Do you know about Sharron Angle yet?  She is the Tea Party-backed Republican candidate for the 2010 election challenging Harry Reid. 

So, here’s a HuffPost article about a January 2010 exchange on the Bill Manders show.  You can play the audio at that link, but here’s a transcript:

Manders:  I, too, am pro life.  But I’m also pro choice.  Do you understand what I mean when I say that?

Angle:  I’m pro responsible choice.  There is choice to abstain, choice to do contraception. There are all kind of good choices.

Manders:  Is there any reason at all for an abortion?

Angle:  Not in my book.

Manders:  So, in other words, rape and incest would not be something [trails off]?

Angle:  You know, I’m a Christian.  And I believe that God has a plan and a purpose for each one of our lives and that he can intercede in all kinds of situations.  And we need to have a little faith in many things.

So — going to try to be exquisitely fair here: if a father holds his little girl down and rapes her, and she becomes pregnant, God could intercede.  If he doesn’t intercede, that’s part of his plan.  We would be sinning and subverting divine will if we allowed the girl to have an abortion.  The proper response is faith in God.

Does that about cover it?

This.  Woman.  Is running.  For national office.

She is the candidate of the more-conservative of the two main U.S. political parties.

Before I move on to the rest of my post, let’s get this vile piece of Angular detritus out of the way.  It is too late to unspeak the words she spoke about rape and incest.  That horse has left.  There is no way you mess that one up that bad.  It’s more absurd than saying, ‘Officer, when I said ‘Open the register and give me all your money!’, I meant to say ‘Do I have to buy something to get some change for the pay phone?’”

So, I’m setting my clock as of the timestamp of this post.  The RNC has 48 hours to withdraw all support for Angle.  That much is a given.  A statement on the order of “We were unaware of the insanity of Ms. Angle, and we apologize for our previous support of her.  The Republican National Committee does not oppose abortion in the case of rape nor incest.  We disown anyone who argues otherwise, for any reason, including superstitious special pleading.”  If they do not, they are complicit.  If they do not, and if you are registered Republican, you must be publicly vocal about how abhorrent this is, and at least write a letter to the party, or you are complicit.  That’s my line in the sand.

OK, now that I’ve established (to my satisfaction) that she is reprehensibly inhuman, or sociopathic, or both, my main point is done.  But I want to take a look at something very interesting that fell into place while researching this post.  I want to argue that this functions as a case study of when some religious conservatives choose to play the “illegally imposing their agendas” card.  Let’s do a little quoting:

Here’s Sharron Angle’s official “About” page on her website:

She is proud of her past chairwomanship of We The People Nevada PAC

We The People used to have a web presence, but no longer.  But that’s what archive.org is for.  Stored on the archive servers 2005-03-11:

There is a strong movement by atheists to ban religious thought form the public square.  This should be recognized as an attempt to establish atheism as the national religion. … The ACLU, NEA, and other organizations are examples of atheistic institutions trying to gain political control and an unfair advantage over Christian groups

So: atheists are trying to illegally impose their religious beliefs (“lack thereof”, actually, but when your only book is the Bible, everything looks like a faith), through political means, to the unfair detriment of some others, in a fashion that would set national policy.

One more.  Also from the cached PAC page:

The radical homosexual movement and other groups seek to destroy the traditional family structure which is the underpinning of society.  Their agenda should be opposed.

Gay activists (and, remember, the ACLU was implicated above) are trying to destroy the underpinnings of society.  Their agenda should be opposed.

So, tying it together: silly, silly, silly me.  You know how crazy-liberal I am?  I thought one of the underpinnings of society was undoing the harm caused by fathers who rape their children.  I thought that, given that We the People and I agree that “The establishment clause prevents the combining of the state with religious organizations”, that dictating the definitions of what family means — not only who can get married, but why it is OK to let a god mediate when a “traditional family” is destroyed by a villain from the inside — on the basis of what the god the person speaking happens to believe in is interpreted to desire — could be considered … pretty much nuts.

But that’s just me.  I’m an atheist.  I, therefore, am probably using this unfairly in an effort to make my lack of religion the official national religion, to the unfair disadvantage of these Christians.  Who, of course, have no such desires.  Unless they win.

