Category Archives: Christianity

Now they’re working for the Intelligent Design lobby

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From Fortean Times which I am nice enough to credit even though they banned me from their forum, but I’m so over that!

Completely.

 

Charles Fort Books

 

10 March In 1974

Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda of the Japanese army stopped fighting World War II. He dismissed the leaflets announcing the end of the war as American propaganda and remained in considerable discomfort on the tiny Philippine island of Lubang on which he had been marooned. Two years later, Shoichi Yokoi turned up in a cave on Guam, and another Japanese veteran was found in Indonesia in 1974. In December 1989, two Japanese civil engineers, who had been fighting with the communist guerrillas in Malaya since 1945, gave themselves up.

Nukes and spooks

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Church InteriorOh, those wacky Eastern Europeans! Check out this website, which is a photofantasm of kaliedoscopic perversion and apocalyptic horror.

Okay, it’s an album of church shots. I’ve been reading more HP Lovecraft, okay? No wonder he sent all his nutty villains to stay with The Baron in the mountains of Hungary: in that context, even Charles Dexter Ward would seem wholesome. Hmmm, wonder if he has a blog? Guy Fawkes does, and Ward seems the type. In any case, I’m ashamed to say the 3-D images on Page Two of the photosite defeat me; I must need the special glasses or something.

I’ve been engaged in a lively discussion of UK nuclear policy over on BoJo’s Blog and the point I keep coming back to is the durability and toxicity of the waste. I’d be in favour of nukes, aggressively so, if only we could figure out how to design nuclear reactors which produced only stable, harmless waste or zero waste, as is now the standard in, ferinstance, many pulp mills. So I am in favour of nuclear research, very much so, since without it we’ll be stuck rebuilding an old 60’s designed something that will eventually produce enough waste to poison the entire planet; unfortunately, the waste products will last longer than any language or civilization. Indeed, they will last longer than written language has been in existence. So, how to deal with it, and how to warn people away from it?

You don’t recognize any of these startling cultural icons from the distant past; you don’t know who made them, or what they symbolize. Hell, you don’t even know that they’re cultural icons, but the whole scene briefly scares the bejesus out of you. Then, like Howard Carter stumbling on the tomb of Tutankhamen, you experience a serious rush of exhilaration, aggravated by a serious case of the heebie-jeebies, as you realize that you’ve just chanced on a history-making breakthrough, a discovery of earthshaking significance. So, which do you do? 1) Immediately pack up the entire expedition and evacuate the area never to return? 2) Waste no time in commencing a major archaeological dig and cementing your place in history?

Amazingly enough, the folks over at the U.S. Department of Energy are banking on curious humans (or whomever) from future millennia to go for Door No. 1. 

Entry to church crypt 

Right. Just a little nervous-making. Not to mention the rising oceans may eventually reach the buried waste and suddenly turn the seas into aquatic X-Men jamborees. Not to mention that the Russians and the Chinese are responsible for a significant proportion of the world’s nuclear waste disposal, and we all know how very methodical and efficient the Russians and the Chinese are, how impeccable the quality of their work and attention to detail, and of course how stable their own civilizations at the current time. We can all sleep a little easier…if we have enough whisky.

The Czech Republic. It’s a blog about the Czech Republic. And recycling. And nuclear waste. And HP Lovecraft because, at bottom, isn’t everything about HP Lovecraft? He’s the Socrates of the 20th Century, with August Derleth as his Plato, which only goes to show you how very far we’ve come.

Sometimes, I think the most merciful thing in the world is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid isle of ignorance amidst black seas of chaos, and it is not meant that we voyage far. HP Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu

The Czechs had something. They had, back in 1280, a jar full of dirt from the Holy Land. And they spread it around the graveyard of a particular church, wanting to extra-holify their already-technically-holy ground. And holy cadavers, Batman, it was a huge hit! Bodies came from all over Europe to be buried there, which musta made quite a fragrant convoy back in the days before aircon; or did the kids just ask Grandma one day, “So, how’re you feeling, Gran?” and if she said anything other than, “Strong enough to wrestle a bear in my underwear” they packed her off to Sedlec whether she felt like a short Czech sortie or not. Put her on the wagon train with “Please bury at Sedlec when dead” around her neck in Latin or something? Nice. That’s planning for the future.

Well, all these dead people were great for PR, but kinda rough on the graveyard. After all, even stacking them six deep (which is hard when they’re only buried six feet down) you have only so much room in a graveyard, and they obviously couldn’t expand it without going all the way back to the Holy Land for more Extra-Holy Dirt, so they said screwit and became creative with the waste.

