Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Spring

I love springtime. It reminds you that the world's still turning.

A Place to Call My Own II

Everyone should have a place to (pardon the pun) call there own. An ancient mechanism of the human mind that dictates possession, hearkening back to a time when man had to scrounge for roots and berries and hunt for food. "Mine" was a survival tactic.

But we must realize that civilization is now able to move beyond the "mine" mentality when it comes to food and survival. Thus, evolution in the human psyche manifests personal possession a vestigial impulse. It is no longer necessary, in the most highly advanced parts of our society, to maintain this impulse because these lucky people don't have to worry about finding food or true survival in it's original sense.

(The evolution of man is all around us. Yet because it happens so slowly, and so progressively, that we rarely realize it for what it is.)

In this case, we have two choices. Either we scrap the idea of personal property or we reassign the impulse to something else. It is the latter that I believe best for the continued success of man, at least in the short run. We must find a new thing to possess. It was survival. It was other people. It was property. It was gold and riches. But now?

We all need a place to call our own. Something to possess in the truest sense of the word. Something that is ours and no one else's and most importantly something that when owned completely isn't detrimented or harmed by it. I seek a different kind of possession. Land costs money and, really, you never get exactly what you want. Either you can't afford that "perfect" house in that "perfect" little town or city, the neighborhood goes sour, or some other injustice befalls your dreams.

My ideal possession is not property, or gold, or riches, or titles, or people. It is this right here. My mind. My words. Myself. Of course people can drop by from time to time, sign the guest book, call me and leave a message, it's all possible. And it's free. It's also whatever I make it. It is always perfect, because just as my idea of ideal changes, it changes.

What is the difference between a house and a home but the memories held within? What is the place I call my own but the ideas and words that I put it in? Nothing. And mine, free thought, is free.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Iraqi Deaths

How many people have died in Iraq since the beginning of combat operations?


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These are the civilian casualties.

A life is a life.

Sunday, April 8, 2007

Rantings of a Mad Man Part XIV: Chocolate Hares and Colored Fetuses

It's that time of year again. Those infrequent Christians pack into ancient buildings to thank god for their misfortunes and the promise of a better afterlife. So I sit here now and could ramble about the idiocy of such a lifestyle or the illogicality of religious devotion in general, but I won't. Frankly, it's gotten too much publicity as it is and I have no desire to feed the beast.

That said, I will make a few observations.

Those who believe in god get to go to heaven. Isn't that like saying those who are faithful to the president get cabinet positions? I prefer a merit-based system myself, you know, where you are rewarded with a position for revolutionary thinking or a little something called skill. But by all means, an all-knowing god would certainly choose the low road. After all, whose god doesn't show favoritism nowadays anyways?

How about Noah and his magical ark? You know, the one that he fit two of each animal on? Two animals, one male and one female, of each of tens of thousands of species on earth that weren't fish or birds. Erm... He was able to find two of each animal, or did they come to him? Like, across the ocean from the Americas too? And where did all this water come from that it could cover the whole Earth? The ark didn't sink when they all got aboard? Obviously it was large enough, where did he get that amount of wood in the desert? Now that we've determined that this was impossible, how was he able to feed them and dispose of their waste for forty days and forty nights? How was he somehow able to stop them from mating, dying, and eating or killing each other? Wow, that's amazing! Certainly anyone who's ever worked with animals would be able to do that.

The Roman soldiers in The Passion of the Christ spoke Latin. Actually to be historically accurate, they should have been speaking Greek. Oh well, I guess Mel Gibson is just a bad Christian.

When the pope releases a papal bull stating something, it doesn't mean that from that point on it is doctrine. Actually, it means that from the beginning of time that has been doctrine, even if previous doctrine had said otherwise. Come again?

The books of the bible were put together by a pagan, Emperor Constantine.

Come to think of it, wouldn't the creators of the church have had to have been pagan at some point too as all religions besides Catholicism are considered pagan by the church.

The pope is considered infallible. But he denounced Galileo as a heretic for daring to suggest a heliocentric universe.

There are no non-Christian saints.

Herman Melville's Moby Dick only became popular because the pope banned it because it gave soul-like qualities to a whale.

The bible makes no mention of limbo, actually a pagan author, Dante, created it. It was then later melded into Church doctrine. However currently there is a motion underway to de-doctrinize limbo, as asked by Pope John Paul II, it has yet to been affirmed however.

If you want a picture of what the church sees the ideal Christian as read the book of Job and see if you really want to be one.

In the words of George Carlin: "The only thing a Christian desires is to die. Help them..."

Slavery was justified by the church because (particularly) the Spanish and Portuguese promised to convert them to Christianity.

I have a serious question: Where did the Easter Bunny come from?

The papacy uses the Swiss Guard for protection, yet the Swiss are only 42% Catholic. They also have a 41% Protestant population and a 4% agnostic population. Maybe they'd want to switch. How about the Conquistadors? The Spanish are devoutly Catholic after all (76%), but then again their atheist population is around 19%. Ah... life.

Up until the seventeenth century, the church did not want commoners to read the bible because it would distract them from listening to their sermons. Why?

That's all for today. Enjoy your day off from work.

FlyFreeForever.