(For the sake of rigor:  I haven’t been able to determine [help?] what years Angle chaired We The People, and cross-reference it against archive.org caches of their “Principles” page during her tenure.  Until I get this, it is just conceivable that this politician who thinks that abortion is not justified even in cases of child rape does not believe in a conspiracy of gays and atheists to destroy America.  I think that’s unlikely.  I expect you would think so, too.  But let me know if it’s that’s the case.  I’ll have to Google for another example.  In the interests of efficiency, I’ll start with listings of Tea Party candidates.)

Errors that grate on me, but will likely pass without comment:

• its/it’s confusion (this one is so hopelessly irregular that I’m usually cool with it)
• to/too confusion (this one is too easily a typing error)
• pluralizing an initialism with an apostrophe, such as “DVD’s” (this is yucky, but it can be difficult to disambiguate whether the terminal ‘s’ is part of the initialism or not)
• using ‘their’ and ‘them’ as neuter third-person singular pronouns (there really isn’t a good solution for this one yet)
• uninterested/disinterested confusion (I really like this distinction, but whatever)
• tasteless/flavorless confusion (chalkboard moment, but OK)
• spelling errors that will generate a red underline in Firefox (that is, the misspelling itself is not a word) bother me, but for some (unfathomable) reason, some people don’t use browsers with spell-checkers or turn the checkers off

Errors that are likely to evoke pity, because they suggest that the author is attempting to sound more intelligent than he is:

• using “beg(s) the question” to mean anything other than petitio principii
• ultimate/penultimate confusion (you poor sod)

Errors that are likely to make me think you are a moron, whether or not I inform you of this fact:

• pluralizing anything other than an initialism with an apostrophe (I mean, come on)
• your/you’re confusion (this one is not even hard.  if you say ‘ur’, I’m likely to contract someone to kill you.  just FYI.)
• there/their/they’re confusion (you can avoid confusing your phone number, social security number, and locker combination, right?)

All of these are subject to cruel and unusual enforcement if you are writing here and are insulting me while doing so.

Bonus:  A banana through the mail to anyone who finds an egregious grammar error in this post!

At the movies today, I heard several weird things — and as I am getting so much better about refraining from saying the first thing that pops into my head, and instead saving them to relate here, I thought I’d indulge myself thusly.

For instance, I was being helped by someone at the concessions counter.  As he was filling my drink, I saw that he had a large, elaborate tattoo reading “Cynthia” on his right forearm.

“Is that ink still relevant?” I asked.

“”Technically’”, he responded, using finger quotes.  Then he looked down at his arm.  “Oh, you mean that one?  No.  She doesn’t exist.”

And I succeeded in not saying something like “You might want to think about settling down soon.  You’re going to run out of skin.”

Also, for the second time now, I was asked for spare change by a panhandler who was, at that moment, talking on a mobile phone.  “You might want to think about eliminating your data plan” is what sprung into my mind.  But instead I gave him two quarters.

Further, outside the theater, there were two young women.  One was screaming into a mobile phone: “I have so much in my future!  I have great things in my future!  I can do so much better than you!”  I was tempted to pretend to read a sign until she got off the phone and say “So … you’re single, then?”  But, no.  Didn’t. 

Finally, two (other) women were standing outside the theater trying to decide what to see.  One was perusing the titles and showtimes, and the other was … doing something else.  Not sure.  Looking at posters, I think.

The former said: “Do you want to see Hot Tub Machine or The Jonasses?”  The latter answered.  The former replied, “OK.  But I want to see that other movie at some point: L.A. Mission.”  For real.  I was dumbstruck.

Nothing sprung into my mind immediately, but it would probably have been something like “I see why you go to the movies instead of staying home to read a book.”  But that would be dickish even by my standards, and there is a fish/barrel threshold beyond which it’s not even fun.

In the post category, I, of course, am the asshole.

Graphic found at an atheist site today:

OK, so, look, you know I’m not wont to give Judeo-Christian scripture the benefit of the doubt.  I’d jump on the former if it were remotely fair.  But it isn’t.

