Everyone keeps sending me this photo from FAIL blog. I think it’s mislabeled.
This is not a failure. This is something working for once. Every church ought to have “Danger!” signs slapped on it. It’s a success when churches are clearly marked, exceeded only by those wonderful moments when they are demolished or repurposed for some useful community function.
Pat Boone had a dream. He dreamed that he was president. It would be our nightmare; after going on and on about the usual far right anti-tax tripe and militaristic fantasies, he gets to education.
As a man who intended to be a teacher myself, I issued an ultimatum to the teachers’ unions: They would return to basic math, including arithmetic, and basic English (the mandated official language), and basic science devoid of unproven theories like evolution, sticking instead to factual evidence and not discounting “intelligent design” as the more scientific basis for life and existence. All history books would again detail the reasons America was founded, and tell the stories of our Founding Fathers and national heroes – not latter day revisions. Teachers’ pay and advancement would depend on the test scores and comprehension of their students.
Yikes. Delusional incompetence on display!
And then he ends his goofy reminiscence of a trivial dream with this:
I woke up tingling with excitement – only to find I’d been dreaming. But I can’t get it out of my mind.
It’s a dream, Pat. I know you loons have a tough time sorting out reality from fantasy, but it’s nothing to be excited about. And forget about running for the presidency: you’re a crazy ol’ coot with no skills or talent, and the time for your kind is over.
In yet another instance in the chronicles of religious pareidolia, people are flocking to gaze in awe at the wrinkles and bumps in a seat cushion They say it looks like Jesus. Does that make Jesus a butthead?
Antoinette, an 82-year-old parishioner, said the face was a “divine phenomenon” as tears welled up her eyes.
“This church is a holy site,” added Lise-May, another worshipper.
Ladies, you are going into rhapsodies of ecstasy over the dimples in a pillow produced by some old guy’s bony ass. Get real.
The hyper Japanese narration somehow made me think of The Calamari Wrestler.
The animals have had about enough of us, I guess. The latest weird story of animals attacking:
An Indonesian villager had to be rushed to hospital after a horse bit off one of his testicles during a freak attack.
The 35-year-old man was unloading sand from a horse-drawn cart at a construction site in Sulawesi earlier this week when the attack occurred, Indonesia’s state-run news agency Antara reported.
A witness said the animal suddenly lunged at the man, sinking its teeth into his crotch.
Shocked bystanders loaded the man into a car to take him to hospital, before one noticed a piece of flesh on the pavement.
“Luckily the horse did not chew up or swallow his testicle, but spit it onto the pavement,” the bystander was quoted as saying.
That last little detail just hammers home the contempt that horse had for the human.
So…is about half my readership cringing and doubling over in sympathetic agony right now?
First it was Santino the chimpanzee flinging rocks at his captors, and now a monkey kills his slave-driving owner with a coconut. You all better be nice to your fellow primates, you hear, or you’ll be up against the wall in the imminent revolution.
There’s a common joke that claiming to have knowledge of the existence of god is like claiming that you know you’ve got fairies living in your garden — both are equally ridiculous, and both require that the definition of the subject and of evidence for the subject be equally nebulous. The only difference is that billions are willing to accept the former, but no one is crazy enough to accept the latter…you’d think. Not so, though: there is actually something called the Icelandic Elf School where you can learn all about the classification and cultivation of various sorts of fairy-like entities.
Also known as Álfaskólinn in Icelandic, The Icelandic Elf School teaches students and visitors about the five different kinds of elves or hidden people in myth that are believed to inhabit the country of Iceland. The school is located in Reykjavík, the country’s largest city.
The school is headed by Magnús Skarphéðinsson, brother of the leader of one of Iceland’s largest political parties. Magnús has a full curriculum, and certificate programs for visitors that can be earned in as little as half a day. However, the school also publishes texts on hidden people, partly for its own use in the classroom. There is also ongoing research on the elves and hidden people of Iceland.
I’m thinking that this organization sounds a lot like the American Discovery Institute, or just about any bible college you can name.
(The Wikipedia entry cites a dearth of sources for the school — here’s another.)
The Phelps gang is picketing in Chicago with their “god hates fags” sign. Hate meets hate: there was a counter-demonstration.
Which side to take? I’m a firm believer in Myers’ Wager — who would you rather piss off, the little guy with the beard preaching peace and love, or the pitiless tentacled monstrosity from a space beyond space and a time beyond time? — so I’m going to side with this sign. Besides, she’s much cuter than the cryptkeeper Fred Phelps.
Uh-oh: this guy is everywhere.
Now this is just getting silly. An Islamic theologian has declared that using ethanol as a fuel is sinful.
As if the debate around using ethanol to fuel cars weren’t already complicated enough, now an Islamic scholar has suggested that driving or even riding in a vehicle fueled by ethanol could be considered a sin for observant Muslims.
The opinion comes from Sheikh Mohamed al-Najimi, of the Islamic Jurisprudence Academy in Saudi Arabia. It is based on the part of Islamic law derived from a statement by the prophet in which dealing with alcohol in any form–including purchase, sale, transport, consumption, and manufacture–is strictly prohibited.
But…but…there are basic biochemical processes going on in every Muslim’s body that produce alcohols! If you’re going to get this ridiculous about restricting anything that has to do with alcohol, they’re going to have to get rid of those sinful dehydrogenases.
But really…don’t you suspect that this has more to do with Saudi Arabia’s status as an oil producing state than in any kind of genuine piety?
