edge critique. The four-year love-fest for Obama has just about tired me out. You daring iconoclast, do please keep up this investigation and daylighting. America has had just too many people agreeing and supporting this man during his presidency.
Keep up the negative campaign. Somebody has to do it, right? And it’s just so … refreshing. I mean, there’s been all this agreement and support the past four years. It’s time somebody really got on Obama’s case about something.
Plus, I’d hate for anything to slip by us. It’s good to know there’s someone standing stalwart against all this skullduggery. I’d love to read some really hard-hitting stuff from you few rare Obama opponents. And you know, I think the world is READY for it. This presidency so far has been like a Leave It To Beaver marathon. Just so sticky-sweet and happy. Boy am I tired of THAT.
I’ve often just sat there while people just, one after the other, offered these glowing testimonials to the Obama presidency, and thought “IF ONLY SOMEONE WOULD DISAGREE.
I hope we will hear an entire four years of your courageous speaking out. We really do need it. The fate of the free world depends on you and your friend pointing this stuff out, at every opportunity. I just feel good that you, one of my very own Facebook friends, has the astonishing courage to dig in and reveal this bad stuff. I’M READY FOR MORE.
And now, regrettably, I must retire for the night, and count my blessings, that I have you and your friend standing vigilant for all our sakes.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You have restored my faith in … oh, all humanity. I only wish Rush Limbaugh had lived to see this.
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Hank Fox on Twitter: #TomSwifties
“This wall is a bit crooked,” said Tom levelly.
“Would you like more sugar?” Tom asked sweetly.
“I lost my crutches again, Tom said lamely.
“We’re stopping here,” Tom said haltingly.
“I’m sorry, mother. I dropped your favorite vase,” Tom said brokenly.
“I’m going back into growing and selling sphagnum moss,” Tom repeated.
“That’s not how you toilet-train a kid,” pooh-poohed Tom.
“Fine, Jed. You dig here. I’m taking my pan, my pickaxe, and my mule somewheres else!” Tom exclaimed. (HT to Thomas Lawson.)
“Mom, I found the spot remover!” Tom shouted.
“I can’t believe I have to grade all of these papers again,” Tom remarked. (Hat tip to Thomas Lawson.)
“Can’t believe all I got for my birthday was this stupid cigar store Indian,” Tom said woodenly.
“I’ll have a Guinness!” Tom stoutly declared. (Hat tip to Adam Freese.)
“Seems like there’s cat hair on everything,” Tom mumbled fuzzily.
“Hobbits are people, too!” Tom said shortly. (Hat tip to Brett McCoy.)
“Your illustration is… not absolutely terrible,” his mother said artfully. (HT to Joe Collier.)
“I can’t stand black coffee,” Tom bitterly remarked. (Hat tip to Adam Freese.)
“I have a split personality,” said Tom, being frank. (Hat tip to Isaac Chokwe.)
“I manufacture tabletops for shops,” said Tom counterproductively. (Hat tip to Isaac Chokwe.)
“I only have diamonds, clubs and spades,” said Tom heartlessly. (Hat tip to Isaac Chokwe.)
“I just love how Christmas trees smell” Tom opined (Hat tip to Inspektor_Queso.)
“Tom, get out here at once! The dogs have escaped!” his mother said bitingly. “I’m coming right now, Mom!” Tom ejaculated.
Travelin’ Dog (Repost)
[ Another repost, from 2003. ]
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Some stories touch you even when they have no clear ending.
I was recently on a week’s vacation to California. I got to see a lot of people and visited a number of places I’ve loved—old good places where I sojourned for a while with dear friends. Sadly, I also said a number of goodbyes. One was to my good buddy Chardonnay, who happens to be a Golden Retriever currently engaged in dying.
Chardy used to come for runs with me and my constant canine companions Ranger the Valiant Warrior and Tito the Mighty Hunter. We romped through the marrow of the world together, carousing along clear streams and across pristine meadows, digging for wily ground squirrels and surprising skittish shore birds. Chardy loved the water more than anything, spending a good bit of his time there and regarding the rest of us as if we were a bit daft for not jumping in with him. Continue reading “Travelin’ Dog (Repost)”
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