Wonder, my darling cousin, and I were having a bit of a discussion a while back about the responsibility of progressive Christians to call out the lunatic right-wing fringe on their atrocious behavior.

See, I am not a Christian so when I call them the lunatic right wing fringe then I am a heretic who will burn in hell. My opinion does not matter to them cause I’m probably out at night worshipping Satan and sacrificing babies. Wev.

But Wonder is a Christian. And a pretty damn good one at that. There haven’t been enough people like her calling out the crazies. It is that side of Christianity that really needs to call people on this kind of very non-Christian activity. (Bolds mine)

But I can tell you that I get — I don’t think I’m in double digits, but it started at about 10 o’clock last night; after the press conference in the morning, I’ve had nine death threats since about 10 o’clock last night. I usually get about two or three a week. They’re very grotesque, everything from wanting to gas all the Jews in America and send the corpses back to Israel to threatening to blow me up, threatening my house will be blown up, raping my wife, blowing up my house. We’ve had our tires slashed, we’ve had feces and beer bottles thrown at the house, we’ve had dead animals placed on the front door of the house.

Where might these types of threats be coming from? How about the scary evangelical wing of our own military.

I read an article a few years back (and I’m sorry I can’t link to it but our library’s search program seems to be screwed at the mo) about how our military is becoming more insular and separate from the population in general. In previous generations there were drafts that brought in a good cross-section of the general population. But without a draft (and mind you I am not a fan of drafting young men and women into wars they may not support) our military is increasingly made up of people who consider themselves apart and above the citizenry they are supposed to protect.

Now add to the already separatist nature of those who chooses to join the military the belief that they are also above anyone who does not share the exact same faith that they do, and the idea that serving god comes before serving country. You now have a massive deadly force of religious soldiers groomed on every front to not respect the basic principles of freedom that our country was founded on, like separation of church and state or religious freedom.

If this kind of behavior is allowed to continue in our military it will not be long before the screaming meamies on the right have a private army to create a military dictatorship here.

So Wonder, and Christians like you, the mission I charge you with is bringing your religious nuts back into line before they destroy the rest of us. You must call them on behavior (like threatening to rape someone’s wife) that Christ would have found abhorable.

I have a fever of 102.8. For those of you who don’t know- anything over 101 in an adult is kinda scary cause our brains to have the expendy power that little kids brains do. So my brain cells may fry but since I got more of them than most people I figure I’m ok.

I gotta bitch about this letter in Salon, and since it’s gonna either be a long ass bitch or an incoherant fever rant, I’m writing it here instead of there.

To paraphrase the original letter- ‘I’m a boomer, I work with gen xers, they’re cynical and I don’t like them, wah fucking wah’.

Alright Boomers- get fucking over yourselves. Seriously and let’s see why us Xer’s might be a little tired of y’all.

Sure you got the civil rights ball rolling, but we’re still fighting to get minority votes counted. Only difference is now you boomers are the ones being the political office holding pissheads.

Sure, you got us reproductive freedoms, but it’s your same damn generation of justices and politicians and religious leaders that are trying to send us girls to the drycleaners for wire hangers.

Sure, because of you interracial marriages are now ok, but bring up gay marriage and even progressive boomers will tell you to drop it so we don’t lose elections. Shhhhhhhhhh- we don’t want too much freedom.

My generation faces lower real wages, higher debt levels, less access to education and healthcare, poor quality schools for our kids and no possible way of affording college for them (If I save 2x my annual income every year for the next 8 years I might have enough money to send the kiddo to 2 years of community college- no shit), and an environment that is quicky going to hell because of the boomer love of the SUV. We have no retirement possibilities. We’re going to be taxed into extinction to support your social security and medicare. Those of us that were lucky enough to be able to afford to buy a house are already looking at massive foreclosures because the economy that most of us have to live in looks a lot less rosy for us than for you. Oh yeah- and you boomers in congress just yanked the bankruptcy rug out from underneath us (though it is good news for the new boyfriend who does bankruptcy law as part of his job- kaching).

