Thursday

As you are probably already aware, a woman in Nigeria is appealing her death sentence, which was given due to her having committed the heinous crime of adultery (Okay, it's not even actually adultery since she wasn't married to anybody at the time, but that's beside the point). I don't think I really need to point out how inhumanly sadistic Sharia law is, but there is another story in the news relevant to this case.

In Alabama, a state known for being marginally less fundamentally religious than Islamic Nigeria, a bunch of Christians are protesting, praying, and suing to have the ten commandments monument returned to Alabama's supreme court building lobby. I believe they would do well to read up on the previous case I mentioned as an example of what happens when the church and the state are not mutually exclusive. "Oh, but we're just trying to uphold the ten commandments, which set a proper moral code! We're not endorsing the level of insanity that those wacky muslims have.", they may say. However, a quick glance at these commandments will reveal that #7 is a decree against adultery. Guess what Moses prescribed as the punishment for adultery? You guessed it: stoning.

Tell you what, fundamentalist christians of Alabama and everywhere, unless you seriously haven't commited an offense punishable by stoning, and since you've read the bible, I'm sure you know that the top ten are only the first of many commandments, including such things as charging interest on a loan (EX 22:25) or doing any sort of work at all on a Sunday (EX 31:15)then shut the fuck up and let man handle the laws of man, and let God worry about God's laws. You can't really accuse a deity of micromanagement when He's theoretically omnipotent. If God's really so concerned about these commandments being followed, then the minute a penis touches a vagina it's not married to, there should be some lightning bolts goin' on. If all that praying these fundies are doing magically levitates the ten commandments monument back into the supreme court's rotunda, then I'll think twice about my Optimus Prime shrine, but unless they seriously dig a future in which bible cops wield full-auto stone launchers against the paperboy when he tries to deliver the Sunday funnies , then I recommend they save their breath and go home.

(Link via Jess)

Man, I really hate it when I see a person driving all crazy-like, and they've got their kid in the car. Normally, when I see a person all crazy-like, I like to fantasize about them driving onto the shoulder without signaling to overtake someone who's already going over the speed limit, and then hitting a patch of oil and spinning into a culvert, rolling over twice, and lying in a crumpled heap, nose-down and sinking into mud, as their ruptured gasoline tank drips fuel which starts pooling near the brake pedal and getting dangerously close to dropped cell phone stuck behind the gas pedal. After struggling fruitlessly to free his broken body from the twisted metal, the driver realizes that this is the end, and asks Jesus to forgive him for his life of self-absorption and inconsideration of others, but then, just before he accepts the holy light of the savior into his heart, his wife calls on the phone to let him know she's sick of his being a jerk and wants a divorce, which sparks the pool of gasoline nad ignites the pool of fuel, engulfing the car and driver in searing flames, which nicely eases his transistion into an eternity of torment in the fiery lakes of Hell.

So like, if there's a kid in the car, the fantasy is not quite as satisying, and I don't think it's fair that they should be able to rob me of that. I've tried imagining that the kid is thrown free of the wreckage and falls through the open sunroof of a passing Miata and into the arms of a caring gay couple, at which point the kid foreswears his former parents, who were raising him to be a jerk like his dad anyhow, and grows up to become a brilliant scientist who cures cancer, but I think that's a little too far fetched. If there's one thing I like my fantasies to be, it's realistic.

Perhaps a vision in which the father raises his kid to be just as much of a jerk as he is (probable), and then later, when the father is languishing in a rest home (possible), the kid is such a jerk that he doesn't ever visit. Heh heh heh, bastard... that's what he gets for driving so crazy-like!

Monday

You know, it's kind of cool when they mix creepy and cute on the tank tops with the comic books and the Roman Dirge, but it's just confusing when it happens in real life.

Hummer fan club members showed up at the dealership to show their support for their massive playschool toy cars (you can also play Spot-The-Typo with that story). I'm surprised the fan club members are still so enthused with their cars. After all, if I spent $50,000+ on a military-themed Sports Utility Vehicle, I would expect it should be able to take a little molotov cocktail. The original Hummer could drive over landmines, for crying out loud. On the other hand, I wonder how much pollution was released into the air from the ELF's fire and how much cholorflouorocarbons they put in the atmosphere with their spray paint, unless they used rollers or airbrushes or something. Looks like inanity all around.