Leave the funny man alone!

So as most of you know (and those who do not, now you do), I am a huge fan of Wil Wheaton. I feel like I'm a younger, less successful version of him. So I just get out of work, and I'm cruising the intarwebs as I usually do and see one of his Twitter posts (@wilw on Twitter), of his dogs attempting to beg tomato soup from him. I can only assume the dogs wanted tomato soup because dogs want anything that humans eat, not out of any real desire for tomato soup.

This may seem irrelevant to most people, but I rather enjoyed it, since Wil's dogs have such character to them. What caught my eye and inspired me to write this little blurb was THIS comment:

I know a lot of not-Americans read this, which is awesome, so let me clarify: currently there is yet another hurricane bearing down on New England just like Irene last year, named Sandy. Some have speculated that the Christian Taliban is going to shout with glee that this is God's punishment to those pesky blue New England states for not voting Romney, but I digress.

Now for most people, they'd have just blown off this retard and enjoyed Wil's pictures of his silly dogs, but I felt the need to comment. You see, my parents live in central Vermont, and most of my extended family lives there or in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. I am keenly aware of what they are in store for, as I toured the devastation wrought by Irene last year: houses washed miles downriver, flipped completely upside down by the water, fields drowned in feet of mud, roads completely washed away, etc. It was pretty fucking horrible, to say the least. So, Rhiannon: what purpose is served by everyone who doesn't live in that area devoting all their runtime towards worrying about this storm?

I know that people are going to be better prepared this time up there, and I'm not worried for anyone now that they know it's coming, so why shouldn't we post up funny dog pictures? Your 'logic' is escaping me right now. I'm not sure how Wil Wheaton can use his celebrity powers to stop a rampaging hurricane in its tracks, so what exactly should he be doing about it?

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I absolutely hate old people who voluntarily remove their brains from reality. This woman is the definition of The Crazy Cat Lady, and yes, she's 57. Sitting there watching the Weather channel for days at a time hugging your Bible and talking to your imaginary Mexican friend Jesus to save people is exactly what you should be doing, if your goal is to keep yourself from annoying the rest of the intellectual world. Just don't go onto a random celebrity's thinkspace and call him out on living his life ON HIS OWN PAGE, or those of us who rather like that person will give you the following advice: eat a dick.

Levity distracts people from despairing about impending doom, who the fuck are you to tell them they can't laugh at dogs begging for soup? No one, that's who. Go jump in front of a bus, please, for great justice.

Death is only the beginning...

ZE PRAYERS! ZHEY DO NOZHINK!

So I'm cruisin around the intarwebs on my day off, doin my normal rounds when I see a picture that someone I know commented on, of a dude who is relatively young and doing fairly well for himself, who is apparently going into the hospital for chemo treatments for some sort of cancer he's got. This is obviously a bad thing and I hope his treatments go well, as I'm not completely evil. The thing that got my attention was the header to this photo:

"Facebook family - a great friend and brother-in-Christ, Tim, needs prayers! he starts his first round of chemo tomorrow and as ANY of us would be, he is very scared! Tim is only 31 years old with two beautiful daughters and an amazing wife. He is very strong in the Lord, but this is a whole lot to handle so I am trying to get as many people around the country praying for him as possible. Will  you join us in praying for Tim? If you will pray for Tim, please Like, say "yes" in a Comment and Share this post with everyone you know? It will mean the world to Tim!!"

As of this writing, there are almost a million likes, 300,000 comments, and 150,000 shares. The vast majority of the comments are mindless drivel constituting mainly of "We're all praying for him!" and suchlike.

Some of you may be wondering why I'm bringing this up. I don't know the guy, honestly don't really care about him, but I'm not a completely evil person and I don't want to see him die just for spite. I've had family members doing chemo and other procedures before as well, and I know how rough and painful it is. The point I'm making with this article is thus: PRAYER. DOES. NOTHING. Instead of wasting my time sending happy thoughts to an invisible, non-existent skybully, I'd be more inclined to check the credentials  of the doctors and the facility he's being treated at, and to familiarize myself with the procedures involved so I'll know exactly the chances he'll have and how well they'll work on him.

I'd hope that most sane and rational people would put their trust into proven science instead of what Douglas Reynholm would call "Wishy Thinking".  Let me provide a simple flowchart that completely destroys the validity of prayer:

The arrogance and/or stupidity necessary to think that God has a Master Plan for Life, the Universe, and Everything, but he'll change this perfect plan just because you ask him nicely, is completely and totally absurd and astounding. Just think of all the things we could have achieved with all the time spent kneeling in supplication to a fairy tale. Fuck, we could probably be exploring the galaxy and shit by now.

To me, the continued advocation of prayer to religious types is almost exactly the same as playing the lottery for poor people. It gives them the extremely faint hope that one day, if they keep buying into the system that they have their whole life and gotten shit on every single day, that just one day, it'll all pay off for them in a big way. The main difference between these two examples is that people actually WIN THE LOTTERY. No one has ever had a prayer answered, chalking the few coincidental occurrences up to divine providence. There's absolutely no evidence that 'God did it'.

The second point I'd like to make with this is the fact that most people are so retarded as to think Facebook Likes actually DO something. They don't. At all. It's nice when you run a page like The Book of Heavy Metal to get a few likes on something you've worked hard to make entertaining and insightful, but to go around blathering about how the more Likes you get, the better this person's chances of surviving CANCER are, is just sheer idiocy. I can't even fathom how stupid someone would have to be to actually think that Facebook Likes magically cure diseases.

Like I said, I'm not completely evil. I get that people want to be supportive and whatnot. I get that. We have this mentality in our country, however, that we're good people just because we send happy thoughts to people, without actually DOING things. Take a few minutes and donate some fucking money to the hospital he's going to, or send some cash to his family to help them defray the costs of medical bills, you know, something tangible and USEFUL.

Now, this is the part where I become slightly evil and say that if this person DOES in fact not make it (unlikely, but not unheard of), I'd be villainously pleased to send each and every one of those people a message that would state, in effect:

"Wow, that guy Tim died. Guess your God didn't love him enough, or he didn't love you enough, or he decided his Master Plan was more worthwhile than ONE PERSON. How can this be, since he was "SO STRONG IN THE LORD"? Here's a secret: it's because God doesn't exist, and in life, bad things happen to good people randomly. Grow the fuck up and make the world better instead of wishing to a fairy tale and falsely feeling good about yourself for doing absolutely nothing. You are why this planet sucks. Your religion is bad and you should feel bad."

Mean? Perhaps. The thing is, any early childhood specialist will tell you it's not good to let your young kids hold on to meaningless fantasies, imaginary friends, etc., and that they have to give them up to grow up and succeed in reality. Religion is essentially the same thing, for adults, and by telling them the simple reality that Jesus Claus doesn't exist, it might make them open their eyes and start trying to make the one life they get worthwhile, instead of just wasting time waiting for their reward in Heaven. Just because someone doesn't agree with your delusions doesn't make them evil, it makes them a freethinking independent, rather than a mindless sheep. Ignorance really is bliss, which is why you have to rudely awaken these followers into doing their own thing, following their OWN path. Sadly, most will end up like THIS:

I see it as a public service. If you don't want to hear it, well, that's just too fucking bad, GROW THE FUCK UP.

Death is only the beginning...

