“The difference between a graphic novel and a comic is that the bus takes four panels to arrive in a graphic novel. ”
(via Robot Wisdom)
Taghumor
I suspect the author of this knows more about programming languages than religions. But it’s still kinda funny.
C# would be Mormonism – At first glance, it’s the same as Java, but at a closer look you realize that it’s controlled by a single corporation (which many Java followers believe to be evil), and that many theological concepts are quite different. You suspect that it’d probably be nice, if only all the followers of Java wouldn’t discriminate so much against you for following it.
(Thanks Dr. P Fenderson)
(Above: a holiday card taken from the Amanita muscaria – Holiday Cards gallery)
Christmas is always a good time of year for ontological terrorism. For example, “The psychedelic secrets of Santa Claus” by Dana Larsen from Cannabis Culture Magazine is one of my favorite links to spread around Christmas time. Larsen makes the case that though Santa Claus is now a symbol of our annual collective consumer-orgy, he may originally have been inspired by amanita muscaria mushroom eating shamans. That the very same politicians that enforce and promote the war on drugs tend to also whole heartily endorse a religious figure birthed of ancient drug culture amuses me to no end. Larsen’s idea, apparently taken from Jonathan Ott, might not pass skeptics’ muster. But most, if not all, of Christmas traditions stem from pagan practices.
Another of my favorite Christmas links is Patrick Farley‘s Chick tract parody about the pagan roots of Christmas. But Chick himself is all too aware of the Christianizing of pagan practices and publishes tracts warning Christians against paganism. In Are Roman Catholics Christians?, Chick portrays Roman Catholicism as a pagan religion. In The Death Cookie he compares communion with various pagan traditions, and in Fairy Tales a kid goes on a murder spree when he learns that there is no Santa.
What you’ll never see acknowledged in the Chick tracts is that it’s not just Santa with pagan origins: the real “reason for the season” has pagan roots as well. What better holiday gift can you give your Christian loved ones this holiday season than an e-mail with a link to jesusneverexisted.com? In addition to covering the lack of historical evidence that Jesus ever existed, they take a look at pagan sources of “son of god” myths and Christ’s various predecessors such as Osiris, Apollo, Hercules, and Odin.
Alas, even the staunchest of atheists, like Dawkins and Sam Harris celebrate Christmas with their families, according to the New York Times. And despite my misgivings about consumer-binging and hazardous winter travel, I too find myself celebrating Christmas every year. Astronomer Carolyn Porco has argued in favor of creating science rituals and customs to replace religion:
Imagine a Church of Latter Day Scientists where believers could gather. Imagine congregations raising their voices in tribute to gravity, the force that binds us all to the Earth, and the Earth to the Sun, and the Sun to the Milky Way. Or others rejoicing in the nuclear force that makes possible the sunlight of our star and the starlight of distant suns. And can’t you just hear the hymns sung to the antiquity of the universe, its abiding laws, and the heaven above that ‘we’ will all one day inhabit, together, commingled, spread out like a nebula against a diamond sky?.
And in a recent Reason Magazine column Greg Beato has made the case for an increase in atheist or secular humanist merchandise, along the insane lines of Christian merchandising. Neither one of these things has much appeal to me. As Beato says, “One virtue of non-belief is that not every aspect of your life has to be yoked to some clingy deity who feels totally left out if you don’t include Him in everything you do.”
Yet, I’ve come up with an idea for a “secular humanist” celebration for December 25th, for anyone dying for something to celebrate. In Divine Horseman, Maya Deren describes the loa Ghede Nimbo as the first human who ever lived (page 38). Michael Bertiaux’s hypersyncretic Voudon Gnostic Workbook describes Baron Legbha-Nibbho as a Christ figure (page 48) and says that his death is to be recognized on Fridays. This gave me the idea of celebrating the 25th as the birth of the very first human. Not as a Voudon loa, but as a secular humanist celebration of the origin of our species.
“In a bold move, Monty Python announces their partnership with YouTube, creating the first official Monty Python Video Channel on the internet. To all the fans who’ve for some unknown reason have sat, progressively losing their eyesight, squinting at their computer screens, watching The Dead Parrot Sketch, or missing the climax of The Fish Slapping Dance all because you’re too damned cheap to buy the shiny new DVD Box Set, you who have gawped at grainy bootlegged Python snippets only to be left unfulfilled by the ripped-off rubbish posted on YouTube… Well loyal Python fan, strain no longer! Now you can save your eyesight and join the Monty Python YouTube Channel, where you can enjoy high quality Python lounging in your knickers. Yes, that’s right, you don’t even have to leave the comfort of your laptop to join the Flying Circus.”
“STUDY COURSE FOR THE PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE-In these modern times of stress and crowding, as more of us are forced to live under one roof, it is incumbent upon the churlish to perfect the art of being difficult. For that reason, famed Hollywood Guru, stargazer to the Stars of Hollywood, Anita Sands now offers a groundbreaking Course: PASSIVE AGGRESSION 101. This is a seminar you must take. In it, YOU WILL LEARN ‘state of the art’ P.A. Technology ! Yes! Up ’til now, you’ve been nasty on the natch but why should you be ordinary in anything you do? There have been important developments in behavioral systems developed for the torture of so-called superior (but really meeker) humans —by surlier, burlier ones —and, as an even cursory purusal of the curriculum of this workshop will prove, tricks in terror can be taught! You can become a doormat with TEETH. HOW?