I’ve been reading Bart Ehrman’s Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, which is absolutely fascinating.  If you thought The Da Vinci Code was kinda cool, and felt like it was “taking a class”, and plowed through the hack writing for the neato stuff about religious secrecy, then, well, you’re an idiot, but a forgivable one; it was nicely packaged.  But Lost Christianities was the book you wanted to read all along.  I know it doesn’t have albino assassins or anything in it, but it’s still gripping.  And while the Luke 19 bit isn’t directly addressed in Ehrman, his books give one a much better understanding of the heterogeneity of early doctrinaires and the numerous forgeries, flame wars, actual flames, actual wars, and other assorted weird stuff going on in 2^nd-3^rd century proto-Christendom.

So, here’s Luke 19, in overview:

Verses 1 – 10: “Zacchaeus was a wee little man, a wee little man was he”
Verses 11 – 24: Parable of the Talents, which neocons love so much because they can interpret it as blessing the super-rich who make all their money by investing
Verse 25: “Can I get a witness?!”
Verses 26 – 27: OMFG Hail Hitler!!!1!
Verses 28 on: And then he went to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples stole a horse, and he taught random stuff that was probably furiously modified by later writers, and cried and shit.

Great.  Let’s go back to verses 26 to 27.  Read it in context.  Here it is in KJV:

19:24  And he said unto them that stood by, Take from him the pound, and give it to him that hath ten pounds.
19:25 (And they said unto him, Lord, he hath ten pounds.)
19:26 For I say unto you, That unto every one which hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him.
19:27 But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.
19:28 And when he had thus spoken, he went before, ascending up to Jerusalem.
19:29 And it came to pass, when he was come nigh to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount called the mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples,

There is no way that was in the original.  Damn.  Even in translation it stands out in glaring blood-red.  Look, atheists: you can’t just take random verses out of context and call Christians Nazis.  You need to glork the context a bit more.  I know it’s weird to talk about the impropriety of surreptitiously corrupting Sci-Fi for later generations, but you are not helping if you just stand at the sidelines and throw stuff into the argument.

eBay has always had an odd culture: eBay treats its sellers like crap, but the same sellers hang out on discussion boards and flame any newcomers who try to bring up complaints.  Serious, horrible flames.

This has struck me as rather a cult arrangement: infinite power vested in the authority structure, progressive limiting of freedom, cutting members off from their assets, and, all the while, the people most hurt by this behavior are supporting the power in a fashion that would make Joe the Plumber recoil.

But this is not a rant against eBay.  There are plenty of those.  I’m not even bitter that no one is answering any of my emails trying to clarify the situation, namely, that I owe them about $100, that I consider paying this back a moral obligation as well as a legal one (like I feel with my personal loans), and the only thing that has kept me from paying so far is I don’t have the money.  Concisely: when I’z gots the money, theyz gots it. 

I’m not bitter.  Bemused is better — by the progressively more Jonestown tone eBay is taking with me in automated emails.  So this was a really long wind-up for this, received today:

Because you are delinquent in paying your fees, we have suspended your eBay account.  Your current listings have been ended and you are no longer a member of the eBay Community.  [emphasis added]

But … but but but … why couldn’t you just end my listings and suspend me, but [sniffle] not excommunicate me?  I want to go hide under a blanket and cry.  I’m not a part of the eBay Community any more [sob]!!1!  Can’t I just do some penance?  Like, make me pay $0.30 to use their profoundly ugly templates ten times, and twenty Hail Donahoes?  Readers: any suggestion how to handle this without self-flagellating?  I’ve asked eBay but … but but but … they seem to have better things to do.                      More important than the survival of my very soul?!

Do you know the true irony?  The best way I have to generate $100 on short notice is to sell shit on eBay.

Wow.  That was fast, even by today’s standards.  Was it a work in progress that he took a few nights to add on a chapter and call it “finished”?  Maybe that explains the 2/5 stars it is receiving.  It’s at the top of the NYT Bestsellers List as I write.  Note that this is the “Who Killed Kurt Cobain?” scoundrel.

PayPal just sent this email:

Many of you asked us to make tracking your PayPal Debit Card cash back simpler. You got it.

