It seems to me that we should pay close attention when people say they are about to rise to the defense of an abstract noun, as do our friendly right-wing Christian brothers and sisters.
There exists in certain religious societies a special police force whose entire raison d'etre is the 'protection from vice and the promotion of virtue'.
On the face of it this sounds like a wonderful organization, working towards a lofty goal.
However, when one examines the acts of these police men (for reasons inscrutable these are almost always men) one can not help but wonder if there isn't another motive behind their actions, something very different from the noble enterprise of protecting the citizenry from vice.
For those of you who do not know of what I speak, I shall be happy to provide you with video evidence of how these men protect, with merciless rod and cast stone, all that is good and just in the eyes of their God, via private email, as I fear that posting a video link on this public blog may disturb the emotional equilibrium of some.
To the point of the marriage of homosexual couples; I live on a quiet, tree-lined street, and our neighborhood is one of harmony and respect, and it is wholly unblemished,thank Heaven, by the scourge of violent crime which plagues so many of our cities.
At the very end of our street cohabit two wonderful and somewhat epicene ladies, who bake astonishingly tasty apple pies.
If our religious brethren are correct then our little haven of tranquility and peace shall suffer a blow from which it may never recover when in the night-stand drawer of the aforementioned ladies shall be placed a piece of paper with some signatures on it.
No doubt it is due to my intellectual deficiencies and the rampant truancy of my misspend youth that I fail to see just how exactly all this prophesized mayhem and murder will come about.
In my country of birth, The Netherlands, gay people have acquired the right to marry years ago and, strange to say, by some divine miracle, the country has so far been spared chaos, famine and general unpleasantness.
If I didn't know any better I would almost conclude that the self-appointed (and always God-invoking) legislators of public morality, while claiming to protect virtue, are primarily motivated by an altogether different, base and very unchristian desire to kick someone in the balls with great force, for no other reason then that they seem to get pleasure out of the act.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Vincent's wish list
It is that time of year again when I send a supplication Northward to St. Nicholas containing my dearest wishes for the coming year of our Lord 2010.
As is tradition, this list will take the form of a summary of ghastly individuals whom I most dearly wish to see publicly humiliated, whipped and beaten in the town's square and dipped in tar and feathers,followed by a hasty sterilization and prompt banishment to the Hebrides.
Note: since Janet Jackson and Adam Sandler have already been listed for 3 years in a row,they have been omitted from this year’s list,even though they most certainly belong there for various heinous offenses against common decency and everything that is just and beautiful in this land of ours.
So here they are.
Have your bucket and a strong doze of smelling salt at the ready.
1 Katie Couric
2 That psycho bitch from Alaska
3 Everyone involved in marketing
4 James Dobson
5 People over the age of 12 who read Harry Potter books
6 Mormons and all other Nazis who supported Prop 8 in California
7 Mahmoud Ahmadinnerjacket
8 That little mindless trollop who is infected with Billy Ray Sirus’ obscene and ridiculous DNA
9 Dinesh D’Souza and similar nauseating petulant right-wing cocksuckers
10 Alan Greenspan
11 Everyone who is worth more than 10 million dollars
12 Oprah Winfrey
13 The audience of Oprah Winfrey
14 Hedge fund managers
15 And, of course, Kenny G.
As is tradition, this list will take the form of a summary of ghastly individuals whom I most dearly wish to see publicly humiliated, whipped and beaten in the town's square and dipped in tar and feathers,followed by a hasty sterilization and prompt banishment to the Hebrides.
Note: since Janet Jackson and Adam Sandler have already been listed for 3 years in a row,they have been omitted from this year’s list,even though they most certainly belong there for various heinous offenses against common decency and everything that is just and beautiful in this land of ours.
So here they are.
Have your bucket and a strong doze of smelling salt at the ready.
