Taber-Chuckles: 2009-05-19

So many posts, so little time.

I can appreciate the attempt to give an encouraging message to the sheep but the short space makes for some damn funny clauses. This is one of them. I could be wrong, and this is the pure message as intended. Yikes. Let's start, as I always like to do, by analyzing the language. It is always a source of amusement.

Actually, the clause itself is fine but for two single words, pay and sacrifice. They give it a rather explicit meaning that is disturbing. All the speaker had to do is move who up to the first line and replace pay with make to make the clause acceptable. As it is, it reveals much about the psychology of the writer.

A person can make a sacrifice or pay a sacrifice. Paying for something implies that the object is something that the person wants but must perform a transaction to acquire it. Something tells me this is an impulse buy. Maybe they person wants the item but do they really need it? My main problem with the use of pay here is that the transaction involves the individual's life itself, as opposed to some form of legal tender or bartering with something of equal value. One's life is not. Apparently, the boogieman for this cult only accepts payment in death.

Next is the word sacrifice. Sure sacrifice fits the usage, if you change the verb, but one could just as easily-and effectively-use the word price. It definitely works with the verb pay. Pay the ultimate price has a shred of dignity to it. Make the ultimate sacrifice has a bit of dignity but also implies that the person knew that this would happen, thus performed the act willingly. That would be okay, but we are dealing with cultists, so there is an understanding of deception and/or coercion. What is the reward? Death. What is the cost of this reward? Death. Sounds like a death cult to me.

Then there is the other aspect of sacrifice. Of the two possibilities, this is usage is definitely literal: the person is literally sacrificing themselves, just like in the "good ol' days." People nowadays still make sacrifices but they are most often figurative. Wearing one's Sunday finest to the cult facility is a figurative sacrifice that pagan cults used to do. The Athenians would offer bolts of fine cloth to Athena as a sacrifice. What they do today is the same thing, just figurative—and very pagan. With this statement, however, it is implied that it is literal. It has to be-it is a death cult.

Towards the end of the writing, the word willing leapt out at me. There is not much to say about it other than it reinforces the supposition of dumb sheep being tricked into marching to the slaughter. All I can do is shake my head at the potential lost if these people were not fettered, neutered, and shamed into submission. They have no true respect for themselves.

On the other hand, taking the message as it reads, it is asking the reader to extol the virtue of someone so delusional as to believe that one person having holes shot in to their carcass makes a substantial difference. How many does it take? When have enough sheep been sacrificed to make one say: "maybe we cannot win this one?" Such arrogance. Such stupid sheep. Sounds like a match made in....ah, crap.

Defend your Faith?!!?

I was driving in to work one morning when I saw this little ditty stuck on the back of a SUV. Worse still, it was one of those magnetic ribbons that I see, usually ordering me to support the military. Even more recently, I saw one that ordered me to pray for the troops. Heh. There also is a ribbon ordering me to save the boobies...Major General Mictlantecuhtli reporting, sir!

This message takes the cake and it is not the first time my dessert has been snatched away because, if anything, these cultists are definitely inventive in ways that set to boil my anger and disgust with a side of classic you-poor-bastard head-smacking.

There is no reason to tell people to do this. Does it make a difference? No. The sad part is that they cannot see it. If faith is publicly banished, you, the cultist, still have it. The cultists would not have a label to stick on their group for fear of reprisals but you, the cultist, have faith. That, realistically, is faith - the singular interaction of a couple of neurons in that mass of grey jello in your skull. It is not a group-think. The only thing that the group has is a label for the faith, which has the same depth as calling a mixed group of bovines "cows."

Why? Because, while they definitely are all cows, they are not the same sub-species. This one is brown, this one has eight horns...you see the pattern here. Cultists within a single cult are the same way. They have the same basic tenets but they interpret and express them in different ways. Next time you are in your cult center, look at the zombie-bozo next to you. Do they feel exactly the same way about certain aspects of the tenets of the cult as you do? Are they as vehement about the same things as you? Probably not.

