Archive for the 'Magical Mysteries from Godtown' Category

“Within 10 seconds I saw him shape-shift”

Published by Twisty on December 31, 2011. 92 Comments

Don't you just want to fuck me?

You never heard such jarring guffaws jangling through the drywall halls of Spinster HQ as when we got hipped to this Braco dude. Laughter rang out like the nightly gunfire at my neighbor’s place.

If you’ve never heard of him — and since you’re a reasonable person with normal inclinations who never, with the notable exception of IBTP, wastes valuable time reading pointless shit on the Internet, why would you have? — here’s the deal with Braco. He’s a messianic New Age con artist from Croatia. Get this:

He “gazes.” That’s it. He just drifts out on stage, looks at the audience for a couple of minutes, then scrams. The end. Fin. Fade to black. Followers flock to him and throw money. Why?

“He only offers a gift to people through his silent gaze, without words or teachings, allowing people’s own reported experiences of transformative changes – in their lives, relationships, careers, finances and health – to define his work.” — Braco’s website

His ‘work’! Do you fully comprehend the awesomeness of this Braco tool? He doesn’t do shit! He doesn’t have to learn English. He doesn’t have to memorize a bunch of polyester New Age platitudes. He doesn’t have to allude to ancient texts. He doesn’t have to do yoga. He doesn’t even have to touch any sick people. He only has to eyeball’em for 5 minutes and then float silently away. Mass hysteria does the rest.

He doesn’t have to pay a bunch of staff, either; his “gazing events” are staffed by, as Tinfoil Hattie calls’em, swooning volunteers. And he seems to hold a lot of these gaze-a-paloozas in Hawaii, so that when he’s done staring down the gullible, he can beat it back to a Mai-Tai under a palapa with an ocean view.

This scam is a work of such extraordinary beauty and criminal genius it brings a tear to my jaundiced eye. Compare it, for instance, to the overly complex, gaudy, and commercialized Osama bin Laden lookalike, Osho®.

Osho® is a popular guru dude in India. According to Osho®’s website, American author Tom Robbins says he is “the most dangerous man since Jesus Christ.” Well, Tom Robbins said it, I believe it, and that settles it!

Whereas Braco’s schtick is elegant and understated, Osho® is the Elvis of the zany cult leaders. He’s got a luxury International Meditation Resort with an olympic pool, a mediation spa, a “Multiversity,” and a buttload of programs, books, theme songs, newsletters, pay-per-view YouTube vids, therapies, horoscopes, and other assorted merch. His overhead must be considerable, so it makes sense that one of his most elite programs consists of “full immersion.” This is where followers actually pay tuition to toil at the resort as menials for 6 hours a day, 7 days a week for a 3-month stretch with no days off and no possibility of parole. They have to pay extra for food, too, at Osho®’s dining rooms and “gourmet café spots.”

Unlike Braco, Osho® never shuts the fuck up. He’s a proponent of “silence shared in words.” The universe, he says, is “certainly made of silence.” To support this claim, he’s got an Internet radio station where he yaks nonstop. When I tuned in he was using his silent words to opine that men are of the sun, women are of the moon, and the sun is aggressive and intellectual, and the moon is receptive and passive. “The woman has to flower in her moon-hood, as the man has to flower in his sun-hood.” Well, knock me over with a feather, some randy old mystic is pronouncing on the essence of women and “sex energy” using elements of the solar system as a metaphor.

I bet old Braco laughs and laughs (quietly) at this Osho® goob and his needlessly strained vocal cords. Braco’s ‘work’ consists of not doing jack, yet his disciples, such as the woman quoted below who is too cheap to take her cat to the vet, report excellent results.

I went to a Braco gazing in NJ recently. The energy that he is channeling is very real. I purchased the DVD entitled the Golden Bridge. It records Braco’s voice which transmits this high frequency energy. My cat rec’d a healing in the fact that she hasn’t vomited in 4 days [...] My cat usually throws up at least once or twice a day.

I mention all of this to complain about the modern habit of confusing “energy” with “pixie dust.” Whenever some dude with long hair starts blabbing about harmonizing your life-energy, or healing your toothache by staring at you, or purging your colon of toxins, and he’s selling tickets, you know it’s time for a Savage Death eye-roll. Energy isn’t an enchanted force field. It doesn’t “flow through” people or cats, can’t be generated by puncturing the epidermis with tiny needles, is not boundless, isn’t “positive” or “negative” with respect to human contentment, cannot be expended mentally, is not “inner,” is not subject to the alignment of stars, does not vibrate your aura, and can’t be channeled, focused, or transmitted by the gaze of mute Croatians or the DVDs of trademarked Indians for the purpose of achieving human happiness. Energy is a measurement of the capacity of a body or system to do work.*

These corny-ass hippie mystics. I ask you. Hey, I know. If you lack vim, I suggest you take a little exercise and eat some goddam kale. If you’re sick, go to a doctor. If you’re unhappy, dump your pig boyfriend. If you crave serenity, take a Xanax. If your life is meaningless, foment revolution. Bitch, pleeze.

