Middle Of The Night Quickie

I'm not in the mood for a shiny, eloquent introduction since it is 4 in the morning.This is one Canadian dude's truth about Facebook that we can ALL empathize with. Plus, it's funny like most things Canuck.

Just watch it. Or I'll send you sixteen chickens on Farmville.

Public Service Announcement

  Everyone who floats around the internet as much as I do has experienced this.

  The annoying pop-up survey.

  Usually it will ask you if you want to take part and if you click"no" it will pop up again whenever you click a link within the website. Often times, you are actually attempting to purchase something from them but are getting the eyeball assault.

  Whenever I encounter one of these things it irritates me. If I like your website, I'll keep coming back. If I buy something from you, I will e-mail you my opinion whether you ask for it or not. Conversely, if something on your blog or what-have-you offends me or my sense of style I will absolutely tell you. I am an opinionated bastard and so are most of us. You do not have to ask for our opinions. We will give them to you anyways.

  If your survey has a little comment section that is clearly visible, I will definitely fill it out, but not in the way you expect. Usually I will type something in the vein of "Your website is really rad but this pop-up angers the shit out of me. Stop annoying your visitors. You're scaring us away." or simply "Your survey blows rhesus monkeys.".

  If you are the administrator of a website DO NOT use the pop-up survey. Ever. It irritates the hell out of people and a fair percentage of folks who encounter them will hit the Back button on their browser driving traffic away from your amazing bagels or T-shirts. If you think it is an absolute must that you have the opinions of your audience, place a link of said survey in the sidebar or use the age-old Feedback tab.

 Friendliness still does work. Stop Attacking your potential clients.

 Thank you.

 

Your Daily Awesome

Japan has some pretty great baseball players. Pitchers, hitters, you name it. And these dudes can go yard- just ask the 868 victims of Sadaharu Oh.

But NO Japanese dude is this guy other than this guy. This guy is Stretch Armstrong with reflexes. Even if you absolutely hate sports and think I'm a twat for mentioning them, WATCH THIS.

You'll thank me.


Spiderman Style Baseball Catch - Watch more Sports

Fundies With Existentialism

A number of years ago, my buddy Mitchell gave me a pair of these as a gag X-Mas gift. (along with one of those boob beer can toppers)

Fundies. Underwear built for two.

  The name and potential "use" of this gag gift reminded me of another kind of fundie, this one usually caught with his or her private parts occupying the same area as those of someone not their wedded partner.

   Baptist minister and Focus on the Family fundie George Rekers was caught with a very young fellow he met off of rentboy.com recently and news outlets and blogs like my own gave the play-by-play. It's fair to say that unless his wife regressed 40 years and had a sex change, Lucien ain't Mrs. Rekers.

  He is the latest in a string of so-far-right-they're-staring-at-their-own-asses bigots caught doing things they have damned others for. Guys like Rev. Tommy Tester (arrested whilst wearing a skirt propositioning a cop for a blowjob), Congressman Mark Sanford ( The Argentine Affair), and Ted Haggard (meth and men) are the faces of the epidemic of religion gone bad. But it is not a new phenomenon. Remember Jimmy Swaggart and his whores?

  It is not a problem with religion so much as when one uses the excuse of faith to rid themselves of what disturbs them the most- their own very human desires. Their internal shame is directed outward as hate towards the people who contently live in a way that the suffering fundie wishes he could. If he wants to leave his wife but the Church prohibits it, he pushes for sanctions against female freedom and for male household dominance. If he really wishes to have a partner of the same gender, he will invest his efforts in the pseudoscience of "curing" homosexuality. Should he desire someone of a different race or religion, personal ignominy forces the person to project racism.

   Self-loathing is the disease and there will always be a religion asserting that they can fix your every ill. And if you are brought up in orthodoxy, you will have been indoctrinated with not only self-doubt but something to cling to while you struggle with your right to exist. Theology instills a near-impossible moral ideal and mandates blind allegiance with damnation and derision for those who violate the command of the laws. Moral codes were often instituted by various societies, but these were magically beamed into print by someone claiming to know the will of the supernatural. The books themselves may have been apocryphal by design but are now taken so literally that no human being can completely comply.

  So we confess to priests, cry to the heavens, apologize for sins we may or may not have even thought of committing on Yom Kippur, and pray for perfection. And when we fall short of the instilled archetype, we project that insecurity onto others and punish them for sins real or imagined. And it is not our place to do so.

   Should there truly be a metaphysical overseer of the worlds, this ethereal being would likely view morality in a far different view than in the books created by the most intelligent of creatures. The vengeful old bearded man in the sky is an image of man's views on God, and it is an insult to the most extreme degree. Why would the sublime create such variations of creatures for man to instill terror on them? Minorities, be them human or otherwise are simply variations. Where some commit atrocities through free will, others are scorned simply for being born the way they are. God doesn't hate, man does.

   If I was floating around the cosmos as the ultimate steward of the universe, I'd be pretty angry with those men who vainly choose to alter my design. The preacher who promises to "repair" my natural method of population control would be the true heretic in my eyes.

  Maybe that is the point to these recent "outings". Entertain for yourself the possibility that their holier-than-thou existence was contrary to the plan of the Creator. Maybe this is some sort of holy revenge for the sin of trying to fix what wasn't broken in the first place.

  Just a thought.

This post was originally created on May 12, 2010 (by me and copyrighted) but I thought that today was an appropriate day to bring this one out again for you lovelies. xo M

Attn : Sports Fans

  Sometimes it absolutely stinks to love a favourite sports franchise that seems to come so close to winning the championship only to suffer defeat year after year.
  I have witnessed my fave baseball club win (Actually, I was at the game for the Joe Carter walkoff) but the last time my number one hockey club won was a week before I was born. My favourite football team hasn't hoisted silver since they were in the AFL and the last time my long-suffering Wolverhampton Wanderers (soccer, for you noobs) took their place in history was when my mum was in kindergarten.

