Holy Moly!

How did Will Ferrell come up with that one? Wait…THAT’S NOT WILL FERRELL!

(link via @lornalily and @anfo_)

A worrying transmission from Planet Yikes

I tweeted this last night and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. It’s not just the girl that I find extraordinary–she’s certainly a little bit more than your average, attention-seeking, teen fundie numpty– it’s the utterly unfazed University staff. What is going on in Texas that they are able to just shrug this kind of thing off? Are they so used to lunatics that they can just leave them writhing on the floor while they get on with their day?  Anywhere else in the world, it’d be “Holy shit! That girl just said a lot of crazy stuff and then had an orgasm and then fell over! Everything else we were going to do today is canceled! We need some time to absorb this utterly insane thing that is still happening behind us!”

Instead:  “Can someone call an ambulance? Great! Now let’s all do the next thing we were going to do! Music, please!”

This is like an intercepted transmission from an alien culture. What are they going to do next, exactly? Proceed to the birthing chamber to meld minds? It’s that what a ‘recessional’ means?

Texas! You NEED TO SEE A DOCTOR!

This Blood’s For You!

As Jesus’s General has it, “There’s nothing that says “Fourth of July” better than a bleeding Jesus and a reworked beer ad slogan.”

Hero of the day

If all copies and records of ‘Father Ted’ were somehow wiped, I would find it impossible to summon up the affection with which Arthur and I initially wrote the show. Somehow, these days, The Irish Catholic Church seems a lot less cuddly.

Crazy Christian movie trailers! Start your collection here!

1. You may need to keep reminding yourself, this isn’t the actual film. It’s a trailer for the film.

2. God’s voice is really more Santa-like, don’t you think?

3. As Videogum (who are keeping their eyes peeled for this sort of thing) have it: “”I love you. I LOVE you! I LOOVE YOUUU! Listen to my demo!”

4. Oh, just everything!

Don’t worry, Jewish people! He’s “reviewing the evidence”

Interview from Der Spiegel with Bishop Richard Williamson (pictured above), the creepy Holocaust denier supported by the Vatican. Via Cynical C, who also offer this nugget from Wikipedia.

“Williamson holds strong views regarding gender roles and dress. He opposes women attending college or university, the wearing of trousers or shorts by women, and has urged greater “manliness” in men. He is quoted as saying: “A woman can do a good imitation of handling ideas, but then she will not be thinking properly as a woman. Did this lawyeress check her hairdo before coming into court? If she did, she is a distracted lawyer. If she did not, she is one distorted woman”

Get that? She’s distorted.

Lunch bags in hell!

This guy posted about doing art lunchbags for his kids, which is very sweet and one of the great things about the internet–that every so often it brings to light the ingenuity and thoughtfulness of some people… things you’d otherwise never have heard about.

That said, I wouldn’t actually have posted a link to it had I not noticed this totally awsome thing. The ad that I had to click to get into the site accidentally looks like a Jack Chick cover and is therefore a little disturbing!

For those of you who haven’t had a jack Chick tract fall into your lap when you opened a comic, here’s a taste (warning! He’s insane!).

I nominate this as a possible meme! Innocent things as Jack Chick covers!

You tell him, Jean-Luc!

McCain/Linehan 2008

Remember Obama’s pastor? How controversial he was and everything? Well, Sarah Palin has a pastor friend too. His name is Thomas Muthee, and apparently, he was once involved in a witchhunt. This is not a figure of speech. He found someone who he thought was a witch, and he and his flock succesfully drove her from her home (after first shooting her python, which they thought was a demon).

Now, to be fair, she doesn’t seem to have had much association with him beyond kissing his tooshie a little during a recent speech, but still. I think I can safely say I am the full six degrees of separation from anyone who believes in witches. Sarah Palin is separated from this guy by NO-ONE.

Now, I want you to seriously think about this one before answering, but… doesn’t that make me a better candidate for the position of Vice President of the United States?

I await Senator McCain’s call.

(via yesbutnobutyes)

A bad day for atheism

You know me…I loathe crusading Creationists and those who might try and sneak their nonsense in under the radar, but the hounding of Professor Michael Reiss from his post as director of education at the Royal Society is pretty scandalous.

It seems to me that the press took his entirely reasonable argument that educators need to engage with children who believe in this stuff (rather than dismiss their beliefs out of hand) chopped out the context and full meaning of his remarks, and gave it to various hot-headed quote robots in the hope of creating some argy-bargy. They seem to have Richard Dawkins on speed dial, and he always picks up. Is he lonely? (And didn’t he learn anything from the Peter Kay nonsense?)

Now Reiss has resigned and the press, having done their bit to reduce another issue to the level of a boxing match, moves on. People like Dawkins should know better, though–it’s this kind of contemptuous fundamentalism that led to the idiocy of Creationism in the first place.

I think it’s a bad moment for atheists. We don’t come out of this one smelling good at all.