___________________
* Dictionary.com says it, I believe it, and that settles it!

Thanks to blamer Tinfoil Hattie for clueing me in to Braco. Thanks also to blamer Keri for trumping him with Baba Dez, “one of the grossest dudes of all time.”

Braco photo from this Howard Stern “video”

Osho® photo from this web page.

Posted in Magical Mysteries from Godtown. Bite me, Chad.

Buddhism sounds familiar

Published by Jill on June 26, 2011. 155 Comments

The other day I dared to impugn the feminist credentials of a global religious leader, head of state complete with palace and throne, and internationally revered dude whose every antic goes virtually unquestioned by the entire world. I caught a little flak for this impugnment.

The impugnment to which I allude, of course, is that of the Dalai Lama. I said “he is no feminist,” and I meant it, by gum.

The Dalai Lama, successfully marketed to “spiritual” Western iconoclasts as a god among men, is problematic from a radical feminist viewpoint. I have already explained why this is so, but I don’t mind repeating myself. The Dalai Lama is 1) a global religious leader, 2) a head of state complete with palace and throne, and 3) an internationally revered dude whose every antic goes virtually unquestioned by the entire Western world. These are three dude-qualities that without exception spell, and have always spelled, trouble for women. Why feminists think it’s OK to overlook these in the case of the ridiculously enpedestalized dudely Dalai Lama I cannot say.

What I can say is that Buddhism, the Dalai Lama’s ism of choice, is just as goofy and fucked up as any other dude-invented religion. I mean, reincarnation? Seriously? What a load.

You know, no jokey essay on Buddhism would be complete without a fond remembrance of delusional ex-movie star tough guy-turned-reality TV Deputy Dork Steven Seagal, who came out as a reincarnated lama, evidently having paid his personal guru-monk to ordain him.

Anyway, while those moments when spinster aunts may be observed to endure gasbag Christopher Hitchens are as rare as feminists on TV, it is difficult to suppress a chuckle at Hitch’s assessment of Buddhism, from his infamous 1998 Dalai takedown, as “the sinister if not indeed crazy belief that death is but a stage in a grand cycle of what appears to be futility and subjection.”

Even if you are, for some reason, okay with Buddhism’s fairy tales of magic and rebirth and ascendance, you may consider it useful to know whether or not your religion hates you. One way to divine the attitude toward women of any given venerable institution is to inspect its power structure for evidence of female representation. So how many Buddhist lamas, tulkus, monks, or poobahs are women?

Zippo.

They got nuns, though. Long-suffering nuns (is there any other kind?):

“[Nunnery founder] Shugseb Jetsun Rinpoche was particularly known for holding a lineage of Chöd, the meditation practice of offering one’s own body for the benefit of others.”

Sound familiar?

Here is a list, handed down by the Buddha Himself, of the crap (the Eight Garudharmas) that nuns are expected to endure on accounta they are members of the sex class:

1. A nun who has been ordained (even) for a century must greet respectfully, rise up from her seat, salute with joined palms, do proper homage to a monk ordained but that day.

2. A nun must not spend the rains in a residence where there is no monk.

3. Every half month a nun should desire two things from the Order of monks : the asking (as to the date) of the Observance day, and the coming for the exhortation (of a monk).

4. After the rains a nun must invite before both the Orders in respect of three matters; what was seen, what was heard and what was suspected.

5. A nun, offending against an important rule, must undergo manatta (discipline) for half a month before both the Orders.

6. When, as a probationers, she has been trained in the six rules for two years, she should seek ordination from both the Orders.

7. A monk must not be abused or reviled in any way by a nun.

8. From today admonition of monks by nuns is forbidden, admonition by monks is not forbidden.

The Buddhist website from which I swiped the above list claims that these gender-based injunctions are not intended to control women, but are actually for the nun’s own protection.

Sound familiar?

Women are, in fact, specifically prohibited from attaining Enlightenment, period. Per El Buddho himself: “It is impossible that a woman should be the Universal Monarch/King of Death/Brahmaa.”

Yes, women are the sex class, yes, even for those chill, enlightened Buddhists! Busy Buddhism-mocking spinster aunts on the go are nothing if not shoddy scholars, so here’s a little blurb supporting my argument from — I say it loud and proud — Wikipedia.

“According to [professor of Buddhism at Stanford] Diana Paul, Buddhism inherited a view of women whereby if they are not represented as mothers then they are portrayed as either lustful temptresses or as evil incarnate.”

Sound familiar?

I was eventually able to transcend Wikipedia to turn up a paper authored by this same Diana Y Paul which contains this unpleasant but hardly surprising revelation concerning Buddhism’s elemental misogyny:

“If a woman is acknowledged as having the spiritual potential of becoming a Bodhisattva, then she has access to the way of enlightenment. If she is denied this capacity, she is denied the religious goal of Mahayana Buddhism. Some texts, such as the Pure Land Sutra, deny women birth in the Pure Land unless they despise their female nature. Despising the female nature results in rebirth as a man in the Pure Land. Vows to be reborn as men were seen as acts of piety performed by devout Buddhist women. In texts of this kind, the female sex is subordinated to the male sex as inferior — as defective and impure in body. Only through denial of one’s feminine body in this lifetime is there spiritual attainment in the next. While men too were to deny their sexual and bodily needs in order to gain rebirth in the Pure Land, there was never a specific vow for them to despise their own body. Sexual transformation from female to male is taken literally — that is, a women dies and is reborn as a man.”

