The Inferno

Top 10 signs you’re a fundamentalist Christian:

10 – You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours.

9 – You feel insulted and “dehumanized” when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.

8 – You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God.

7 – Your face turns purple when you hear of the “atrocities” attributed to Allah, but you don’t even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in “Exodus” and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in “Joshua” including women, children, and trees!

6 – You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then ascended into the sky.

5 – You are willing to spend your life looking for little loopholes in the scientifically established age of Earth (few billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by Bronze Age tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that Earth is a few generations old.

4 – You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs — though excluding those in all rival sects – will spend Eternity in an infinite Hell of Suffering. And yet consider your religion the most “tolerant” and “loving.”

3 – While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor speaking in “tongues” may be all the evidence you need to “prove” Christianity.

2 – You define 0.01% as a “high success rate” when it comes to answered prayers. You consider that to be evidence that prayer works. And you think that the remaining 99.99% FAILURE was simply the will of God.

1 – You actually know a lot less than many atheists and agnostics do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history – but still call yourself a Christian.

Top 10 signs you’ve received a non-funny joke in your email:

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Thanks to Rog the Frog

I’ve been reading some of William S. Burroughs’ works, namely Naked Lunch and Junky, and I must agree with the blurb on Junky’s jacket, Junky is much more palatable than those who find ‘Naked Lunch’ tough going.

Burroughs’ writing is a dowser for extreme alienation, as a member of two despised social classes for almost his entire adult life, homosexuals and drug addicts, his prose is unpretentious and dryly didactic. In a word, simply marvellous. Without ever saying a word overtly, Burroughs damns God, the Establishment, the Government, the American Dream and a million other semi-mythical constructs that permeate our every day weltanschauung. There are no attempts to re-read Burroughs to try to understand him. Either you get him, or you don’t, I’m afraid it’s as simple as that.

In the grand tradition of Henry Miller, Burroughs ploughs through numb day after numb day in his accounts, with drugs as his best friend, as opposed to Miller’s considerably raunchier escapades. I suppose you could argue that Burroughs gets as seamy, but Miller still takes the cake, in my opinion.

Tea heads are not like junkies. A junkie hands you the money, takes his junk and cuts. But tea heads don’t do things that way. They expect the peddler to light them up and sit around talking for half an hour to sell two dollars’ worth of weed. if you come right to the point, they say you are a “bring down”. In fact, a peddler should not come right out and say he is a peddler. No, he just scores for a few good “cats” and “chicks” because he is viperish. Everyone knows that he himself is the connection, but it is bad form to say so. God knows why. To me, tea heads are unfathomable.

…

When I jumped bail and left the States, the heat on junk already looked like something new and special. Initial symptoms of nationwide hysteria were cleasr. Louisiana passed a law making it a crime to be a drug addict. Since no place or time is specified and the term “addict” is not clearly defined, no proof is necessary or even relevant under a law so formulated. No proof, and consequently, no trial. This is police-state legislation penalizing a state of being. Other states were emulating Louisiana. I saw my chance of escaping conviction dwindle daily as the anti-junk feeling mounted to a paranoid obsession, like anti-Semitism under the Nazis. So I decided to jump bail and live permanently outside the United States.

Is anyone else sick of all these periodic protests by ‘Muslims’ against things in the media? The Pope makes a speech and suddenly people in 35 countries are up in arms. Are these people really studying the content of every papal speech in German states? Make no mistake, I’m not excusing the Pope, he’s an incompetent lout and should be summarily executed, just to set the matter straight.

Now for these so called ‘Muslim’ religious fanatics eagerly aping Echelon in its nefarious activities. I dislike all generalizations and this is yet another slick one that backfires like a boomerang. And we all know it’s the extremist minorities fanning the flames of discontent amongst the moderates, to attract more people to their cause, but can they really have that much power? And it’s sad to watch people who are living in abject poverty, with umpteen mouths to feed foaming at the mouth over the words of some clergyman somewhere? Ahhh poverty, the fertile breeding ground of extremism, be it the post-1990 ruins of Eastern Germany or the rabid souks of Arabia.

And why is the media giving this matter so much importance? Thanks for enforcing the divisions with one hand while preaching about how evil they are with the other. I’m so disgusted by mass media reporting, have been for a while, but the BBC’s continuing coverage of this utter drivel is enough to drive anyone mad.

Or long before it, assuming we leave no intelligent agents behind to continue the rape of our planet.

Is this picture accurate? Maybe, but I bet the Earth, as a self-sustaining model can’t wait to be rid of its greatest parasite: Homo Sapiens.

North Korea has the bomb. It could just be a wily manoeuvre, with the doyens in Pyongyang riding the coattails of an opportune seismic tremor. But the Russians are convinced it was an underground nuclear explosion, and Big Brother is never wrong, at least where the last few Marxist adherents are concerned.

What will North Korea do with their newest toy? Simply sit tight, knowing that the capitalist hordes can never invade now? Force Beijing to ease up on the oil stranglehold? Or just sit back and watch the crumbling NPT finally disappear completely, as every ragtag banana republic out there rushes to get its own nuke, secure in the knowledge that the West is powerless. After all, if a country as isolated as North Korea can pull this off, simply anyone should be able to. Iran is Prom Queen compared to North Korea at this point.

Iran will be the country to watch now, indeed. Sanctions schmanctions, they know the US is too thinly spread to do much, and France and the UK won’t want to get involved in the morass that is the Middle East in more than a supporting role. That leaves China and Russia to intervene militarily, and when was the last time they sent troops to help the West, apart from the token offerings to UN forces here and there?

Of course, time is the great leveller, and for all we know, nothing will happen. The media will hype this beyond all proportion, North Korea will aggrandize their stolen glory, then return to begging Beijing and Seoul for aid, while the media flies overhead in search of new carcasses.

Detente, anyone?