a moment of silence (or not)

so, a new revolutionary era begins, or so some cnn type commentators would have us believe. bush was downright messianic in suggested we should rid the world of tyranny... except, hasn't that supposedly been the goal of all of humanity since the birth of our modern culture that breeds those horrible tyrants? so, it's a powerful, revolutionary message, to suggest evil exists and we should go kill it?

the only amazing thing in bush's speech was that he barely bothered with the big "terrorist" word, instead going for (or against, rather) "tyranny"

the "war on terror" (a concept and not really anything against which someone can make war) is melting into something even broader and scarier. if only we could actually use the might and riches of the united states to stop the tyrannical acts across the globe (without being tyrannical about it, ourselves, of course), if we could do that fairly and broadly, unilaterally... if we could actually be the police of the world, maybe it would come to something good... well, as good as one might expect from our modern culture, anyway. except, no one can actually expect us to be able to do any of that. we will go where there is money to be made

we don't care about "terrorists" or tyrants. well, that says it wrong. the people of the united states might care about "terrorists" or tyrants--they might also care about the streets smarts vs book smarts apprentice battle, but that won't be changing the world anytime soon, will it?--but the united states as an entity unto itself does not care about those who might do us harm except to mow them over as we head into the pastures of green (money, that is), the fields of gold (oil, that is)

that being said, i would like to officially change my view on suvs at this time. i say, now, that we all get the biggest, baddest suvs we can, the h2, the excursion, the escalade, the avalanche, the behemoth (oh wait, i think i made up that last one), and we waste as much gas as we can, just guzzle and guzzle and guzzle away. let's get the world's oil supply to dwindle at an even more alarming rate. let's just burn through it all as fast as we possibly can. hell, let's start running our appliances on it. let's stop running power plants on coal and run those on oil as well. let's make it our goal to rid the world of all oil or oil related materials by, say, 2010

then, maybe we can get the fuck on with living, without the shadow of "terrorists" or the "war on terror" and someone will have to get us a damn alternative energy source already or we'll have to start thinning the herd (or rather, it will thin itself out naturally... and you thought i was suggesting some sort of genocide, didn't you?) so we can live comfortably without the expense of other lives (human lives)

or, we could keep stepping all over foreigners, killing near-indiscriminately because we want control over all the money and fuel and damn the consequences

all hail emperor bush

8:54am pst : what the fuck is this girl singing? announcer fella (trent lott, i guess) called it the american anthem. i expected the star-spangled banner. i guess i'm at fault here

so far, there's been parading and announcing and cheney swearing in and lots of hoopla

8:56 : bush sworn in. gun salute. lovely.

supposedly his speech has been clocked at 17 minutes. that's about 16 too long for me, but i'm gonna try to watch it anyway, just cause i'm a masochist

9:02 : the first real groan, with that line about everyone in the world having equal rights cause they bear the image of the maker

9:03 : i grab the dictionary to doublecheck the definition of tyranny, since our goal is to get rid of it by force and all

9:05 : "freedom is eternally right" so why does god have rules?

9:06 : "america's belief in human dignity" like that in chomping down on bull testicles on fear factor

9:07 : i swear a soldier in the audience just rolled his eyes at the permanent tyranny/permanent slavery line

9:07 : "when you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you" or on you, if that's the way it has to be

9:08 : "rulers of outlaw regimes" - technically, bush isn't one of those anymore, is he? the lucky bastard

9:09 : "freedom's enemies" - didn't he just explain that every mind goes toward freedom? so, who are these enemies then?

9:11 : so, he's talking about the dead soldiers and it occurred to me: with all the money spent on the celebration today, could they have afforded to invite the families of the 1300 + dead soldiers to come represent their fallen family members? not that they'd want that visual a symbol of all that death, of course

9:13 : "an ownership society" - isn't that the problem? that we're all about owning everything and believing the world belongs to us?