Paul is quick to suggest that not all Buddhist sutras reflect this high-grade misogyny. However, she acknowledges that such “liberal portraits of women a religious beings” comprise an “extremely small percentage” of these religious texts.

But I digress. Back to the Dalai Lama. Surprise. He hates Buddhist homos, promotes religious intolerance, eats meat, opposes abortion, and sees nothing oppressive about men paying to rape women.

“Men-to-men and women-to-women is generally considered sexual misconduct,” he asserts.

And here he’s just blatantly buttering up the faithful:

“To have sexual relations with a prostitute paid by you and not by a third person does not constitute improper behavior.” But if your best man buys you a hooker for your bachelor party, karma gonna get you. You’ll probably be reincarnated as one of those poor body-offering nuns.

The Dalai Lama, it turns out, is just another liberal dude in a gaudy toga, imbued with misogynist dudeliness, like all liberal dudes.

Posted in Magical Mysteries from Godtown and Men Hate You. Bite me, Chad.

Why didn’t I think of that?

Published by Jill on May 20, 2011. 43 Comments

Once in a while there emerges an idea so radiant, so silky, so bursting with nourishing emollients and nutraceuticals, that the staff at Spinster HQ can but put down their string cheese, gaze up from their microscopes, and raise a prickly-pear margarita to its genius.

Today I allude to this, one man’s response to the announcement by some apocalypse-predicting old godbag that the world is gonna end on Saturday:

An atheist and entrepreneur from North Hampshire, Bart Centre, is enjoying a boost in business for Eternal Earth-bound Pets, which he set up to look after the pets of those who believe they will be raptured. [cite]

God.

I mean God, the actual fictional deity. A real prince of a guy. He hates homos, women, Arabs, and communists; he loves blastocysts, white folks, America, and pedophile priests. He gives AIDS to babies and turns a blind eye to genocide in Sudan. Hell, he even gave me breast cancer! So it’s just like him to suction up 200 million pious animal caregivers through his giant Heaven Vacuum Tube and leave all those innocent dogs and hamsters and parakeets to starve to death or — the more likely scenario — get eaten alive by all the marauding infidel zombies God will have left behind to rot in squalor and pestilence. After Darfur, a thing like that would be pie to a guy like him.

Often I scratch the spinster noggin with a puzzled finger, unable to quite fathom why anybody would care to worship a fictional depraved shitbag like that God guy, but then I remember that fictional depraved shitbags are often charismatic, and that the godly, who have been lied to all their lives, can’t help being gullible.

Posted in Glossology, Godbagism and Magical Mysteries from Godtown. Bite me, Chad.

Spinster aunt has nothing better to do than bloviate on the same topic as yesterday

Published by Jill on May 28, 2010. 107 Comments

The argument has been made that intuition is superior to science because it is somehow free of the oppressive misogynist entanglements that encumber its dude-dominated counterpart. A spin-off of this argument says that, because academia has traditionally given (and continues to give) women the stink-eyed bum’s rush, science is antifeminist and, presumably, must be shunned in favor of this women-centric intuition dealio.

Unfortunately, it is not possible for any concept, process, person, or cognitive function to exist outside of patriarchy. That’s what patriarchy is: a world order with firmly established and inescapable auspices. Science, like everything else on the planet, is Dude Nation’s minion, yes, but “intuition” doesn’t exist in a magical patriarchy-free zone merely because it is associated with women’s reality. In fact, it is because of patriarchy that women were assigned the supposedly unique and mystical power of hunchiness the first place.

Thus do we dispense with the first argument. Onward to Argument 2!

It is understandable and even necessary that feminist women should cast a jaundiced eye upon such facts as have been amassed by a scientific community that exists primarily to serve the megatheocorporatocracy. More than a few of these ‘facts’ have been used to smush women (and other sentient beings) over the past couple of hundred years, for the exclusive benefit of the ruling class (primarily Penis-Americans). Furthermore, nobody can argue that the science community isn’t really fucking sexist; more than a few women have contributed to scientific discovery, only to be ignored by both the Nobel committee and the PBS documentary that popularizes the breakthrough during pledge drive.

But the statement “science harms women” is not as accurate as is “the application, by misogynist knobs, of scientific method to systems of oppression harms women.”

Science is just knowledge, and scientific method is just a way of acquiring it. Because our world order is predicated on a pack of lies, it is, of course, incumbent on the individual to determine the truth and/or philosophic value in anything presented as scientific fact, but it is imprudent, backward, and self-destructive to curl a suspicious lip at knowledge itself (I will stop short of calling it irrational, since self-destruction may sometimes be seen as a reasonable solution to certain insurmountable pickles; however, such situations are generally the result of the fundamental incompatibility of fully-realized humanity and oppression culture).

