…”goat”, of course, being a euphemism for “anything that pisses me off.”
regular readers of this blog (all 3.1 of you per month*, on average, i believe) will likely recall that i’m usually nicer over here. sorry for the bursting of certain bubbles and all that, but today i have a rant. i haven’t exactly read everything that’s available though the Blogswarm Against Theocracy, but i’ve read a lot of it. and a lot of it pisses me off. of course, a lot of other things piss me off, too, and the read can decide whether or not that’s the product of a mild form of Tourette’s syndrome, or having children, or this upcoming move, or what. regardless, i’m about to rant. Happy Easter.
WHAT REALLY GETS MY GOAT.
Atheists who position their arguments seemingly from the stance that Atheism is a religion. yeah, that’s right, i started with “us” first. why? because when we talk like we deserve the same recognition as organized religion, non-profit churches, and government-sanctioned endeavors to help those in need, we simply obviate how much we fail to understand about society and government. Atheism is not a religion. it’s bad enough that the fundamentalists keep trying to fit us in that box. let us not do so as well.
Christian fundamentalists who promote methods by which their special brand of intolerance can be inflicted on the general public. and by that i mean everything from anti-abortion legislation to protesting funerals of Iraq war veterans.
School systems which require, as a portion of the graded curriculum, the attendance of middle-school (junior high) children in abstinence-only education. this is, in fact, one of the most subtly nefarious blurring of that already-compromised line between Church and State.
Agnostics who spend 3/4 of whatever it is that they say or write in the communication of obtuse caveats in the vain hope that whatever eventually becomes the point of their message will not offend anyone. seriously, we understand that the point of agnosticism is largely to leave all options open so that with your last dying breath you can suddenly become Christian or Jewish or Muslim or whatever and thus be “saved”, no matter what. we don’t need to be told that you find every religious teaching to be beneficial and worthwhile and respectable and “neat” every time you open your mouth. jump into whatever pool it is you chose with both feet and get yourself wet. because right now all you’re doing is wandering aimlessly with a lukewarm drink in your hand and getting sunburned.
Intelligent Designers who fail to understand the inherent irony in that title, considering the fact that its ideals are largely spouted by some of the most willfully ignorant people in the world, for whom “intelligence” is but a dim, fading light at the end of a tunnel that they don’t even realize they’re standing in, and yet forcibly desire to inflict their petulant myopia on the world at large.
School systems and governments who cave in to the Intelligent Designers.
Fundamentalists who seek to destroy everything they cannot understand, including Art and people who “shockingly” have different perspectives and beliefs.
“News” people who have compromised any sense of common decency, let alone journalistic integrity, to “report” the “news” that they are fed from the Bush Administration and its Congressional sycophants.
The people of this community who now look at me askance and pretend as if i’m suddenly not trustworthy just because i’ve admitted, within their hearing, that i do not hold any particular belief in their god. there’s surprisingly fewer of them than i thought there would be, but seriously, your lips, my sphincter. enjoy.
what does all that have to do with the separation of Church and State? well, some of that is inherently obvious. the rest of it exists in our society as a by-product of the intolerance which naturally springs from a semi-religious governmental status quo. as i noted in this post (also here), the public’s view on politics is largely that politicians should show some form of allegiance to some form of religion. which, in light of the fact that what people want is the confidence that their leaders have a spiritual side, is quite ironic, because religion often has incredibly little to do with spirituality. but before i digress too much, let me point out that this is the same thing the public generally wants of itself as well. a person’s spiritual shortcomings, moral turpitude, lack of common decency—all can and will be overlooked provided they attend church regularly and at least pretend to drink the religious Kool-Aid.
which, of course, merely underscores the lack of common sense that exists on quite a large scale.
and it’s having to deal with that lack of common sense on a perpetual basis that really gets my goat.
* this number, by the way, is completely made up and full of shit, in case you were wondering. since it’s my blog, i steadfastly refuse to apologize for making up certain metrics relating to the blog itself, or to the numbers of individuals, in part or in whole, who give a flying shit about anything i write.
Look, this is a real simple thing. The country was founded by mostly-Christian individuals who were possessed of the foresight, maturity, and wherewithal to understand that the edicts of the religions and religious denominations had no place with an operable role in government. In fact, they made incredible sacrifices to distance themselves from their European church-states. In fact, they made great sacrifices, including their livelihoods, the lives of their family members, and in many cases their own lives, to ensure the separation of Church and State. The Mike Huckabees in the world that want to interject specifically religious dogma into the the Constitution have it exactly wrong, and every time they spout those desires, they prove that their eclectic version of America is not what America was founded to be, or has ever been. It’s not the America that our soldiers have fought and died to preserve. And it’s not an America that would have any hope of participating in a future in which the human race survives.
