Say what you will about Charlie Kirk – and many have – but he championed discussion and debate, not dismissal and censorship. He had much to say – but he always listened.
SPEAKER DROPPED FROM LOCAL MENTAL HEALTH EVENT
An American speaker was invited to a local symposium, titled, SEE ME, HEAR ME – THE UNHEARD VOICES. Enough people complained about his social and political opinions, that the invitation was withdrawn. The irony lies heavy upon the ground.
Beware the zealot! The true believers are the worst. The average person’s psyche is a spider web. Pull on the right thread and you will get the desired result. Praise them, and they will like you. Ridicule them, and they will hate you. The greedy can be bought, timid can be frightened, smart can be persuaded, but the zealots are immune to money, fear, or reason. A zealot’s psyche is a tightrope. They have severed everything else in favor of their goal. They will pay any price for their victory, and that makes them infinitely more dangerous.
Many Christian debaters and apologists view and present Good, and Evil, Right, and Wrong, as real, concrete items, rather than abstract, human, mental concepts. They claim that the existence of Sin and Morality somehow proves the existence of God. Rather, it is the exact opposite. It requires a God to prove the existence of morality, and especially, Sin.
Sin is a transgression against God. No God = no sin. No God to hand it out means that there is no morality. What we have is social-animal, evolution-driven, ethics – The Greatest Good For The Greatest Number.
What’s the point? What am I here for? How can I live the most valuable life with the time I’ve got? Interesting and productive questions…. but they can be both asked and answered, without stuffing God into the cracks. It’s just tough to ask the questions without acknowledging Spirituality and Soul which then provokes one’s view of creation, humans, time, etc. Two delightfully vague and tenuous terms whose definitions can be made to mean anything, without evidence, but which usually mean desperation and delusion. Also, there is no evidence of “Creation,” and no evidence of the need for a God for the existence of humans, time, etc.
A.J. Swoboda, After Doubt: How to Question Your Faith Without Losing It. That’s not the dumbest book title I’ve ever seen, but it’s well up on the list. Cool. What are some of the other dumb titles that have made your list? Well, there was that one titled, “The Curious Case Of The Man With No Sense Of Irony, Or Humor.” 😮
As with so many things about Christianity, many Apologists have not done enough research about their religion to actually know what they’re talking about. When the Jews were held in slavery in Babylon, each spring it was a ritual to go to the local temple, and engage in sex with the priests, exchanging seminal fluid – a sign of fertility – for a promise of abundant crops.
The SIN – even if God were to exist – is not gay sex. It is using it to entreat and worship any deity who is not The Lord thy God is a jealous God. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.
I have not found any evidence, especially in the Jewish Torah, that circumcision of baby boys was a command of God/Yahweh. The Jewish people collectively tend to suffer from a DNA genetic likelihood of hemophilia. While an individual tragedy, the death of a newborn boy from blood loss, would be far less of a drag on his family, and a tribe of nomads.
Similarly, circumcised boys would be far less likely to later develop penile and urinary infections, again being a noisy drag on a poor tribe of nomads, trying to evade and avoid human and animal predators in the wilds. This is not a God/Yahweh-given religious procedure! It is a social-evolutionary method to achieve The Greatest Good For The Greatest Number. The Rabbis just ensured that they made a shekel or two for performing it.
….But I can stretch it over Toronto’s CN Tower. Here’s a chance for you to do the same. Take the following list of questions, and provide interesting, entertaining and informative answers which might have people questioning your sanity, as well as your veracity.
What is the difference between a gooseberry and a grape?
A gooseberry is like a grape, but with a bad case of mold. Cannibals won’t eat clowns because they taste funny, but if you swallow a gooseberry whole, it will tickle your palate all the way to the bottom.
What is meant by skid row?
That’s what happens when I don’t change my underwear every day. One little brown stain in my BVDs, on laundry day, is forgivable, but when there’s a whole line of them, the wife says that I am going to involuntarily take that ‘Eat A Tide Pod Challenge.’
Why do elephants have big ears?
The better to hear you with, my dear Red Riding Hood. I am the elephant in the room. You should just put down the basket of bananas that you brought, and leave quickly, before you get stepped on. Don’t worry about making it back home safely, through the deep, dark woods. There was a pervert, transvestite wolf here when I arrived, all dressed up in one of Granny’s nighties, but I didn’t see him, and accidently sat on him. FYI: Granny’s gonna need a new bed too. Sorry!
What is green and travels at thousands of miles an hour?