They may lean that direction, but is it the same amount? Maybe they lean the other way. All of those differences make up that person's faith, just as those same opinions make up yours. That is your faith. They are not the same. Maybe the zombie-bozo next to you would like nothing more than for some tenet that you hold dear to be kicked to the curb by the cult. You are both still members of your cult with a fundamental disagreement.

Think it's bullshit? I'll make it simple: abortion. Do you think you disagree with some of your fellow cultists over abortion? Are those reasons mundane or theological, not that it really matters for the sake of the argument - of course, it would be best if the assessment was that it was theological. It is a difference and that makes one person's faith different from another.

It is up to an individual cultist to defend their own faith because they define their faith.

So by defending your faith, which, arguably, will contain tenets and ideas that are antithetical to advancement and human progress, what this imperative is really saying is: "Defend your ignorance."

That is much clearer to me.

Not the joyful bondage for which I hoped.

There have been many times that I was ready to knock this one out and would not. Finally, it takes a death close to home to help one find the strength to take keyboard under hand and let it all out.

Overview: Marriage is a redundant, antiquated, superfluous, unnecessary, bogus institution that has no place in an intelligent, modern society.

Much is made of the institution of marriage by people with a vested interest in its perpetuation: theo-factional group leaders. You hear volumes of rhetoric about marriage is a sacred institution and marriage is between a man and a woman. Those two bites, right there, are the worst. If you examine the language used – matrimony, (joyful) bonds of matrimony, wedlock, conjugal – much of it has roots which are demeaning to a free-thinking, free-willed individual. I will come to that momentarily.

Marriage is sacred?!! What a load of crap. Pagans had marriage long, long before the psychotic cultist turds of today came along. Going back to pre-xian Roman times, it was partly to ensure legitimacy of offspring. Yes, it worked just as well then as now. If marriage is so awesome, why do couples have paternity tests?

Marriage is between a man and a woman? Here is another bovine with diarrhea. Matrimony is between a man and a woman. The word comes from Latin and is translatable as "to lead or guide into motherhood." You do not hear matrimony used as much now. After all, an elderly couple who marry cannot have matrimony. What about a couple who do not intend or are unable to have children? What about a couple who already have kids from prior situations and need/want absolutely no more? No matrimony there either. That's probably why marriage is heard more today. It covers more of the bases.

With that out of the way, is it really between just a man and a woman? Who cares? Considering how infinitely personal religion is, this is nothing more than an individual's religion – an individual's particular hangups – insinuating itself into someone else's business. What despicable arrogance. Originally, matrimony was not a religious ceremony. It was social. Superstitious peoples involved their gods in the ceremony for good luck. Today, the cultists are forced to adopt (now that is a funny word choice) a new term: marriage. Without asking anyone else, the new term now has to take on the same reverence as the displaced word.

Some people are married to their work. Is their job their partner? Does it complete that person? Too bad if that is the case. One might go so far as to think that this person is a bit deranged. Why this person and not the members of a couple...or the cultists doing the screaming? It's a double standard. As it has been said before: if two people love and care for each other, let them be together.

Something else that comes up when discussing marriage is that it is a sacred contract, a covenant, between two people. This is the part that I loathe the most. Two people do not need a contract—a set of rules and stipulations—to live together, have fun together, produce offspring, and finally grow old together. Two rational, sane, intelligent people do not need it because they will simply do it anyway. Another term that relates to marriage is conjugal. This is another word from Latin that literally mean "yolked together" - as in cattle. Does that sound like something intelligent people do? Intelligent people can easily work together to make a happy life for themselves. Dumb animals have to be tied to one another and have a driver whip them to go in the right direction—okay, just "a direction." Who is that driver? Take your pick: religion, society, tradition, guilt or any other members of the Anti-Progressive Club.