Anyways, I assert that knowledge not acquired through scientific method is way more suspect than that which is acquired through scientific method, on accounta, without quantifiable, measurable evidence to which analysis has been applied and upon which the full force of one’s awesome intellective powers has been brought to bear, what you got there is unsupported assertion based on reasoning that may or may not be flawed, but you’ll never know, because you didn’t run your shit through the Number 1 Science Information Test Lab.

Another term for “unsupported assertion based on reasoning that may or may not be flawed, but you’ll never know, because you didn’t run your shit through the Number 1 Science Information Test Lab” is belief. I could give you 7,894,532 examples of goofy or uncool results obtained from the confusion of belief with fact, and maybe I will, if my secretary Phil ever gets back from Starbuck’s with my double Caffe Immenso. Until then, perhaps 2 or 3 will suffice.

One example of flawed reasoning substituted for scientific inquiry, recently mentioned by a couple of blamers, is the tragic vaccines-cause-autism movement: my kid got vaccinated, my kid developed autism, therefore vaccines cause autism.

Another imperfect grasp of causation was famously demonstrated by the cargo cults of the South Pacific: some folks in New Guinea, having observed fabulous wealth being offloaded from war planes during WW II, erroneously concluded that technology-shaped things cause cool stuff to appear, and believed that they could attract more cool stuff by building imitation landing strips and replica airplanes out of vegetation, and by marching around in homemade military uniforms carrying gun-shaped pieces of wood.

Wait, wait, here’s a hot one (also vaccine-related): the notion, put forth by godbag misogynist politicians, that vaccinating teenage girls against papillomavirus causes them to turn into sluts.

Still another term for “unsupported assertion based on reasoning that may or may not be flawed, but you’ll never know because you didn’t run your shit through the Number 1 Science Information Test Lab” is intuition.

You know? I’m gonna go ahead and assert that ‘intuition’, a psycho-clairvoyant precognitive Spidey sense, doesn’t even exist. I prefer the term ‘insight’ to denote the process of observation and deduction applied at knee-jerk light-speed by the free-flowing neurotransmitters of a well-greased lobe. Like when you invent the wheel, or when you’re strolling along, and you encounter a stick, and your lobe sends up a flare, and sure enough the stick turns out to be a snake. That sort of thing.

It is true that, as an oppressed class, women have been trained to ignore, at least in certain circumstances, this handy and useful brain function, with the untoward result that we’ve become more compliant with the mandates of rape culture than if we’d been encouraged from birth to exercise to the max our awesome lobe-powers. We are exhorted (and rewarded when we do) to place a higher premium on conformity than we do on our own safety and well-being, even when the free-flowing neurotransmitters of our well-greased lobe initially suggest “No! Stop! Don’t do it, fool!”

Suppression of lobe function is how women end up married to schmucks, wearing high heels, faking orgasms, getting boob jobs, and smiling coyly at strangers with candy.

But heck, isn’t there a baby-with-the-bathwater thing going on with this full-bore embrace of the myth of intuition at the expense of actual science? The insight-bush might bear the occasional fruit, but the lobe isn’t omniscient! The lobe can’t predict the future! The lobe simply cannot intuit which of the brown spiders, purple mushrooms, or lumps in your boob will kill you! You need actual knowledge to traverse this treacherous terrain. This kind of knowledge comes from science.

While this so-called ‘intuition’ dealio may give satisfactory results as an immediate dispenser of just prejudice in emergencies, when there’s time, why not send the old intuition around to a couple of the other lobes for some rational analysis? Why not check out what some other people have done, rational analysis-wise, with their so-called intuitions? Why cling to myth, assumption, fallacy, or belief? And what about intellectual curiosity? What about enbiggening the horizons of human endeavor?

Persistent and willful ignorance is the enemy of liberation! A life that eschews science is a life is lived entirely in the present, like that of a beetle, or a puppy. And although puppies possess several enviable attributes, a surpassing appreciation of the value of truth isn’t one of’em.

Although it can possibly be said that puppies are themselves cosmic articulations* of truth.

________________
*I anthropomorphize the cosmos in this fashion for purposes of sentimentality and poeticalness only.

Posted in Magical Mysteries from Godtown, Number 1 Science Information and Oppression Culture. Bite me, Chad.

Spinster aunt reveals her inner Firestone

Published by Jill on May 27, 2010. 94 Comments

Holy bajoly! The discussion on one of my recent posts has taken quite an unexpected turn. It went from the idea that women’s history has been erased/co-opted by the dominant culture to the idea that — I’m not even kidding — science is bad!

Unfortunately I have to go and see a girl about a horse, so time is short, but here’s the gist of the much better post I had intended to write on this topic (it was going to have more jokes, and probably an unforgettable new coined term, so it’s too bad, but there it is):

Science is bad, apparently, because men dominate the field. Also, women are better than men because we “have an intuitive understanding of nature and the processes involved.”

Concludes this commenter:

All the paper that men need to record history that they destroy, to transmit information, that we used to tell by stories and metaphors, is just a waste. They are just inefficient. It’s annoying because I always understood how bees and flies and some birds and bats flew, intuitively and it is only in 2005 that male scientists begin to understand it, with high tech equipment. It’s annoying also because they claim we never knew it, when Nietche(sp) wrote about it, the oscillation. It’s soooo dumb.