Thusly:

By 1318, more than 30,000 bodies were buried there and by 1511, it had become necessary to remove the older bones to make place for the new ones. These later became the material for the macabre creations. In 1870 a local woodcarver was hired by the Duke of Shwartzenberg to decorate the inside of the church with the human remains (approximately 40,000 sets of bones).

Now, forgive me, but it’s been quite some time since I was a Monstranceregular at church, and I am no longer familiar with the terminolgy. Which reminds me to do that blog entry comparing M.R. James to Gene Roddenberry; all I remember is the line, “Ah, the narthex. That’s where they keep the dilithium crystals.” Anyway, I do not know, exactly, what a monstrance is, but I do know if I had to make one up it would look something like this one, which is actually labelled “Monstrance,” and indeed, what person, no matter how categorically narrow-minded, could argue that it is, indeed, a monstrance? Is it perhaps from the same root as “remonstrance” and does it perhaps mean the Dark Age Croatian equivalent of “Kids, don’t try this at home”? Perhaps they should ship it to Utah?

In any case, unless we find a way to make glow-in-the-dark art out of depleted Uranium and other by-products of nuclear fission, or we find a practical use for tumours once and for all (staffing the White House doesn’t count), we had better bring this level of creativity to the disposal of the waste. Despite the levels of fossil fuel-based pollutants in the air, I’m not holding my breath.

Kids, don’t try this at home.

For the Defence

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The fact that I am on his side in a battle to the apparent death with a group of crazed fandom should give John Paulus pause.

It should, actually, give him the willies, but he doesn’t know the history there.

So, who is John Paulus? He’s some American guy. I don’t know what he used to do for a living, but I know he has a porn deal now. I know he’s a very steadfast character, and he’s not greedy. I know if I were in a dark alley facing an unknown number of foes, I’d like to have a John Paulus or two on my side. How do I know anything about John Paulus?

Clay Aiken‘s fans went apeshit on him.

Apeshit fans, flamewars, fame, tabloids, lawyers, secret passions: this has “raincoaster” written all over it.

So the back story, as far as I can make out, which is hardly, since the only time I ever watched American Idol was the other night, over the calamari and Mango Madness before Narnia, so I missed Clay Aiken entirely except that I know he didn’t even win and he’s the only famous loser of American Idol, and he has a record coming out this year which has been jeopardized by the whole scandale, is this:

Apparently, John Paulus and Clay Aiken got together and had sex.

That’s it, pretty much. John told, as people who have sex are wont to do, particularly when they have sex with famous people whose record companies would very much like to hint that they are not having sex with people called John, but instead “he just hasn’t found the right girl yet.” John didn’t take any money for telling the story, and he hasn’t changed any of the details of the story since it broke. And he isn’t backing down, despite some rather…pointed…remarks from certain fans known as Claymates (this is ironic, isn’t it? They must not be as literal-minded as I am). Not all the Claymates are wingnuts, but there are enough that I can hear the flapping noises from Canada!

Clay Aiken never actually said he was straight. He’s never said he was gay either, and he hasn’t actually gone and said “John Paulus is wrong,” either, which is interesting. He has posted on his blog (for access to which he charges money) about something that he says is “real,” leading everyone to conclude there are things going around about him which are not real, which, as anyone who knows anything about fandom and fame knows, is by definition true. The lies could be that he’s gay; they could be that he’s straight; they could be that his favorite colour is…whatever. He’s famous, and therefore there are a lot of lies going around about him, true ’nuff. Hell, Viggo Mortensen has been known to complain about lies going around about him that originated with…himself! (Happy Halloween, Viggo!)

Right now the defenders of Clay’s honour are spreading the rumour that it wasn’t Clay on the webcam at all, but some trannie named Coti (again, that’s as I understand it; don’t actually have time to read all 937 comments) and also that John couldn’t have been with Clay because John is straight, to which John says:

if I had a girlfriend please ask her to provide a picture of the two of us together. I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting. If you know something to the contrary I am sure that the National Enquirer would be more than happy to hear your story. I would encourage you to do it. Remember they require you take a lie detector test. Here’s the contact: Abutterfield@nationalenquirer.com.

I’m that confident in myself.

[see why I like this guy?]

You know what’s really entertaining is that Clay knows that he and I were together; he knows that’s him in the webcam as well, but that his fans are saying that he looks like some drag queen named Coti. Clay don’t take it to heart and don’t feel insulted that your fans think you are a female impersonator.

