Jesus Tree.

Copyright 2017 by KPRC Click2Houston - All rights reserved.

Copyright 2017 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.

Do you see Jesus? Right there, in the tree, for true! A woman has claimed to see Jesus in an oak tree, and if you click over and watch the video, it’s easy enough to see why. Her house is crammed full of religious icons, statues, paintings, all that. I did laugh, watching part of the video, where they zoomed back from the tree, and superimposed a white Jesus image over the tree, so that people would know how to locate Tree Jesus.

“I was looking out the window and there he was,” Clack said. “I have little square panes in my windows, and it looked like it was framed. I just laughed and said, ‘Lord, you even framed it for me.’”

Clack, who is Catholic, said she noticed it around 4 p.m. when the sun shone on it. She describes the figure as “a big face.”

“Remember, it’s bark,” she said. “When you stand back 15 feet or so, (you can see it) — it’s a big face.”

Now I’m curious – do all the acorns have tiny baby Jesuses? This would also make Jesus a Dryad. Uh oh, he fell into the wrong mythos.

Via KPRC.

Xmas Packaging.

I think there might be a roll or two of very dusty wrapping paper, somewhere in the house. I’ll confess to a love of wrapping paper with creative design, but it’s quite a waste. So I got out the cheapshit markers. As You can see, I have a ways to go, so best back to it. :D

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© C. Ford.

The Gay? It’s Ghosts, Just Ghosts.

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GailyGrind.

A paranormal organization is claiming that the vast majority of gay men and women aren’t actually gay – they’re just possessed by someone of the opposite sex.

According to the Spiritual Science Research Foundation (SRF), 85 percent of all gay men are possessed by female ghosts, causing them to be attracted to other men. Lesbians are, you guessed it, possessed by males ghosts.

The SRF cite “spiritual research” as proving that “the cause for homosexual preferences lie predominantly in the spiritual realm.”

The main reason behind the gay orientation of some men is that they are possessed by female ghosts. It is the female ghost in them that is attracted to other men. Conversely the attraction to females experienced by some lesbians is due to the presence of male ghosts in them. The ghost’s consciousness overpowers the person’s normal behaviour to produce the homosexual attraction. Spiritual research has shown that the cause for homosexual preferences lie predominantly in the spiritual realm.

  • Physical causes (5%): Due to hormonal changes.
  • Psychological causes (10%): Having an experience with a person of the same sex as a teenager or young adult that was pleasurable and therefore wanting to experience it again.
  • Spiritual causes (85%): Mainly ghosts.

Homosexuality can be overcome by regular spiritual practice as per the 6 basic principles. SSRF suggests some simple steps.

As for Gay Pride, the folks at SSRF don’t like it, no, not at all:

It is natural that the LGBT population has the need to be respected as human beings, and in fact they should be.  Nevertheless, naming Gay Parades as ‘Gay Pride Parades’ is inappropriate from a spiritual perspective because it increases the ego of the LGBT population specificially as it relates to their homosexuality. Pride is an aspect of ego and is thus undesirable from a spiritual point of view.

If this trend continues, one day we could have Parades for people who are proud to be college drop outs or business people who are proud that they are bankrupt.

Organizing such Parades in the name of human rights and freedom does not indicate that society is progressing. In fact, this evidences its decline. The human race needs to know what is right and what is wrong. Just as we teach children not to play in dirty water or eat mud, we need to educate society what is correct from a spiritual perspective. By failing to do so, we run the risk of a further decline in Righteousness and consequently people in society will become more unhappy.

They have some interesting Tables of Sin on their page about gay pride. About that ego stuff, I’ll just leave this here:

ego-levels

Skimming their twitter feed, I did come across this – the location of the soul, and it’s surrounded by deadly ego!

There is a wealth of nonsense at their site, and their tweet stream is full of isht too. Via The Gaily Grind.

Internet of Shit.

I’m busy laughing, and happy to be a semi-dinosaur on the technological front. The only thing I want wi-fi on is my computer and tablet. That’s it.

The Internet of Shit. Have fun!

One Gigantic Eyeroll.

eyeroll

There’s nothing quite like the self-absorption of hipsters, so constantly desperate to be on the edge of cool, while attempting to appear bored with it. For all the attempts at coolness and self definition, it’s a constant fail. Here’s another one. What good is all that Jesus stuff unless it reflects your self-centered naval gazing and dependence on stereotypes? I’m surprised there isn’t a a stack of Pabst cases somewhere, but perhaps that’s in one of the Amazon boxes. I’d dearly like to think this is a huge poke in the eye of all those who style themselves a “hipster”, handily stripping $130.00 out of their wallets, and perhaps it is, because there’s no gullibility quite like that of hipsters whose eyes are constantly clouded over in their utter concentration on their own egos.