So yeah, we’re cynical and we see most of you as greedy hypocritical bastards. Stick that happy daisy in the end of your pipe and smoke it.

If anyone has something to say about punctuation or spelling errors they can smoke that too- 102.8 suckers. I’d like to see you string together something coherent at that temp.

Well it’s Carb Fest 06 peeps- and I’m cooking for a crowd and hanging out with some of my favorite people who I only get to see very occasionally, like Ish from Sweden and Rosarita and the Naughty Professor. The four of us scandalized Grand Central Bakery this morning by talking about orgy horror stories. I heard one about a girl who lost her engagement ring and had to ask all the other girls at party to check their no no parts for it.

After a tasty dinner of Eritrean food tonight with the above mentioned trouble causers I will be making the following for your Carb Fest pleasure.

Turkey cooked in an entire bottle of wine
Mashed potatoes with roasted garlic and dill
Smokey green beans
Spinach salad with mandarins, sour cherries and raspberry vinaigrette
Whipped sweet potatoes
Cornbread stuffing with sausage
Baked wild rice pilaf
Cranberry-apricot relish
Blackberry Crumble for dessert

I think that is it. I talked to the vodka fairy and a great big bottle of Kettle One is being delivered to those of us who have been the most naughty and nice this year. So I’ll be slurry drunk by dinner.

Ok- so I skipped Passion of the Christ because it was pretty damn apparent to me that Mel Gibson is a raving lunatic. Besides, unless absudities are pointed out (i/e Monty Python’s Life of Brian or the Meaning of Life) I don’t like religious movies. Sorry Charlston Heston- but I don’t think the bible is the source for the greatest story ever told.

However I do have a great big juicy soft spot for Mayan history and that is a story never told in Americna film. But I have to get over some issues before I can see Apocalypto

If you weren’t fortunate enough to miss pisshead McCain this weekend talking to Snuffalufagus, I mean Stephanopoulos, then you completely missed his I’m against discrimination except when I’m for it spiel.

MCCAIN: I just want to point out again, I believe that gay
marriage should not be legal, OK, but I don’t believe that we should
discriminate against any American, because that’s not the nature of
America, OK?

So what do you call it when one part of the population is not allowed to do something another part of the population can do because to allow that section of the population equal access would break some long standing tradition?

Let’s see:

When certain people (blacks, women) weren’t allowed to vote while white men were- we called that discrimination

When certain people weren’t allowed into colleges (blacks, women) while white men were – we called that discrimination

When certain people (blacks, women) can’t get a particular job or home or line of credit that they qualify for because they are not white men- we call that discrimination.

So how is it again that when certain people want to marry but aren’t allowed to because they aren’t what we normally expect to see in a married couple (i/e a man and a woman) it’s not discrimination?

Seriously, anytime someone can show me a logical argument for why 2 people can’t pledge to be responsible for each other in life because they are of the same sex- I will gladly stop calling it discrimination. But we all know there is never a logical explanation of discrimination, just selfish justifications for perpetuating it (like “I’m trying to run for preznit and I must appeal to the base by being a giant bigot.”)

I know there are quite a few of you middling democrats out there who liked McCain in 2000 and maybe even in 2004- but he has shown his not-so-maverick side since 2000 and it ain’t’ pretty. Unless, of course, you think watching one more person take it up the ass from Georgie Boy while smiling with a mouth full of shit sandwich is a maverick move. Then there’s been a whole lot of maverick made lately (uhm Lieberman I am talking to you too).

I am very disappointed that my favorite dirty old man didn’t guess that the last virtual cookie was for Shakira’s Hips Don’t Lie, but I guess that’s because he doesn’t watch the video with the volume turned on.

So here’s an oldie. It’s been stuck in my head for days and I figure the best way to get it out of my head is to inflict it on you all.

The title is in the lyrics- you just have to tell me who sings it.

When I wake up in the morning, love
And the sunlight hurts my eyes
And something without warning, love
Bears heavy on my mind

Then I look at you
And the world’s alright with me
Just one look at you
And I know it’s gonna be
A lovely day

This is why.