  Being a sports fan is painful. When you go crazy for the West Brom Baggies, Chicago Cubs, Cleveland Cavs, Seattle Seahawks, or Toronto Maple Leafs you are used to the bitterest agony. Your friends and family are accustomed to your tears and tales of the one who got away. People take their favourite club personally like it is a part of them.

  But while I have sympathy for your plight and my own, we have nada on the 7800 folks who pack the Curt Frenzel Stadium in Augsberg, Germany.
  The Augsberg Panthers are by far the oldest professional hockey team in the World, a full 22 years more ancient than Slavia Prague of the Czech league. At 132 years of age, they are a decade more ancient than the English Football League.
  The Augsberg club that was swept in the finals this year has the most notorious record of choking in professional ice hockey. They have never won the top-level German championship. EVER. The few times they have tasted an iota of glory were during a 20-year period where Germany had them in a semi-pro league. During the 95-year period where Germany had one pro league they never claimed victory and since then, well they've still stunk. Since the forming of the DEL, this year's finals appearance marked the only occasion that they made it past the first round of the playoffs and the highest they've placed in the standings is 7th. The sports fans living in Germany's second-oldest city may well be the most long-suffering fans out there.

  So the next time I hear any of you fuckers whine about the Toronto Maple Leafs paying outlandish salaries and still finishing in the crapper, I will direct you to this image. Notice that the only guy smiling is the team doctor.

These Guys...

  ...wake you up when you have to work the night shift in the roof truss factory, interrupt your Shabbos nookie, and keep coming back despite your numerous requests that they cease. They are bible-thumpers looking for converts and they come in two equally irritating varieties- Mormons and Witnesses.

  Both types travel in pairs and may employ cute old ladies or different attire when their repeated efforts to occupy your weekend or disrupt your seance fail.. Never taking no for an answer, religious proselytizers are the leading cause of peephole installation and responsible for the majority of impulse Rottweiler purchases.

  But what to do about these zombielike pencilnecks? Most of us want REVENGE. How many of you lovely people have wanted to take a crap in their boots or at least bother them on Friday fish night?

  Luckily for us there is Australian film nerd John Safran. While some of us *cough* MAY have knocked on the doors of a few local irritations, this guy did the deed on a superhuman scale. The Yeshiva boy who likes to push everyone's buttons took his assholery to Salt Lake City to prove a point and exact a little justice for each and every one of us who has had their Seder, orgasm or hangover interrupted.

  Enjoy!


Door To Door Atheists Bother Mormons - Watch more Funny Videos

The Great Mosque Debate

  NYC's Landmarks Preservation Honchos have declared that the former garment-district building on Park Place is not an historical landmark. This building and its neighbour are at the centre of a major controversy because of their proximity to Ground Zero and the intentions of developers. The building will become a taller structure and part of a new Mosque and Islamic Centre. And I think that Soho Properties should reconsider this idea.

  Like it or not, the disturbed boys who leveled a significant chunk of Manhattan were adherents of Islam. Muslims all over the World have made it a point to place Mosques at places they deem strategic victories. The locations of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Babylonia as well as Mosques throughout not only Asia and Africa, but also Europe are no coincidence. They are intentionally built over sites considered holy to many other faiths and none have escaped. Mosques have been built directly over sites considered special to Christians, Jews, Pagans, Hindus and even peaceful Jains and Buddhists. And to many of the more radical Islamic followers, this will be a sign of victory and dominion over the infidel.

  But even if it weren't a Mosque, but a Church or Synagogue I would be opposed. People of all faiths were mercilessly massacred  by evil people in the name of the same G-d. It is the ultimate insult to humanity and to G-d itself to inject a metaphysical being into a place where MAN'S most sinister impulses prevailed. It is akin to Lutherans building a church at Treblinka or Catholics erecting a cathedral to celebrate the Inquisition. There are some places where man's horrible displays of free will dominated over any of the almighty. As humans we have emotional attachments to places where the most awful things occur. They become sacred to us.

  It is not a question of Islam being more inherently sinister than the other People of the Book. All Abrahamic faiths call for executions of non-adherents, not just Islam. Very few people of any religion actually think they are supposed to murder people. But like it or not, there are a lot of Americans who do feel slighted by a Mosque being built when the ancient church that was nearly destroyed in the attacks has not been rebuilt. A new religious site built while the old is still a wreck seems unfair regardless of the book they read. And since it would be categorically uncouth to exclude only a Mosque, we should not have any new religious preaching posts in the area still scarred by misguided fools who used their beliefs as a weapon of mass destruction.

   While it is indeed true that many people are angry at Muslims and blame them for 9/11, religious bias is not the sole reason why a Mosque should not be built in such close proximity to Ground Zero. It is not a case of "THEM" taking over like so many right-wing pundits proclaim. A Mosque built there will simply give the fearful and bigoted a new reason to complain about people they do not know but are very much like.
  Folks' hearts may be in the right place, but many will take it as an offensive gesture regardless of the motivation. This Mosque will not bring unity, but xenophobia. As much as you try to force hippiedom down the throats of people, there is a timeline for healing and these wounds are simply too fresh.

  I firmly stand against construction of this Mosque as well as construction of any new religious buildings in close proximity to a location where so many people lived and died as equals. There needs to be a moratorium on denominational religious construction until people come to the realization that we are all spiritual entities with our own merits and flaws. We cannot erase fear and hatred by force. Time does indeed heal wounds, an there simply has not been enough of it to justify something so divisive.