Check out some of the fan posts:

This one is pretty grounded:

I hope that there are more fans like me out there, fans who love the voice, don’t give a crap whether he’s gay or straight, and only worry about this story because his high-risk behavior sounds dangerous. Obviously Clay doesn’t think there are many reasonable fans, but I still think they exist. The bottom line is that Clay can sing and can entertain and it would be a shame if his career were cut short because of this. That said, none of us has any right to demand that he say something or say nothing or that he prove anything other than the fact that he is singing. Insanity

And then there is:

matthew shepard was a killed
very sadly many americans felt he deserved it
umbelievalbe and shameful
does clay really deserve all this

Posted by: totallydifferentanswerthanyesterday whom I am wondering if s/he is asking for Clay to be “a killed” too? And shouldn’t that be “a kilt”? Jez askin’.

Also:

give ME a bed, a toilet and Clay Aiken (with room service for food occassionally) – and I’m pretty much set for life. I don’t want or need anything else. CLAY – call me – you got my number Posted by: ForClayOnly, pretty standard stuff except the part later about getting a dick if that’s what Clay wanted…ew. And…You will NEVER poison OUR minds against Clay, because we LOVE him with a passion you can not hardly begin to comprehend. You would have to have a HEART first…Clay’s blog was NOT patronizing. He likes to give us fun little tests. He is a teacher, remember? It’s fun for him to see who among us can figure it out – and it’s fun for us to try.

Once the meds kick in. Remember, you can’t channel the light until you take the helmet off.

And some posts from John Paulus:

Everything I stated about Clay was fact and truth. The story been floated here about me and some drag queen that I have never met are a fabrication. Claymates you’ve shot yourselves in the foot over the last two months and I have a very funny feeling your[sic] about to shoot yourselves in the head.

You can call me a whore, slut, liar, and accuse me of being a pathetic person. You have a right to your opinion. But, when Claymates make accusations that claim I am involved with drugs- well that crosses the line. Nothing I have stated about Clay was fabricated or concocted. I shared an experience. Also you wrote “John took it way too far in outing Clay in order to start a porn career.” I DID NOT OUT Clay in order to start a porn career. That is a very very false statement. I did a porno only after I lost my job in Real Estate and I have had offers to do porn since 1995.

What’s particularly interesting about this flamewar (besides the fact it is routinely responsible for 10 or so hits on my blog, but that’s only of interest to me) is the vehemence with which significant numbers of the Claymates defend their particular, and rather limited, vision of Clay. Essentially, if he is not exactly as they conceive him to be, he might as well not exist and could, in my estimation, be in some degree of actual danger. I think, under those circumstances, we can all understand anyone’s reluctance to open up the closet door and yell “Surprise!”

Howl, Canadian Edition

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Today I did something conventional: worked all day, then dinner and a movie. Shocking, I know. I was even invited to a VIP-only jazz show, but I had a choice between jazz with free drinks or work with the opportunity to buy my own later. Normally, as a freelancer, my instinct (and, indeed, my moral obligation to the profession) would be to go for the freebies, I haven’t done any paid work in awhile and could really use A) the cash and B) the reference, so there you have it. Besides, on Monday I got three free meals, four free drinks, and probably a door prize, though I bailed too early to tell, a victim of the effects of smoked salmon, cream cheese, deep-fried artichoke hearts, and a half-pound of peel-and-eat shrimp meeting two pints of Strongbow, two shots of Johnny Walker Black, and a glass of merlot that would have eaten the shell off an egg. So for the week, I’m still ahead.

Dinner and a movie. Right. It’s a blog about dinner and a movie.

Had, in honour of the blog, calamari. I believe strongly in theme-based meals and, indeed, theme-based living. Tuesday was obviously Giant Squid Day. Today, I think, is Literary Day. There I was eating calamari in honour of my Giant Squid blog entries, although the calamari in this case was more micro- than macro-squidopic, but still pretty good. I think a Mango Madness counts as a serving of fruits, don’t you? From the agonies the blender went through it must certainly have its share of dietary fiber. And, I am sure, the RDA for cheap vodka goodness. Gotta luv White Spot.

The movie. Narnia. Yeah, yeah, I know I’m late. Scroll down and check out PeterPan if you want to see me catching up on something that won a Webby in 2000-and-bloody-1-ferchrissakes. I was born a month late, so by my count I’m still really early most of the time. So, Narnia it was.