9:15 : cool, didn't know ennoble was a word. dictionary confirmed, though, he wasn't just making up that one

9:18 : he's just rambling now, soemthing about the ebb and flow of history, the author of liberty, and something

9:19 : the liberty bell meant something when it rang?, does he really want to reference that bell as a symbol here? i mean, considering that it's been broken for years

and, he's done, and he's got that shit-eating grin going on, and i'm done for now

i'd rather let the kids watch a few cartoons than listen to anymore of this, though i'm sure i'll check in again later

ALL HAIL OUR HOLY EMPEROR BUSH (and check out that halo):

"keep contributing to the tsunami disaster"

that title comes from leonardo dicaprio, from sunday's golden globes. obviously, he meant that we should keep contributing to the relief effort, but poor wording is poor wording. so, i'm going to assume that dicaprio loves disaster and wants more of it--he did, afterall, star in the most successful disaster movie yet. we must assume a fetishistic connection there: leo loves disaster and death just like mel gibson loves torture (see the mad max trilogy, braveheart and, obviously, the passion of the christ)

of course, leo isn't the only one talking about the tsunami. it would seem all the celebrities, big or small, are getting involved. hell, there's already been a network telethon. but, i'd like to point out a few statements from some government folks

first, there's condi rice, the devil on bush's shoulder (not to imply that there isn't a devil on the other shoulder, as well). at her confirmation hearing tuesday, she said "the tsunami was a wonderful opportunity to show not just the us government, but the heart of the american people. and i think it has paid great dividends for us." isn't the kind of attitude we try to save for private government meetings, not the televised ones? sure, it makes us look good to be all helpful, but aren't we supposed to at least pretend we're doing it out of the goodness of our hearts and the righteousness of the action? should be openly helping people to try to repair our worldy image of late? or, should we be helping people because those people need help and we've taken it upon ourselves as the most powerful and rich nation on the planet to act like a real big brother (and not that literary referenced one), supportive and understanding?

so, let's turn to colin powell. "i hope that as a result of our efforts, as a result of our helicopter pilots being seen by the citizens of indonesia helping them, that value system of ours will be reinforced," he said. he might have a point if, say, we'd postponed killing muslims at the same time we went off to save some from the destruction? but, as long as we continue shooting and exploding the so-called insurgents and terrorists in iraq, not to mention the numerous innocent bystanders, can we really try to win favor with the world by helping some other folks a few thousand miles farther east? isn't all just so obviously a PR campaign if we are so selective about it? if we really cared to help people, wouldn't we be helping the innocents in iraq as well? hell, wouldn't we have offered $350 million on the first chance, rather than the $15 million and $35 million we offered instead to the tsunami relief efforts?

if you're kicking a guy while he's down, is it really much of a gesture if you help his brother up at the same time?

and, if we think the world is so bad off, the starving, the poor, all those third world folks we try not to see on those commercials that plead for donations, just pennies a day and all that jazz, shouldn't we have already been donating money to help them, even before nature threw out a big fuck you to tens of thousands of coastal dwellers?

what's the point in being great and powerful if everybody beneath us hates us? what's the point in being great and powerful if all the lowly peons and plebes are going to die from before we can exploit them to make us some nikes?

it's not real until we see it on tv
Now Playing: green day - american idiot

a little caffeine and chocolate and some medicine and i think i'm up for a blog entry, in theory. that is, i'm not feeling too great today, but after an extended weekend, i really want to be productive today anyway

thing is, just like last january, oddly enough, the world is boring. war goes on, no significant changes, no chance of a real ending anytime soon. bush gets reinnaugurated this week, and despite the talk of how way too much money is being spent on the celebration and the protestors look to suck, i'm not sure i fell like being bothered by any of it. no one is about to do anything drastic or even entertaining. it is in our cultural makeup that we will sit idly by and let the government do whatever it wants, an odd cultural twist considering this nation was built on the backs of revolutionaries and folks running from religious persecution...

we white folks need to take a cue from the blacks or the jews. if once we were persecuted, we should keep playing the victim and live our lives as if those in power are the enemy... except, the ones who were peresecuted before are now in power and the slaves and concentration camp folks still aren't getting much of it (the power, i mean)

but, it is in our cultural makeup to play ourselves as victims, isn't it, even as we contend that we are on top of the world, omnipotent and arrogant and american. we're the greatest country on the planet. but, terrorists want us dead so let's all cower...