1 Katie Couric
2 That psycho bitch from Alaska
3 Everyone involved in marketing
4 James Dobson
5 People over the age of 12 who read Harry Potter books
6 Mormons and all other Nazis who supported Prop 8 in California
7 Mahmoud Ahmadinnerjacket
8 That little mindless trollop who is infected with Billy Ray Sirus’ obscene and ridiculous DNA
9 Dinesh D’Souza and similar nauseating petulant right-wing cocksuckers
10 Alan Greenspan
11 Everyone who is worth more than 10 million dollars
12 Oprah Winfrey
13 The audience of Oprah Winfrey
14 Hedge fund managers
15 And, of course, Kenny G.
'Tis the season to be cantacerous
I’ll make an exception for the kids and perhaps even for that curious winter solstice ritual of decorating a pine tree, but besides that Christmas blows and it blows thus.
I’ve worked in the shipping industry for most of my adult life,but even most lay people who are only occasionally alert will have noticed that all this holiday hullabaloo is first and foremost about using a crass mixture of religious inanity and pagan myths to rake in some good-old cash.
So much so that all the importers start filling the container ships, coming from you-know-where, as early as July, to have the shelves of the big-box stores stocked for the mindless cattle that will come crowding through the automatic doors as soon as the Halloween starter pistol has gone off.
The herd will obediently -and precisely on cue- run, shop and drool all the way through Thanksgiving,and their Pavlovian, spastic purchasing delirium will rise to a feverish crescendo when Christmas, that grand-daddy of all excess consumerism, looms into their blinkered view.
In January the sales start to milk the exhausted wallets just a little bit more.
If people actually enjoyed spending that elephantine pile of money on all that useless crap, like giant plastic inflatable Santas, I wouldn’t mind so much.
Take a look around in your local mall in the weeks before Christmas and try to detect even a hint of bliss on the faces of these well-trained bovine creatures as they wrestle their way through the crowded parking lots and food courts and stores.
Oh boy, are they having fun!
And if you are hell-bent on being of good cheer, I have no idea why you are waiting for permission from the GAP's marketing division to adopt this attitude, and why restrict all this loving of your fellow humans to a few days in December?
Mandatory fun is seldom fun at all and that is my biggest beef with frigging Christmas.
Giving someone a present is great, as is getting together with friends and family for a good dinner.
But to do so because it is a certain date takes all the fun out of it and makes the present-giving ceremony empty and even slightly suspect.
My hunch is that most people go along with all this proscribed and costly ‘fun’ because they are afraid to actually give shape to their own lives and live on their own terms.
And don't get me started on the scrotum-crushing Christmas ‘music’ that I will have to endure in every elevator and every grocery store from Thanksgiving to December 25; those same 23 god awful shitty songs, every fucking year!
I swear, I will dig up Bing Crosby and shoot him in the head if I hear that crappy, sentimental garbage [also the best-selling song of all times] one more jingling time.
There is something disturbingly vacuous and even indecent about people who go all misty-eyed over the simulacrum of a time and place, full of carolers and rosie-cheeked uncles with arms full of gift-wrapped toys, that never existed; fake memories, false sentiment.
God damn you,Thomas Kinkade!
Christmas ?
Humbug !
I’ve worked in the shipping industry for most of my adult life,but even most lay people who are only occasionally alert will have noticed that all this holiday hullabaloo is first and foremost about using a crass mixture of religious inanity and pagan myths to rake in some good-old cash.
So much so that all the importers start filling the container ships, coming from you-know-where, as early as July, to have the shelves of the big-box stores stocked for the mindless cattle that will come crowding through the automatic doors as soon as the Halloween starter pistol has gone off.
The herd will obediently -and precisely on cue- run, shop and drool all the way through Thanksgiving,and their Pavlovian, spastic purchasing delirium will rise to a feverish crescendo when Christmas, that grand-daddy of all excess consumerism, looms into their blinkered view.
In January the sales start to milk the exhausted wallets just a little bit more.
If people actually enjoyed spending that elephantine pile of money on all that useless crap, like giant plastic inflatable Santas, I wouldn’t mind so much.
Take a look around in your local mall in the weeks before Christmas and try to detect even a hint of bliss on the faces of these well-trained bovine creatures as they wrestle their way through the crowded parking lots and food courts and stores.
Oh boy, are they having fun!
And if you are hell-bent on being of good cheer, I have no idea why you are waiting for permission from the GAP's marketing division to adopt this attitude, and why restrict all this loving of your fellow humans to a few days in December?
Mandatory fun is seldom fun at all and that is my biggest beef with frigging Christmas.