The Canadian Federal Liberal eco-energy plan. Cover up five acres of soya-beans with ugly solar panels. Generate electricity at 12.3¢/Kwh. Sell it to the Americans for 3.8¢/Kwh. Put huge, ugly wind turbines in dairy pastures. Reduce milk production and farmers’ income by 20%. Generate electricity at 11.7¢/Kwh. Sell it to the Americans for 3.8¢/Kwh. Continue until the country is bankrupt, or the infrastructure has collapsed.
What is the difference between minimum and maximum?
I thought a mini-mum was a young, sexy female parent, with a high hem, and a maxi-mum was an older, more sedate one. The difference between minimum and maximum is actually a very fine line that either of them might cross on a 4-hour drive to a vacation campsite, with two young kids in the backseat. Are we there yet? I gotta wee! How long have we been driving? Bobby’s lookin’ at me! I gotta go poo-poo! Billy shoved me! Do cows have batteries? I went poo-poo in my pants. You don’t mind if I practice my soccer kick on your seat, do-ya? Drive faster honey. Risk a speeding ticket! If we’re not there in five minutes, I’m gonna bury one or both of them behind a big cedar tree.
What is a pantry?
It’s not spelled right, but this is a pan-tree – with a cooking utensil hanging from every branch.
What is a carnivore?
I am a carnivore, whenever the carnival comes to town. The rides are fun, but I head straight for the food lane – hot-dogs, hamburgers, French fries, caramel corn – are all okay, but they have Deep-Fried everything – corn dogs, cheese, ice cream, Mars bars. I walked past one booth, and the sign just said ‘FRIED’. I asked the guy, “Fried what?” “Nothing,” Just a big catcher’s mitt of fried dough, like John Pinette’s beavertails. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y0GhNFcY6k I had two, with cinnamon and powdered sugar coating, and some Maple syrup.
What is another word for oriental?
I officially admit defeat! I can’t think of a serious, or humorous, way to define “Oriental” in a single word. I am just waiting to see what other people do with the prompt. I could do a bit about Orientals’ North American driving looking like they learned to pilot vehicles with rickshaws in Tokyo, or tuk-tuks in Indonesia.
I could riff on their hive-mind, and the likelihood of them ignoring American social patterns to get a great education, and a 6- or 7-figure job, but I don’t want to be counter-cultured, or even doxxed, by a squad of #YellowLivesMatter ninjas.
What is the difference between pussy willow and catkins?
This is FHRITPGrab Her By The Pussy-willow Trump,
and these are my cat-kins.
What is a felony?
I’m not sure, but if a person who commits burglary is a burglar, and a person who commits a felony is a felon, then God is an iron. It is a great irony that, as God has created us, everything that we like, enjoy, desire, strive for – is bad for us. W.C.Fields said that everything he liked was illegal, immoral or fattening. Salt, that makes things taste good? – causes heart problems. Sugar, in candies and yummy do-nuts – rots teeth and causes obesity. Smoking ruins lungs.
Alcohol ruins marriages, friendships, and livers. Drugs…. Don’t get me started! I can barely handle reality. I don’t know why anyone would want to do drugs. Sex – causes abortions, STDs, bar fights, battered wives and divorces, but we keep striving for them all. Is resisting temptation supposed to be good for us??! Why couldn’t He just create us, already loving broccoli, liver, and Disney movies?
My wife was recently hospitalized from an overdose of
PROPRIETY
conformity to established standards of good or proper behavior or manners.
appropriateness to the purpose or circumstances; suitability.
rightness or justness.
Note that the above definition does not contain the word “Community” standards, although that is usually assumed. Her problem was that she felt that she was the one to establish the standards, regardless of reality, or anyone else’s opinion. What she thought was proper – was proper.
The son located a ‘Sarcastic’ image like the above, online, and downloaded it as the wallpaper on his cell phone screen. In an orgy of irony, he rotated it 90 degrees, and installed it sideways. The next morning, she told him that his phone had beeped because of an update, and she noticed that the image was ‘wrong,’ so she ‘corrected’ it for him.
I bought a little 19 ounce can of tomato juice – just enough for three small glasses. Because they settle, sitting on store shelves, I inverted it, shook it, and poured a glass. I was going to put the balance in a jar with a lid, but thought, “It’s only going to be another two days”, and tucked it on the top refrigerator shelf. The next day I noticed dried-on drops on lower shelves, and thought the son might have nudged it. When I asked him, a voice came from the living room, “Well, silly me. I didn’t know that it was open, and it was upside down….”
Generally, men are less refined, and more basic than women, especially about bodily functions. A comedienne once declared that, ”Women don’t sweat, and we don’t fart. Hell, if we didn’t bitch, we’d explode.”
