Updated to add: My dear and lovely wife Rita is gone. She passed at seven p.m. here in Germany the last day of September, after battling a series of cancers and tumors that eventually consumed her. She passed at home, in as peaceful and loving an environment as any of us could wish for ourselves or any of the loved ones we hold dear. She was truly a very special princess. Details of memorials and services to follow. This blogpost was being proofed for release as I watched over her in her final hours.
Fast Food and Timeless Love
Those who follow my life’s travails on Facebook will have a better grip on the decidedly gloomy situation imposed upon our family by the continued degradations from my wife’s terminal illness. There’s enough pain, sorrow and heartache to drive many a formerly sober man to whisky, without delving into the hoarier details involved in cohabiting in the apartment above my 85 year old Nazi-era mother-in-law! Before proceeding, be advised that these missives have been prepared and released under the most dire of circumstances and incredible stresses.
On the matter of the extraneous errata of my sick mind, it’s probably as a result of the mind blowing decisions my wife and I discussed being up against, of which a brief glimpse is offerered in the love story I’m sharing with you today.
Whatever else bubbles out of my brain, today’s offering is just a ‘simple’ tale of a man and his dying wife going out on their last dinner date together in a romantic German location, on a rare balmy night in late Autumn somewhere close enough to Paris to fear guillotines pulled by donkeys headed north.
For some odd reason, the French really have issues with the past when it comes to dealing with the Germans, but there were no wagon wheels or donkey hooves pounding north on the cobblestone streets the night of our last dinner together. It was just another of the minor blessings that have fallen our direction.
We grab blessings these days with all the vigor we can manage, because time and the degree of significance of their appearance is amplified by the deepening shadows and gathering storms we’ve ignored in order to remain in our amorous stupor for as long as is humanly possible. You count your blessings where you find them. That’s the philosophy Rita and I have maintained for a quarter century together and I’m not messing with success.
The Gathering Storms
If you’ve an aversion to fear, death, Nazi storm troopers, video game screen caps or humor bred of morbid fear and impending doom, stop now. Everyone else….. Continue reading →
The monkeys are in charge and it’s payback time. This is what happens to the fate of humanity when the monkeys hold a kangaroo court against us and we are called to account for our crimes. It’s July, 3242, the day of the Monkey Nuremberg trials.
This is also where the latest Planet of the Apes movie meets a collection of my most excellent monkey pictures and spawns a possible sequel (note: I have not yet seen the latest release). I envision my offering as a sort of futuristic tragic comedy. The plot:
Day of the Trial
Good day for a hanging. An early riser snatches a coveted balcony seat in the viewing gallery.
The lunatic fringe known as the Mississippi Tea Party is going bonkers over their loss to Senator Thad Cochran in the recent primary runoff. There is literally no tactic they haven’t considered (legal or illegal), in their attempts to seize power. It is their complete disregard for American jurisprudence and common standards of human decency that led a handful of them to conclude that sneaking into a nursing home and photographing Thad Cochran’s Alzheimer-afflicted wife would be some kind of political coup d’etat.
The Dean of Debauchery
With the dust not yet settled from either their illegal behaviors or the loss of the Republican primary, one of the masterminds behind the ill-advised break-in recently committed suicide (so we are told). His name was Mark Mayfield (seen above) and by offing himself in such a dramatic fashion, he has ensured that his legacy will always be “the McDaniels lieutenant who killed himself rather than face justice for his crimes”. He’s not the first Tea Party idiot that I’ve known named Mark who has bought the farm. It’s safe to say that given the choice of continued living in Mississippi, or killing yourself and burning in Hell, Mr. Mayfield is indeed “in a better place” now. Take from that what you will, but for the sake of your future male children, please have the decency not to name them Mark. Everybody knows the only good Christian name worth having is Timothy!! Why else would God name two books of the Bible after me?
The Fallout
Like a wounded tiger, the uncontrolled and artificially-created beast that is the Tea Party incarnation of Fox News is lashing out in Mississippi. The overt racism which always seethed just under the collar of a ‘reconstructed’ Mississippi is on full display. What Bush did with the twisting of the definition of torture is now being applied to the definition of voter fraud! How do you know if it’s voter fraud? According to Mississippi Tea Party activists, If the voter is Black, then it’s voter fraud!!. This is how the simple-minded Tea Party people operate in an attempt to keep things simple, but the tone-deafness of their racism is simply unbelievable!!
The Tea Party Constitution
Tea Partiers are quite content to use the second amendment as their favorite masturbatory aid, but don’t be fooled into thinking they give two wanks on a dead wallabies weenie about your right to free speech. How can I be so sure? Well, I’ve put them to the test. One thing that rightwing Christian movements have in common, whether they be mid-twentieth century Germans or early twenty first century Tea Party creationists is a proclivity towards banning that which they find offensive. Not at all dissimilar to what we see their fundamentalist Muslim counterparts doing to ‘ungodly’ art in their own neighborhoods.