Parenting Fail: At the movies version

So it's July 3rd, I have two days off, I'm tired of beating the crap out of Eclipse mercs in Mass Effect 2, and none of my friends are around to hang. I decide to go check out The Amazing Spider-Man at the local cineplex. Show starts at 8pm, I got my popcorn and soda in hand, and the theater is packed. Then random chance decided to take a huge dumper on me (yet again) and I pick a seat where within 5 minutes are seated a family consisting of two twentysomething parents, and their THREE children, approximately 3, 4, and 5 years of age. Let 2 hours of irritation begin.

Now, I'm not a parent, nor do I plan on being one (mainly because I like money, sanity, and sleep). I will say that I'm pretty fucking sure I know what not to do if I were one, however. I don't know if this couple randomly found these devilspawn and decided to just take them along on any outing they go on, because they sure didn't act like they knew what they were doing as parents. Strike that, they didn't do ANYTHING a parent would do in this instance.

The movie starts. I'm eager to see it because I couldn't stand Tobey Mcguire, or Kirsten "my character is a stupid bitch" Dunst, and I'm enjoying it, for the first 10-15 minutes. I'm trying to ignore the constant babbling directly behind me perpetrated by 3 toddlers who have no fucking idea what is going on, and unfortunately it's not working. I keep waiting for their parents to tell them to stop talking, and I'm not hearing it. I turn around and I ask politely "Hey, please be quiet?". I get a nod from the father, and then he just goes back to the movie, completely ignoring his talkative child, who is now asking "Daddy what did he say? What does quiet mean?".

This is my nightmare.

The rest of the movie continued as can be expected with small children, and needless to say, while I immensely enjoyed the flick, I would have enjoyed it about 100% more if these two assholes had not been there with their little irritants. Let me break it down for you, so that if you are, or know anyone, who does this, you'll be able to make things better for everyone else.

First: It is 8pm. Why the FUCK are your children not in bed at this time? When I was a child my bedtime was 8:00 no matter what, until I was in junior high. Why are you dragging toddlers around town at this time?

Second: This movie is rated PG-13. I know no one gives a shit about movie ratings, but you know, you really should. I think it is wildly inappropriate to take 5 year olds to a PG-13 movie, because they will have no fucking idea what is going on, and this was most definitely not a kids movie. If I saw the Lizard in this movie when I was that age I would have nightmares for a solid week.

Third: If you can't afford to hire a babysitter to watch your kids for 3 hours while you have dinner and see a movie, then maybe you should just stay the fuck home. The world is not your babysitter, these people were pretty much completely ignoring their kids as they watched this movie.

If the theater weren't so packed, I'd have moved to a different seat. AND I'd have told them why before I did it. I was about ready to pitch that kid all the way down to the bottom of the stadium seating, that's how irritated I was. The constant questions progressed to fidgeting (and kicking my seat), and then on into whining because they were bored/tired/hungry. I literally had to get right up and leave as soon as it ended to keep myself from doing something that would land me in jail.

I just don't understand why it's so impossible for people to behave like parents nowadays. I think this photo says it best, though: 

I can see this happening to those kids if the trend continued. Indulgent parenting, aka "Do whatever you want because I think you should be a free spirit or because I'm not going to be mean like my parents". It's actually NON-parenting. And it has to stop. If I did any of the above mentioned things, I'd have been given one warning, (which I would have promptly forgot since I was FIVE) and then get marched home and probably get my butt smacked for disobedience.

I don't have kids and even I know that young children like that are NOT going to sit still for a full 2.5 hour movie, let alone a fucking half hour cartoon. I know your kid might like Spider-Man on saturday mornings, but bringing them to the adult version of the film is irresponsible and wildly inappropriate. It's also supremely inconsiderate to everyone else there, because you ruin their good time with your little brats who don't understand anything about how they're supposed to behave outside the house. They're having a grand old time cause they don't know any better, while their asshole parents just ignore them and inflict them on the rest of us. I know you've probably gotten very good at tuning out the incessant babbling/whining/fidgeting, but I haven't, and I shouldn't have to deal with it.

I feel like there should be some kind of license to have children, to prove that you can be a capable parent. I know the implementation of this would be extremely difficult, and of course all the breeders would scream about not being able to shit out half a dozen retard babies, but seriously, we have WAY too many stupid assholes in this country, and it's not really getting better. Parenting is not a natural phenomenon, it's a skill like any other, and a lot of people just don't have it, or can't develop it. They're the ones who are crappin out kids like it's their job cause God says it's bad to use birth control or some other bullshit.

So in summation: If you don't do anything to actively keep your child from annoying the rest of us, don't be surprised when someone like me gives you an earful. I'm glad my parents gave me structure and discipline as a kid, because I've grown into a successful, non-douchebag intellectual. These kids are gonna turn into spoiled little shits who will scream and cry when anyone says 'no' to them.

I hate people.

Death is only the beginning...

The Metal Agenda and why it seems to work

I've been a metalhead for most of my life. Having been born in 1980, the culture was made part of my worldview at a very early age. As the years have passed, I've only come to appreciate it more than previously, and I dont' see it stopping. I've seen different music types rise and fall (ska comes readily to mind) and yet metal endures. Hell, all my favorite bands from the 80's are still touring and putting out records, and will probably keep doing so until they kick it, DIO style, which is an awesome legacy to leave the world. So I found myself wondering at one time or another, why this is. Why has metal lasted so long, and why does it attract a certain crowd?

I think a lot of it has to do with the roots of metal, and rock, which is mostly about cultural rebellion. Bucking authority and refusing to "fit in" with the brush-cuts and the button down shirts and shit. Every generation, rock and metal have evolved into something similar, yet distinct from what came before. From Elvis to The Doors, Led Zeppelin to Black Sabbath, Judas Priest to Motley Crue, and on into the many subgenres of metal, it's all a similarity of difference, of not doing what society tells you to do and to rock the fuck out and do your own thing. That sort of message resonates with people, not just hormone-driven teens but people of all ages, especially in the crazy times we live in.

I also got to thinking about how a lot of metalheads, and not just the ones I know personally, tend to be, if not out and out atheists, at least anti-religion. What was the correlation between the two? It couldn't be as simple as just giving a negative fuck about it, although that is a pretty good reason. I think that it stems from that core of rebellion that all metalheads have, of not conforming to a vision of "normality" just because it's what everyone else does.

Religion is the ultimate form of "The Man". Religion doesn't work if you don't give up your ability to reason and question. It depends on the total submission to higher authority, whether it be a fabricated god, a creepy old man in a funny hat, or angry mobs of fundies who want to burn down abortion clinics because they dare to do things that go against "god's" will. This submission is gained through fear for the most part, never through reason. The fear of Hell, of punishment, of ostracsim from the retard community, it's all used by this institution to keep the masses in line and paying at the offertory. How else are these priests going to be able to do nothing all day and still be able to buy shit?

Metal is the anti-religion, in my opinion. There are so many different kinds of metal, and instead of fighting over which is the best kind (like the different sects of Christianity do), all us metalheads just look at each other, say "fuck it", and get another round of brews. It attracts freethinkers, open-minded individuals who have seen the bullshit of conformity and the closed-minded sheeple mentality, and want no part of that garbage. It encourages people to break out and be different, no matter what.