Women’s intuition? Seriously?

Again I say it: holy bajoly!

Intuition is unproven conjecture based on this, that, or the other thing. As blamer Nails put it:

Science is about understanding that your intuition is not always right and that the way to really *know* that it was involves testing and repeatability and good structure for experiments. You can tell me you intuitively know whatever you want to, but it doesn’t prove it at all.

Science is a process by which one discovers actual truth. Have Pinkfaced Captains of Industry and their Dude Nation minions subverted the scientific method for evil? Sure. Does their having done that invalidate the method itself, to the extent that goddessy ladies should pooh-pooh the whole idea in favor of some kind of magic lady-worship cult, the centerpiece of which is faith in “feelings”?

It is unlikely that the best place to find truth-n-beauty is at a matriarchy convention in San Marcos where the subject of the keynote speech is “My Journey with Sekhmet Goddess of Power and Change” and afterward there’s a drum circle.

Patriarchy is the problem, not science. Science does not oppress women. Dude culture oppresses women. I’m not advocating “science equality,’ either. I’m advocating — as always — liberation from oppression. Is anything more liberating than truth-n-beauty? I ask you.

Scientific discovery leading to human-friendly technology is the only way we’re gonna get out of the dark ages. For example, here at the lab at Spinster HQ we’re working on an anti-patchouli ray which we fully expect will change the way we smell public spaces forever more.

Posted in Blogulation, Magical Mysteries from Godtown, Number 1 Science Information and Private Business of the Secret Feminist Society. Bite me, Chad.

Spinster aunt backslides (but can quit anytime. Really.)

Published by Jill on April 5, 2010. 67 Comments

Bluebonnets
Springtime at El Rancho Deluxe. These goddam bluebonnets are everywhere.

Longtime residents of Savage Death Island will recall that this Internet feminist once had a pretty hardcore BBC news feed habit. I sat around all day transfixed by the horror of the Beeb. That habit caused my butt to fuse with my Aeron chair, and led to many obstreperal lobe core-breaches. Eventually it got so bad that the drunken wood nymphs with whom I am obliged to revel in springtime staged an intervention. They installed a new (well, factory-refurbished) obstreperal module in my neural net, gave me a case of Portuguese rosé, and forced me at gunpoint to frolic with furry woodland creatures in a meadow of wildflowers (see photo) until I puked. Thanks, drunken wood nymphs! I owe ya one!

Thus I got clean. I stayed Beeb-free for a over a year.

Until today.

But don’t worry. The news is actually kind of good. I mean, the news is of course really bad, generally, but one small aspect of the teeny thing I’m reporting today is kind of not awful.

I allude to the comments on a BBC Have Your Say blurb titled What does Easter mean for you? (Apparently it was Easter over the weekend. Whatever.). Ordinarily I run screaming from Have Your Say-type dealios that depend for their content upon the submissions of self-selected British amateur opinionists, but the imp of the perverse compelled me to click on this Easter thing. What, I wondered idly, is the current thinking on this silly myth?

The comments were refreshingly cynical and secular. Apparently, what Easter means for readers of the BBC website is “just another bank holiday.”

Of course one hippy-dippy commenter writes:

As for the meaning of Easter, we ignore that. Our spiritual needs are well catered for by the splendour of the coastal scenery, the movement of the sea and communion with nature at its best. We marvel at the hand of physics rather than the hand of a godhead.

Just a minute. Physics catering to spiritual needs? Jesus, this god crap can really fester an abscess in even a non-believer’s brain!

So yeah, on this post there are few nut-job responses involving incomprehensible hallucinatory glossolalia about our lord and saviour who died for our sins so we can be reborn as winged faeries who eschew depraved British capitalism, which is “part of the Anti-Christ,” which if you support it you will pay “a million fold” for the suffering you inflict on the poor. But these loons are far outnumbered by the weary atheists who just want a day off from the interminable grind.

Easter means a long weekend. Public holidays are the only good thing that ever came out of man’s need to invent religion.

My personal favorite (and by no means an anomaly; these views represent a solid majority):

[Easter means] nothing. I’m retired and hate all religions.

I realize I need to get out more, but this spontaneous outpouring of lackluster, disinterested, non-religious Jesus-fatigue really gave the old lobe-shaft a couple of sorely-needed cranks. Especially after suffering National Public Radio’s scourgey reportage, wherein correspondents “covered” Easter like it was breaking news.

Dude, here’s some breaking news for ya: Some ancient Romans executed a popular hippie mystic, and, just like he was Elvis, a few fanatics had a hard time believing he was really dead so they pretended they saw him hanging around Trader Vic’s and some leper colonies and such. It’s very sad, but it happened over 2000 years ago! It’s time to move on, already!

But no. The NPR correspondents could not resist interviewing some Haitians, and of course the Haitians were Christians who said that God sent the earthquake “to test their faith.”

