The Inferno

Don’t these whatchamacallits look like cuter versions of The Corinthian from Gaiman’s masterpiece ‘The Sandman’? Below is Tom Cruise as the legendary character.

You decide.

Before you put good money into their red kettles, examine their position on these issues. Their issues are taken from their website, the link is here. Visit it for more detailed opinions, some of which I’ve pasted pertinent bits from below. My thoughts are below.

Abortion – It is opposed to abortion as a means of birth control, family planning, sex selection or for any reason of mere convenience to avoid the responsibility for conception.

Yawn, so 1940s. Get over it, SA.

Alcohol and Drugs – …it nevertheless believes total abstinence to be the only certain guarantee against overindulgence…

This here has to be a joke.

Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide – The Salvation Army believes that euthanasia and assisted suicide undermine human dignity and are morally wrong regardless of age or disability.

Of course, since God wants you to suffer every excruciating pang of agony it has in store for you. Quitting is for losers, children.

Homosexuality – Homosexual conduct, like heterosexual conduct, requires individual responsibility and must be guided by the light of scriptural teaching….The Salvation Army believes, therefore, that Christians whose sexual orientation is primarily or exclusively same-sex are called upon to embrace celibacy as a way of life.

This is priceless. God doesn’t like gays, but it makes them anyway. And as a final cruel twist of the karmic knife, it wants you to be celibate. No inserting penises in rectal tracts, only birth tracts! Got that, kiddies?

Marriage – Marriage is the only proper context for sexual intimacy.

Hopelessly antediluvian. And come to thnk of it, it was being broken even then.

Pornography – The Salvation Army opposes pornography in all of its forms.

Has anyone from the SA been on the webternet lately? Say, since 1995? I guess this laughable position means either you’re Amish or if you’re on the net, you must not click on the boobies. Good luck!

Suicide – Suicide is never an acceptable option

This “sanctity of life” angle is getting stale. Seriously, life isn’t that big a deal. It arose from random genetic mutations and will arise again, long after our feeble species has committed suicide on a global level. We’re so smart we destroy the only home we have, take that, you pro-lifers! Ask any Rwandans about the sanctity of life, seriously.

Their standard reference for all these positions: the Bible. Of course, it’s not even a surprise, but just so we know.

I used to feel bad about walking past those people with extremely bored expressions as they dingled their bells, but no more. Now I’m free of guilt, something religious people will seldom be.

In their defense, SA does have some very good points, such as helping the poor, feeding the homeless, endless compassion (unless you’re gay) and so on. If you feel these outweigh their outmoded moral stance on some of the above, go ahead and donate. My money’s staying firmly in my pocket. In return, I might actually go help at a soup kitchen or help some recent immigrants with English or something. We shall see.

Clearly, there’s a Torontonian who feels similarly about a lot of things. A kindred spirit, if you willl. Basking in the glow of anonymity of course.

I don’t care what colour you are. I don’t care where you’re from. I don’t care what you do for a living. I don’t care what class you are, how you dress, what you smoke or drink or who you know or whom you’ve fucked.

I hate you all. I hate every last living, breathing, snot and feces producing, promiscuously copulating, celebrity obsessed, opinionated one of you. From right here in Toronto right around the planet and back, coast to coast, nationwide and internationally. Every. Single. Last. One. Of. You.

Fuck love. Fuck your insipid grasping at some abstract concept of chemical imbalances and reasonless actions, fumbling around in the crowd trying to find some cinematic supposition for real human interaction. Fuck lust, too. Fuck you all, from the lowlife dirtbags that think dropping trou and waving the little soldier in a sloppy arc is a pick-up line to the sniveling of the desperate ‘nice guys’ who never get the girl due to a total lack of testosterone grown stones. Fuck you all, from the crazy, under dressed sluts that judge a persons character by the price of their shirt, right down to the fat, flabby chicks that think personality is enough.

Fuck you drivers, for thinking that a yellow light is a sign that says ’step on the gas’. Fuck you wheelmen and women that think it’s okay to sit in a left hand turn in the middle of morning traffic, even though there is a protected left in the intersections before and after where you need to make your turn. Fuck you too cyclists – you’re not exempt from the traffic laws just because your peddling, you miserable spandex covered neon reflective fucks. Fuck you too, pedestrians. Use the fucking crosswalk if you don’t want to get hit, and use it before the little countdown clock says ‘3′. You don’t have enough goddamn time to lope across four lanes of traffic.

Fuck you chick on your cellphone. Fuck you attitude packed minimum-wager that makes my coffee. Fuck you cops that spend all their time handing out speeding tickets. Fuck you douche bag doing ten over the limit in the passing lane on the highway. Fuck you lady using exact change at the counter at the grocery store. Fuck you kids having a conversation in the doorway. And fuck you also for not getting the fuck out of your designated handicapped seat when a pregnant or elderly person gets on the fucking bus.