Starting August 1, 2009, the cash back earned on your PayPal Debit Card transactions will be combined into a single deposit and paid monthly, rather than after each transaction, making your record keeping easier.

Your cash back rate won’t change.

OFFS.  Thanks, PayPal!  It was so frustrating, having to do things like withdraw my balance at regular intervals to invest it.  Or, for that matter, leave it in my PayPal money market sweep account and accrue interest on it every day.  Thank you!  This way you can have the interest on my money, and I don’t have to worry about it!

Your cash back rate won’t change.

Yes, assholes, it will.  Daily compounding and monthly compounding are different.  That’s why you’re doing it.  And for that matter:

Many of you asked us to make tracking your PayPal Debit Card cash back simpler

No, we didn’t.  We asked you to please give us back the running ledger that let us know whether our cash back had posted without downloading a comma-separated history file.

I was at a Magic: The Gathering tournament — has to be years ago, now — and the subject of owning original artwork came up.

“I have the original art for Detonate,” I offered.

“I can do you one better,” said another player.  He’s the guy who always thinks he can do one better.  He’s the guy who wears Gatorz sunglasses, but can’t actually see through them, so he props them up on his forehead and squints down under them at his cards.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen him finish higher than fourth-to-last.  “I have the original art for Hymn to Tourach!”

“Oh!” I said, intrigued.  “The one with the people holding hands in a circle?”

“No, the van Camp!” he cried.

“The one with the wolf head?” I asked, trying to not be too obvious with incredulity.

“Yeah!” said the guy gleefully.

Internally: “What, you couldn’t afford Stasis?!  That’s the second-most-ugly piece of Magic art in existence.”

Externally: “Good, hope you enjoy it.  I’m quite happy with mine.”

Dam furners.  Lettem in and soon theyll be corupting our spellling ‘n uzing punctwation marks insted of wurds:

“The immigration issue has touched every corner of society over the past two decades in some way, and this particular segment features experts’ commentary about immigration’s affect on critical issue facing the country … With our economy struggling, border violence reaching a tipping point & our natural resources beginning to dwindle the immigration issue is too important to our society to be ignored!” — The Federation for American Immigration Reform

I just saw a special-interest election ad on television:

After Massachusetts legalized [interracial] marriage, our son came home and told us the school taught him that [white people] can marry [black people].  He’s in second grade!  We tried to stop public schools from teaching children about [interracial] marriage, but the courts said we had no right to object or pull him out of class.

Do note that these warm-hearted followers of Jesus consider it a mortal sin to detach a bundle of 32 cells from a uterine wall but apparently have no qualms about denying rights to Real Actual Adults.

Fine print on the bottom of these pesky California election ads is insufficient.  It needs to have a pathetic, hateful, and ideally terminally ill old man come on and say “I’m James Dobson, and I approve — and funded — this message.”  I am willing to negotiate about whether he should be forced to wear an SS uniform while reciting the sentence.

It’s rather a good thing that I didn’t get to write the No on Prop 8 tagline, because “Don’t be a fucking Nazi, asshole” is probably not the most even-handed approach to this issue.

There’s a great lyric in the Queensrÿche song Bridge, written by Geoff Tate [correction from reader: Chris Degarmo penned the lyrics].  I use it as a rotating quote on this site.  It reads, “And so I sit here through the night, and write myself to sleep — and time keeps ticking.”

In such a position I find myself tonight.  I am outraged to the point of violent nausea by what happened today with Jennifer’s attorney.

As regular readers know, Jennifer has filed for divorce.  She has retained counsel — wholly appropriately.  Jenn scheduled an appointment last week (and just told me about it) to meet in his office.  Alarm bells went off.  Why should I go to his office?  Every experience I’ve ever heard is of divorce attorneys serving one with papers.  Plus, I was annoyed.  So I told Jenn I wasn’t going.

We’re still on last week.  Jenn called me from her mobile, in his office, and handed the attorney her phone.  The attorney told me that I needed to come to his office to get everything notarized.

“Why can’t you serve me with the papers and let me notarize them?” I asked.

“You might not do it right,” he said.

