Questions of Faith

Like most anyone with a brain who also walks a path of spiritual or religious faith, I have my moments of doubt.

But when I do, the thing that always brings me back to Jesus is this: To me, the actions and behaviors of the apostles (the original ones [sans Judas Iscariot] plus the replacement guy, plus Paul, who is a special late-addition case), make no sense whatsoever unless Jesus lived, proved to them his divine nature, died, and rose from the dead definitively.

For them to have such uniformity of action, commitment to an executed man, and put themselves to the kind of risk they did, all to establish the early Christian church, makes no sense otherwise. It defies human nature, self-interest, and self-presevation for all 13 of those people, one of whom had a position of authority before converting to Jesus’ path, to do that. And to stick with it even through persecution and unto their very deaths as martyrs.

So, to those of you who want to knock me off my faith, you are going to have to give me credible reason to believe that Jesus never even existed, and neither did the apostles, for you to knock me off my faith.

Consider it a challenge if you like. If you can provide me with such such evidence of those two assertions that it overwhelms the record of the existing sources from which I currently draw my knowledge and on which I base my faith (and that comes from historical sources, not just biblical ones), then I will publicly declare myself agnostic.

Disprove the existence of those people, and I will admit that my faith is fundamentally flawed.

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Crazy Angry

I’m sure virtually all of you among my readers already know about the guy who crashed his little plane into a federal building because he was mad at the IRS, to which he owed a lot of money (and yet was able to afford owning a plane; go figure).

You’ve probably also heard the debates, quite cogent in fact, about how few people are calling this guy a terrorist, even though he would have been if he weren’t white.

But that’s not what bothers me at the moment.

What bothers me are things like this series of tweets (the tweets don’t bother me; its the problem they identify that concerns me) by BlackGirlInMaine, who notes:

Ok, I’m late to the party but there are actually folks who think Joe Stack is hero and a patriot? Man flew into a building…Seems like the cowards way out and then he took another life with him..a man who had done tours in Nam..sorry but Joe was not a hero…The thing is these folks who cheer and support this stuff walk along side of us..they look normal and you need to be concerned.

Or this comment by Thordaddy, whom I hate to even give space to after banning him, who at this post by Big Man at Raving Black Lunatic posted about the IRS-crazy plane-wielding white terrorist this little comment:

The difference between this disgruntled white guy and underwear bomber is that the former might actually increase your freedom while the latter has already decreased it AND HE DIDN’T EVEN SUCCEED in his martyrdom.

I always knew Thordaddy was crazy, but to even suggest that Joe Stack’s actions, murderous and anarchic though they were, might increase our freedoms by teaching the feds a lesson is beyond the pale.

I’m tired of people who scream that every brown- or tan-skinned man who straps on a bomb or flies a plane in anger is against our way of life and wants to kills us when he attacks a federal building or a bunch of innocents, but the citizen who’s angry at the government for something that’s his own fault is a hero.

You cannot have it both ways, people. The government today is almost exactly the same as the one we had under George W. Bush. If it was the innocent victim then, it still is now. If it’s a justifiable target in your eyes now, then it was then, and Dubya was as deserving of your ire as Obama.

Embrace terrorism or decry it. Don’t do both at the same damn time.

Take a Lesson John-Boy by Miz Pink

Okay dokay here we go.

No doubt all of you in blogland have heard about that John Mayer interview with Playboy Magazine and even if you don’t know who the hell he is and I sure didn’t except vaguely that he sang some crap, you no doubt know about things like talking about his “hood pass” and using the N-word and talking about how his penis is like a white supremacist because he only boinks white chicks.

Nothing new here. Just want to preface that Johnny is young, virile, healthy and can speak but has diarrhea of the mouth and no home training and should shut the heck up.

Oh, article here by the by: www.playboy.com/articles/john-mayer-playboy-interview/index.html?page=1

On the other hand I just learned that Roger Ebert the movie critic hasn’t been able to speak for the past four years and the Esquire Magazine article about him is just heartbreaking (in good and bad ways). Deke shared with me some of the Twitter posts that Roger has done and all I can say is, this is a man who cannot speak but has loads to say and does it well.

John Mayer should take lesssons from him.

Esquire article about Mr Ebert here: www.esquire.com/print-this/roger-ebert-0310

Acts of the Hummus Idol, No! Let Me Go! Edition

What offense have I committed against the universe or its creator that it or He continues to inflict me with the cursed Deacon Blue!? For months, nine of them to be precise, I have managed to hide behind an infernal nexus under a spiritual singularity sandwiched between a nether portal node and chaos spiral quasi-warp.