I can honestly say that of all the people that I've met in my life, the absolute coolest, open-minded, sane and rational people have been metalheads. I'm talking about true metalheads, not the douchefarmers who go to an Unearth concert and just punch the shit out of people in the mosh pit, or some lame poser who has listened to St. Anger and thinks he's a Metallica fan. Even then, though, those people do build on the platform of rationality that Metal brings. Maybe that guy who listened to St. Anger will find out it's not that great and go find some of their old stuff and realize just how awesome true metal can be. Maybe that'll motivate him to push on with life and go invent something awesome like a steam-powered guitar or some shit. Who knows? The point is he's inspired by metal, and not repressed by it. Theists can't say the same. Metalheads don't buy into the bullshit lies of religion, like "be good and love god or else you'll burn in the fiery pit for eternity!" You know what lady, I'd rather rock the fuck out with my mates and live the only life I KNOW I get a chance at. Go fuck yourself.

I'm reminded of all the rallies against bands like KISS and Black Sabbath, picketing hordes of imbeciles claiming that it's the "Devil's music" and will erode the fabric of society. Funnily enough, a lot of them were Christian groups. They're still doing it today too. Sorry to say, but the only danger to the cohesion of modern society is religion, so take those signs and shove em up your stupid asses.

The best times I've ever had have been at various Metal shows, meeting all kinds of new people from all over, singing along over a tall frosty at the top of our lungs, throwin up the Horns and generally just having one hell of an awesome time. Hell, that'll happen at house parties I throw with Rock Band as the main form of entertainment (apart from the booze) and music. It brings people together in a GOOD way, in a way that religion never can and never will. Seriously, Bibles for Haiti? Really? I'm sure those are of a great comfort to starving homeless people, you whitebread retarded jackasses.

Nothing can kill The Metal. The Metal will live on. March on Metallians! Spread the awesomeness of Modern Music! FOR METALLL!!!

Death is only the beginning...

The Power of Idiocy: brought to you by Religion.

I try to stagger these anti-religion posts, because this is a blog that is equally about hating idiocy and stupidity in all forms, and about heavy metal. This just really got to me today, though.

I follow George Takei, who most of you know as Hikaru Sulu from the original Star Trek. He is a supremely hilarious guy, and is very net savvy. He is also very gay, and very vocal about that, which is awesome. Today he had posted up a pic of a sign that reads "Bigotry wrapped in prayer is still bigotry", and in the comments, some dumb, ugly, Southern retard Christian lady starts proselytizing and haranguing the masses of the internet about how everyone will face judgement if they don't submit to God's love, and how the Bible is the Word of God as dictated by the Holy Spirit (apparently they had stenos back in the Bronze Age), and all sorts of other crazy religious shit. She wouldn't stop either, just kept spamming comments about how God is Love, unless you don't believe in him and then you go to eternal torture forever. That's the exact opposite of love, I think.

It is just amazing to me that people can willfully ignore contradictory fantasy bullshit like that. Especially when it's blatantly obvious that it's fairy tale bullshit. If you've ever tried to make the argument to a theist that "If God is in the Bible and you say that makes him real, if I read a Superman comic, does that make him real? Just using your "logic" bro.", you'd see just how insanely angry they get that you're mocking their faith. Dude, you made the rules, I'm just following them, if you don't want me to think Superman is real cause I read about him in a book, then you shouldn't say the exact same fucking thing.

The sick thing is, enough of these people in large groups can change the nation. Right now there are enough idiot Reich Wing Republicans in Colorado's House that they've passed another "personhood" bill. You know, those completely farcical laws that say if you use birth control or get an abortion, you can get arrested for MURDERING A COLLECTION OF CELLS. Sorry guys, a collection of cells is NOT the same thing as a person, and anyone who thinks it is is a complete and total moron who should be sterilized before they breed. I'm impressed there aren't more women out there who aren't completely enraged by this.

Republicans have swiftly become the spokesmen for the uneducated theists of America. I have no idea how such a swift decline in intelligence came about, but these guys are literally the most powerful people in this nation right now and are working to basically implement the Christian equivalent of Sharia law (essentially the same thing), and no one is apparently giving enough of a fuck for them to stop. I'm amazed there hasn't been an armed uprising yet against these assholes. You can't tread on women's rights, setting this country's social progress back by 60 years, and try to get hokey religious non-facts taught in schools like they were facts, without paying the consequences, and I'm predicting that the flashpoint is going to come sooner rather than later. People need to stop feeling powerless against this onslaught of religulousness and fight back. It's all well and good to be the benign atheist and just not give a shit, but the christians are going to take that as a sign of weakness and move in for the kill, and before you know it you'll have to go to church every sunday or face prison time.

Idiocy in large enough groups is  power. This is a fact. Fight back against that idiocy, with more than just passive book-writing and angry letters. Personally, every time I see someone putting up church posters and shit all over my apartment complex, I tear em down and throw them away. I just got an invitation to some indoctrination seminar at the local hotel, I think I'll go and act like an unbelieving asshole the whole time. If you don't like it, you shouldn't have invited me, douchefarmers. Proactive resistance is the only way to stop this continued invasion of the secular society America was supposed to be. FIGHT, METALLIANS! FOR METALLL!!!!!

Death is only the beginning...

The God Delusion: Facebook edition

Before I get started, I just want to preface this with a little gem I found on the intarwebs:

I've had a few Christtrolls trying to refute logic with imbecilic nonsense on my facebook page for this blog lately, and I thought that this needed to be said. Moving on!

So lately I've seen a lot of my more deluded acquaintances from my highschool days liking various religious pics on the ol' facebook. One of them was just a poster that said in big psychedelic LSD trip letters "GOD IS GOOD!". This was followed by a tremendous circle-jerk of comments all saying things like AMEN and YES HE IS! , etc. I was almost afraid to interject that a jealous and vengeful god could hardly be quantified as good, since I think the torrent of supreme hate that would ensue would have broken the internet.

The thing that struck me about this was the fact that people I used to know, people I used to consider relatively intelligent and rational, have since ( in the 14 years since high school, I know, I'm old) turned into mindless automatons, parroting an obviously fallacious mantra. God is anything BUT good. You don't create a supposedly perfect universe with an unbelievably evil dimension of pain and suffering that simultaneously exists within this universe, unless you're inherently a sadist.

This facebook sharing of what amounts to indoctrination reinforcement is getting out of control. People I once knew as somewhat reasonable are now spam posting psalms from that fiction of fictions, the Bible, sending me invite after invite to some fucking church event where they bathe the homeless or feed the lepers or some other disgusting activity I really don't want to get involved with, and basically just basking in their own righteousness for the whole internet to see. It's really becoming quite disturbing.

Just now someone I know re-posted this sick picture of a random baby with some skin disfiguration or some such, with the tagline "SHARE AND FACEBOOK WILL DONATE $3 TO HELP THIS BABY!". Really? I'm pretty sure Zuckerberg could give even one tenth of a fuck about your crusade to feel good about yourself by posting gross pictures on everyone's news feed to make them feel bad for not caring. Even if that were true, Facebook would quickly run out of money if they tried to do this kind of shit. This ties in to my "Americans are fucking retarded" hypothesis. It just amazes me that people are this retarded in public.

This is why I try to post at least one irritating and controversial (to theists) picture/quote a day, to try to keep the idiocy from spreading too far, too fast. I know I'm only one man, but hell, if I can get more people to hop on the science train to progressville, maybe we'll stop believing fairy tales are true. Would you believe that god was good when presented like... this?:

Seriously. To think that the above means that god is inherently good and that your version of existence is automatically correct because of your childish belief, then I've got news for you: you're pretty fucking dumb. It's like Santa Claus for adults, except if you're bad, you don't just get coal, you get a trillion tons of coal, on fire, poured over you, for the rest of eternity, and you can never redeem yourself. Yeah, that sounds like god knew what he was doing when he was creating morality. Idiots.