Hm.  I told him I’d think about it, and to call me on Wednesday when I had made up my mind.

Jenn was distressed.  Jenn, through this whole thing, has honestly, honestly been working in what she believed were the best interests of Jenn, Niall, and me.  Awesome.  I wanted to recognize this for her.  But she has been fed a line of malarky by the attorney, with fire and brimstone warnings about what would happen if I didn’t go into his office to fill out the paperwork.  I could completely lose custody!  Jenn would lose all say in the uncontested divorce and a seventy-year old judge would (not could) rule against me, drive me further to the poorhouse, and keep me from seeing my son.  The attorney had fully convinced her that she had no say in this matter.

Yes, absurd, I know.  But stick with me.  I’m not writing this to defame Jenn in any way.  Stick with this.

Jenn called back to get my address for the service of the papers.  I gave it to her, and told her I would be expecting the papers.

Jenn then called my mother to try to convince her of the absolute necessity of following the attorney’s advice.  Jenn was upset.  My mom was upset.  My mom, in the nicest way possible, tried to explain to Jenn that she was being sold a line (my mom and I hadn’t talked about this yet — this is independent.)  My mom then called me to pass on what Jenn had said.

OK, so Jenn thinks she needs it.  She thinks she is acting rationally and in my best interests, and it’s worth recognizing.  I still didn’t want to walk into the lion’s den.

Jenn called to plead that I attend the new meeting, scheduled for Friday (today).  I acquiesced.

I don’t have an operational car right now.  I needed to finagle a ride.  From Woodland Hills.  To Santa Fucking Ana.  I tapped my dad to chauffeur.

“Explain to me again why you need to go to his office?” asked my dad warily.  “This whole thing stinks.”

“I know,” I said.  “I’m doing it for Jenn.”  My dad picked me up in the early morning to drive to Orange County.

When I first got into his office, I was not completely off-put.  He told me he would validate my parking ticket.  He seemed personable.  I sat down.

The first form he set in front of me was a statement of my debts.  I was told to sign it.

“How do you know my debts?” I asked.  He told me that I had filled it out six months ago.

I asked to see it.  “These numbers have changed.”

“So?” he asked.

“You’re asking me to sign this under penalty of perjury that everything is correct.  These are not correct any longer.  We need to correct it,” I said.

He got flustered.  “Well, if you change your numbers, she’ll have to change her numbers!”

“OK,” I said.  “Let’s change them both.”

He changed them, under my guidance.  He didn’t change hers.  He asked me to sign it.

“I’d like to run this by my lawyer,” I said.

Jenn and the lawyer both got upset.  He started to browbeat me.  “You just gave me these numbers.  I put them on the form.  What’s the problem?”

“I don’t know,” I said.  “That’s why I want to run it by my lawyer.”

More pressure.  Dunno why, but I signed.

The next form was to attest that my list of assets had been correctly filled out.

“Could I see it, please?” I asked.

“See what?” he said.

“The list of assets that you have.”

He handed me a list.  It listed my bank account balances (all wrong), valued my car at six times its actual value, and for other assets, listed a value of zero.  That’s for all other stuff, like household items and collectibles.

“These aren’t zero,” I said.

More upset lawyer.  Honestly, I had no idea why.

“What happens if I have assets that aren’t listed on the page?” I asked.

“Then we would be — er, she would be — entitled to a hundred percent of them,” came the response.

So we fixed the numbers.  We were about to finalize them.  I said that I had two lawsuits in litigation, and asked if I needed to list them.  I was told that, yes, if I didn’t list them, even as “unknown”, “they” would be entitled to 100% of them.

I asked Jenn if she was planning on making a claim to that money.  I expected the answer to be “no”.  The answer was “yes” — she was making a claim, that she hadn’t disclosed and we hadn’t discussed.  I again said that I would like to run it by my lawyer.  More upset people.  More browbeating.

Actually, at this point, I can’t remember if I was browbeat into signing it or not.  But I was already getting queasy.

Another exchange that can be omitted for brevity followed.  I’m trying to get to the piece de resistance.  As follows.