The Blogswarm Against Theocracy starts today and ends this Sunday. I will be attempting to have unique posts on these four blogs:
{this opening post has been cross-posted to my three blogs as a way of saying “yes, i’m here, and no, i’m not going to let the bizarre mortgage triangle we currently living under adversely affect my ability to post this weekend!}
i had three posts in the works for the March 19 Blogswarm, and as it happened, i neglected to have them saved in the Wordpress database. thanks to some beta software on this computer, when i hybernated the computer because three realtors were bringing prospective buyers through our house yesterday (one of whom didn’t call first like he’s supposed to, no less), the system didn’t wake up. the resulting hard reboot lost me a bout two hours of blog-work. go figure. i ALWAYS save drafts, or draft in a text editor. but not yesterday (or night before last, for that matter). i think this whole selling-the-house-and-preparing-to-move shin-dig has me pretty scattered. never a dull freakin’ moment, anyway.
i feel compelled, though, to follow up with some notes on the day, because as inferred yesterday, the current Iraq war hits a bit close to home for me as a Gulf War veteran. not that i think my personal considerations on it are any more important or dynamic than those who have served or are serving in the current war, but that i had given my word to support the blogswarm endeavor, and failed to adequately do so. the chagrin-meter leans heavily to the right.
so naturally, when the realtors were done traipsing through the house and not giving us an offer immediately, and when the children were finally tucked into bed, and after i’d finished up some client work, i at least managed to get out and do some reading. one of the things that quickly struck me was that {insert almost any other blogger’s online identity or blog name here} writes better than me, and i’m not just talking about the presumably-appropriate use of capital letters. i still had a lot of what i’d written in my head, and i could have theoretically replicated my previous efforts, but after an hour or so of reading, i realized how redundant that would have been. great minds think alike after all, although putting myself in their company is probably a bit dishonest. so instead, on the off-chance that you might have missed some of these fine posts, allow me to serve you by including a brief synposis and link to their thoughts, witticisms and insights.
Some unshaven simian has cursed me—i mean, tagged me—with the gratuitously insipid middle name meme.
TEH RULEZ, as copied from the accursed simian’s blog:
1. You have to post the rules before you give your answers.
2. You must list one fact about yourself beginning with each letter of your middle name. (If you don’t have a middle name, use your maiden name or your mother’s maiden name).
3. At the end of your blog post, you need to tag one person (or blogger of another species) for each letter of your middle name. (Be sure to leave them a comment telling them they’ve been tagged.)
it is potentially of note that the simian in question did not comply with rule #3, and i only happened to notice the tagging of me by virtue of my dutiful inspection of his RSS feed. i guess he’s busy with his campaign and all. pfft. whatever.
like the aforementioned simian, i don’t follow rules, because rules are for the mindless masses who fail to recognize that exercising one’s free will in support of the greater good is beneficial. besides, why try to start setting a good example for my children now? not to mention the fact that “Dawnne” is one of my middle names already, and both it and the other one are too short to be “fun”, at least not in my opinion.
so, for the purposes of this meme, my middle name is “POOPYHEAD”, chosen for both its appropriate attribution in my case, and of course for its inherent sense of maturity and acumen.
· P ~ Pr0n. one of my first contracts when i was just starting out in the self-employed world was to code a database-driven image-delivery system for a pornography website. the cheap bastards never made their final payment, but were i to re-activate a certain email address, i could see how much it was being used. last time i checked, the system was installed on over 15,000 websites! fame! fortune! o wait…. i would have told the bastards to go fuck themselves, but i figure doing what they do for a living, they probably do that enough anyway. · O ~ Objectivity. i am, actually, fairly objective. i consider it one of my finer qualities. i don’t consider myself to be perfectly consistent in this category, but i’m fairly (pardon the pun) conscientious about it. · O ~ Omnivore. this is the fault of the Spouse Unit (aka Mrs. Other). when we met, i largely consumed cheap beer and dead cows with the occasional chicken. now, i actually eat my vegetables and fruits, drink wine, and catch myself from time to time actually wanting a salad. · P ~ Poopyhead. no explanation required, i’m sure. what, you expected more? sue me. · Y ~ . fuck. i just HAD to pick a word with “Y” in it, didn’t i? ummm…. YouTube. there ya go. as in, i watch some shit on YouTube but since i’m too goddamned lazy to videotape anything, i never contribute. · H ~ Hungry. i really suck at making sure i have a good breakfast each morning, and here it is nearly 1:00 p.m. and i still haven’t eaten. · E ~ Entelligent. as exemplified by my awesome speling skillz, i am extremely entelligent and thoroughly dedicated to taking memes seriously. · A ~ Asshole. as pretty much exemplified by every post on the otherwhirled. so, bite me. · D ~ Dumbass. this is what i will, no doubt, continue to be until #1 Son is somewhere in his 20’s, after which i will suddenly and mysteriously become insightful.