So in conclusion: facebook is a vast desert of idiots, with small oases of reason (like this) that are slowly getting larger as time goes on. Just don't go poking the camels... you might get spit on.

Death is only the beginning...

Einstein had it right all along

I'm sure some of you have seen this before:

Sad, but true, nonetheless. I walk around my city, I travel to various places, and I am disgusted by the rampant idiocy that surrounds me. I know stupidity is not endemic to America, but I'm pretty sure we've got the lion's share. I don't know if it's something in the food, subliminal signals in all those adverts, or something else entirely. I did test all of my sunglasses to see if they would reveal anything, but alas, there was nothing. Not even Rowdy Roddy Piper showed up to help me out.

Now, as I declaimed in a previous rant, this is the Decade of the Stupid Attention Whore, which has continued for 12 years now. I'm hoping the trend will stop before the twenty year mark, but I'm not holding out much hope. Celebrity worship is one of the most retarded things that a society can engage in, and it's all too common here. I blame Jersey Shore for the latest influx of duckfaces and douchebags, but then, one could blame Jersey Shore for any number of things and still have room for more. Someone had brought up the idea that the whole show was scripted, which to me seems preposterous. I honestly can't believe that anyone would basically trash their entire public image on purpose just to be paid to act like that in a "reality" show. 

I think that's when TV programming started to get worse than it already was: reality TV. I mean come on, Survivor? A show that rewards people for surviving in a place where people already live! "I don't have my cell phone guys, this is really hard!" Ah, Daniel Tosh, telling it like it is. But I digress.

Reality shows like Flavor of Love, Next Top Model, and other assorted intellectual garbage are part of the problem. People watch this shit and think "I could be like that person!" and get their 15 minutes. The worst contributor to this smorgasbord of dumb is MTV. MTV is no longer about music. It should be called Moron TV, because that's basically the only people who watch it. I literally want to end every single person who appear on shows like "16 and Pregnant" and "Teen Mom". Even thinking about the stupid little sluts who get knocked up just to be on TV makes my head want to explode all over the place. How people can think this shit is acceptable is beyond me.

I'll admit, every once in a while I like to watch something a little lowbrow, like Dude Where's My Car?, but that is stupidity with purpose. I don't even have a cable subscription anymore. I wouldn't watch anything that is on TV right now. Netflix streaming makes my entertainment much more awesome. It's painful to have to listen to people gush about the next True Blood episode and who their favorite douchebag is on American Idol. Seriously, who gives a fuck about some jerkoff who can sing other people's songs halfway decently? I do that at metal shows all the time, no one gives me a fucking medal.

I don't know if there is a cure for this epidemic. It's daunting to try to break into the novel business when most Americans think reading is stupid and only something huge nerds do. It's sad to see people who don't know simple things, such as the fact that Europe is not a country. Exempli gratia:

 

I can't even make this shit up. The fact that we have a show called Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? is just another nail in the coffin of our national intellect. Yes, kid in the last frame, you're right to laugh at the dumb blonde. You'll end up making more money than she'll see in her lifetime. Unless of course she marries some rich old dude *shudder*. 

If you don't read books just for the hell of it, I encourage you to do so. Go outside and read a book in the park. Watch useful shows like stuff on the History channel. Don't give a single fuck for the latest trend/fad/celebrity whore. You're better than that. Rick Santorum is challenging the president's drive to make higher education more accessible to the public. It's because dumb people are more apt to believe the religious bullshit he's peddling. I don't think anyone in this country aspires to be a garbageman or a burger-flipper. Stay intelligent, my friends, or THIS might happen to YOU:

 Death is only the beginning...

God's Master Plan - A Checklist

This is taken from the following video by Scott Clifton, who portrayed Liam in the soap opera The Bold & The Beautiful. I always wondered why he seemed like he should be on TV:

1. Decide to arrange for something other than yourself to exist.
2. Create a being by the name of Lucifer with full knowledge that this being will betray you and ultimately cause an infinite amount of suffering unnecessarily.
3. Allow an unfathomably horrific dimension of existence known as ‘hell’ to emerge created by yourself or perhaps Lucifer and allow that dimension to continue existing. Do not override or prevent such a thing. It will come into play later.
4. Create objective unchanging moral prescriptions and base them upon whatever your nature happens to be and then label any action or thought contrary to these standards ‘sin’.
5. Be sure to include in these moral prescriptions edicts for social and psychological health such as encouragement to beat ones children with a rod, permission to buy and sell slaves and will them as property to ones children for life, requirement that women not be allowed to teach or have authority over men and of course the instruction to kill anyone who expresses interest in worshiping other gods.
6. Design a physical universe, planets, animals and vegetation all with the appearance of age. Be sure to include in your creation biological flaws redundancies and over-complications that appear as if they were the product of blind cumulative processes, perhaps a urinary tract that runs straight through the prostate gland or a unnecessary appendix prone to inflation and rupturing, or maybe a respiratory and digestive system forced to share the same plumbing, (these are just a few working ideas).
7. Create a garden with a tree in it bearing fruit that when eaten provides knowledge of your objective moral standards, and create two sentient cognitive beings without knowledge or awareness of these standards and instruct them not to eat from the tree which would enlighten them (in other words, arrange it so that only AFTER they eat from the tree are they capable of understanding that doing so was a violation of objective moral standards).
8. Warn these cognitive beings that they will undoubtedly die if they eat from this tree, but don’t follow through if they do. Endow a reptile with vocal chords, lips or some other means of speaking audibly to your cognitive beings enabling it to make a convincing case to one of them for eating from the tree. Do not prevent this or intervene.
9. Now by this point make sure your cognitive beings have been equipped for reproducing themselves and multiplying, and because one of them has sinned, arrange that every single one of their descendants until the end of time will be born with an inherent sinful nature, defaulting in a future of everlasting torment. Do not by any means allow each of them to be born with a clean slate and the capacity for living a sin-free life if they desire as you did with your first two prototypes.
10. Endow these cognitive beings with a ‘soul’ which keeps their thoughts and feelings and other cognitive faculties in existence forever one way or another. And then allow the sinfulness of these beings to be incompatible with your presence and let hell be the only other place that they can go once they exit the the physical world, do not make any attempt to spare these souls the eternal torment of hell such as allowing souls to stop existing altogether or creating an additional realm for them to reside besides with you or in hell.
11. Over time allow these beings to populate the earth you’ve creating, knowing with infallible certainty of course that after so many generations they will disappoint you enough that you find it necessary to kill all of them in a global flood and start all over from scratch.
12. Now when this happens (again right on schedule) make an exception for one small family of cognitive beings who you deem righteous. Of course it goes without saying that your powers of omniscience allow you to know, again, with infallible certainty that this family too will ultimately disappoint you in the same way that those who you drowned, rendering the entire endeavor futile, but for now it’s best that you pretend not to know that.
13. Instruct this small disappointment of a family to populate the entire world all over again by way of incest.
14. Declare that until further notice the only way for these cognitive beings to rectify their sinful nature while on earth is to perform ritual animal sacrifices and other acts of senseless violence. Additionally when certain sins are committed by any one of your cognitive beings, demand that the surrounding community kill that being themselves.
15. In the meantime perform many epic miracles for all to see and intervene often with your physical creations, stop the sun in the sky, part the red sea, turn rivers into blood, and women into pillars of salt, give men superhuman strength, speak to the thousands with a booming voice from heaven etc, but before these cognitive beings become advanced enough in the areas of science and communication that they could actually document, share, playback and verify these epic miracles, make sure you stop performing them all together.
16. Decide at some point that the most pressing of your objective moral prescriptions are not as obvious to these cognitive beings as you once thought, take this opportunity to chisel your top ten moral concerns into two tablets of stone and commission one of your cognitive beings to deliver these tablets to the masses. (Note to self: Roughly half of these moral concerns should center around pleasing you, praising you and remaining loyal to you.)
17. After several thousand years impregnate one of these cognitive beings so that she gives birth to your son in physical form, who also happens to be you, at the same time.
18. Allow this cognitive being who is your son but also you to grow up and make several revisions to you/your son's original standards of morality then arrange for other cognitive beings to torture and kill you/your son, authorize this sacrifice of yourself to yourself as a means of granting all other cognitive beings immunity from the consequences of their sinful nature, which you allowed them to be born with in the first place.
19. Do not however make this sacrifice free, establish that none of these cognitive beings shall be eligible for benefits of this sacrifice unless they actively believe that it happened. In other words, despite the quality of their intentions any cognitive beings henceforth who finds themselves unconvinced these events actually took place, is unwittingly designating themselves for the endless suffering of hell.
20. With that established, be sure to refrain from making it clear and knowable to the rest of the world that these events actually took place, ensure that no cognitive being after the first century has the luxury of witnessing your son who is also you say or do anything to indicate he was a living god. Again, make sure that all of this occurs before advancements in science and technology are available to verify for those who aren’t present.
21. Arrange so that the only surviving record of these events will be offered anonymously by non-eye witnesses translated to a language different from the one you/ your son will speak written no earlier than thirty years after you/your son preformed these miracles and makes these clams, however do make sure that these records feature the precept that believing in something without evidence is morally superior to investigation and verification.
22. Be sure that after only a few decades the only accounts of these events in existence are copies of copies of copies which will be verifiably altered and added to in historically and theologically significant ways from generation to generation, sect to sect. Do not preserve the original copies of these accounts, do not protect them from revision, do not set in place any mechanism for protecting them from being interpreted in hundreds upon hundreds of ways most of which being heretical and therefore punishable.
23. Do not bother to employ your omniscience in such a way as to discern which of these cognitive beings are truly rebelling, and which simply don’t know how to distinguish you from other versions of god which do not in fact exist.
24. Do not make it clear to these beings that you are are even here. Allow for your very existence to remain an easily debatable, easily questionable, easily doubtable proposition. Allow billions and billions of souls to be unthinkably tortured for all of eternity regardless of their character, integrity, bravery, responsibility or conduct because they had not correctly assumed that the right set of propositions were true by the time their lives on earth were over.
25. And finally… when all is said and done, demand that you be praised for this plan.