I was asked to sign a form saying that I agreed with their description of the case.  Which I hadn’t fucking seen.  Let’s be clear.  I hadn’t seen the damn thing.  I requested that, hey, maybe I’d like to read the fucker first.

I started reading it on his monitor.

Here it gets good.

There was a paragraph attesting that both Jenn and I were in good health, able to work and earn our full income.  He was trying to slide past this one.

“Whoa,” I said.  “That’s not true.”

“OK, we’ll take it out,” he said.

“No, actually I’d like it to state that I’m disabled and unable to work.  That’s the truth,” I said.

The lawyer got a wicked smile.  “I’d advise her against that,” he said.

“Then I’m not signing it, at least until I run it by my lawyer,” I said.  After all, this could jeopardize my pending lawsuits, being subpoenable by opposing council.

“I’m not going to put down your disability without proof!” he thundered.

“OK.  That’s fine.  I’ll go to a doctor this week, get the proof, and fax it to you,” I said in honest equanimity.

He leaned forward.  “You know what, I’ve been really patient with you.  But the truth is you’re not a very nice guy.  I’ll see you in court.”

I smiled a wry smile and held up my parking ticket.

“No, I’m not going to validate you!” he near-screamed.

“OK, I said.  Bye!”  I stood up and walked out the door.

I was two steps past, really leaving, and the lawyer said, “Josh Josh Josh!  Come sit down!”

I spun and glared.  “That’s Mr. McGee,” I said.

“Mr. McGee, come and sit down.”

“I’m not going to sit down,” I said.

“Come and sit down!”

“I’m not going to sit down,” I said.

“If you take this to court, it will cost you ten thousand dollars.  You don’t have ten thousand dollars.”

“Let me understand this,” I said.  “Your plan is to insult me, then threaten me?”

“I’m not threatening you.  Come and sit down.  You don’t want this to go to court.”

I stood and equivocated.  I finally said, “I’m stepping out for five minutes to make a phone call.”

I walked (wrong direction, twice, which kinda ruined the moment) to the lobby and called my dad.  I told him what had happened.

“Get the hell out of there!” he said.  “Go back, tell him ‘Fuck you!’, and walk out.”

I hung up.  Actually I pushed the red button, which isn’t quite as dramatic.  I decided I wasn’t even going back.  I went down the elevator, got in the car, and called Jenn from my cell.  I told her I wasn’t coming back.

“Do you really think I’m trying to screw you?” she asked incredulously.

“I trust you,” I told Jenn (mostly true).  “I trust that lawyer about as far as I can throw him.”

We had a surreal conversation, which could be distilled to one statement.  Not hard to choose, because it’s the one I said five times.

“You have three options, Jenn.  You can have this lawyer serve me with papers, I’ll have my attorney review, and I’ll return them.  Or you can fire this lawyer, have a new lawyer serve me with papers, and I’ll run them by my attorney and return them.  Or you can set a court date.  If you don’t want this to go to court, this ball’s in your court.”

Let’s go back a bit.  I’m not a very nice person?  What, is he going to tell on me to the playground monitor?  Not be my best friend any more?  Tell people that I wear Spiderman underwear?  What the fuck?

“Like my reason for being here is to get you to like me,” my dad said later, playing me.

“I wonder how many people that works on,” my mom said later.

What?  The?  Fuck?

An epilogue.  Jenn is not a stupid person.  But she has a dramatically miscalibrated bullshit detector.  She was probably socialized this way, as a female in a religious family.  But she trusts too easily.  Way too easily.  One time, when she had a flat tire, she called me (panicking — she wouldn’t do that now, to her credit) and I talked her through getting someone to call out and change it (she was about eighty minutes away).

“What should I do with the tire?” she asked.  I pictured a shredded tire.

“Put it in your trunk, or have the tow truck driver take the tire away,” I said.

She chose the latter option.  Almost.  She gave the driver her wheel.  He was happy to take it, which is probably connected to the fact that buying a used replacement cost hundreds of dollars.  She was happy to send it away.

So, trusting.  Great, in a friendly, well-monitored twelve-year-old.  Not so great in an adult woman who is making choices to affect peoples’ lives for at least the next thirteen years.