You can see more of this here.

The Red Pill.

Courtesy Jaye Bird Productions.

Courtesy Jaye Bird Productions.

The kickstarter funded documentary (I use that word lightly) The Red Pill, all about those poor, downtrodden yet valiant MRA heroes has been reviewed. Note that in the comments, a few MRAs get a bit, um, bonkers over how a film reviewer could have possibly seen the film before it was released, gasp! Unleash the lawyers! It’s a fine demonstration of the distance between these men and reality.

Here’s a great example of how not to open your documentary. “After releasing my film in 2012 about marriage equality, I was at a loss of what topic to explore next,” says Cassie Jaye in the halting tones of a hostage reading her captors’ statement to the world. That comes at the start of her film The Red Pill, and the high drama of her search for a subject gets illustrated with the results of a web search. “I started to research this ‘rape culture,’ ” she tells us, each syllable so far from the next one that a tumbleweed could breeze through the gap.

We literally see the words rape culture get typed into Google. “A website called A Voice for Men popped up,” she tells us. And then, for two agonizing hours, Jaye tumbles slowly down America’s stupidest rabbit hole, discovering that Men’s Rights Activists are actually just dudes who have been dicked over by a culture that punishes masculinity.

[…]

Here’s something Elam wrote on A Voice for Men in 2010: “Should I be called to sit on a jury for a rape trial, I vow publicly to vote not guilty, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that the charges are true.” What excuse would any serious documentarian have for not asking Elam to explain that?

You don’t even have to put in that tiny bit of online legwork to suspect that something’s hinky with Jaye’s film. (It’s a Kickstarter job, and A Voice for Men and Reddit’s most misogynistic MRA subs were active in the campaigns.) Jaye acknowledges in the opening and closing minutes that MRAs sometimes spew nasty garbage online, but she never presses them on this in her many interviews. Instead, she lets them moan about how hard it is to be a dude in 2016, endorsing their anecdotal complaints about unfair family courts, incidents of men being tricked into being fathers, and — I didn’t quite follow this one — one father’s conviction that the women who had custody of his son were systematically trying to make the boy fat. That story drags on forever, and Jaye cuts from it to footage of herself tooling around in her car, driving past a Supercuts.

Like many amateurish Kickstarter docs, The Red Pill doesn’t always have visuals worth regarding on a screen, but I do cherish one flourish: an animated sequence of falling snowflakes, each with a different MRA complaint printed on it, meant to illustrate the movement’s diversity of grievances. There’s “Misandry”! There’s “Restraining Orders”! Even the metaphor is hilariously white.

[…]

What the film and the movement fail to demonstrate is any kind of systemic cause. Instead, the author of men’s troubles here is always that vague bugaboo feminism, which we’re told is designed to silence its opponents. (Is it even worth pointing out that being criticized for what you say is not the same as being denied your right to say it?) Jaye renounces her own feminist past toward the end of the film, the announcement delivered over video of her typing, then looking at a computer, then driving around some more.

[…]

“Why can’t men talk about their problems?” Elam asks Jaye’s camera in earnest, apparently unaware that he gets shouted at and pilloried not for identifying “problems” but for being a dick. Hey, Elam — men can talk about our problems. You’re one of them.

Alan Scherstuhl’s full review is at The Village Voice. I fully appreciate Mr. Scherstuhl’s willingness to watch this documentary, as it’s not something I could bring myself to watch, even it were free and I was promised the proverbial month of Sundays.

“I was picked out to be picked on in the name of Jesus.”

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Florida Highway Patrol wrote Judy Jones a ticket for having vinyl lettering on her truck’s windshield. However, she claims the trooper did it because of her faith.

“First thing he said to me, he said, ‘I want you to know that you are breaking the law.’ And I said, ‘How am I breaking the law, sir?’ He said, ‘With that sign up there, that Jesus thing up there,’” she said.

Jones got a $100 ticket and is fighting her case.

“I’m going to court for Jesus,” said Jones.

Florida law says no one can drive a car that has any signage or material on a windshield that is not transparent. Jones claims her decals are legal.

“It is not obstructing any, my sight at all,” Jones said. “I was picked out to be picked on in the name of Jesus.”

Florida Highway Patrol says that in no way did the officer write Jones the ticket because of its content. They say it was simply in violation of state law.

Okay, I know this is all rather silly, and while driving a Jesus testament truck wouldn’t be my thing, I do question the law here. I’m not in Florida, but I see all manner of vehicles here with sports teams names spelled out, and front and back windows littered with such stuff. I doubt that’s terribly legal here, either, but no one seems to care much. I can’t see how the lettering on Ms. Jones’s truck would obscure her vision any, and I do wonder if the truck was minus the Jesus stuff, and the lettering was sports related, whether she would have been targeted in the first place. A hundred dollars is a hefty ticket, I wouldn’t be happy about having to pay that for not actually doing anything dangerous or wrong. I do wish Ms. Jones good luck in court.