Fuck taxes. Fuck welfare. Fuck the whole selfish, over politicized and party driven government system. I’m sick and fucking tired of policies and new laws with seven hundred bylaws that nobody but you and your cabinet reads. Fuck you councilors and your stupid ‘district improvement’ plans. Fuck you unions, for asking for so much and giving nothing more that what you already give. Fuck the whole process that allows people who are supposed to be working for us work for interests that only benefit the next campaign. Fuck your short-sightedness, your rush to the bandwagons, and your incessant arguing over fuck all. Fuck the parties, fuck the conventions, and fuck your campaigns. Do some real fucking work for a change.

Fuck you bottles of water. You’re water. You’re not worth two fucking dollars.
Fuck you trendsetters, fuck you fashionistas. Fuck your little dogs and and your idiotic outfits. Fuck your high heels in the snow. Fuck your five dollar coffees and your fifteen dollar veggie burgers. Fuck your health kick, your diet or your fucking new interest in kickboxing or sushi.

Fuck your culture. Fuck your race. Fuck your sense of entitlement. Fuck your sense of uniqueness. Fuck you all for the belief that you have something unique and interesting to contribute. Fuck you for filling the internet with your useless garbage. Fuck your blogs, your wikis, your forums. Fuck your name calling. And most of all, fuck whatever you believe. It’s all wrong. Fuck it.

Fuck your complaints. Fuck your addictions. Fuck your dependencies. Fuck your pain. Fuck your tears. Fuck selling whatever it is you sell. Fuck your manipulation of others. Fuck movies. Fuck fucking. Fuck everything you own. Fuck your allergies. Fuck your stupid commons sense. Fuck your spelling and fuck your lack of education, or your ignorance, whatever is applicable.

I don’t give a fuck. Shut the fuck up and just get on with it.

It’s actually quite funny in bits, but so heartfelt too. Taken from here.

Tis the season to spread cheer
And refute overt materialism
By drinking oceans of beer
And disparaging theism

Taken from here.

How awesome it is to see these unabashed proponents of unfettered, free-market capitalism rushing, hat in hand, to the government for a bailout. And hey, while you’re saving these corporate whores, how about dishing some money out for the regular folk too? Right, silly me. They don’t count, how could I forget?

So it seems that not all the creationist idiots in the world are confined to Kansas or Alabama. Romania has just done something incredibly stupid. I guess they’re in a mad hurry to live up to Stoker’s dramatization of Transylvanians as barbaric, mindless peasants, obsessed with religious symbolism. To quote Elizabeth Miller:

Its inhabitants are still depicted as backward peasants who hold fast to their primitive and superstitious past, who still hang garlic on their windows to keep vampires away, and who would never venture out at night without a crucifix in hand.

Why this vitriol against the bumpinks of the Carpathian? Well, they’ve just banned the teaching of evolution from the national curriculum, opting for a more “balanced” worldview, which of course, consists of liberal doses of balderdash from everyone’s favourite sci-fi/fantasy novel: the Bible.

Some choice excerpts from the news article:

Evolution has been removed from the school curriculum in a move which, pressure groups argue, distorts children’s understanding of how the world came into being.

Meanwhile, religious studies classes continue to tell Romanian children that God made the world in seven days.

Followed by

Meanwhile, in religious classes, pupils are taught that the world was created in seven days and God made plants on the third day and the sun on the fourth. Textbooks claim the first man was Adam, who was ‘made of ground’, and that Eve, the first woman, was made from one of her husband’s ribs.

“The Romanian state, whether it intends or not, offers pupils a unique perspective on the world, the religious one, without any critical scientific or philosophical offset,” argues Cernea.

And finally, one benefit of being a religious person, sleeping in on Sundays:

At present, children are taught religious classes from ages seven to 18. This is mostly an Orthodox curriculum. They are also taught that to sleep in on Sunday mornings is bad because children should be going to church.

And why is this not surprising at all?

But there are new proposals to make all religious classes compulsory for the education system, regardless of the parents’ wishes.

I can just see all the other fundamentalists living in other, saner secular societies nodding their heads and wishing their countries were more like Romania. “We need to be more like that”, they whisper to each other, “this liberal, atheist, gay, heathen, multicultural, leftist, feminist, 9/11, UFO, non WASP, Zionist, Manson-family, Commie agenda leaves no place for rational people like us”. Suckers!

Here’s the source.

Next target, Chemistry!

Don’t laugh. In a country stupid enough to allow this, you never know what’s coming. Then again, ridicule is a powerful weapon, so disdain away.