It's really quite sad and pathetic that so many people actually believe this bullshit, and that it's supposed to be good and right and what we should all base our morals off of. If it weren't for the perpetuation of this nonsense we'd be out cruising the galaxy by now.

Death is only the beginning...

I'll take Useless Activities for 500, Alex...

I know, I know, I'd better stop posting so much or  you'll all get used to me updating frequently, heh. Well my Metallians, I just had to say something about this, because it irritates me to no end when people do this.

So I see this as a Facebook status update tonight:

"LET'S KEEP THIS GOING ......HEAVENLY FATHER, WALK THROUGH MY HOUSE AND TAKE AWAY ALL MY WORRIES AND ANY ILLNESSES, AND PLEASE WATCH OVER AND HEAL MY FAMILY AND FRIENDS... BRING QUIET WHERE THERE IS CHAOS, BRING LIGHT WHERE THERE IS DARKNESS, AND PUT LOVE IN OUR HEARTS .... IN JESUS NAME.... AMEN .... THIS PRAYER IS SO POWERFUL ....STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING, AND RE-POST!"

To understand just what my issue is with this, one must first understand what prayer is. Prayer is a theist's way of asking their tribal sky-god to do something for them just for asking nicely. I have a nice little flowchart that explains it pretty succinctly:

This pretty much sums it up. The arrogance necessary to believe that God would change something in his Master Plan (yes, I'm not trying to be subtle on that one) just for little old you because you asked nicely and are a good little sheep is just mind-boggling. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake, to coin a phrase.


The thing that irritates me the most about people who say shit to me like "I'll pray for you and your family" is the automatic assumption that I want you to pray for me. Frankly, it's insulting. I work hard and take action to change things in my life, instead of just whispering demands to a non-existent creator thing and thinking that will make shit better. Instead of wasting your fucking time beaming messages to some imaginary friend and hoping shit changes, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. 


Prayer doesn't heal illness: medicine does. Prayer doesn't build houses: people with tools and construction materials do. Prayer doesn't feed starving people: FOOD DOES. I'm reminded of another great image I found while cruising the interwebs: 

Seriously people, you're not helping. It's as simple as that. To think that all your problems can be whisked away just because you pray for it is so asinine as to be completely laughable. I really don't think they realize just how ridiculous all this shit sounds, and then they get angry because we laugh about it. If you don't want us to laugh at your beliefs, then maybe they shouldn't be so ridiculously ludicrous. I leave you with a few more great images that definitely belong here. Enjoy!

Death is only the beginning...

American culture? What's that?

Two posts in as many days! How industrious! Yes my Metallians, I'm trying to write more often on my blog thing, mainly because I have new converts to the Good Book, from my friends on the atheist pages of Facebook. Many have friend requested me, but for me, Facebook is for people I know personally. Here they can get all the sarcasm and hilarity they want! So a big thanks to all of you new folks :D

Now, I don't know how many of you listen to the shit music that is crapped out of recording studios nowadays, or watch the trash that Hollywood tries to trick us into buying, but I have to say, it's getting to be almost intolerable. I watched the Grammys, and I have to say, I'm glad that Adele walked away with all of those awards, because no one else deserved them. Almost all music that is produced nowadays, apart from metal (which is FAR from mainstream), is pure, unadulterated SHIT. Example:

This is not even including the fact that Nicki Minaj looks like someone dropped a chimpanzee in a vat of makeup and then wrapped it in hooker clothes. What happened to music in the last two decades? Really, I'm asking, what the fuck happened?

I remember the 80's. Most people focus on the bad things about the 80's, such as Reaganomics, the Lockerbie disaster, the Iran-Contra fiasco, AIDS, etc. but really, is any of that worse than the shit we're dealing with right now? The difference is we don't have any epic music shows to go to that cater to people with taste. 80's metal shows were some of the sickest concerts ever, and you had good music to listen to! Music that wasn't just about slappin bitches, jackin' foos with your gat, or how many idiot guys you've slept with (I'm looking at you Britney).

Bohemian Rhapsody, one of the most elaborate songs of popular music history, is all but forgotten by people wanting the newest Hannah Montana shitpile. Shot Through the Heart is so epic even Barney Stinson uses it to get people pumped up for partying. People only know One Night in Bangkok because washed-up ear-biter Mike Tyson tried to sing it horrifically on The Hangover Part 2, and no one knows it's about chess. Shit, people don't even know about chess anymore.