If you have to suddenly fart where there are other people, you apologize for the unwelcome smell. (I’ve been arguing with a repeated crossword clue that says that ‘odor’ is a foul smell – it’s a smell. A dictionary check shows definition number 2 is ‘foul smell.’ Definition number 3 says ‘pleasant smell’.) 😕 If you get a little warning, you move away from other folks, and do it in private.
One day, while I was still toiling in the salt mines, I joyously leapt out of bed early one morning, and headed for the bathroom. Once there I reduced internal pressure by releasing a toxic cloud that had the cat’s eyes watering. I ripped about four yards of sailcloth – FFFffphaatt.
Suddenly, from the bedroom, 25 feet, a hallway and another room away, I heard, “ARCHON!”
“What dear?”
“You could apologize for that.”
“There’s no-one here to smell it. Who should I apologize to?”
“Well, at least you could go somewhere else to do that.”
“I’m in the bathroom. Just me and the exhaust fan. Where else would you suggest I go?”
Now she’s angry. If/when you fart, there are two things you can do – at least one of those two things that you must do – and I’ve just demonstrated that neither of them apply.
“Oh sure, some of your Archon logic.” – as if I can somehow twist the Universe into any shape I want, like some balloon animal. Two plus two always equals four – but then, so does three plus one, nine minus five, and the square root of sixteen.
It would be logical for you to pop back again in a couple of days. I promise no stench – maybe some bread baking. 😀
Rain is running down the back of my neck. I think there’s a hole in my boot.
Unless you’re the lead sled-dog, the view never changes, just a line of assholes in front of you.
“What Honey? Oh, I was just listening to Alanis Morisette singing her first hit, on my iPod. Haven’t heard that in a while. Remind me again, why are we standing in line in the rain, waiting to get into a Kohl’s? They’re giving away free Knirps umbrellas to the first 50 shoppers??! Now, isn’t that ironic?”
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Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.
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Click above, if you’re enough of a masochist to want to hear her sing the only song about irony – that isn’t.
I told the wife, that when our Wheaten/Schnauzer/Poodle–cross cur was gone, we would not get another dog. I explained a thousand times that we are too old, too weak, that we didn’t have the strength, the stamina, the patience….most of all, the money, to buy a purebred, non-allergenic puppy.
Our two new little handfuls, with their black Daddy, and white Momma.
By ‘we’, of course, I meant ‘me.’ Suddenly, one day, while I was composing a previous A-To-Z post, she called to me to “come see something on my laptop.” Halfway down the stairs, I saw the picture of Mom and Dad Scotty Terriers. Before I could even protest, she shifted to more photos of a bundle of the cutest puppies. Ohhh, no fair!
Scottish Terriers are usually black, but some of them are white, and a few of them are brindle, which is white, with blonde/gold highlights. Mom was white. Dad was black, and the puppies were some of each. Could we just go to look at them?? They were only a 2 ½ hour drive away. I’m doomed – doomed I tell you.
Aren’t the two new Scottish terrors Terriers cute??
We brought the son – and his checkbook – along. They valiantly held out, but we all knew that we had not come just to look. The wife picked the little black female, above. Then came the hard sell. Unlike the previous litter, this time the breeder was having trouble getting rid of the males. If we would also take a male, she would give us a screwing deal on both dogs.
The wife launched a piteous appeal to his heartstrings, to get the son to further loosen his purse-strings. When he finally bowed to the inevitable, we became a two-dog family. Happy birthday, Mothers’ Day, Arbor Day, Thanksgiving, anniversary, Christmas, and Leonard Nimoy’s bris.
The next day, we got a panicked phone call. “Is something wrong??” Well…. Another couple had come to look at the puppies, and she was attaching ribbons to ours, to assure that we got the ones we’d picked out. The male the wife had chosen, the only brindle one in the litter – had turned out to be a female??! Would we accept any other male? We chose the happy, chubby white male, as a Mini-Me.
We named the male, Duff, a Gaelic word that means ‘black.’ We called the little female, Guin, a Welsh term which means ‘white.’ So, our black dog is White, and our white dog is Black. At least we’re not out Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog, as Norma Tanega did, back in the mid-60s.
Here’s a liter of IRONY!
I only hope that the male pulled that plug from the socket, before he chewed it off.