Sixteen-year-old junior Matthew LaClair says he was shocked when history teacher David Paszkiewicz, who is also a Baptist preacher in town, spent the first week lecturing students more about Heaven and Hell than the colonies and Constitution.

He said Paszkiewicz told students that if they didn’t accept Jesus, “you belong in Hell.”

Part of the whole Evangelical tradition is “spreading the good news” whether or not your audience wants to hear it. And if that audience happens to be a public school classroom where you are the teacher with all the power over a room full of captive students- so much the better.

These kind of Christians are the telemarketers of the religious world. They don’t really give a damn about you as a person, they just want to make sure they get their quota of news spreading in so that they can get whatever heavenly door prize goes to the one whose most verbose.

This preacher/teacher went on to lie about what he was teaching in class when LaClair complained to the principal. It was only when LeClair produced recordings of the lessons that the preacher/teacher fessed up to what he had done. If what he was doing was good for the students, or if he had the actual convictions of his stated beliefs then he never would have had to lie about it. But he did lie. And in lying he not only did his beliefs a disservice, but he cast doubt on an innocent kid who just wanted his own freedom of religion respected. How mature and more importantly, how christian of him to lie in order to escape responsibility.

But you know, it’s ok for the preacher/teacher to lie about the kid- the kid is a believer in something “non Christian”. So ya know, the kid’s going to hell anyways and lying about him ain’t no big thing.

Nice, real nice.

Obsessing over pooping rituals will kill you.

Having been dick slapped by the majority voters in the country, Bill O’Reilly is not content to lie down and die like a dead horse should. Last year he went on his idiotic rant about the “War on Christmas”, this year it’s the “War on Religion”.

As for the imaginary War on Christmas- it’s not even Thanksgiving yet and the stores are full of Christmas detritus already. Even Ikea, you know that godless, Swedish, commy store has sent out flyers advertising their Christmas baubles. The Kid brought me a list of things he wants yesterday and shoved it in my face like any demanding white male Christian child would (he was promptly put in his place by non-Christian, non-male me). Christmas is not in danger. Credit ratings, common sense, propriety and rationalism are in danger, but Christmas and the Ka-Ching sound we have all come to associate with the holiday are as firmly in place as that fruitcake your boss gave you last year that is now welded to the bottom of your cupboards.

Now to the War on Religion. I am an agnostic. Whenever this comes up in the company of religious folks, they assume agnostic means I “just haven’t been taught the wonderful ways of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ” and cannot come to terms with the idea that I have chosen to avoid dogmatic beliefs based on unproven ideas consciously. See, me and my types, agnostics and atheists (though I think most atheists are just as dogmatic as the fundies) only make up about 3% of the population.

People who call themselves Christian, regardless of denomination make up about 82% of the population. Now I know we all can’t be as cool as me (coolest cat in the litter box and all that) but even my vast coolness rays cannot influence the 82% of the people in this country who think the earth is only 6000 years old and that you can get knocked up by divine intervention. The truth is, rational thought is rarely as sexy as screaming dogma that lets you exclude large chunks of the population from your club.

Religion, for all the harm it has done many over the course of time, is in no danger from a culture war. Those who do not believe in the innate Christian-ness of our country may be in danger from those like O’Reilly who cannot fathom the idea that someone would rather think on their own and take responsibility for their own actions rather than give up individual thought for faith. Of course, I have to take responsibility for my own actions, fundy yahoos can blame God or the Devil, which ever one is trendy at the time.

So in honor of the holiday season I will once again change our little slogan. I still firmly believe that modesty is for people with nothing to brag about, but until New Year’s I think we need something seasonally appropriate.

Happy Freakin Holidays- I’m gonna get drunk and set a manger on fire. Of course I will then have to take responsibility for my manger arson, no blaming the Devil or the Catholics for it. It’s all me.

And just for fun- The Marines hate the Baby Jesus. It’s true.

I can’t help but think that this is so much better than giving corporate welfare to McDonalds to expand globally. But I am an Indy Pop Queen, so you all know where my loyalties would lie.