Though I knew it was coming, when I heard this I dropped the Meyer lemons I was juggling because earth-inheriting meekness shit like this just chaps my entire hide. Why would anyone want anything to do with a malignant narcissist like that God dude, who “tests your faith” by slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people? It simply does not compute. If I were those Haitian Christians, I’d be all for inviting that sensible-sounding Antichrist guy over for a nice lunch and some brainstorming on how to to get this psychokiller God dude outta here.

Would I deny the suffering Haitians whatever small comfort their religion might provide? Pfui. Haitians are not children (except the ones who are children). But the Honky McWhiterman narrative so popular with American news correspondents presents Haitians as simple folk to whom quaint fairy tales are sufficiently meaningful. Certainly fake mythology crap is more expeditious for these child-like naifs than hard-to-understand concepts like science and truth.

Pfui.

Posted in Godbagism, Heartwarming Nature Crap, Magical Mysteries from Godtown and Not Altogether Depressing. Bite me, Chad.

Spinster aunt begins post with “I,” tells anecdote

Published by Jill on January 28, 2010. 43 Comments

I recently blew out a lobe laughing a cold, ulcerated laugh. It happened yesterday, when my sibling Tidy told me a sad tale of Christian insanity, which tale I now relate to you, right after I bore you with some background details.

For reasons that, to my surprise, turned out to be none of my goddam business, Tidy has started sending my niece Rotel to one of those honky upper-middle-class god-affiliated schools where the kids wear uniforms and attend mandatory “chapel” sessions. For the past few months I have been nervously eyeballing the child, ever alert for signs that the faithy godbag indoctrination has begun to take, so that I might countermand that moron crap with an auntly intervention of Question Authority-ism. So far it’s been all clear, which is why it was quite a jolt when, during a recent babysitting gig, young Rotel broke into song, and the song she broke into was not “Fried Ham, Fried Ham, Cheese and Baloney,” but a horrifying ditty about dewdrops of mercy and Jesus and how he is the “light of the world.” The goopy dewdroppy Jesosity blew my mind. There was only one possible response.

“Holy shit!” I said.

Both of the nieces busted out laughing. They know I am prohibited by Tidy from saying “holy shit” in their presence. They don’t know it’s because Tidy is afraid they might repeat it in front of nice people, nice people who will form the opinion that Tidy is a self-absorbed loose-moraled alcoholic for permitting her daughters’ exposure to anyone low-class enough to say “holy shit” in front of little kids. The nice people will have no choice but to call CFS. The nieces will be thrown into foster care, Tidy will be sentenced to lousy-mother prison, and I, corrupter of youth, will face a firing squad.

I’ll get a cigarette out of the deal, though, so it won’t be a total loss.

But I digress. The sad tale of Christian insanity I mentioned at the beginning of this post starts here:

The other day Tidy hears that a public school on the poor side of town has raised over $4000 for Haitian relief. She thinks this is awesome, so she calls up Rotel’s affluent god-based school to suggest that they get a sort of break-the-piggy-bank-for-Haiti initiative going. So the kids might broaden their philanthropical horizons or whatever. To Tidy’s surprise, the god school wasn’t down, not in the slightest.

Not that they are totally ignoring Haiti! Au contraire! They’re “keeping Haiti in front of the students” with “prayer.”

That’s when the laugh erupted and lobe blew out.

It was already pulsating a bit from the smelliness of the idea of repurposing the earthquake as a sort of social studies unit to teach young WASPs, not about human suffering and its root causes, but about compulsory altruism and the duty to allocate a small percentage of one’s white privilege loot to indigent brown foreigners. Totally screwed Haitians = golden opportunity to introduce noblesse oblige to Richie Rich.

Gross, yeah, and a poor substitute for the new world order that would really put things right, but at least it generates a little cash for immediate relief efforts. If you haven’t eaten in 4 days, and you manage to scrounge one of those fabled energy biscuits, do you really give a crap about the motives of the sanctimonious chump who texted 10 bucks to the Red Cross?

This prayer gambit on the other hand. It is difficult to imagine an emptier, worthlesser, time-wastinger, efficaciouslesser gesture. In fact, organized prayer has been proven to be 137 times worse than doing nothing at all. This is because compulsory group participation in phony appeals to a fake benevolent American deity is a political behavior that not only fosters intolerable levels of community sanctimony, but reinforces a culture of oppression through repetition of patriarchal doctrine. So not only do marginalized groups get the immediate shaft in the form of material non-support during a crisis; not only are little kids duped into thinking that muttering a few words in chapel is good for earthquake victims; but organized prayer replicates the deleterious effects of godbagism by storing them in the common consciousness to ensure ignorance and obfuscation of truth for future generations.

The starving, sick, homeless Haitians should really be luxuriating in all that prayer right about now. Who needs food, water, and antibiotics when little rich kids in Texas are, on your behalf, being forced by deluded authority figures to mutter nonsensical crap to an impotent made-up figment?

Posted in Godbagism, Magical Mysteries from Godtown, Oppression Culture, The Spinster's Finger on the Pulse of Today and The megatheocorporatocracy. Bite me, Chad.