Between having to use a new term and the mainstreaming of the gay culture starting in the Eighties, the cultists have felt pushed into a corner. Many things in society that used to belong to them have been whittled away in the name of equality. There is very little left to them - thank the spaghetti for that! They deserve nothing special in an age of enlightenment. If anything, their behavior only highlights their hatred and bigotry. You cannot really blame them since their guide is a book that is confusing, anachronistic, and self-contradictory. One thing that is somewhat clear is that their supposed deity said "love thy neighbor as thyself." Pretty embarrassing, if you ask me. If they are so full of self-loathing, maybe they should kill themselves and leave the planet to people who do not have hang-ups, who have compassion, who can tolerate others and have it not impact their lives. How can I help them on their way? I know, let's eliminate all marriage-related benefits. That is equality and they hate it.

Die, hypocritical bastards, die, and take your bullshit institution with you.

For Karl.
This post was originally conceived: 2008-Jun-02

Are you the worm?

Today, I drove past by my Taber-chuckle source. Reading the current sign again, my mind raced away with something like the following:

What I fixated on from this sign is the sleeping xian tidbit. As before, my first thought is WAKE UP! Get your ass out of bed and get to work. There are things to do, not just for your community and the world but also yourself.

Sleeping in a metaphor in this case but I find it is more realistic than not. The main thing that is dormant in these people is their curiosity. How can anyone look the cosmos, the planet, or even their front yard and not be interested in something? I cannot remember the exact quote but I believe it was Einstein who observed, roughly paraphrased, that he could not believe that a deity would create something as powerful as the human brain for it to just sit there idle and dormant (my embellishment). Considering that emphatic xians are so keen to earn daddy's favor, should not they do something to make it proud? Would not the creativity of the human mind be just the ticket?

What do these people think will make their daddy proud? Singing? Praying? Kissing its ass? Those seem to be the main avenues to the afterlife. No one wants to be subjected to such crap, except really old, senile people, or Alzheimer's patients. Those people are draining. They are tired of life, but will not admit it. They have nothing more to give, nothing to contribute. Instead, they focus on the glory days, when people cared who they were, when they had power and influence, when they meant something and had significance in the world. No more. Now they just sit there, drooling and loading up a diaper. To these people, daddy is omnipotent and omniscience but to me, it sounds a bit omnistultant. Only an idiot would not appreciate the creative potential of the human being.

Rather than doing something for the world, the people spend their lives groveling, crying, pleading, begging, crawling to daddy to take them up after death. Then what? Do you get to stand on two feet? Of course not. Daddy likes you on your knees in front of him. Keep doing it. Keep crawling like a worm. After a lifetime of practice, they only just suck at it.

What makes them think they can stand up and use opposable thumbs? Daddy is an old daddy. Its thinking is old-time thinking. Its loud-mouthed cheerleaders tell us this all the time. So why do they expect to suddenly find a progressive afterlife experience? Since no other aspect of their perception of daddyland is different from the same concept of those sheep herders who invented it after a week of huffing raw methane, why should this part be any different. There is nothing to do except what daddy wants. Even these people move out of their parents' house because they want their independence and freedom. When they die, they want to move right back in to Slavery Central.

Hmmm. Sounds like hell to me.

Taber-Chuckles: 2009-02-26

What a fitting metaphor: the sleeping xian as an infant. They sure are.

Who doesn't like rocking a cradle? You see that sleeping face and you just want to shake the crap out of it. Make that infant bounce all over the place, maybe wedge the skull between the bars. Then laugh as the little baby cries.

Why are xians asleep all the time? It would be nice if they woke up for a second and contributed to the world. The strength of their devotion to something from a dream, applied to real problems in the world could accomplish so much. Of course, the last time they applied themselves, they tortured people across the world for not liking the Prince of Peace. Maybe having them sleep is not such a bad idea. It definitely makes it easier to sneak up on them and club them like a baby seal. Good times.