It pays to stay au courant. Things have moved a great way from the early days of simple, caveman aggression. Advanced studies take basic human aggressiveness and refine it into sublime and ever more evolved manifestations. Use the same old Cro-Magnon fist but shroud it in a Third Millenium velvet glove! P.A. Studies 101 does not involve putting aside the mortal weapon. Oh no. It involves a lighter touch on a smaller, more streamlined club, targeting more mortal spots on the enemy. Take this class and become the shit you always wanted to be!
COLLECTING INJUSTICES –OR THE VALUE OF SCREAMING AND YELLING- (not YOUR screaming. THEM!) When people have too much patience and calm, and constantly summon the strength to be calm around you, it is incumbant upon you to DOUBLE DOWN on being outlandish. I’m talking double-dip nasty. Be hugely provocative. Make them totally lose their cool. Do exactly the opposite of what they tell you to do. Ignore any request. They say, ‘don’t leave, do the work,’ LEAVE and neglect the work and come back and tell them what fun places you went and amusing, creative things you did while they were stuck doing the work. If they say don’t make noise. CHATTER AND PLAY THE RADIO. When you have them blowing up, screaming and yelling say in a gentle, pained manner, ‘See? You’re an angry rageaholic bitch to me.’ When you can truly collect an injustice the collateral benefit is that you get to tell a few of the enemy’s friends of the cruel evils the enemy has done to you. Makes for great gossip down the line. You’ll dine for years on these anecdotes.
CONTROL TRIP: If the Enemy can approach you and talk, he will ultimately control you. Always avoid conversational approaches. As a chatty Cathy comes at you, or as Enemy moves toward you with mouth open, immediately trip switches that leave them powerless. Lock yourself in your own room, forcing them to bang, cajole, talk through the door. That leaves them in total powerlessness. Then to absolutely seize control, tell them you don’t like being yelled at through a door, that it’s insulting. This is called a reverse switch and leaves most authority figures completely stymied, and stupid ones, feeling guilty in the bargain.
HARMONY- Why should we have any harmony on earth? Life sucks. Earth is a place for SUFFERING. You’re suffering, why shouldn’t everyone else? Be the Equalizer with your own brand of the Golden Rule. Not to give others what you yourself want… No way! Your job is to give others what you got. Every glad ass is trying to sell some dumbfuckin’ harmony seminar. It’s on every street corner. Harmony has been done to death. COSMIC TRUTH: There’s harmony everywhere EXCEPT on earth. That’s how God made it. Don’t try to fix it if it ain’t broke. If God meant for humans to be happy automatically he wouldn’t have given babies painfully hungry stomachs, wee-wees, ammonia in diapers, mucus in noses, soft skulls that crush with a minor fall off a bed, necks that break with the slightest slap!
SHARING-Ever notice how high horse the enemy gets when you have the flu? It really deserves a get-back. Here you are feeling stuffy, headachy, feverish, unable to sleep and they’re perky as a squirrel going “More tea? Can I get you a Mango smoothie?” Implied by all this wussy pussy energy is ‘where’d you fuck up, you little maniac that you’re this ill? You wanna eat Big Macs with change stolen from my purse, you goddamn pay the price. Look at me. I’m in perfect health. I eat spinach. I never get the flu.” Well, fuck them and the bale of hay they rode in on. They’re made of steel maybe, but you’ve got an endless supply of kryptonite. You’ll show them! The thing to do is get them in a corner where they can’t get away like when they’re reading to you, sitting downwind and cough right in their face. Don’t bother to turn your head or cover your mouth, just casually HACK in their face. Make sure a shower of spit falls on their lips, eyes and nose. If they call you on it, do a wide-eyed huh? Like, aren’t you testy. Here I’m the one dying of a l08 fever and you expect me to HOLD BACK every cough just because you insist on sitting with me and reading me Peter Wabbit?” Then when they come down with your flu and are lying in bed missing work, hacking, as you go out the door, remind them to drink mango smoothies. It’s not expected you make it for them. You’re not Florence Fucking Nightengale. You’re Greta GetBack.”
(via Heyoka Magazine)
I’ve been a big fan of Gary Larson’s “The Far Side” for as long as I can remember. His “outside the box” comics of silly reactions that monsters, animals, insects, aliens, and even vegetables might have in reaction to us human beings pulls me out of my reality tunnel and makes me laugh, and sometimes more importantly, is a reminder not to take everything so seriously. Now a DVD set of “Tales From The Far Side”, an animated series that appeared on TV in 1994, is available.
“Almost everyone has seen a Gary Larson Far Side cartoon in a newspaper or on a T-shirt, mug, calendar, or greeting card. But if you weren’t watching CBS on the night of October 26, 1994, you missed Tales From the Far Side, an award-winning animated short film that you’ve probably never heard of. Yes, that’s right: the Far Side was animated. Twice. And it’s brilliant.
The first short film premiered as a Halloween special in 1994, where couch potatoes and animation buffs like me saw it and were never able to forget it. The program was never broadcast on television again, but it did make the rounds at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival, where it took the Grand Prix. Three years later, a sequel (aptly titled Tales From the Far Side II) never even made it to television.
Both short films are comprised of a series of vignettes in the visual style of the print comics, with a haunting musical accompaniment by jazz guitarist Bill Frisell (who has featured some of the scores from the soundtrack on his disc Quartet). The tone ranges from the slapstick to the macabre, humorous to depressing, and even has some live action cow action thrown in there.”
(via Fantasy Magazine)
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