quote of the day

from urizen @ daily kos, singing the unsung good news swirling out of this campaign season's teapot tempests which have engulfed, to date, jeremiah wright and john hagee and rod parsley and now michael pfleger:

i'm thrilled to see that candidates' faiths are becoming a liability to them instead of an asset ...

how to sell obama to a racist

so, does barack obama have an "appalachia problem"? maybe ...

... or maybe not, with a little reverse psychology:

... he started to get excited about obama. he said, "whoever the next president is, the economy is screwed up, so he's going to have to deal with that and probably fail. if obama is president, everyone will see he's just like every other president. he'll let his supporters down in some ways, and screw up, and change and negotiate with republicans who his supporters all hate. and all the blacks who said they wanted a black president will see what it's like to have 'your' president let you down." i said right, in the end obama will be just another president, who gets some things right and other things wrong. but, i said, afterwards we'll be living in a post-president-obama world, and no one will ever be able to say that america is so racist we won't let minorities rise to the top. he said, "yeah, and the naacp will have to close up!" i said they probably won't close, but they will change. i said everything will change, because it has to. he said that he was really thinking about voting for obama now, for the first time. he said he had never heard a reason to vote for him before that made sense, but "making the naacp go away is a real thing that could happen. how can they justify their existence when the president is black? and how can al sharpton pretend he's a black leader, when the black leader will be the president ... ?"

go read the whole thing. it sounds like something out of monty python.

in fact, i'm already envisioning a sequel ...

THE DATE: january 21, 2009 THE SCENE: a large outdoor prison labor camp, manned on its perimeters by doberman-walking, heavily-armed, aviator-shaded, afro-&-sideburn-sporting, toothpick-chewing, purple revolution-jumpsuited soul-brothers. behind barbed-wire, under the hot sun, bent over rows of cotton, wretched white slaves toil in close chains as strains of parliament funkadelic waft out of the guard towers. under their breath the white slaves bitch and bemoan their fate. one slave curses himself for being stupid enough to get tricked into voting for barack obama by a co-worker at the post office. enraged at the confession, someone throttles him with his own chains. the guards fire into the air and bark for order as the slaves scatter and the victim's last spasms subside ...

and now the legacy begins

an example of the kind of books inspired when one is no longer able to explain his wars ...

but he's not there

only 1% of people think of god as female, with 62% considering god to be male, the online survey conducted earlier this month of 1,050 adults in britain found.1

i remember sometime during the last millenium catching part of a documentary about christians in korea or some such topic and the one clip that stayed with me was an interview of a korean man saying that not only did he believe in jesus christ, son of god, but he also believed that christ was a caucasian with blond hair and blue eyes.

i immediately thought: "how horrible!" — this pathetic person had built himself a mountain that he could never scale.

most theists and deists with an anthropomorphic vision of their diety create one in their own image and posit themselves as the "chosen people" of that god, yet here was a person submitting to a god that he could never claim kin to, no matter how hard he prays, no matter what he sacrifices.

it seems that instead of enjoying the ego-boost most religions give their faithful, this person was basically condemning himself to a permanent inferiority complex. and if god is white, blond and blue-eyed, how could this person ever have any kind of relationship with any white, blond and blue-eyed human being in which he wasn't automatically inferior (perhaps even inferior to any caucasian nonbeliever as well), all the way down to his corpuscles?

watching that guy declare his strange faith just seemed so heartbreakingly tragic.

---

¹ hat tip to p.z. myers @ pharyngula. from commenter greta christina:

the zombies' song "she's not there" keeps coming to mind. with a little tweaking, it makes an excellent atheist song. well, let me tell you 'bout the way he looks the way he acts and the color of his hair his voice is soft and cool his eyes are clear and bright but he's not there!

godwin* would be proud

(edited footage from "der untergang" (2004))

* see "godwin's law"

not for resale

i see that my generosity is not to go unpunished:

apparently the warning in the readme file supplied with my icons is not explicit enough. apparently this seller can't follow his own advice: "please read ebays policy carefully ..."

the concept of copyright itself is quite simple: if you didn't create it, you can't sell it — not without documented permission from the creator.

and while i may be the creator of these icons, even i can't sell them — not without risking the wrath of the likes of dc comics, warner bros., paramount pictures, george lucas, the beatles and any other holders of copyrights and trademarks attached to the sources of my creations.

so my advice to anyone contemplating making a buck or a pound off my icons — don't. i've already filed an infringement notice with ebay.

just be happy i'm giving them away for free to my fellow gps enthusiasts and not keeping them to myself. let sleeping dogs lie. it's not worth the £1.99.