These rockstars were treated like gods at the height of their careers, and one awesome band just led to another, creating even better music than what had come previously. I think the decline came, not when grunge became popular, because Nirvana was a great band, but when Cobain killed himself, and people started looking for something less angry and depressing.

Enter the decade of the spoiled attention whore. Not content with being a successful singer (I will admit that her first album was ok), Britney Spears decided to basically spew a shitstorm of daddy issues all across the country by turning progressively stupider and sluttier, culminating in the front page (really?) news shocker of her whirlwind marriage/divorce from intellectual neuter Kevin Federline. She's still doing shows dressed in costumes that might as well be underwear (not that I mind that sort of thing, but come on, you're better than that). Lindsay Lohan is apparently "coming back" again, from what I don't know, because you have to first matter before you can comeback. It doesn't help that she looks like a 60 year old meth-head at the age of 25. Additionally, I present this:

Granted, Whitney Houston DID used to matter, but that was like 15 years ago. I listened to a few of Amy Winehouse's songs. They were quite irritating. Also, everyone who went crazy on facebook about how sad they were that an icon like Whitney died: you're all a bunch of twats. I can guarantee you that absolutely no one had remembered she was still alive until the announcement was made.

Some of you may have come here expecting a treatise on why museums and operas and shit are in decline, and I agree that that is also a sad thing, but I figured I'd tackle one problem at a time and the reintroduction of 80's pop/rock and metal to drown out the awfulness that pollutes the radio waves today seemed most relevant. This IS the Book of Heavy Metal, after all.

So in short: Americans are stupid, have terrible taste in music, and just adore attention whores. I hold no hope for the future of music unless more bands like Taking Dawn break out and start melting faces across the country with their arena rock inspired sound. I leave you with this:

March on, Metallians! FOR METAL!!!!

Death is only the beginning...

Logical fallacies, Part Two: Chemical Boogaloo

So as most of you know, I'm an atheist. I'm not an atheist because it's the cool thing to do, or because my parents didn't love me (they do, they're awesome), or because I'm an asshole. Well, I AM an asshole, but I don't TELL anyone that because that'd open up another whole can of worms.

I'm an atheist for one simple reason: Evidence. The thing that irritates me most about theists, and Christians specifically, is that they actively deny verified, observable evidence because it conflicts with their fairy tale world. Willful ignorance of the simplest of scientific concepts drives me up the wall.

So I'm a member of a few atheist facebook pages, mainly to get a laugh at the theist trolls who try to start shit for no reason, and I see one thread where this colossal moron named Scot Brandon tries to tell US what OUR beliefs are, most notably, the retarded idea that "living things come from nonliving things". When religious types say this, what they're implying is that atheists think that plants were created by rocks and fish magically appeared from water. This is yet another logical fallacy, brought to you by the mental incompetents of Christendom.

Protip: all matter is nonliving. "Life" is a descriptor used by humans to distinguish between inanimate objects and animate ones. Things we term "living" are nothing more than a complex amalgamation of chemical processes and cellular compounds that can reproduce itself utilizing more chemical processes.

That's it. Anyone who tries to tell you that life is anything more than that is applying romanticized philosophy to a self-aware existence. This is not to say that one should not make the most out of the time they have before their chemical processes no longer function, but to claim that life is a sacred thing that was created by a higher power and we shouldn't question it is, on it's face, completely ludicrous.

For those who don't know, we are all made up of stellar matter. Star stuff. Stars are colossal elemental forges that create every known element in the Universe through a simple process called nuclear fusion. The reason why everything on the planet Earth is based on a carbon-12 template is because when a star runs out of hydrogen fuel to "burn" (parentheses are to keep theists from bombarding me with the 'things can't burn without oxygen dummy' comments), it then starts to fuse helium atoms together. Three helium atoms combine to form stable carbon-12 atoms. When stars go supernova, all of those atoms are blasted out into space, some to be used in the creation of new stars, some remain as gaseous nebulae, and some are trapped in forming planetary systems, such as EARTH.

Carbon-12 is an amazing thing. It is one of the only atoms that can combine with a plethora of other atoms to create a myriad of stable chemical compounds, most notably hydrocarbons, the simplest organic molecule. Add some oxygen, nitrogen, and sulphur into the mix (all elements readily found on a prehistoric, volcanic Earth) and you have amino acids. Strings of amino acids form complex proteins, and with a little added phosphorus, you have DNA. Over millions of years, random mutations and adaptations to environments produced the organic systems you see today. This is not something that magically happened in two seconds like Scot would like me to tell him I believe.

The theory of evolution isn't really a theory, as it has been observed to happen over time. Theists latch onto that word "theory" though.

Isaac Asimov has this to say about that:

Even if that were the case, if you have observable, verifiable evidence to support your theory, then it doesn't matter if you were drunk, it's CORRECT.

Returning to Scot (as much as I wish I didn't have to), like a good little Christian he told me he ignored my post after he read that all matter is nonliving, and just posted a link to a wikipedia page on the definition of matter like he had won the argument, even though it proves exactly what I just laid out in terms so simple a 10 year old could get it.

Can't have all those facts polluting your brain now, can we? Have to save those brain cells you refute the existence of to be able to blindly worship an Iron Age, Middle Eastern, tribal sky-god who tells you "You have free will so that you will do what I say".

In the immortal words of Professor Farnsworth:

 

Edit: Scot, the imbecilic monkey, responded with THIS little gem: "you probably think all molecules are alive and there is life on the moon, ha!" I don't even know where to begin. I hope he doesn't breed, I don't think our planet can handle any more abject stupidity.

Death is only the beginning...

Logical fallacies, Part One: brought to you by religious fanatics

Those who know me know I am a man of science and rational thought, of free will and free knowledge. Most people don't know that I grew up in a small town in the middle of the woods in Vermont, and unsurprisingly, it is a very religious place. Now, most of the people there are normal folks, who don't try to push their beliefs on others, and that's fine. The thing that gets me is that, with the advent of the internet, these people that I know have vociferously begun to champion the cause of Christian morals for the poor, benighted heathens who apparently don't know "right" from "wrong"; at least, according to a certain book.

Tonight's rant was birthed by a discussion I was having with one of my former high school classmates, wherein he had posted a pretty disgusting picture of an aborted fetus in a hospital kidney dish on facebook, with some ridiculous tagline that read "REPOST AND SHARE IF YOU WANT TO STOP ABORTION. GOD HATES MURDER" etc. etc. Now, ignoring the fact that capslock makes you an instant retard, why anyone would choose to repost this on a public site like this is beyond me. Several points sprung to my mind:

First- This picture is really repulsive, and I really don't want to see shit like this on my newsfeed reposted by 20 different christian crackers.

Second- How reposting such a disgusting thing is supposed to stop abortion, I will never know. Writing your congressman does that.

Third- Your morality does not get to be projected onto anyone else.

The last point is the most important, and something almost every single religious person either forgets or ignores: Morality is completely subjective. Herein lies the logical fallacy that religious folks absolutely hate to hear: You do not have to believe in God to be a moral person. Let me repeat that.

You do not have to believe in God to be a moral person.

Just because my views on morality, being an atheist, do not coincide with your  views on morality being a theist, does not mean my views are any less valid than yours. The big difference here is that I don't actively try to push my beliefs on how people should live their own fucking lives every goddamn day with sick pictures of aborted fetuses.