Story and video here.

Fashionista Jesus.

A stained glass window at Rochester Cathedral depicts the resurrection of Jesus Credit: Luke MacGregor/Reuters.

A stained glass window at Rochester Cathedral depicts the resurrection of Jesus Credit: Luke MacGregor/Reuters.

People are not at their best when stretching themselves like a rubber band in order to justify and rationalize, and that’s certainly the case with Fashion Jesus. Unlike many people, I’ve read the bible, cover to cover, more than one version.  Given that reading, I can say that the bible is not overflowing with fashion, hot or otherwise. Well, okay, there’s some interesting bits, clothing-wise in Revelation, but other than that, the bible is a bit skint on the fashion side. That’s not stopping people from claiming they are being inspired by Jesus’s great fashion sense.

…But now Jesus is being put forward as an icon of an entirely different sort – in the world of fashion. The Church of England has given its blessing to London Fashion Week with an official video making the Biblical case for the clothing industry.

Shrugging off the “sackcloth and ashes” image of clergy’s puritan forebears, it argues that – despite criticism of the industry over size zero models and cases of sweatshop factories – fashion and design are ultimately an expression of God-given creativity.

In one extract, the Church’s de-facto catwalk chaplain says fashion designers have told him that they draw inspiration from church interiors, stained glass windows and even Jesus’s cloaks.

The Rev Peterson Feital, the Diocese of London’s “Missioner to the Creative Industries”, said many had been drawn to the “beautiful clothes” Jesus is often depicted wearing.

“Designers ask me about fashion,” said the Brazilian-born Rev Feital, who also runs “Haven+” a charity working with people in the fashion and entertainment industries.

“They are all so interested when they walk into a church building or a cathedral and they see the stained glass windows and what they see there are beautiful figures and Jesus wearing beautiful clothes – a cloak and all that kind of stuff.

“So right there in the centre of our worship there are so many elements in which fashion belongs in that conversation between church and culture.”

Simon Ward, a former chief operating officer of the British Fashion Council, said that despite questions about how aspects of the industry operate and the “image it conveys”, he was convinced fashion itself is divinely inspired.

“He’s a God of creativity, and fashion is just one of those areas that really focuses on creativity,” he said.

“And what did He do first? He created the seasons, so the idea that fashion changes a lot again I think reflects God’s heart.

“All the way through the Bible clothing and fashion imagery jump out of the pages at us. In the New Testament the first Christian in Europe was Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth … The image we get of Jesus in heaven is what he’s wearing, with a gold sash around his chest, and then the New Jerusalem comes down; what are we told about it? – ‘dressed as a bride’.

“So I think God and fashion really are closely linked and if we think that they’re not we’re getting it wrong.”

No. No, no, no, no, no. None of this has the slightest thing to do with Jesus, and it barely has a connection to any bible. What they are copying, and claiming to find inspiration in is the work of artists. As an artist myself, I can say that there was much exaggeration in stained glass art, and other art found in cathedrals. Artists love colour, we love textural things, luxuriant and rich things. It’s doubtful that Jesus, if he existed at all, wore any of the high status clothing depicted in stained glass windows. Rough cloth, rope sandals, and very dirty feet are probably closer to how any itinerant preacher would appear. There wouldn’t be much fun depicting that. The powers that commissioned cathedrals and similar expected artists to portray everything in an overwhelming way, one that would stir emotions along with stimulating the visual sense. For the olfactory, there is always incense burning, and the scent of flowers. For the aural, the echoing silence and wind of whispers. Not one bit of this artistic creation has so much as a single flake of paint in reality.

I don’t think it’s at all wrong to pull inspiration from the work of previous artists and the stained glass of cathedrals. I do take issue with the whole Fashion Jesus lie.

Via Telegraph.

A Biblical Failure.

The film, which courted Christian viewers and abandoned the gay subtext of the 1959 classic, could lose up to $100 million.

The film, which courted Christian viewers and abandoned the gay subtext of the 1959 classic, could lose up to $100 million.

Bye, Ben-Hur.

The film about betrayal in biblical times was an epic fail at the box office. Its opening weekend, it took in $11.2 million in domestic markets and $10.7 million in international ones, reports Variety, a dismal sum given to its production budget of over $100 million.

Ben-Hur ranked sixth at the box office, failing the cinematic chariot race to a top 5 position. It lost to films in their second and third weekend, including Suicide Squad ($20.9 million), Sausage Party ($15.5 million), and Pete’s Dragon ($11.3 million).