Knowing the book as well as I do, there weren’t a whole lot of surprises in it for me, although it did come as a bit of a shock when I realized that Maugrim was speaking with a distinct Canadian accent. Is this some kinda xenophobic crack, people? Watch it. I mean, I didn’t hear the Minotaur speaking Greek, did I?

Timber Wolf

Sure, it was a timber wolf and all (I live in Canada, I know a timber wolf when I see one; hell, I’ve seen them in the wild and petted a tame timber wolf, not to mention the time in Algonquin Park when I was a munchkin and we all went out on the official Wolf Howl, sitting around in a big circle, 60 of us campers, in the dark, listening to a lecture by the nice Mr. Park Ranger Guy and then waiting in silence for the wolves to start howling – seems kinda optimistic, eh? sitting there in the middle of the night with a whackload of strangers, waiting for wolves to howl – but they did: one, up in the north, followed by a long and, we could feel, pregnant silence, then some beta-wolf, the kind who never wants to go into a restaurant if there’s nobody in there already but will go if you go first, answered, then another, and another, and soon the hills were literally echoing with the cries of wild wolves; a more beautiful sound I have never heard, nor ever hope to. It was eerie, and exquisite, earthy beyond comprehension; you simply felt it more than heard it, and utterly, utterly indifferent to Man. Which made it all the more strange when Mr. Park Ranger Guy encouraged us to, one by one, join in. We didn’t feel we had the right. But Mr. Park Ranger Guy was the alpha, and he started, and we did, indeed, all join in. The wolves fell silent. You could imagine them turning to one another with puzzled lupine expressions, their brows furrowing like grizzled Sharpeis, and saying, “Can you make that out? It’s the funniest damn accent I ever heard.” Perhaps they were embarrassed for us, the obvious tourists. Gawd, we even appeared touristy to the wildlife! And it was too dark for them to see our chinos! But after a few minutes, Mr. Alpha Wolf said, “To hell with it, I’m gonna get my full howlin’ allowance in tonight, tourists or no tourists,” and the rest of them followed him and so did we. It was the most peculiar, the most delightful, and the most transcendant harmony of which I have ever been a part. Imagine howling with the wolves, and the wolves howling back. It both put humanity in its place and assured it that it had a place, and should you ever be in Algonquin Park I recommend that you find yourself a Mr. or Ms. Park Ranger and ask about going on a wolf howl) but I do think (yes, that was a parenthetical. Scroll up) that making a nasty villain the only Canadian in the entire film…oh, wait.

Do they have beavers in England?

Okay, scratch that. Um, so to speak: I do not suggest you scratch a beaver, even if you have one handy. Nothing but trouble comes from that.

But I guess we’re even. One big baddie, two little goodies. Canucks all, but from their accents the Beavers musta been Maritimers. But didn’t Trumpkin say that by Caspian’s time there were no more beavers in Narnia? Wiped out! Is that ethnic cleansing? Was C.S. Lewis traumatized by a Canadian when he was young? Let’s get the UN and NATO on this ASAP!

So, my friend was settling in to watch The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but meanwhile she was also eavesdropping on the two men in the row in front of her. One was complaining to the other about how all movies are merchandised to the gills; Fantastic Four figurines, Batman meals at fast food outlets, probably Spidermanburgers somewhere. “You can just see it,” he said. “Narnia Nuggets, Tumnus action figures. C.S. Lewis must be rolling in his grave.”

“Yeah,” said his more laconic friend. “He’s probably thinkin’, ‘Screwtape that!‘”

raincoaster 9.11

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Oh god, I hope I don’t burn in Hell for this. Actually, considering my resume, hard to imagine I have much to lose, eh? It makes more sense if you’ve read either Diary-X’s sad tale or John 11.1 and if you’ve read both you might even get a laugh out of it. Here goes…

Now a certain community server was ill, Diary-X of Deken, the bloghost for Mercredi, Kryztina and raincoaster. raincoaster was the one who would do anything to ramp up her hits; her server was ill. So the famewhore sent a message to Google, MSN and Yahoo ‘Y’all, we whom you love is ill. We is da illest, in fact, but our server looks to be biting the big one.’

But when the nerds heard it, they said, ‘Ah, don’t bother me when I’m playing World of Warcraft. Your server’ll be just fine; this is a great opportunity for you to use those backups we told you to make, so that you can see how smart we were all along, when we set up the parameters of the backup procedure.’ Accordingly, everybody hung out and waited to hear if DriveSavers could restore the orginals, and meantime the blogs stayed in Limbo. 