*sigh*

not like i don't jump on that bandwagon each time i sit down to write something here. oh, woe is me, poor persecuted middle class white guy with every opportunity in the world. i got to go to a great college, so i dropped out. i had a great office job thing going, with opportunity to take on more responsibility and more hours and make a career (if you will) of it, but i quit and went back to some temp work and then nothing, trading the selling of my time for a happier existence with my wife and kids

except the world went on as it had before, indifferent to whether or not my life was better when i wasn't selling it hour by hour, doing work that served no obvious purpose. the world went on before, no matter how much i made a go at being a writer (whether in novel form, comic form or here in these political/social/cultural essays/blog entries). the war on terror followed closely on network television's war on originality and hollywood's war on depth and all that seems to be coming of any of it (the wars and rumors of wars, that is) is more of the same, one child of mother culture ruling the rest at the expense of a soul (not that i believe in that sort of thing)

i can be happy in this place, this apartment, with my kids and my wife and my books and my cds and my movies and tv and drawings and writings and i can separate my life from the world... but, what happens when the world decides i'm too loud (too outspoken, anyway)? or will it even hear me? it's not like my blog had a huge audience. it's not like my revolution is coming and everyone is just dying to get in line beside and behind me. we don't want a revolution. we just want more of the same, our country getting richer as the world gets poorer, our entertainment getting shallower as the shark infested waters of the third world get deeper, explosions on the evening news and in our saturday morning cartoons, the destruction of the world just another commodity to be bought and sold and watched between espisodes of the apprentice and without a trace and trading spouses, trading spaces, law & order and csi and... we can turn to the matrix or lost for philosophical commentary. we don't have to think about the real world as long as we can boil it down into hour long fictional blocks or even just edited down segments for reality television

there is no reality anymore. that's the way of it. as long as we can make a show about it, it isn't real enough for it to really take up our time. as long as we can put embedded reporters into the thick of things and the digital footage looks hardly more real than the latest first person shooter, why should any of us take any of it seriously? why should we care except if it doesn't bother to entertain us? then, we can change the channel to something that will and maybe send a letter to the fcc

the nazi prince, lost's garden and the fossil record

england's prince harry went as a nazi to a costume party and everybody's outraged. the simon wiesenthal center urged him to visit auschwitz, tony blair's office tried to stay out of it even as a spokesman said "clearly and error was made" and harry already apologized, saying it was a poor choice of costume

now, had he dressed up as the devil himself, would anyone have complained? or would all the little english girls already in love with him be clamoring for photos of the devilish bad boy?

dressing up in a costume does not mean one supports whatever that costume may be. you dress as spider-man, that doesn't mean you were bitten by a radioactive spider. you dress as a vampire, that doesn't mean you drink blood or support the drinking of blood. you dress as a witch, it doesn't mean you cast spells. you dress as a ballerina, that doesn't mean you even have any coordination, let alone great dancing skill. and, dressing as superman does not mean you can fly

and, dressing up as a nazi for a fucking costume party does not mean you support killing joys or invading poland or even enjoy german food. and, it is not in poor taste to wear a costume that offends someone