Not that any of you self-important, over-evolved chimps calling yourselves homo sapiens would understand any of that. Suffice to say, my delicious and nutritious godly self was well hidden from the Deacon, who had bound me to service to him through the most devious means possible: plenty of lawyers with mountains of court orders, injunctions and liens.

I knew I shouldn’t have condemned all my legal counsel to the depths of Gehenna 10 years ago.

Oh, and how did the mortal bastard track me down to drag me back here? I don’t even want to say, but he compels me to. Dog the fucking bounty hunter. A reality TV putz. Found by a blond Neanderthal named Dog. I won’t be able to show myself in godly circles for centuries now without shame. Zeus already revoked my Olympus privileges. Though that might have had something more to do with nailing Hera last week…

I, the great and powerful Hummus Idol, will now entertain your questions and grant unto you the wisdom that only a pile of very angry crushed chickpeas, tahini, olive oil and other seasonings can offer. Don’t let the smiling face fool you. I am a fridge-cold killah. Bow down before me, speak your question, and incline your ears or any other convenient part of your anatomy as I spew my advice upon thee.

Q: How the hell can we get writer/director/loudmouth Kevin Smith to let up on us already? I mean, sure, we have a random policy of persecution against large people, but we don’t charge extra for people’s baggage. That’s gotta count for something, right? And we offered him a $100 voucher. And said “sorry” even though we treated him like shit and called him a safety risk. What can we do? – Southwest Airlines (http://twitter.com/SouthwestAir).

A: You mortals who don’t already follow Kevin Smith at http://twitter.com/ThatKevinSmith via Twitter (as I do, because who else talks as much about smoking weed and licking out his wife’s ass?), you can click here and/or click here for some stories on the Southwest Airlines fuck-up.

Now, to answer the desperate concerns of the Southwest Airlines public relations team: Don’t you idiots realize this it the information age? First off, plenty of other folks noticed that “Silent Bob” was on the flight. And you should have been overjoyed he flies you instead of first class on United or something. You have 1.3 million followers on your Twitter page. He has 1.6 million. And his followers probably like him more than yours like you. You are outclassed.

Even if this had been a normal mortal, do you know how many ranting tweets and Facebook posts go viral? Piss off the wrong person who just gets noticed by a bunch of other people, and your image is toast.

Just give up, shut up and hope he tires of ridiculing you soon. You might want to reconsider your capricious and inconsistently applied policy, too. Oh, and lower your rates, damn it! You used to be a cheap airline. How am I supposed to smuggle my minions across the United States with you costing more than the bigger airlines sometimes now?

Shit, I am going to tweet about you mercilessly now, too, just as soon as I figure out how to register an account with the firewalls the Deacon has set up to keep me from communicating with potential rescuers.

Oh, and while I love your filthy mouth and mind, Kevin, suck it up already. You made your point. And if you think you have it bad, consider when I tried to fly a couple decades or so ago, and they tried to serve me up as an in-flight snack. Of course, the joke was on them when I used my powers to crash the plane into a frozen peak and they ended up having to chow down on their own dead.

Yeah, I’m bitter like that.

Q: Please, please, can I give up the act already? I don’t know how much longer I can pretend to believe the insane shit I spout on-air. – Glenn Beck

A: Offer up your children to me in sacrifice. Or your wife. You were wise enough to only lease your soul to me instead of selling it, but you still owe me for all the money and viewers I sent your way. Keep spouting the utter nonsense and working the teabaggers and birthers into a frenzy. I need the chaos they create.

Q: Why do people keep snickering at me when I say I’m a teabagger? – Simon Scrotumberg, Nashville, Tenn.

A: Because teabagging is a sexual term that means someone is sucking on your balls or vice-versa. Just like you’re sucking the balls of the GOP, which is gumming up government just to be evil and contrary (thankfully for me) and the balls of every commentator on FOX News who gleefully lies to you at my command.

Q: How can we reclaim the term “teabagging” from that damn Teabag Party and all its dopey minions? – Stewart Suckerworth, Augusta, Maine

A: Do your filthy act in the public squares and in the middle of the workplace, and shout “I’m teabagging this guy!” or “I’m being teabagged by this dude (or chick)!” and get several thousands of your closest friends to do the same nationwide. And put it on YouTube and Twitpic.

(Image by Stewart Butterfield, who is not affiliated with this blog and who doesn’t even know I or my opinions exist, and used under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License)

(Hummus Idol does not speak as a representative or agent of Deacon Blue or anyone else associated with this blog. In fact, Hummus Idol doesn’t exist. He is wholly and completely a manufactured character that acts as an angry facade behind which Deacon Blue can hide for petty entertainment purposes and for times when he needs to be extra crusty and get shit off his chest. That said, you can feel free to shower the Hummus Idol with offerings of jewelry, money or fine art…he will make sure it goes someplace where it is needed.) View complete list of Humus Idol entries here.