Another point I brought up was that "right" and "wrong" are value judgements that completely ignore the legal context of a situation. Let me give you an example.

Say I'm walking past a secluded alley, and I see 3 gangstars beating the shit out of another dude with, say, a lead pipe. Now, the question I posited was this: Is it "wrong" for me to not step in and try to stop them? It depends entirely on who you ask, because morality is subjective. Is it wrong for me to not help the dude, possibly getting beaten/killed in the process? Maybe. Am I within my legal rights to just ignore the situation and walk on by? Absolutely. Do I think I'm wrong for not helping the recipient of said beating? Not at all, and here's why: I have ZERO information on why this guy is getting his ass kicked. He may very well deserve it, and who am I to step in and impose my value judgement on the situation?

The same thing applies to this abortion issue. Just because YOU think it's wrong, does not mean you get to harass, disgust, and irritate other people into thinking you're right and they're wrong. If you want to change the law to make it illegal, then WRITE YOUR CONGRESSMAN. Shit, the whole Republican party would jump on the chance to take zillions of religious whackjob letters begging to stop abortions, instead of focusing on real political issues.

When you stamp labels of "good" and "bad" on actions/things and claim that this is the way it is because I say so, or because GOD WILLS IT, then you yourself are doing a "bad" thing: imposing your will on other people, whether they like it or not. Free will is just that, FREE. Not "Free unless you do something I don't like" will. The overwhelming arrogance and self-righteousness of these people are what really disgust and sicken me. To think that what you think is "right", just because an imaginary being you can't prove to exist said so, is the height of arrogance. It must feel good to ride so high up on that horse of yours, knowing that all the unwashed heathens have you to guide them, as they live out their lives just fine without your lunacy. My advice to you is this: go drink a gallon of bleach, so the rest of us can be happy without being judged by self-important assholes.

Death is only the beginning...

I hate internet people

Yes, I hate people. All people. I especially hate stupid people. None of these compare to the hatred I feel for people on the internet. It is incomparable. Inconceivable, even. Yes, I do know what that word means.

So why do I hate internet people, you might be asking yourself? I'm glad you brought it up. Let me tell ya...

So I play World of Warcraft, as many of you know. I recently got one of my old work friends here in Tucson to play with me on my server, and have been having a grand old time. Her husband wants to play too, but since they only have one PC, he made a character on her account, seeing no sense in purchasing a full separate account until they had a second PC.

Now, I know that sharing accounts is forbidden in the game's EULA. I've known it for a very long time. Putting aside the idiocy inherent in forbidding family members from sharing an account, I understand why it was listed in the license agreement. Too many dumb people would give their account info to some jerk they don't know and, for some reason, trust, and then get all their shit stolen and run crying to Blizzard to give it all back to them. I understand they made a bad decision to just put a blanket ban on all account sharing to save themselves some irritation. I get all that.

With that said, I posted on the support board on WoW.com, as there was a tool implemented that allowed characters to be split off of one account and put on its own, new account. This was introduced after many people clamored for a way to move their characters they didn't want to lose onto their own account after having given the game a try and liking it. So in this way, Blizzard was creating revenue by allowing family members to try the game on their sibling's/husband's/cousin's account and then letting them have their own separate paying account.

I should have expected this, really I should. In the first 5 minutes of my reasonable and polite request to see if this functionality was still available, no less than a dozen fucking WoWnerds pounced on my post with amazingly arrogant, condescending replies informing me that my friend was violating the terms of service, should be banned, was being reported (how I don't know since no info was given), and that they should be ashamed for breaking the rules. All of this in a written tone that equates to how one would speak to either a 5 year old or a really, really stupid person.

I respond with a sarcastic "Thank you for the very unhelpful and irrelevant responses, I already knew of the Terms of Service. My question remains unanswered. Are you really so naive as to think that married couples don't share accounts? Or parents letting their kid play a character as a reward for good grades, etc.? Anyone who doesn't have anything useful to contribute, please go drink a gallon of bleach."

Immediately I'm bombarded with demands to "watch my tone" and threats of ban reports and such, all the while still telling me that my question was answered (not answered), and that I should be grateful that anyone deigned to respond at all given my hostile attitude. Really?Also, apparently everyone who responded was a perfect law-abiding citizen who would never share an account with their significant other because it's a bad thing.

It was at this time that a board MVP showed up (basically huge nerds with no lives that moderate official forums for free when they could apply for the position and actually get PAID to do it), who informs me that telling someone to drink bleach is considered a personal threat (For real? Is everyone in this country a fucking pussy?) and that I would have my posting privileges revoked. I had not posted on any WoW boards for several years for JUST THIS REASON. Please, do your worst.

So I figured in for a penny, in for a pound. Oh yeah, I don't respond to threats. I went out in a blaze of glory such as has not been seen on the intarwebs since the time I got a permanent IP ban from the Crossroads of Dereth forums for daring to call out the mods on their insane banhappy powertrip back in 2002. Sadly, I doubt anyone will read my epic denunciations of pathetic corporate cocksluts who parrot policy like dutiful slaves for a company they don't even work for.

It's the overwhelming arrogance and superiority that gets me. I realize this is the internet and therefore you are anonymous, but really? Do you really have to act like an incredibly huge asshole to anyone who asks a simple question, just to make yourself feel better about your pathetic, basement-dwelling life? Guess what, pal; at the end of the day, you're still a sad, fat, ugly piece of shit who can't get any pussy unless you go to a pet store. You aren't better than me. Enjoy working pro bono for a company that doesn't pay you and doesn't give two shits about your selfless devotion to their inane policies. I'll continue only working one job and getting paid well for it, thank you.

Death is only the beginning...

It's been a while, time for some filler

Yes I know, months it has been, with no posts by yours truly. Things have been quite crazy lately, what with the summer season at work (parts busiest time of the year), being in my baby sister's wedding (which was fully awesome despite the setbacks I endured getting there), and being rejected over and over again by various and sundry womens. Now that things are settling back down, I have time to inflict my hatred for all things idiotic upon the world once more, as well as rave about how awesome Metal is (we can't forget that now, can we?).

I will thus leave you with this for now, something to tide you over while I gather my thoughts, scattered by the rampant retardation that currently assaults mankind. I submit that this, first set down by the geniuses at Penny Arcade, is the ultimate in hatred for something/someone:

"Don't say another goddamn word. Up until now, I've been polite. If you say anything else- word one- I will kill myself. And when my tainted spirit finds its destination, I will topple the master of that dark place. From my black throne, I will lash together a machine of bone and blood, and fueled by my hatred for you this fear engine will bore a hole between this world and that one.

When it begins, you will hear the sound of children screaming- as though from a great distance. A smoking orb of nothing will grow above your bed, and from it will emerge a thousand starving crows. As I slip through the widening maw in my new form, you will catch only a glimpse of my radiance before you are incinerated. Then, as tears of bubbling pitch stream down my face, my dark work will begin.

I will open one of my six mouths, and I will sing the song that ends the Earth."

God is dead.

That's right folks, even though it's been a while, I have returned. Appearing with me will be my next epic rant on the evils of religion and all the idiocy that goes along with it. I know I'll be receiving letters.

DISCLAIMER: I'm sure some of my family members and friends will read this, and some of them are religious types. Please note that I am not lumping you guys in with the folks I will be writing about, since you are those people who use this stuff to be better people and not be indoctrinating crusaders. You guys are doing it right.