Mockery Korner

Published by Jill on January 25, 2010. 44 Comments

I regret that today’s post is one of those posts in which I recycle a couple of reader comments from the trash bin, because they express comicalness. Today’s are both dudely.

In our first example, the author alludes to some Japanese fetish footwear I pictured in a post way back in the Osteopassic Period. I’ve gotten quite a bit of mileage out of that post, as The World At Large continues to google “torture fetish shoes” with no small frequency.

Hello.

I am a man. Yes, I know, please bear with me. I’m one of those men who’se Mother tried to bring him up pro-feminist in the seventies.

My partner, who is a woman, desperately wants a pair of these shoes. “What will you do in them?”, I ask. Just sit around, looking at them, seems to be the idea (as she accepts she won’t be able to stand up), presumably while I cook dinner.

Trouble is, my partner is a student, and has no money, so she wants me to pay 200 pounds (UK) for these shoes. So I ask you: am I more of an instrument of the oppressive status quo if I buy them or do not?

Hey, Man. Seriously? It must be a helluva rush to know you wield Absolute Shoe Power over your woman. Do you also mete out food and shelter, in addition to clothing? Do you write to Internet feminists when your woman, let’s say, wants a sandwich and you aren’t sure if you should be contributing to her fat content?

Damn, that’s hot!

Our second example, wherein a dude named Clinton responds to a recent post about Focus on the Family’s spokesfootballer, is just batshit. I reproduce it here because I love the first line so much: “People like you are the reason that people don’t grow up to be better than they are.”

People like you are the reason that people don’t grow up to be better than they are. Since you refuse to be a good person, why would you expect anyone else to be, as well? You think that Focus on the Family is loony because they are pro-life, but you neglect your own looniness in rejecting the Savior of mankind, Jesus Christ. And apparently it’s okay to insult the very foundation of Christianity (”ghost of a dead Nazarene on a stick”), but it’s not okay to take the moral high ground and believe that all life is sacred. Why don’t you do the world a favor and stop blogging, or try and treat people with respect. Even if you’re correct (which you’re not, by the way), people in the wrong aren’t going to admit that they’re wrong if you have a high and mighty attitude, and insult them. If you hope to change anyone’s minds, you need to change your attitude.

Not only is it “loony” not to worship the ghost of a dead Nazarene on a stick, it’s my fault that wrongthinking people don’t change their wrongthinking ways. Because I don’t ask nice enough. One of my favorite arguments ever: wrong may be wrong, but she who points it out is wrongest of all!

Oh, and that last part about my attitude? Clinton plagiarized it word for word from a speech my mother authored and delivered more or less continuously from 1968-1980.

Posted in Blogulation, Magical Mysteries from Godtown and Oppression Culture. Bite me, Chad.

Spinster aunt publishes post on godly football player without titling it first

Published by Jill on January 18, 2010. 72 Comments

Redneck beer coozy

According to the Internet, a celebrity football player and his mother are making a pro-compulsory pregnancy Super Bowl commercial for noted hysterical antifeminist group Focus on the Family. Reportedly the gist of the commercial is the heartwarming tale of the pre-parturient football mother, who experienced life-threatening issues while pregnant and was advised by doctors to abort the fetus. Well, Football Mom begged to differ. Since abortions invalidate and indecentuate women, she brought her fetus to term, whereupon it matured into a dude who made a shit-ton of money throwing a ball around in a stylized form of organized combat. She raised herself a star quarterback who loves Jesus! Her gamble paid off, says Focus on the Family; yours will, too!

I love the hyperreactive, emotionally unstable “argument” supporting the premise that abortions “kill babies” that would otherwise grow up to become influential celebrities. If you have an abortion you’re murdering the future winner of the Nobel Prize for Selflessness, etc.

Oy.

Try this simple experiment. If you are in a public place, such as the Super S “grocery” store in Dripping Springs, Texas, this unborn-fetuses-are-the-Mother-Teresas-of-tomorrow thesis can be disproved in about 47 seconds. A quick glance around this shrine to Creme Filling will confirm that your fellow shoppers — all former fetuses brought to term as per God’s Plan, then abandoned by that same God to forage for sustenance in this forsaken hellhole of wilted iceberg lettuce and plastic-wrapped genetically modified snack foods — count no Mother Teresas among their number. No Presidents of the United States, no Nobel laureates, no celebrities, no astronauts, not even any local TV news anchors. It turns out that the vast majority of fetuses brought to term are just regular chumps the existence of whom is a matter of extreme inconsequentiality to the cosmos. They don’t cure cancer or negotiate peace settlements in the Middle East. They eat sliced baloney, wear beige Easy Spirit shoes, and sheathe their Miller Lites in beer coozies that say “I don’t need the INTERNET, my wife knows EVERYTHING!”

This same experiment can be performed anywhere — in urban sidewalks, rock clubs, trendy coffee huts, taco stands, and upscale shopping malls –with homogeneous results. Which results are: exceedingly few non-aborted fetuses become saintly millionaire football players.

What Focus on the Family conveniently omits to consider is the proposition diametric to their Heroic Fetus thesis. That is: applying their own loony reasoning to the problem of the existence of Bad Dudes — it follows that an abortion today could unburden the world of tomorrow’s rapist, suicide bomber, or genocidal maniac. Why wouldn’t that be a good idea?