At just over six months old, they recently got their first trim. We had to be vetted by our new groomer. She was recommended by the wife’s hairdresser. The woman came to the house to see the dogs in their ‘native environment,’ before she would accept us as clients. I feel so 90210. 😯 Oh Yeah! We’ve got two new puppies. Be thankful that you’re only stuck with me. At least I’m house-trained. 😉
They’ve gone from being a mere handful, to being A Real handful.
“The totally convinced and the totally stupid have too much in common for the resemblance to be accidental.” ~Robert Anton Wilson
Dear God (if you’ll excuse the expression), how can they so casually dismiss everybody else’s religious claims, yet profess to unflinchingly believe the exact, same thing, with a different color paint on it.
I don’t call myself an Atheist. I don’t call myself much of anything. If I have to, I like the son’s definition – A Militant Agnostic. I don’t know, and neither do you. I have been called many things by ‘religious people.’ Every person, and every religion, creates a ‘God’ in the way they want Him to be. I like to think that there’s a unifying force in/to the universe, so I believe in a God, just not your God, subject to your imaginings, and all the man-made rules and restrictions of your particular (or anybody else’s) religion.
Muslims fight with Jews, who feel that Christians are mistaken. Catholics look down on Protestants. ‘Good Christians’ claim that Mormons are ‘not Christians,’ even though they worship the same God, and accept Jesus as their savior. They just don’t believe that Christ was the last person to hear from God.
If there is a Divine Being who created Heaven and Earth, there’s only one of Him/It, but you’d never know that from some Christian claims. A caller to the Atheist Experience show railed that the Atheists, “are almost as bad as those Godless Muslims”, not seeing the contradiction.
The moderator insisted that Muslims are not Godless. “In fact, they worship the same God that you do.” I thought the caller was going to explode! Apparently a good Catholic, he insisted, “They do not! We worship God in three parts! They only worship one God.”….but it’s the sameGod. The problem is not with different Gods. The problem is how different people worship, view, pray to, and react with, one God, in different ways. You see Him in three parts. They see Him as one unified whole. People were burned at the stake over how many Angels could dance on the head of a pin. Far too many exclusionary fools seem far too worried about irrelevant, unimportant details. Who’s right? All of them – and none.
A well-known Atheist, sarcastically claimed that, “We’re all Atheists. I just worship one less God than you do.” The words were scarcely out of his mouth, before the Christian Apologetics, obviously missing the irony, insisted that, ‘Well, that’s okay for those gods, but ours is the REAL God, the particular imaginary one that we believe in and expect you to believe in, with no more proof of existence than Odin, Zeus, Jove, Yahweh or Allah.’
A good Catholic, who thought that my That’s Not Funny post wasn’t that funny, sent me some more Christian vs. Atheists jokes.
Q: What do you get when you cross an atheist and a Jehovah’s Witness?
A: Somebody knocking at your door for no reason.
2. Q: Why did the Atheist cross the road?
A: He thought there might be a street on the other side, but he wouldn’t believe it until he tested his hypothesis.
and finally…
3. Q: What is so ironic about Atheists?
A: They’re always talking about God.
The third joke is especially true of you non believers. How many articles do you see written on my blog professing the existence of the Lord? I don’t write many because I know He is there. This is the same reason I have absolutely no blog posts on the legs of the chair I am sitting on…I know they are there.
That’s fine – until you sit down on that chair that you know is there – and it isn’t. We’ve all done it; some of us more than once. The same thing could happen with ‘your God.’ A little double-checking couldn’t hurt.
You don’t even need to be Atheist, to feel that Jehovah’s Witnesses knock on people’s doors for no reason. Christians will belittle and make fun of ‘Jovies,’ but, when push comes to shove, they’ll cut them some slack, “Because they are Christians, after all – sadly mistaken Christians – but ‘one of us.’”
An open mind can always stand a closed one, if it has to – by making room for it in the general picture. But a closed mind can’t stand it near an open one without risking immediate and complete destruction in its own terms. In a closed mind, there’s no more room. Gordon R. Dickson, author – Tiger Green – 1965
The Atheist-crossing-the –road joke isn’t funny, because it ridicules those who seek the truth. Truth may not be what you ‘believe’ it to be. The unquestioning faithful may blindly believe in salvation, but in no other life endeavor, would non-cynical, un-researched participation in a course of action, be considered a good idea. The ‘God’ that you believe in, is not any other person’s ‘God’, not your husband’s, your wife’s, the person next to you in the church pew – or even the priest/preacher at the front.