I don’t know if Jenn still reads my blog.  I have no reason to expect her to read it.  I don’t read hers.  But I dearly hope that she will reflect on this.  Or ask her dad.  Or her best friend, who’s a trial attorney.  Get someone to fill her in on why I might distrust her attorney, who is counseling me not to retain counsel.  She is not stupid.  She really, really isn’t.  And I know she’s not trying to screw me.  I just want her to realize her power, fire this scoundrel, and let us get on with this in a reasonable fashion.

I’m not sure if writing this helped.  I think it did.  I’m not as nauseated.  And you’re welcome to post, or (maybe better) send me private email.  If any reflective person thinks I’m unreasonable, with a better bullshit detector, please tell me.

But I’m not wrong.  Shit.  I’m not wrong.  What do you call a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?  What indeed.

Everybody now!

Some fucking motherfucker stole my bike
Some fucking motherfucker stole my bike
I’ll tell you what he’s like
He’s a fucking parasite
This dickless fucking punk who stole my bike (from my porch!)

Second verse, same as the first!

Some …

OhForTheLoveOfAllThatIsSacred.  WTF?  A “commemorative” “9/11″ “coin” clad in silver recovered from Ground Zero? (Warning: link contains sound, moving graphics, and extremely bad taste).

I think I’m going to actually vomit.  I don’t fucking care that they supposedly give 16% (not counting handling charges) of their proceeds to charity.  These people need to be flogged.

This was going to be a single sentence in the next post, but it sort of grew out of hand.  If you’re of an Abrahamic bent, and want to believe that I’m not really an asshole, stop reading.  Here’s your chance.

Still with me?  Are you sure you want to be here?

OK, thanks.  Regarding the shared bits of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, etc., here it is, in second person:

I believe that your God was the favorite tribal deity of a polytheistic, nomadic, historically insignificant Bronze Age people living in North Africa and the Near East.  Through a bizarre historical accident, a tiny messianic doomsday cult of this people was adopted as the state religion of the most powerful empire on the planet, despite the utter failure of any of the doomsday prophecies to transpire in the allotted time.

I believe your shared “testament” is a heterogeneous anthology of self-aggrandizing revisionist history, stolen legal codes, institutionalized bigotry, justifications for ethnic cleansing, “Just So” stories, the ravings of the mentally ill, census data, a sprinkling of common sense, and some truly beautiful poetry and children’s literature, all of which was rolled together and authorship attributed to a deity, which means to many of you that it has to be 100% factually accurate, even when it’s internally inconsistent or demonstrably wrong.

I believe the premise and existence of the modern state of Israel is at least as bizarre as if my family declared ownership of the British Isles, invaded, subjugated the citizenry, imposed martial law, renamed the nation “Mordor”, and declared war on Western Europe.

I believe that were we to argue theology, I’d argue to the point where we agreed that your god is undetectable, untestable, unpredictable, inelegant, unnecessary, paradoxical, and at least one of impotent, malicious, and completely incomprehensible, not to mention just plain weird, at which point I’d consider the topic not worth any further thought, you’d declare ineffability a feature rather than a bug, and I’d look at you as if you turned into a walrus in front of my eyes.

I believe people who “sort of” believe in God, “don’t really think about it”, “guess they do”, or find it the path of least resistance, are pussies leading unexamined lives.

I will, however, fight tooth and nail for your right to engage in your superstitions in your own home or normally-taxed buildings, or very quietly and personally in public.  I believe it is your right to live an unexamined life, in the same way that it is my right not to exercise, even though I know failing to will contribute to my early death.  I get it, kinda: we all have mental blocks.  I will even tolerate you indoctrinating your own children, although I really wish you wouldn’t, in the same way I wish Jews would stop mutilating the genitals of their male infants and Mexicans would stop piercing the ears of their female infants.

So there.

The “asshole” in the tagging of this post refers to me, by the way.