YOU ARE HEREBY TAGGIFIED: don’t argue with me. just do it.
crap. that’s enough already. i’m pretty sure the rest of you on the blogroll (which i still need to fix here and resynchronize with the otherwhirled) have already been tagged.
The premier liberal/progressive blogging event of the year is just EIGHT SHORT DAYS AWAY! If you’re interested in participating, catch the details over at BlueGal’s site or at the blogswarm’s blog. And if you haven’t already, make sure you bookmark the Blog Against Theocracy website so you can easily stay in tune with the swarm throughout the event (and after!)
The logo above is provided courtesy of Tengrain at Mock, Paper, Scissors. He also has a presized “sidebar” version for your convenience. Tengrain reminds us:
The theme, like always, is the Separation of Church and State — we are for it. But the variations on the theme are many, and we scored the widest range of responses. This is not a bashing of religion - peeps can believe what they choose, however they choose — but it is a reminder that the Government should keep out of religion, and Religion should keep out of the government. A great resource for ideas can be found at our good friends, First Freedom First. Many of you know FFF already. They are not sponsors of the Blog Against Theocracy swarm, but they should be beneficiaries.
I will go one step further to point out that the anti-theocratic movement is one point of agreement between atheists, agnostics, humanists, and persons of various religious beliefs, all of whom recognize and appreciate the need for government’s firm separation from specific religious doctrine and preferential treatment. Not only do I firmly support the premise that this blogswarm is not about bashing religion, but I hope to see a strong community grow out of this endeavor over the years: A global community of like-minded critical thinkers who can respectfully, but adamantly, argue against the practice of inserting any form of preferential treatment for any religious belief into our governments.
I will be participating in the blogswarm from the otherwhirled with my usual image-based snarkery (because it’s okay to be snarky about this, provided the snark isn’t meaningless or antagonistic), from perpetual dawnne (with some real-live bona-fide actual thoughts written down and stuff that I’m already working on because it takes me that long to write meaningful stuff), and I am also hoping to participate photographically from Synthaetica Digitography (because, seriously, why do anything but blog? blogging is all there is! blog!!! blog!!!) Some of my contributions will be cross-posted to Mock, Paper, Scissors, but I am also hoping to write at least one unique thing for the mighty SCISSORHEADS.
I hope that you all will make some time to participate and read the many insightful posts that the swarm will have. You’re welcome to use the button below to subscribe to the blogswarm’s feed!
earlier this week, i got glasses. just a very slight astigmatism in my left eye: not even enough of a prescription to warrant contacts, and really not so bad given that i’m over forty and have put my eyes through a lot of stuff over the years. anyway, yesterday, i took a self-portrait with my cell phone, and sent the pic to Daughter the First and my friend Sherri. Sherri’s mobile phone, from which she has sent me a pic in the past, apparently could not handle receiving photos. which makes sense, because Sherri’s kind of one of those gals who can dish stuff out, but not take it.
ooops. did i say that out loud? sorry, Sherri. i guess it’s not really fair for me to call ‘em like i see ‘em.
anyway, in the hopes of keeping Sherri from apoplexy because she hasn’t been able to see a stupid photo of me in my new glasses, i offer the following. click the thumbnail to see it full-size.
hey, look. i got Transitions lenses! woo-hoo!
so, there you go, Sherri. don’t say i never gave you anything.
now, go get a freakin’ cell-phone that accepts pic messages. eesh!
{UPDATE: hey, look! check it out! I’m Hairy Potter!}
Category: 
…”goat”, of course, being a euphemism for “anything that pisses me off.”