Prior to its release, Ben-Hurwas criticized by The Advocate and other outlets for not including the gay subtext present in the 1959 classic, a critical and commercial success that went on to win a slew of Oscars. In the 1995 documentary The Celluloid Closet, out screenwriter Gore Vidal revealed he had convinced the film’s director to incorporate this subtext in order to explain the tension between the film’s leads, a prince and a Roman soldier who betrays him.

Various excuses were offered as to why the gay subtext was not present in the story’s most recent iteration. At Ben-Hur‘s premiere, star Tony Kebbell (Messala, the soldier) said it wasn’t needed in the present day. In a conflicting report, screenwriter Keith Clarke claimed copyright law prevented him from incorporating it, as he could only adapt what was included in Lew Wallace’s 1880 book Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ.

As a result, the film placed more emphasis on the novel’s religious themes and fleshed out the character of Christ. It also marketed heavily to Christian audiences, holding special screenings and releasing promotional videos that featured reviews from religious leaders.

But not even Jesus could save Ben-Hur from bad reviews. The film currently has a score of 29 percent on the film aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Critics called it “an amateurish effort,” “something soulless and empty,” “a compete snore-fest,” “gutless,” and a “digitalized eyesore hobbled in every department by staggering incompetence.”

“The filmmakers of this stagnant remake display all the technical tools needed to achieve greatness, but they lack that most basic of functions: a reason why this story needs to be retold,” wrote the Washington City Paper.

Wow. Those reviews are beyond scathing, those are brutal. I thought the whole hype of “Christian, Christian, Christian Ben Hur with Added Jesus!” was sheer silliness, but it turns out the film was much worse than the standard Christian silly. Ouch.

Via The Advocate.

Extra Crispy Sunscreen.

KFC-Extra-Crispy-Sunscreen-e1471958289356-800x430

Well, here’s my WTF for the day. Someone thought this was a really great idea, and maybe it is for some, but myself, I don’t see the appeal of smelling like fried chicken. I imagine the monster dogs would approve though. That alone is reason enough to keep such a thing a long, long way away. What scares me is the thought of someone like Trump trying to buy a truckload of this stuff to hand out to Black people in an attempt to court their vote.

USA Today reports that KFC has already given away all 3,000 bottles of its experimental KFC Extra Crispy Sunscreen that it offered as a promotional item started on Monday. Apparently it took a mere two hours for KFC to exhaust its entire supply of chicken-scented sunscreen tubes.

“We think it smells amazing,” KFC spokeswoman Kasey Mathes tells USA Today. “The sunscreen seemed like a natural fit.”

KFC first put up an ad for the Extra Crispy Sunscreen on Monday, and it featured what might be the greatest disclaimer in the history of advertising: “Extra Crispy Sunscreen is real sunscreen. Do not eat.”

Although you’ve missed your chance to get a free bottle of the sunscreen, one has already gone up for sale on eBay and is priced at over $60 as of this writing.

Via Raw Story.

Stockpiling Piss.

Shutterstock

Shutterstock

The Intercept directs our attention to a Bloomberg report from earlier this year that reveals Robert Mercer — a hedge fund manager who is also a major funder of a pro-Trump Super PAC — has been funding the creation of a massive stockpile of human urine in Oregon.

The urine is being collected by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, a research outfit founded by Arthur Robinson, a chemist who unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2010 with financial help from the Mercer family. So far, Robinson and his institute have collected and 14,000 frozen samples of human urine.

What is Robinson’s interest in urine?

It seems that he believes that analyzing urine with an expensive piece of equipment called a mass spectrometer will be able to help him predict patients’ future likelihood of contracting diseases, thus creating a whole new era in the realm of preventative medicine.

“He’ll use the spectrometer to decode the chemical patterns in urine, the red flags that warn of disease before it strikes,” Bloomberg writes. “The human life span will stretch. It’s hard to judge the credibility of his claims; although he earned a Ph.D. from the University of California at San Diego in the 1960s, he hasn’t published peer-reviewed research on diagnostic medicine in decades.”

Despite the fact that Robinson hasn’t produced any recent peer-reviewed research, Mercer has spent $1.4 million funding this gigantic urine storage center.

Blood transfusions, miracle pee! Oh all the things the super rich think will magically extend life. Given the intense fright and paranoia all that wealth seems to engender, I’m glad I’m not rolling in money. Not that I wouldn’t mind having a bit more, life’s rough when you’re prone to outbreaks of stone brokeness. That said, I think all around, I’m a whole lot happier, enjoying life moment by moment and day by day, rather than constantly fretting how I can stick around longer, so no one can get my money, power, or privilege. Strikes me as a miserable way to live.

Via Raw Story.