Eat me

[Poop Fresh-Herbed Pickles]

Everyone vote today?

It's extremely tight.  Nobody's watching that Free Stuff video.  She has like half the views but just as many votes.

[matthew]

Everyone vote today?

It's extremely tight.  Nobody's watching that Free Stuff video.  She has like half the views but just as many votes.

It is pretty clear that there is quite a team backing "free stuff", 'as her day-by-day rise in votes does not reflect a new viewership at all. It is quite clear it is the same people re-voting. Obviously each party would do this, but it seems more likely that that is all she has at this point.

[Doctor Rock]

Who runs the newspapers?


from the Gazette Letters To The Editor:

caption under photo of Burmese monks walking, hands in prayer mode:

"God or no god, Burma's Monks have moral effect"

Beneath this photo is headline:

"Monks trump atheists"

While, like Christopher Hitchens, I believe in no god, I cannot help wondering whether a group of atheists marching down the street could have the same moral effect as the Buddhist monks.

- Paul Jones
Mont St. Hilaire



I willing to bet that, like me, Christopher Hitchens is well aware that Buddhism is an ATHEIST belief system and there is NO BUDDHIST GOD, though not all Buddhists are atheists.

@$%^!

Well, you have the horrible buddhist military junta and its buddhist army who happily kill and torture dissidents... And then you have the other buddhists who oppose them.  Clearly, this is not about religion!

Not that it matters to religious folks.  They'll pick and choose and only listen to what they want to listen.  

[matthew]

Yes, even the BBC has mentioned that most of the soldiers are ex-Buddhist monks themselves.

[Moetown]

Asshole

[Moetown]

I heard a song called Make A Plan by Saturday Looks Good To Me. I was really into it, but had to go in before the song was over. I think I need to hear it again.

[Tripp]

LEts talk about Baptists this week...

[matthew]

Religion is so alien to me that I often forget that most of my family (and the vast majority of humankind) is religious. My father, probably of Anglican background (the "upper class" Newfies, who were still poor by any other standard) ended up going to Baptist Church as a kid. He had about as much interest in church as Homer Simpson and sat in the back eating potato chips (according to accounts of my mother), and the apparent reason for the Baptist Church was because of its proximity to home. His aunts were both dedicated religious fanatics. One of them still goes every week, and the other worked in the church. One of my father's sisters still goes and works the Sunday School. Her daughter and grandchildren are all very religious, as is one of her sons, the rightwing Bush-loving creep I mention regularly. The other brother could care less. My other aunt on that side seems to have gone godless and moved out West.

I cannot be certain of the causal relationship, but it is remarkable that the lives of the religious ones are certainly more miserable.

My father was master of his own apathy, but it was my mother's familial mix that led to atheism. Her mother was born into a French family, and was dumped into a Catholic boarding school or orphanage or some damned thing and learned to hate Catholicism and nuns. She then grew up with her Scottish grandparents who were Presbyterian. My mother's father was of the real poor Newfie background: Methodist. Those folks all went United Church of Canada (religious merger) in the twenties. Religion never did anything for my maternal grandfather and he walked away  as well. The combination allowed my mother to wander freely and spent some of her early childhood attending the Pentecostal church of a friend, because she enjoyed singing. When they announced it was time to be saved or cast into hell my mother was outraged and severed all ties. She still refers to them as "Holy Rollers". Like most kids living in the working class hole that was Verdun (it is undergoing gentrification, slowly but surely), they were hostile to the French and knew the Catholic Church was looked down upon by their Protestant parents. My mother recently admitted to participating in a terrorist attack/desecration of the local church when she was quite young. Her little alley gang snuck in after services and peed behind the rows of pews. One kid took a dump.

My mother's sis was always the black sheep and I am not aware that there is ANY religiosity on that side.

Yeah, but I often feel uncomfortable being around the elders on my father's side.