Granted, this sign has only so many slots for letters, but one could just as easily interpret it as Satan is rocking the cradle in an affectionate way. After all, Satan truly loves Mankind. He did his best to improve our lot and free us from an abusive parent whose first words to its children was "DON'T TOUCH THAT!"

Let's take another tack. Let us ignore that knowledge aspect and focus on the other: obedience. What you see in the allegory of the chapter of Genesis is a test of obedience. It assumes, however, that obedience is good. Obedience is only good for children. Adults, however, can capitulate. You yield some degree of individuality for the sake of a functioning society. However, those first words from the sky daddy are don't wander off and don't touch that. Parents still do that today. Out of fear of germs - a creation of the daddy, yes? - anything Baby Moron tries to play with is swatted away. No wonder kids today are damn-near worthless.

For humans, advancements are not made by people who toes the line, who capitulate completely, who grovel in fealty. Advancement is made by someone who stands up for itself and says Screw you! I'm doing this! It makes a difference for knowledge and culture and society. That benefits everyone, unlike religion, which only offers benefits a single individual: the believer.

I just become angry as I have this dialog in my head. What a waste.

Taber-Chuckles: Jan 28, 2009

I definitely need to drive by this place more often. I just happened to go by one morning because I was running late and here was this beauty. I think I gritted my teeth when it click in my head what it said.

In one sentence is the command and the excuse. I can understand the clergy expressing this thought. They better...it's their job. If they don't think this then they need to quit.

To individuals, this surely must rub some of them the wrong way. Don't think. Yield to gawd. It will reward your submission with...an uninspiring life. I suppose if you approach it from a point of thinking that you as an individual is nothing, worthless and empty without a continuous serving of mystical spaghetti, it makes a little sense. You are nothing. You have nothing. Subjugate your remaining flecks of will to some The Pasta and as a reward, you will enjoy the same semi-random events that affect everyone around you. It's magic!

Is His Noodleness really giving his best? I suppose those parents who willfully let their teenage daughter die from easily treated diabetes or another set of parents also mentioned in the same article who let their fifteen-month-old die from a blood disease think that gawd's will was done. They prayed and I am sure they prayed their asses off so that their children would die and the lord provided.

Is gawd's will gawd's best? I suspect that you can find millions of people throughout this perpetual dark ages who would agree with that but their faith prevents them from making such a statement. Instead, they justify their disappointment with pathetic expressions like "It was gawd's will."

I think what bugs me so much about it is its similarity to the Nanny State. No one wants a Nanny State, except for freeloaders. Yet this is what the "Non-thought of the Day" is expressing. Leave it to me. I'll take care of you. Do these people not have a sense of pride in themselves? Do they not think themselves capable of doing anything significant? I guess not. It's the crux of the most contemptible phrase these people mutter: The Lord will provide. No. Your lord will provide you with only one thing: death. Everything else is up to you.


Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death. - Albert Einstein

I will agree that the sad individuals who yield their will to a cloud will not do so for every question in their lives. However, that is not the point. It is egregious that they do so at all in the first place. They threw away the greatest and most powerful part of their humanity: the ability to grow beyond what they are. The church does not like that because you are with the boogieman made of you; that should be good enough. It makes me weep to think of the wasted potential of mankind on a singular, selfish desire.

I leave you with a few more thoughts from Albert Einstein, which I feel apply nicely:

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

Jesus made me puke

Link: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20278737/jesus_made_me_puke/print

Very funny. What is the point of camps like this? Indoctrination. The fact that people are so empty and malleable that a jock-cheerleader helps them find some sort of spirituality makes these people dangerous to the public. They are a bad day at the office away from beating their spouse so that they can ask sky daddy for forgiveness.

This has been a consistent theme. Welcome to Religion. You are worthless but if you ask for forgiveness for your gawd-given...I mean...self-possessed worthlessness, gawd might forgive you. If it doesn't then you didn't pray hard enough.

Are people really this empty inside? If they are and there are so many of them, can we use these husks for storing nuclear waste? Let's have them do something useful for society for a change.

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