***

in personal news, i was a little proud of myself during lost last night. see, i've read books by the likes of daniel quinn (ishmael, my ishmael, the story of b, etc.) and i generally subscribe to the negative view as to what the agricultural revolution has done to humanity, the makeshift prison in which it has confined our culture. so, on lost last night, even after they've pointed out that there is fruit all over the place and their diets are lacking in, if anything, protein, they reveal that sun has started a garden, and yay for them, it's presented like a great idea, a wonderful solution, nevermind that there still would be a lack of protein if not for the few fish jin has been catching, as locke has not been getting any boar of late. thing is, in this very episode, it was pointed out how easily and readily available fruit was, that it was all over the damn place. 48 (less now) survivors on a tropical island, and they need a fucking garden? the plants are already growing. the fruit is already there. you don't need to line it all up and mass grow it. figure their mystery island to have a big population explosion once these folks get over the trauma of their crash and get horny

what made me proud there, you ask. well, i was proud that my dislike of their garden idea (a la the big failure of the main character in the mosquito coast), their insistence on forcing the island to fit their civilized ideals, came so naturally. i didn't have to think of it later. as soon as i saw their garden, i was annoyed, wishing that with all the veiled (and not so veiled) reference to philosophy and human nature (as animal or not) that the writers would be smart enough to have someone (even if it had to be creepy ol locke) suggest they didn't need a damn garden

maybe that invisible monster is mother culture's little sister, and the garden will be the last straw that gets her to start slaughtering these pesky little fleas that crashed onto her island

***

and, i'm tired of people pointing out the incomplete fossil record as the perfect refutation of the theory of evolution. so we haven't recovered the remains of every animal that ever lived. big fucking deal. have these theists never heard of decay or decomposition? what we have found, however much you might think it looks like it comes in bursts of change, is plenty enough to refute creation, certainly. even if you take the genesis account of creation as man's metaphor for what god did, doesn't taking millions of years to create all the various forms of life (not to mention, letting all the dinosaurs die, not a very good job on the part of an omnipotent creator) kinda make god look a little pathetic and powerless?

or are we to jump to the intelligent design theory: god created stuff then sat back. hell, let's go with the theory that there was a big bang but god started it and hasn't done a thing since. thing is, then, what point is there in worshipping said god? what point is there in even acknowledging him? if he is such a hands off god, then he has placed the universe in the hands of the scientists not the religious folks. or was he only hands off accept for when he talked to noah and moses and david and all those other bibilical folks? if we side with the religious people, we have to accept a hands on god, and that does not fit with dinosaurs or everyday evolution

and, that just won't do

my ineptitude
Now Playing: a perfect circle - mer de nom

i'm behind schedule. i should have had this entry written already. i should have been a published author by now. i should have done something revolutionary by now. but, what are schedules to we pathetic, atheist outcasts, we few, we sad few who can't be bothered to live our lives like the rest of you, cheering on wars and lamenting one group of dead strangers rather than all of them

of course, that's just another excuse in a whole line of them i've got. it's what i do

i dropped out of college not because i couldn't take it anymore but because a paperwork mix up screwed me out of my grants and i couldn't afford to keep going, not because i realized then how completely unnecessary to my life to come college would be but because of things beyond my control

i lived for years socially alone, off to see movies all the time on my own, hiding in books (written and read) and television, no friends to speak of, not because i was socially inept but because i didn't need them, because all that jazz about how humans need companionship was a bunch of bullshit...

that's got to be it, right?

i've got a wife now, three kids, no more excuses in theory. but, i've ingrained my own supposed ineptitude in my head so far down, it's hard to let go. i throw in an excessive amount of movie rentals and a new interest in and knack for cooking and complicate things further. i try my hand at a daily comic, twice, and that goes nowhere (though there were some great strips among the many examples). i run this here blog, to an audience i could probably count on one hand, and i linger on message boards and waste time online, putting off my real writing time each day (even as i look forward to it, oddly enough), and i wonder why i don't have time for more exercise than i can manage to squeeze in, why i don't have more time to coach my son in some basic knowledge and reading skills, why i have no time at all to get any of my old manuscripts reedited and submitted to agents or publishers of late

it's all the same old tired excuse. multitask enough and, on some level, it doesn't even matter if any of the tasks are ever complete. do some of the tasks really well and the rest are diminished in importance, seemingly

and, i didn't even mention obsessing over the world's politics

isn't it still the season?