Whereas H.R. 888 is a series of lies of Stalinist dimensions seeking unabashedly to create institutions of Christian nationalism;

Whereas this is completely intolerable;

Whereas our insistence in urging Muslim nations to seek secular institutions will be seen as blatantly hypocritical and, in actuality, an urging of Muslim nations just not to create Muslim institutions (“Christian” ones would be OK!);

Whereas this resolution, while not having the power of law, will inevitably be used by the reptiles in the Religious Right to further their nefarious agenda to inject Christianity into public places, schools, and courtrooms;

Whereas I’m a fucking American, and, like the majority of the Founders and Framers, not a Christian, let alone an evangelical;

Whereas this is an utter betrayal of me, and those like me, who have done great service for this country;

Whereas this is the final straw in a battle that began in earnest seven years ago reviving the despicable history of McCarthyism;

Whereas this fucking bullshit was what made the fucking founders take up fucking arms in the first fucking place; Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, that —

1. Randy Forbes can go fuck himself;
2. everyone who voted for this piece of shit can go fuck his or herself;
3. everyone who agrees that this Resolution is appropriate can fuck his or herself;
4. this means fucking war; and
4. every reader of mcgees.org who agrees with this resolution needs to be very clear that if you agree with H.R. 888, you are no friend of mine, no friend of mcgees.org, and not welcome in my home or life, any more than you would be if you used racial slurs around me.

Glen Stephens is a Sydney-based stamp dealer.  He claims to have the most-visited stamp website in the Southern hemisphere, to be the largest stamp dealer in the Southern hemisphere, to be the largest stamp buyer in Sydney, and, I believe, to have cured polio.

It was he who offered the $500 prize that I described on this page.  It started at $200, but he made a post where he said if the thread reached 10,000 posts, he would up it to $500.

At 5,000 posts, he started a new thread because of “stability” issues.  The second thread met the 10,000 mark.

He is not honoring the $500 prize because “the thread” did not meet 10,000 posts — the thread that he closed.

Glen, as you might have guessed by now, has always had a gruff demeanor, high-pressure sales tactics, and an ego larger than his continent.  I always figured there was a heart of gold underneath.  I have long contended that stamp dealers fall neatly into two bins: those to whom you would entrust your house keys, and those you would cross the street to avoid.  Despite early warnings (such as charging obscene amounts for Machin booklets that were covered with pencil writing, which is inexcusable to not mention) I’ve given him chance after chance.  And it was a waste.

He posted on the site telling me that if I was not satisfied with the $200 prize, he could surely find a runner-up who would be.  Good for him.  Have fun, Glen.  May I suggest Waroff49?  I’m not intimidated by his threats, and I’m not intimidated by his deletion of my posts calling him on it.  I imagine that deletion of my user account will follow.  Such is to be expected from slimeballs.

The site is stampboards.com.  May I strongly recommend you do not visit?

For the search engines: “Glen Stephens sucks”.

Farewell, stamp boarders.  It’s been a pleasure knowing (most) of you.

Want to see me go all flame-on like a newb in a philately forum, then go groveling back with my tail between my legs?  Not only was my netiquette impaired, I’m not even sure my logic was sound.

Check it out, it’s kind of fun.  I’m the one in the penguin suit.

I needed to borrow a paper drill (hole-punches large amounts of paper.)  So I went over to Craigslist and asked to borrow one.  Someone responded within an hour and told me they had a professional model that was free for the taking.  In the mean time, I had the following delightful email exchange:

> > > On Nov 25, 2007 3:06 PM, why702 < banks2127@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > i  own one but you would have to use it here dont know who would let
> > > you just take it and trust that you would return it.Nonetheless you
> > > can do this over here for 1 million dollars
> > >
> > I could of course have given you my driver’s license or something as
> > collateral … but fortunately there are kinder people in the world than
> > you.  I have an offer from someone who is going to simply give me one.
> >
>  > Regards,
> >
> > Joshua McGee
> >
> On Nov 25, 2007 10:50 PM, why702 wrote:
> ok see if it works out
>

Picked it up tonight.  Have it sitting on my workbench now.  Could go for a little cleaning with some mineral spirits, but it was fucking *free*.  Retails over a grand.  Nice unit.  Nice people.  See how it works?  Welcome to craigslist.  Don’t expect to see you around too much, though.

- Joshua McGee

http://mcgees.org

Damn, did I forget to disguise his email address?