WTF Were They Thinking?

All right, I’ve seen some bad ideas in my time, but this is one of the worst I’ve seen lately:

I saw this puzzle in the toy and game aisle at the Goodwill Store, unopened in original shrinkwrap.

Yeah, big surprise there.

The idea of a 500-piece puzzle for a presidential candidate was bad enough (I would have found an Obama puzze ludicrous, too, and I like Barack Obama).

But who thought the image of John McCain, inset over an image of a dark and leafless tree, with the totally incongruous message “New Dawn,” would appeal to anyone…even his supporters?

If this was a puzzle for “John McCain and the Zombie Apocalypse,” maybe. But New Dawn? This is an image that’s supposed to make people hopeful?

Never Let Billy Ray Cyrus Breed Again by Miz Pink

I know I’m a little out of the pop culture loop since I’m not like a teen…or twentysomething…or whatever…but Billy Ray Cyrus has another daughter beside Miley? And she’s younger? And she’s even more tawdry and outrageous?

Dear God please sterilize Billy Ray now. The whole Hannah Montana thing was bad enough but now there’s another kid whose gonna build up even more controversy before she gets double digits for her age?

Seems that this little prepubescent tramp to be pole dances, sings raunchy songs, dressed as a dominatrix one Halloween and…did I mention she is only NINE years old?

And now she’s going to model lingerie…and worse yet its a lingerie line for CHILDREN!

Click here for full story

Omigod!!!!!!

Stop this!!!!

I swear if I were God I’d be raining fire and brimstone on Billy Ray, every agent and executive and lawyer who green lighted this crap and Miley too for being a poor role model.

What kind of daddy lets his daughters do such things? Didn’t he get enough money from the song Achy Break Heart alone? Do we need to take up a collection for his rent money so that he can spend more time with his girls?

I swear I’d sooner have my child lobotomized before I’d let her do this in the public eye. And apparently somebody already lobotomized Bill Ray Cyrus.

Swords Into Plowshares, Please

I’m not some idealistic peacenik. I realize that sometimes, asses must be kicked for things to get done right in this world. For example, I’m all for sticking around to hunt down Al Queda in Afghanistan and trying to get that nation some stability. Why? Because that’s the source of a lot of the terrorism, both the support (hiding places and training camps) and the bodies to hurl at us. Also, Afghanistan is a hot mess, and partly because of what we did to get the Soviets out (and that came back to bite us on the ass, since the people we armed to fight them are now are enemies).

But Iraq I want us out of. Now. Because we only went there for a grudge match with one guy (Saddam Hussein) and by extension his lackeys, we did it for the oil and the chance for rebuilding contracts, and we lied about the reasons (weapons of mass destruction that never existed and that Saddam wasn’t likely to build since he was more about satisfying his desires than fighting us).

So, I don’t advocate that we strip away tons of military funding. World is dangerous. I get that. But we spend too much time using our military to enforce our will than to truly defend ourselves or punish the right people these days.

So, then I see a couple days ago that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is asking for a 20-something percent increase in the next federal budget to just over $4 billion to radically revamp food safety in this nation. Now, if you have any knowledge of the state of food safety and monitoring in this country (sadly, I do), you’d realize that’s a very minor request and that it probably will accomplish little.

And yet, the U.S. Department of Defense, at the same time, is asking for $700 billion.

Yeah.

That’s one-hundred and seventy-five damn times as much money.

Isn’t that around 17,500% the amount of money the FDA is asking for?

To wage war.

Rather than protect people here at home from unsafe food. To bolster an agency that is charged with the safety of all drugs and much of the food in this nation (the U.S. Department of Agriculture having some responsibilities there as well.)

Where are our priorities?

And the ones who most fight against FDA funding and for more funding of the military are the Republicans, who so often are the ones touting God and Jesus, too, and telling us we’re a Christian nation.

Got news for you, you hypocritical, shit-heeled bastards: Jesus fed people. He didn’t smack them around. Jesus healed. Jesus preached the importance of peace. Yes, he mentioned that sometimes, we need to take up swords.

Sometimes.

But we always need to be there for people who are hungry, sick and hurting.

I’m going to say this bluntly: There is a higher percentage of Republicans who claim to be Christian who will have spaces waiting for them in hell than there are agnostic Democrats who will be.

Not a much higher percentage, mind you, because the damn Dems seem to forget about their human priorities too, in the midst of greed and power-mongering.

But if you’re going to claim Jesus, start acting more like him.