Then after this Stephen gave the nerds a call and said, ‘Let get those blogs up again.’

The nerds said unto him, ‘Dude, we had it set to back up the technical specs, not the content. Hey, we’ve got our priorities straight; content is for wusses, right? And btw, your drive is toast. They’re going to crucify you when they find out. And besides, this means you can sleep at night and stay up during the day, like a normal person and not a blogger for once in your life.’

raincoaster answered, ‘Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them. If they had a nineteen-inch monitor set to my blog all the time, they could see way gooder.’ After saying this, and waiting for them to stop shaking their heads and offering her medication, she told them, ‘Our blog has fallen asleep, but I am going to awaken the hell out of that biotch, you watch me.’

The nerds said unto her, ‘Lordy, if it’s archived on Google it may be all right.’ 

Then Stephen told them plainly, ‘Yo, your blogs are dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, because you probably would have killed me and then you’d have gone to prison and shit. But let us go to LiveJournal.’

raincoaster, who was called a lot of things behind her back, said to her fellow-bloggers, ‘Hell with that, I’d rather die than LiveJournal.’

When raincoaster checked the forum, she found that her blog had already been in the tomb for ten days. And there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Many of the bloggers had come to LiveJournal to console them about their loss. When raincoaster heard that WordPress Googled, and was ad-free, she went and checked it out, while the others stayed at LiveJournal, playing with blue bouncing kittens and mood meters; handy hint: try Lithium.

raincoaster said to WordPress, ‘Lordy! If my blog had been here, it would have Googled and my hits would not have died. But even now I know that I will give you whatever you ask of me, because I’m easy that way. Google me, baby!’

Mr. WordPress said to her, ‘Your blog will rise again.’

raincoaster said to him, ‘I know that it will rise again in the resurrection on the last day, because frankly that blog has more personality than most civil servants and several uncivil ones as well.’

Mr. WordPress said to her, ‘Boy, you could use some of that Lithium yourself, sweetheart. Clap your hands and the blog will live. Those who believe in blogging, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in blogging will never die. Those who believe in LiveJournaling don’t deserve to live, so who gives a rat’s ass about them? Do you believe this?’

She said to him, ‘Man, I don’t believe you. But I believe that you are the answer to my prayers.’ All men like to hear that. 

When she had said this, she went back and emailed her friends and told them privately, ‘I’m so going to burn in Hell for the blog entry I’m working on, but it’s totally worth it.’ Now the WordPress blog had not yet come online, but was still at the editing stage.

The bloggers who were with her in da house, in IM, in MSN, in YIM, in AIM, in Googlechat, consoling her, saw her go offline quickly and sign out. They traced her IP because they were worried she would off somebody if she couldn’t blog again. When raincoaster came to the archive where the blog was and saw it, she knelt at her desk’s feet and said, ‘Lord, if you had been Googleable, I wouldn’t have had to copy 1040 entries in a Yahoo window, an MSN window, and an ALIBABA-YAHOO-CHINA window and my elbow wouldn’t be killing me.’

When Mr. WordPress saw her weeping, and the bloggers who came with her also weeping, for she does not like to come alone and always gets emotional then, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, ‘Where have you copied it to?’

She said to him, ‘Lordy, on my C drive, in Microsoft Word!’ Mr. WordPress began to weep. So the bloggers said, ‘You’re not gonna make us learn Linux, are you?’ And there was wailing and the rending of garments. But some of them said, ‘Yo, it was techies who got us into this mess. Word.’

Then raincoaster, again greatly disturbed (no cheap shots, please) came to the archives. It was a folder, and it was password-protected. raincoaster said, ‘I live alone, what the hell do I have a startup password for?’

Carrie, a sister blogger, said to her, ‘Lordy, are you sure you want to look at that? Some of those entries stank, you know.’

raincoaster said to her, ‘Hey, I’m gonna be famous someday! Where’s my damn will, I need the scissors. Oh ye of little faith’ So they opened the folder. And raincoaster looked upwards and said, ‘Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me and will suck up to me in future.’

I am so burning in hell for this one! At least Dave Allen will be there!

When she had said this, she cried with a loud voice, ‘Goddam you, WordPress! Post, you fucker! Move, you skanky little progress bar!’ The entry posted, its words in plain text. raincoaster said to the blog, ‘Let’s format that fucker, and let him fly!’

Many of the bloggers therefore, who had come with raincoaster and had seen what WordPress did, believed in them.