The third one shows how some Christians mistakenly feel themselves attacked. Atheists don’t ‘always talk about God.’ They talk about Christians, talking about their God – claiming to know what He thinks and wants. If there were more Christians, secure in their own, but quietly acceptant of others’ opinions, and fewer aggressive know-it-alls, there’d be far fewer Atheists pointing out apparent mistakes and contradictions. If Snidely Smartass hadn’t published his ‘Smart Christian – Dumb Atheist’ joke, I wouldn’t have written my post. As ye sow, so shall ye reap. 😛
The above title is a Latin motto which means ‘The Art Is To Conceal The Arts’. To properly awe an audience with the performance of a difficult task, it is often necessary to make it appear easy.
A comedian, commenting about the Olympics, said that all he understands about gymnastics is this; he hopped into the air, and landed on his feet, perfectly erect, and said, “That’s good!” He hopped into the air again, and landed leaning slightly backward, so that he had to put a foot back to keep from falling over, and said, “That’s bad!” To win gold, you have to make it look easy.
I recently had the chance to read the beginning of an online novel by a writer who, like many of us, hopes to be a published author. He’s a member of a highly respected profession. He’s intelligent and well educated. He has a (reasonably) good vocabulary and grasp of grammar and composition. What he is not, is an author – or writer.
I only managed to read the first three paragraphs, before I had to stop, or suffer nausea and vertigo. Here are the three paragraphs. Remember to take Gravol. (Americans may take Dramamine.)
You are on the beach, watching the swaying of the waves. The waves sweep across the steeps like a flock of stampeding sheep speeding over the steppes, the snaking waves hissing over the driftwood steeped in the sandy wrack.
A squadron of gulls lifts uneasily into the air and then dissipates against the grey sky. You look meaningly at the gulls. They hover, the flurry of gulls. The gulls lull heavily in the air, squealing their dull squeals.
You incline your head downward and stare at the inrushing waves, each one a hungry-mouthed sheep, coming toward you ravenously. The water is deliquescent twenty feet from the shore. Beyond the shoal the surface seems lacquered, solid, unbreachable, enameled, brackish, thick, as if it were a spreading mass of viscous aquatic jelly. From the shore you cannot fathom, through the spume lid, the pelagic fathoms. The lake’s lid is swarming with wavelets, each one undulant and alive—afroth, the lake’s lip, frosting wisps.
That opening is almost as bad as, “It was a dark and stormy night.” This thing has more verbiage slathered on than icing on a Wal-Mart birthday cake. This is like the parlor of a Nevada brothel – cheap, gaudy and ostentatious. Typos, overdone alliteration, excess words, redundant words, repetitive words, overly ornate words, eight-dollar words, employed to seem interesting and impressive, but used incorrectly. Steppes, and steeps, and stampeding sheeps – oh my.
To ‘look meaningly’ is to use a facial expression to convey information to another person. You cannot look meaningly at seagulls, because their tiny bird-brains don’t get it. And speaking of seagulls, I can think of five verbs to describe the noise they make. ‘Dull squeals’ is not on the list.
Deliquescent means; The process of a solid dissolving or becoming liquid through the absorption of moisture from the atmosphere. That obviously is not happening here. It’s a good, solid, proud word. It’s just hanging out in the wrong neighborhood.
Instead of smooth, clear, economical communication, this writer seems to have gone out of his way to confuse and impress, and say, ‘Look how much work I went to, to attract and hold your attention.’ It is not concealed. (But it should be!)
I recently re-read E. E. ‘Doc’ Smith’s Subspace Encounter. Doc was the mentor who taught Robert Heinlein much about writing. An engineer by trade, Doc always used the exactly correct word, and the exactly correct number of words.
In this book, he has Mankind meet another galactic civilization. Physically, they are Human, but their society is vastly different. Not cruel, but they are pragmatic to the point of making the Spartans look like soft amateurs.
To identify their empire, he coins the word ‘Justiciate.’ This is literary irony. It is like referring to The People’s Democratic Republic of North Korea. It is not ‘for or by the people.’ It is not a democracy, and it is not a Republic. There is little ‘justice’ in a society, where the ruler of 180 planets is identified as the Supreme Tyrant. And the supreme ruler of the red-skinned sect, who wants to kill 90% of those of other skin colors and keep the rest as slaves – identifies himself as The Grand Justice.
Having invented the Justiciate, Doc went on to invent an interplanetary monetary unit for them – the Junex, meaning the Justiciate Unit of Exchange. For an imaginary empire, he created imaginary money to give believability. No sheeps or steeps or gulls were needed.
As a young adult, I missed much of his precision. Re-reading it now, with life experience, I have a greater appreciation. He made it look easy, when it really wasn’t. I’m glad Jim Wheeler made me do it. 😀
Archon's Den 