'tis the season is over. christmas and going into debt to get material goods for toys because we can't be bothered to show our love in more meaningful ways is over. some christmas lights remain. some trees are still up. some people are still insisting on caring about others (when they should be back to their usual selves already) just cause a bunch of folks died on the other side of the world (how many of those who are all concerned and donating money could even point out on a map the location of sri lanka two weeks ago?)

it seems like such a nice thing to want to help, though, doesn't it? it'd be a nice thing if the world had a good disaster relief organization like we have in this country, right? it's not arrogance that brings us the rescue of everybody else, is it? and, if it is, is that so wrong? if we could rescue everyone, save everyone from evil dictators or indifferent weather, if we could unilaterally bail out everybody, that would certainly be a good. but, it seems a little odd we stand so much against the redistribution of wealth and we don't want to give handouts to those in need right here at home, but a little weather (or, technically, i guess a tsunami isn't weather, since it's caused by an earthquake and not a storm) affects people who could have prepared for it in the first place (and who our own early warning system could have warned, if we were really so concerned for their well being) and we jump right in. a leader we helped put into power takes the power his people allowed him over many years to have and suddenly he's an evil we need to jump in and destroy, nevermind that we've got our own problems (and our own leader taking liberties with removing ours)

it's a strange dichotomy, our socially accepted indifference to the suffering around the world and our ability to completely bypass that indifference for grand gestures of caring... occasionally, and as long as the local news can show us local citizens who narrowly escaped, and show us women holding dead children and families broken, homes destroyed... except, how long will it be before we stop caring again, before we all forget where sri lanka is?

thing is, why do i bother complaining when people bother to do something that, arguably, is a good thing?

maybe i'm just so in love with being contrary, i can't help it. maybe i'm just sick of hypocrites and arrogant fools who think it's their place to save the world, but only when it's convenient or the news is depressing them. maybe we should stop reporting innocuous stories about celebrities and cover all the deaths around the world, the genocides, the disasters, not just the big ones, not just the ones with convenient access to oil, but every tragedy, every life lost, and see how long we can take it before we all implode

***

that being said, i meant to do another list entry today, but the list is so long it would be another week long, multiple entry number, and i don't care to do that again, so i'll just give the list (sans commentary), my 103 rentals* from blockbuster video in the last 122 (if my count is correct) days:

1. 0911 . candyman
2. 0911 . the game
3. 0913 . the station agent
4. 0915 . tremors 4 the legend begins
5. 0915 . the shape of things
6. 0916 . ringu
7. 0917 . run lola run
8. 0918 . the awful truth season two disk one
9. 0918 . cabin fever
10. 0919 . wrong turn
11. 0921 . the eye
12. 0921 . the awful truth season two disk two
13. 0923 . mean girls
14. 0923 . jeepers creepers 2
15. 0924 . the bourne identity
16. 0924 . man on fire
17. 0925 . fearless
18. 0927 . the last samurai
19. 0927 . the shipping news
20. 0928 . rebel without a cause
21. 0928 . crouching tiger, hidden dragon
22. 1001 . outfoxed rupert murdoch?s war on journalism
23. 1001 . the deep end
24. 1002 . the weather underground
25. 1002 . dirty pretty things
26. 1005 . ladykillers
27. 1005 . super size me
28. 1009 . casa de los babys
29. 1009 . young adam
30. 1011 . gattaca
31. 1011 . darkness falls
32. 1015 . fahrenhype 9/11
33. 1015 . fahrenheit 9/11
34. 1017 . the punisher
35. 1017 . master and commander the far side of the world
36. 1019 . the day after tomorrow
37. 1019 . the lost skeleton of cadavra
38. 1021 . tomie
39. 1021 . the office the complete first series
40. 1022 . following
41. 1023 . arrested development season one disk one
42. 1023 . the game
43. 1025 . south park the passion of the jew
44. 1025 . south park bigger, longer & uncut
45. 1027 . ratcatcher
46. 1028 . arrested development season one disk two
47. 1028 . dawn of the dead
48. 1030 . touching the void
49. 1102 . galaxy quest
50. 1104 . house of sand and fog
51. 1106 . arrested development season one disk three
52. 1106 . last house on the left
53. 1111 . the stone reader
54. 1111 . the thing
55. 1113 . the hunting of the president
56. 1119 . the chronicles of riddick
57. 1119 . bush?s brain
58. 1120 . i?m not scared
59. 1120 . sliding doors
60. 1122 . a day without a mexican
61. 1123 . control room
62. 1123 . joseph campbell and the power of myth
63. 1127 . dirty pretty things
64. 1129 . the saddest music in the world
65. 1129 . uncovered the war on iraq
66. 1202 . the da vinci code decoded
67. 1202 . spider-man 2
68. 1204 . the terminal
69. 1204 . the dreamers
70. 1206 . the pink panther
71. 1206 . audition
72. 1209 . existenz
73. 1209 . the bourne supremacy
74. 1210 . cracking the da vinci code
75. 1211 . love object
76. 1213 . dodgeball a true underdog story
77. 1213 . deadline
78. 1214 . collateral
79. 1214 . unlocking da vinci?s code
80. 1215 . the door in the floor
81. 1215 . zatoichi
82. 1217 . blood work
83. 1221 . napoleon dynamite
84. 1221 . shaun of the dead
85. 1222 . corn
86. 1222 . we don?t live here anymore
87. 1223 . shrek 2
88. 1225 . the exorcist
89. 1226 . cube 2 hypercube
90. 1228 . anchorman the legend of ron burgundy
91. 1228 . garden state
92. 1228 . pitch black
93. 1230 . ghost in the shell
94. 1230 . dogma
95. 1231 . elf
96. 1231 . ghost in the shell 2 innocence
97. 0103 . king arthur
98. 0103 . grand theft parsons
99. 0105 . buckaroo bonsai
100. 0107 . the alamo
101. 0107 . dark city
102. 0110 . hero
103. 0110 . zoolander

* important to note, of course, i have the rental pass, a monthly charge for two movies at a time, for as long as i like (though i try to get my movies back as fast as i can, obviously)

addendum: the benefit of the dna record

so, yesterday, i began my entry with this: "you know, there is one real benefit from the national id card...that even its supporters are ignoring"

thing is, i never got around to mentioning what that benefit was, so i figured i'd add an addendum now. dna on record with the government will help identify the bodies when the "terrorists" come after our homeland again

sounds kinda anticlimactic now. oh well

the mark of the beast

you know, there is one real benefit from the national id card (passed through the back door of the intelligence reform and terrorism prevention act of 2004) that even its supporters are ignoring

see, they'll go into how it will protect us from terrorists (nevermind that the "hijackers" of "9/11" didn't rely on false identification. they will, of course, mention that american citizens (making sure to point notable examples like john walker lindh and richard reid) sometimes act against the interests of the homeland, but only in passing, as if it were some arbitrary aberration. we all love the homeland, of course, and we should be proud to hold onto our national id card and have our dna and fingerprints on file, and to have electronic tracking chips in our pockets (or under our skin, like they already do with some pets)

what do we have to fear anyway, as long as we don't break any laws, right? i mean, it's not like republicans target innocent people for intimidation or vote challenging or unnecessary and illegal imprisonment, right? it's not like those in power, when given more and more power, won't use it wisely at all times and never abuse any of it, never build any secret prison camps, never authorize the torture of anyone deemed to stand against the homeland until that person bothers to confess to some crime, only to ensure more torture and more unlawful imprisonment

we should all be following all the laws, anyway, of course. we should all be living our lives to the exacting standards of our nation's christian morality, living our lives by the standards of the god in which we trust. and, any who dare live any other way--well, those pinko atheist socialist fags need not apply for any national id card anyway, cause we can identify them by the numbers we tattoo on their arms in the internment camps, by the cell in which we put them in between torture sessions

of course, who am i calling "we?" afterall, this little diatribe alone would likely put me on the government hitlist a few years into the future. all it's going to take is a tiny technological advance in our surveillance, and a baby step into the arena of big brother and the antichrist's reign here on earth. too bad it's the religious Right, those most likely to believe in the antichrist, who are harbouring him as their great leader in the crusade on terror, while we atheists don't even get to argue cause we can't stand behind even the intelligent design theory attempt to believe in god without bothering with church (and isn't that just the american way?)