Focus on the Family blames evildoers on crummy families where there is too much MTV and not enough “attuning to God’s presence and calling.”

O for the simpler days of yore, when you could just take your “snippy” teen “out to the back 40 acres” and “get his mind straight” (apparently, back in the days of yore, everybody had 40 acres in the back. This area was called “The Whuppin’ 40″). But now, instead of compliant teens who shape up the minute Paw kicks the shit out of’em, MTV has created a race of headstrong youths who are, inconveniently, able to “articulate their anger,” thus “compound[ing] the difficulties of growing up.”

Here’s an excerpt from the Super Bowl commercial story that’s creepy in ways I just can’t put my finger on.

“Tebow, one of the most esteemed college football players ever, has been very vocal about his Christian faith and his love for Jesus Christ.”

A college football player loves the ghost of a dead Nazarene on a stick, so he’s qualified to compel pregnancy? That doesn’t even make sense in a world gone mad!

It’s not Tebow so much as this recent Haiti-spawned spate of vocality about love for Jesus Christ, I suppose, that sticks in the spinster craw. On CNN yesterday there were countless videos of traumatized Haitians stumbling around in rubble, alluding to God in fearful, reverent and favorable terms. It blows the lobe. This earthquake and subsequent torments visited randomly upon the survivors is a pretty good argument of in favor of an indifferent, deity-free universe, but apparently other, more fanciful conclusions have been drawn. The heart bleeds.

Posted in Compulsory pregnancy, Godbagism, Magical Mysteries from Godtown, Mass Media and The Spinster's Finger on the Pulse of Today. Bite me, Chad.

Godbaggianism originates at cellular level

Published by Jill on December 2, 2009. 92 Comments

Need cash? Got any Jewish eggs? Sell’em on Craigslist for 8 large! No Methodist, Buddhist, or Secular Humanist eggs, please. God can tell the difference.

True story: when my ovaries were amputated, biopsied, and interviewed by clerics, it was found that my eggs did not subscribe to any supernatural fantasies whatsoever (except one, which claimed to have Unitarian leanings). Experts were baffled. I was somewhat bummed, since this precluded their lucrative sale to desperate eggless godbags. The ova of spinster aunts, alas, do not command top dollar, no matter how “qualified and extraordinary” we are. It’s discrimination, pure and simple.

___________________

[Full text of egg ad, for posterity:

JEWISH EGG DONORS URGENTLY NEEDED $8,000
Date: 2009-11-20, 7:28AM CST
Reply to: jewishbaby3@yahoo.com

WE WOULD FEEL INCREDIBLY BLESSED TO HAVE YOUR HELP!

A Jewish Blessing, LLC was founded in response to the growing number of requests from infertile Jewish families for help in finding qualified and extraordinary young Jewish women to be their egg donors.

We are currently working with several wonderful couples, with more families reaching out to us every day and we are truly in need of your help.
If you are a Jewish woman age 20-32, very responsible, kind and sincere, with a great personality and would consider helping one of these families achieve their dream of becoming parents please email us at jewishbaby3@yahoo.com …. and please pass this forward to friends who might also want to help.

________________________

UPDATE: Screw that low-rent $8000 egg gig; I just found some discriminating egg shoppers who’ll pay 20 grand!


JEWISH EGG DONOR NEEDED by LOVING JEWISH COUPLE $20,000+ not an agency
Date: 2009-11-15, 5:44AM CST
Reply to: lovingjewishcouple@yahoo.com

JEWISH EGG DONOR NEEDED by LOVING JEWISH COUPLE $20,000+ ALL EXPENSES PAID not an agency

Reply to: lovingjewishcouple@yahoo.com

“We would love you to be part of our miracle”

We are a loving, caring, Jewish couple who are accomplished, secure and happy. It would mean the world to us to share our love with a child and make our lives truly complete.

We appreciate intelligence, education and learning. If you are a student it would be our pleasure to assist with your tuition and related expenses.

You are an ideal donor if you are:

* Jewish with a biological mother who was born Jewish
* (prefer if your biological father was also born Jewish)
* A woman between 18 and 33 years old
* Between 5′1″ and 5′11″
* Warm, caring, responsible, reliable
* Motivated and passionate about what you do
* An individual with high self esteem
* Highly intelligent with high IQ, SAT Scores & GPA (Please Include Scores)
* Attractive
* At healthy body weight
* A non smoker and drug free
* Free of genetic diseases (such as Tay-Sachs) in your primary blood line
* Able to make about 5 visits to a highly respected Fertility Doctor.

You will not need to carry a pregnancy.

Please e-mail us in confidence, addressing the *points above including your age, SAT Scores verbal/math etc., highlighting what you feel is special about you and whatever other information you feel comfortable sharing, with a recent photo if possible to lovingjewishcouple@yahoo.com

Posted in Magical Mysteries from Godtown, The Argument Against Human Reproduction, The megatheocorporatocracy and Ways in Which the Internet Is a Hoot. Bite me, Chad.