Let me first clarify my stance on religion: I have no problem with people using the lessons and values espoused by a certain religion to be a better person and live a better life. Some people need that apparently, and that's fine. I have absolutely no problem with Buddhists, since Buddhism is all about personal enlightenment. There is no "deity" involved. Christians, Muslims, Jews, Mormons, etc. all believe in an omnipotent, omnibenevolent deity to some extent. The problem is that this concept, along with the associated hokum and mummery that are a part of these religions, is not compatible in a world where evil and suffering exist, and where logic and reason have disproved many widely held "beliefs" that were laid down as divine law.

With that being said, I absolutely cannot stand anyone who believes with no doubt in their mind that everything in the Bible happened for real and that all this mythological nonsense actually exists. Most people don't realize that the Bible as it exists today is an amalgamation of texts from many questionable sources that have been written and re-written to suit the various groups' idiosyncratic view of Christianity. Theologians today still can't agree on what is truth and what is not in any version of any Bible, anywhere. Most notable among these revisions is the King James version of the Holy Bible, in which the king gave the transliterators instructions that would guarantee this version of the Bible would conform to the teachings and structure of the Church of England, which seceded from the Roman Catholic Church during the reign of King Henry VIII, who was excommunicated for doing so, just so he could get an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

What's the point of all this historical geegaw? It's to show that the things that most people take as DIVINE TRUTH NOT TO BE CONTESTED is all a result of personal human desires and politicking. The things you read in this book are not historical accounts of what actually happened over 2000 years ago. I'm sure that there was a dude who ran around trying to get people to love each other and be good, and I'm sure powerful people who didn't want things to change had him killed for it, but that doesn't mean that it was an act in a divine drama. The Bible is meant to be a collection of STORIES to give people guidance to be morally good human beings. That's all. That's why they're called PARABLES and not FACTUAL ACCOUNTS.

Then there are the people who either look down upon you with pity or disbelief when you tell them you're not religious. Does THIS sound rational and sane to you?

Of course, that assumes that religious types who actually BELIEVE the above are both rational and sane, which many are not. All I have to say is Westboro Baptist Church. Granted, they are completely crazy, but that craziness stems from their belief and interpretation of what? That's right, the Bible. Faith is a powerful thing, I'm not denying that. Most of the time it's a force of... I don't want to say evil, but of not-so-good. These guys think that it's good that our soldiers are dying because they think what they're doing is evil, and that gays are demons in disguise trying to subvert people to unending sin, etc. By believing everything in the Bible as incontrovertible truth, angels, Hell, and all that nonsense, you shut your brain off to actual use. Thinking for yourself and questioning everything is what leads to progress and the betterment of humanity. Embedding yourself in a cycle of faith that can be interpreted any way you fucking want it to be makes you a neural automaton. Why do good people die? Because God wills it. That's a terrible fucking answer, and believing that makes you a pretty awful person.

I have another picture for you (yay pictures!), which I absolutely love since it pretty much states in no uncertain terms that God as most people believe Him to be, does not exist:

Why call him God? Exactly my point. In order for your argument that God exists to be valid, you have to have some kind of PROOF. Believers will refute that claim, saying that proof isn't necessary when you have faith. Which leads us back to the whole not using your brain to find out the truth thing. I have for you an example of what I'm talking about. It's an old, yet excellent analogy called Russell's Teapot:

"Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time."

The old "Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist" argument holds absolutely no water with this teapot. It's like believing in Santa Claus. It's nice to believe there is a benevolent, jolly guy who rewards good people and punishes bad ones, but eventually the kids who believe this grow up and realize there is no way that something this inane is possible. Religious types haven't really "grown up" yet, to extend the analogy. They'd rather be blissfully ignorant than come to grips with the fact that reality sucks and it's up to people to make it better, not wait for some nonexistent creator to come down and eventually make things better, someday. If you want me to believe in God, then the burden of proof is on you, not on me. Any lawyer will tell you that if you want someone to believe what you say, the burden of proof is on you, no one else. Denny Crane.

Yes, I know, long rant, but it's a rather extensive subject. In summation: People who blindly believe in ridiculous things that cannot be proved and claim it's ok cause it's religion are completely and unfailingly retarded. Some of the worst atrocities in the world are committed in the name of religion, not just in history, but today as well. Yes, there are non-religious atrocities too, but those are easier to understand (note: still not acceptable of course), since humans are inherently flawed and there are most definitely evil people who will do these things because they can. Doing something awful in the name of a supposedly good God is worse because it's ignorant and savage. GOD WILLS IT is not an acceptable reason for anything.

I leave you with a few more pictures. Hopefully you will get a chuckle. My next rant is probably going to be more scientific in nature, so all you religious whackjobs had better rest up so you can write me more letters about how the earth doesn't revolve around the sun and how rain is angel's tears. Out!

Ah yes, the Doctor: Always there when you need him :D

Death is only the beginning...

And now... The Metal

Seeing as how this endeavour is entitled "The Book of Heavy Metal", I figured now was as good a time as any to comment on the subject. Displeasing the Gods of Metal is something you never want to do. Ever.

I found out quite by accident today that the newest Amon Amarth album has just released, Surtur Rising, and was amazed that I hadn't heard about it at all. Of all the death metal bands that are out there, Amon Amarth is one of the best, simply because they play viking death metal and look like actual vikings. It's melodic too so it actually has a discernable musical quality to it, rather than the "scream your lungs out incoherently" brand of metal that is unfortunately so popular. The cover for their album Twilight of the Thunder God gives you an idea of just how epic they truly are.

With that said, there's only one other contemporary metal band that I like, and that is a sad commentary on the state of metal. Sure, the 80's are over but the metal from that era is STILL listened to and albums are still purchased to this day. People flock to 80's metal shows (whether it be the actual bands or a cover band that puts on a good show), and so many people still know the lyrics by heart to songs like Foolin', Still of the Night, and Separate Ways. Why then has the metal scene gone pretty much to shit?

Honestly, I don't know. I could say it's due to the pop music that keeps getting produced and stupid bitches like Britney Spears that draw people away from the metal (how I don't know, Britney is one of the dumbest fucking people I can think of), but that doesn't provide a direct cause as to the decline of metal. Granted, the rockstar lifestyle of the 80's is most definitely not desirable to any rational human being, but that doesn't stop people from wanting to be like them. So what is it? Why is there no band out there that can put out a vintage 80's sound?

The closest I've been able to find is a band from Vegas called Taking Dawn. I've been following them for about 5 years now and they just got signed to a record deal and have been touring for at least a year now. Their first album, Time to Burn, is exceptional and while it doesn't quite have that 80's arena rock sound, it's close enough. These guys have some great songs that really get you into it, guitar riffs that stick in your head and lyrics that you sing along to as loud as you can. The best part about this band is these guys always put the fans first, really nice guys who'll pose for pictures and sign autographs and breasts, and really put on a great show. You can tell they do it to have fun and to play some epic metal, and I think THAT is what has been missing from the genre of late. Bands are just in it mainly for the money and recognition, fuck the fans gimme the cash sort of mentality.

I'd encourage anyone who loves 80's metal to go get Taking Dawn's first album and see what you think, I promise you won't be disappointed. Apart from buying old albums and going to see cover bands, this is about as close as one can get to good music nowadays. Rap and country need to go the fuck away. No one cares how tough life is in the hood or how your wife left you for your retarded cousin or some shit. The people want METAL