Some self-induced dashboard juxtaposition from ShortFormBlog.
Jon’s “Oh” face…
So this happened. Over and over and over.
This was seriously one of the funniest talk show interviews I’ve ever seen. Usually Gervais is really annoying, but something about how Jon Stewart played off of him made it hilarious. MUST WATCH.
Good point.
“New rule: it is not a “tell all” if we already knew. Thanks, woman who has come forward 50 years later to tell us JFK liked to get laid, good to know! Thanks especially for the details, like how he once made you blow his friend, which confirms my long-held theory of a second shooter.”
— Bill MaherThat last part had me bawling.
If the GOP really makes this issue central in the next month or so, Santorum (whose campaign claims to have raised $2.2 million in the two days following his victories last week) is by far the likeliest candidate to benefit. It could finally unite the Christian fundamentalist right behind him—especially since Romneycare contained exactly the same provisions on contraception that Obamacare did before last week’s compromise was announced. That’s right: Romneycare can now accurately be portrayed as falling to the left of Obamacare on the contraception issue.
Currently reading…
Sexy rumpus time.
Faith No Maher: Stop Calling Atheism A Religion
From last night’s Real Time with Bill Maher.
New rule: Until someone claims to see Christopher Hitchens’ face in a tree stump, idiots must stop claiming that atheism is a religion.
There’s one little difference. Religion is defined as the belief in and worship of a super-human controlling power, and atheism is precisely not that. Got it? Atheism is a religion like abstinence is a sex position.
Believe it or not, I don’t really enjoy talking about religion all the time. In fact, not only is atheism not a religion, it’s not even my hobby. And that’s the best thing about being an atheist, it requires so little of your time. But there is a growing trend in this country that needs to be called out, and that is to label any evidence-based belief a “religion.”
Many conservatives now saw that belief in man-made climate change is a religion. And Darwinism is a religion. And of course atheism, the total lack of religion, is somehow a religion too, according to the always reliable Encyclopedia Moronica. It’s a dodge, of course, straight out of the grand intellectual tradition of “I know you are but what am I?” It’s a way of saying, “Hey we all believe in some sort of faith-based malarky, so let’s call it a push.”
No. N-n-n-n-no. It’s not fair that people who can’t defend their own nonsense get to create a fake fair and balanced argument, the way they do when asserting that evolution and creationism are equally valid. I’m not saying that atheists are perfect thinkers, everyone has blind spots - I’m sure there are atheists who think pony tails look good on a man, pineapple belongs on a pizza, Ayn Rand was in important thinker - but when it comes to religion, we’re not two sides of the same coin and you don’t get to put your un-reason up on the same shelf with my reason.
Your stuff has to go over there, on the shelf with Zeus, Thor and The Cracken - with the stuff that is not evidence-based, the stuff that religious people never change their mind about, no matter what happens. That’s not atheism.
I’m open to anything for which there is evidence. Show me a god and I will believe in him. If Jesus Christ comes down from the sky during the halftime show of this Sunday’s Super Bowl and turns all the nachos into loaves and fishes, I’ll think two things: first, “How dare he interrupt Madonna, she is going to be pissed.” And two: “Oh look at that, I was wrong. There he is. My bad. Praise the lord!”
But that’s not going to happen. And short of that, if you still insist atheism is a religion, then it’s only fair that we get to do all the looney stuff that you get to do. And I’m going to start tonight by un-baptising Mitt Romney’s dead father-in-law.
In case you didn’t hear, it was discovered last week that Edward Davies, Anne Romney’s father, an enthusiastically anti-religious scientist who called organized faith, “hogwash,” was posthumously baptized in the Mormon tradition 14 months after he died. They tried to do it sooner but he wouldn’t stop spinning in his grave.
So here, then, is history’s first ever un-baptism ceremony, right now, for the late Edward Davies.
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today in the presence of math, gravity, evolution and electricity to honor brother Edward and to send the powers of Seal Team 666 to rescue him from Planet Klolobb so he may spend eternity with the kind of free-thinkers he chose to hang out with on Earth.
So by the power granted to me by the Blair Witch, schlemiel schlimazel, e plurbis mumbo jumbo, expecto patronum, sussussudio, yo momma… I call upon the Mormon spirits to leave your body the fuck alone. Brother Edward, in this world you had to put up with Mitt Romney, you’ve suffered enough!
Atheism is a religion like abstinence is a sex position.
I am glad…
… that people are looking into Newt Gingrich’s marital infidelities.
I am not glad, however, that they are using the opportunity to mock and vilify open marriages. Everyone’s talking about it like the idea of an open marriage is a despicable thing. It’s not. It’s a lifestyle choice that two (or more) people can openly and honestly enter into and be happy with.
Gingrich may have wanted an open marriage, but he was never in one. Sleeping around on your wife, and then proposing an open marriage when she finds out about it is not how it works, buddy. Obviously his wife at the time was not interested in it. So he left her.
It’s perfectly fine to criticize Newt Gingrich for attempting to assuage his wife by proposing an open marriage. And it’s perfectly fine to mock him for attempting to live this lifestyle, and succeeding at being a guy who sleeps around and leaves his wife for a new one when he gets bored while at the same time speaking out about how the values traditional marriage are under attack (especially while being the driving force behind the Clinton/Lewinsky investigation). That’s all fine. Hypocrisy is hypocrisy.
But it’s not okay to make a mockery of the idea of open marriage itself.
We’re starting to see a trend where homosexuality is becoming more and more accepted into society (even among conservatives). Some say it’s the last hurdle in the civil rights movement, but there’s another one very close to it, and that’s the world of open relationships, polyamory and the like.
One day it may be perfectly legal for two men or two women to marry anywhere in the country, but the chances of that also including three-person marriages (or four, or five, etc) is highly unlikely. Hopefully after one, the other follows shortly thereafter.
Infidelity does not break marriages up; it is the unreasonable expectation that a marriage must restrict sex that breaks a marriage up. One of the reasons I wrote the book is that I’ve seen so many long-term relationships broken up simply because one had sex outside the relationship. But feeling victimized isn’t a natural outcome of casual sex outside a relationship; it is a socialized victimhood. I’m not advocating cheating; I’m advocating open and equitable sexual relationships. When both in the couple desire this, when both realize that extra-dyadic sex makes their partner happy, and they therefore want their partner to have that sex, a couple will have moved a long ways toward facilitating emotional honesty, while simultaneously withering at jealousy scripts, which can be very damaging to a relationship. But if one can’t achieve this with a partner that’s hostile to the idea, cheating is the reasonable action.
Doopy boopy doop boop, SEX!