Banning Critical Artworks
Not content in their efforts to dominate that media in which they can buy and control, the ‘liberty loving’ Tea Party folks are hard at work trying to keep my artistic Facebook creations out of the display of their sensitive and easily swayed flock of rubes. Shown above is a McDaniels parody campaign advertisement that the Tea Party fascists tried to get banned though their dishonest attempts at silencing me. This is in line with their true character of acting in the manner we have com tp expect from the Brownshirt Faction of US politics. Their latest attempt at silencing my creative #timremix works involves a report to Facebook that the following picture contains “graphic violence”! It’s definitely as tasteless as their politics, but violent? I only created it out of ‘self defense” when I read where some of the high ranking operatives in the Mississippi Tea Party were talking about building a memorial to the late Mark Mayfield!! Just thought you should all be aware. There’s entirely too little documentary evidence of their hooliganism and thuggery for people to point and click to. Here’s the ‘graphically violent” picture in question that they just flagged on Facebook:
Profits on the sale of the Mark Mayfield memorial t-shirt are going to improve nursing home security in Mississippi.
Isn’t there a Bible verse of some significance to this bunch of religious knuckle draggers that specifically forbids bearing false witness?
Every generation deserves their own version of the Scopes monkey trial. This is probably the best we’re ever going to get in our generation.
Setting the Stage
If you haven’t seen this Vimeo of Lawrence Krauss and William Lane Craig you’re really missing out. It’s another one of those “Does God Exist” style debates (Spoiler alert: He’s still incommunicado). I know. I can hear you all sigh. …..not another one of those…. Hear me out! It lacks the faux intellectual suck-upitude present in most of these types of debates. Krauss brings a deserved wickedness to the mix that has been sorely lacking since Hitch passed.
This event is sponsored by a Bible Forum with an audience I expect is heavily stacked in favor of religious leaning viewpoints. You can skip the first 23 minutes to get directly to Krauss’ opening and bypass the long intro.
William Milquetoast Craig
If you’re an atheist of any intellectual rigor at all, you’re already recoiling in horror at the thought of listening through the tortured rhetorical apologetic sophistry that is William Lane Craig (Skip over his soliloquey to get to coffee table format immediately after). On the other hand, seeing Krauss expand his role into the empty shoes left by Christopher Hitchens is a refreshing respite from his many Universe from Nothing videos of late. Krauss is clearly not confounded by fools nor suffering them gladly, a trait he shares in common with the late Mr. Hitchens.
Lawrence Krauss
While Krauss is clearly lacking when compared to the linguistic facility of Hitchens, he is decidedly less restrained than the oft too-clever Hitchens and entirely more surefooted in matters pertaining to science and religion. Krauss does borrow from Hitchens in this debate, tossing in a Mother Teresa bit related to the Catholic vexation on suffering as a means to salvation. I felt that Craig got away on that, brushing it off much more easily than he would have if Hitchens had been there.
Krauss had clearly sharpened his knives against Craig before entering this debate. He did the best take-down of fundamentalist quote mining in recent memory. He was clearly angry at the misrepresentations being peddled by Craig and others of his ilk. Seeing his unrestrained disgust with Craig was worth the price of free admission. Somebody needs to do what Krauss is doing and he obviously likes to travel more than I do, so more power to him.
Your burka says no, but your knees say YES YES YES!
NOTE: I have just edited and slightly modified this earlier foundational post on the Skepchick-ElevatorGate-Dawkins et.al. brouhaha. It was offered as pointed satirical levity in response to all the online chatter in the skeptical blog-sphere at the time.
There was no way of predicting that Rebecca Watson would…how do the kids say these days?…remix..my web parody piece into an actual work of living performance art by deciding to go full freakin’ Gal Qaeda over the course of the following year(s). Remember those early initial whines were coming from a Youtube video broadcast from the relative safety (is anywhere really “safe”? Pearls? Clutched!) of her Girlyban Bunker.
In her latest missive, likely smuggled out of Girlyban HQ by (Richard Carrier pigeon, she bows out of attending the TAM meeting being held in the heavily occupied luxurious South Point Hotel, Casino and Spa and Debauching area, probably because it is located in the dangerous outlaw territory of Afghanistan Las Vegas. Herein also lies the birthplace of the #gamergate female SJW phenomena.
Birth of the American Girlyban
Some of the greatest men of skepticism and science were taken completely unaware last week, when an internal coup attempt unexpectedly sprang up from within the very heart of the skeptical movement. In a move that threatens to upend the very foundations of the skeptic/atheist movement, a dedicated group of sleeper females, though wit, great cooking, and feminine guile, gradually infiltrated the heralded halls of rational intelligentsia. I have chosen to label them as the American Girlyban for reasons that shall become quite clear.