Giving someone a present is great, as is getting together with friends and family for a good dinner.
But to do so because it is a certain date takes all the fun out of it and makes the present-giving ceremony empty and even slightly suspect.
My hunch is that most people go along with all this proscribed and costly ‘fun’ because they are afraid to actually give shape to their own lives and live on their own terms.
And don't get me started on the scrotum-crushing Christmas ‘music’ that I will have to endure in every elevator and every grocery store from Thanksgiving to December 25; those same 23 god awful shitty songs, every fucking year!
I swear, I will dig up Bing Crosby and shoot him in the head if I hear that crappy, sentimental garbage [also the best-selling song of all times] one more jingling time.
There is something disturbingly vacuous and even indecent about people who go all misty-eyed over the simulacrum of a time and place, full of carolers and rosie-cheeked uncles with arms full of gift-wrapped toys, that never existed; fake memories, false sentiment.
God damn you,Thomas Kinkade!
Christmas ?
Humbug !
Sunday, December 6, 2009
The parson's charnel house
” When I had reached the age of falling in love, there was only the war, so I fell in love with it “
This quote is from Guy Sajer, author of ‘Forgotten Soldier’, the memoir of a German soldier in WW2.
All children of average intelligence and sensitivity reach an age when they become fascinated with the world and want to understand it and discover its secrets.
Throughout the ages, the Church has forcibly funneled all that starry-eyed wonder into the Christian doctrine, where it was warped,suffocated and finally murdered by the hideous twin doctrines of fear and guilt.
This irrescindable iniquity inflicted upon the young by maladjusted and sinister shamans is so heinous and vile that I shall never forgive the parsons for it, no matter how demurely they smile or cloak their insidious, bronze-age poison in loquacious sophistry.
This quote is from Guy Sajer, author of ‘Forgotten Soldier’, the memoir of a German soldier in WW2.
All children of average intelligence and sensitivity reach an age when they become fascinated with the world and want to understand it and discover its secrets.
Throughout the ages, the Church has forcibly funneled all that starry-eyed wonder into the Christian doctrine, where it was warped,suffocated and finally murdered by the hideous twin doctrines of fear and guilt.
This irrescindable iniquity inflicted upon the young by maladjusted and sinister shamans is so heinous and vile that I shall never forgive the parsons for it, no matter how demurely they smile or cloak their insidious, bronze-age poison in loquacious sophistry.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Stripped
The plane is flat and gray and there is nothing there but rocks and ash and there is nothing green to eat.
It goes on forever, without end, and only the wolves are not afraid and they accept the plane the way it is.
There are other creatures, delirious and crazy.
They tell stories to each other of waterfalls and lily pads.
They all know someone who has seen them but none of them have seen them with their own eyes.
The wolves, tall and thin, their coats ragged and gray, walk stoically and without rest.
They go side by side, their teeth glistening and their yellow eyes fixed on the horizon.
One almost falls out of step and the others snarl and growl and afterwards they walk in unison again.
They take pride in knowing that they are the toughest and brightest and meanest on the whole godforsaken plane that goes on without purpose, and with no end.
It goes on forever, without end, and only the wolves are not afraid and they accept the plane the way it is.
There are other creatures, delirious and crazy.
They tell stories to each other of waterfalls and lily pads.
They all know someone who has seen them but none of them have seen them with their own eyes.
The wolves, tall and thin, their coats ragged and gray, walk stoically and without rest.
They go side by side, their teeth glistening and their yellow eyes fixed on the horizon.
One almost falls out of step and the others snarl and growl and afterwards they walk in unison again.
They take pride in knowing that they are the toughest and brightest and meanest on the whole godforsaken plane that goes on without purpose, and with no end.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Polisher's rouge for aspiring philosophers
The inversion of any hyper-inflated model for social co-dependence will inevitably lead to either the erosion of the agreed upon meta-equilibrium or the crypto-fascist coercion by the Alpha males in the core group of Kekkonian “in-out-out-in” enablers who will then inevitably drift to the outer perimeters of said system where they become the primary violators of the very social mores they had dedicated themselves to in the first place.
I have no idea why people find this so hard to comprehend.
I have no idea why people find this so hard to comprehend.
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