shall we all fall in line and bow down now? or, do we wait out each little change, each passing bill that infringes our rights just a little more, or shall we hold onto the ideal that, whether or not it might be nice if we were all law abiding citizens, it might someday come to a point where each and every one of us could face a law we won't like, and isn't the whole point of free will that we have laws and choose to follow them because it is the right thing to do and not because we will be punished... oh wait, that way of thinking went the way of the dodo and that christ fella, tortured and killed on the cross, didn't it?

and, what happens when our blogs are linked to our dna, when all anonymity goes out the door and only the loudest get to not only rule but even have any say at all? what will constitute traitorous acts against the homeland in a future where our every movement and our every word can be recorded and tracked?

where can our mayflower go? or, is it possible to change this "homeland" of ours for the better, to break the system even while remaining inside it?

antony flew the coop
Mood:  irritated

• "A British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century has changed his mind"
• "British philosopher Antony Flew has been called the world's most influential philosophical atheist"
• "After half a century the leading atheism proponent in the world now concludes that there is/was a God"

thing is:

1. never heard of him
2. don't care if he'll settle for the cop out of a god who created shit but now keeps his hands off
3. don't much care for philosphers in general anyway
4. really don't care for how it took like a dozen or more sites to even find different wording (i was going to quote a whole list of lines about him, but most news sites just used the AP article, pretty much verbatim)

see, this flew guy, who apparently was the god among atheists, to coin a phrase, decided that the intelligent design theory is the way to go after years of demanding that theists find the evidence for god

see, he can't figure out (and can't seem to find a scientist to explain it to him well enough) how the first organisms came into being. me--i think it's fairly simple. all the organisms we've got now are based around dna, which is nothing but chains of proteins which are nothing but strings of amino acids, which, belive it or not, are quite simple molecular constructs. and, it's in their nature to join together, and in the nature of the resulting proteins to also join together, and there you get dna, which is the basic building block of life. and, even if you can't pinpoint the exact moment when such chains started moving and living, does that really mean you jump on the intelligent design bandwagon?

and, if you do jump on that bandwagon, then don't you have to explain how god came to be? if you insist on explanations, then take it all the way, or accept at face value what is obvious and evident, that lifeforms evolve from generation to generation. and, no one can debate that, unless he has a serious mental defect. all you need is a group of more than one person or animals and take a look at the differences between them. if there was no evolution, they would be identical. of course, the devout religious freaks don't get that. they hear the word evolution, get offended that we're calling their parents monkeys and flip a switch in their heads that turn off their ears, not to mention the logical parts of their brains

nah, let's forget all the evidence. let's all bow down to the magic man in the moon (or sun, rather, since even a lot of what makes christ what he is today comes from earlier sun worship) and praise him and may he bless us all, keep us safe from the wars we wage

and, however many people read this flew guy's work, however many people loved it and learned from it, were changed by it, we (atheists, that is) don't have a christ, a pope, even a minister. we don't need spokespeople and teachers (though the latter can be helpful and the former could be useful). we don't need a savior, especially not some guy who got old and settled for the incomplete intelligent design theory

and, on a tangent here, why can't the news people write their own articles rather than regurgitate the AP words? why spread the same bits of information by so many means when we could all just as easily subscribe to the AP wire? how about we get some different points of view in the news (in regards to fallen atheists or the war on terror or that damn tsunami)