Entire herds of atheist males are now frozen from panic and shock. Skeptics are increasingly becoming more skeptical. Otheres are facing exhaustion from endlessly dodging incoming rounds from Girlyban snipers on skeptic websites. Others suffer from the nausea of just running around in circles getting more skeptical and hysterical at the same time. It’s a scene reminiscent of that Alien movie, right after the baby beast comes ripping out through the chest cavity of that dude on the gurney.
These crafty Girlyban infiltrators are using psychological warfare tactics on the guys. This is so NOT COOL. It’s OK to use a logic bomb to fry the circuits of an out-of-control sci-fi movie robot, (by putting them in an endless loop until they explode in smoke and fire-DUH). It a violation to the spirit of camaraderie, if not the Geneva convention, to use them against your fellow travelers. But it’s foolish to complain that terrorists don’t follow the rules, because then they wouldn’t be terrorists would they?
Many atheist men, (and some of the atheist women who love them) are concerned with the direction of the atheist movement now that the warlord Benedict PZ Arnold Myers threw his vast and powerful virtual army of support to the side of the rapidly swelling Muslima coalition.
Some of the guys sensed the early warning signs. There were whispers of discontent early on, specially with the imposed addition of lighted make-up mirrors in the unisex bathrooms in the Atheist Freedom Center. It was a bad omen, but proper social decorum, then as now, seemed to require those who spoke up be labeled as misogynistic douchbags or worse, much, much worse. Many men sighed, gave up, and just started wearing make-up themselves. The old adage, “If you can’t beat ’em join ’em” was adopted.
The history of guy-liner use within the rationalist community is still a touchy subject, but I’m not here to dance the Gish Gallop, so let’s get on with the ball. It’s already too late to un-think the horror of what might happen if warlord Benedict PZ Arnold Myers were to meet an out of control Girlyban bikini-wax enthusiast.*** He’s known as a guy who’ll kiss up to nearly anything in a (non-Catholic) skirt.
***Consider yourselves lucky Google image search returned a null result for “bearded guy gets bikini wax” EVEN with safe search turned OFF…..nuff said.
My personal fear is that all this feminine familiarity is leading PZ down a path of succulent female temptations ruination. The atheist community has been longing for its own honest-to-goodness sex scandal of Haggardian proportions for quite some time now. I know it is horrible to contemplate, but seeing how the world survived goatse boy, it might survive if pics of PZ popped up showing him wrestling nude in pudding with even the most grizzled of the Muslima coalition.
You’d think WMD’s need to actually exist to have an effect, but we all know better. The actual existence of the zombie elevator guy, with a penchant for caffeine fueled sex romps, proves even a phantom threat can be ginned up to a full scale Girlyban cyber-battle. Enter Richard Dawkins.
Richard Dawkins, one of the founding fathers of new atheism (“Four Horsemen“), was blindsided by a barrage of verbal shrapnel, after innocently stumbling into a well hidden landmine planted by a fully embedded American Girlyban operative. The poor guy had no idea the “hell on Earth” he was unleashing by simply offering his reasonable, if opposing opinion, to a prominent Girlyban missive.
What Mr Dawkins, a native Brit didn’t realize, is that his contrary opinion on a subject the American Girlyban considered as long settled American atheist tribal law, was being received by the Girlyban community with the same enthusiasm the Muslim community feels toward artists of Mohammed cartoons. I’d caution Mr. Dawkins about getting cornered late at night in a hotel elevator by any American woman with multicolor hair and a tendency to imagine sexual dragons where none exist. My suggested solution to these fearful trembling atheist flowers to “shoot first and let God sort out the rapists from the coffee addicts” probably isn’t making the world any safer for either Mr. Dawkins or myself. Still, I have a duty to concerned female skeptics to offer practical suggestions geared to solve the problem, whether they embrace them or not.
Muslima aka Skepchick (alias Rebecca Watson) lobbed the initial IED (irritatingly exasperating detour). Watson appears below, in her latest posting to YouTube (from her secure, unknown bunker just slightly north, east, south and west of Baghdad – near the still hidden WMD’s). This is a classic use of social media to bypass the “men” in charge at the top. The irony of her having learned and copied it from a sexist man living in a cave in a Pakistan suburb, just makes the irony more profound.
And just like the Taliban, the American Girlyban are fed up with the lurid sexual nature of a depraved Western culture.. Here’s a previous example of their ‘outrage’ to the subject of blending their sexuality with their role in skepticism:
In hindsight, it’s obvious these wily operatives were just filling the atheist church pews with easy prey to make future examples out of. Is it any wonder a mob of slobbering, World of Warcraft addicted, socially awkward basement dwellers are starting to invade their ‘space’?, Contrary to their more recent proclamations, their history of their deceit is well documented. Right now they’re still playing out the “Bush – “We don’t torture” phase of their disinformation campaign. Give it a couple months and they’ll be BRAGGING about the abuse and claiming it’s a necessary tool in their war against ‘creepy elevator guys’. Watch and see.
The American Girlyban are even more scary than their Muslim counterparts, if for no other reason than the wild mood swings.
The Tim Channel 