Horror Story: Memories Along a Fault Line (Part One).

      Lying next to him, feeling his heart beating inside of his chest, the beat strong and rhythmic, not arrhythmic, irregular, weak, or, perhaps (no, Bonnie, not perhaps, certainly) best of all, not the pounding, alacritous pattern known as tachycardia, she could hardly believe that the events in Pittsburgh had actually occurred.
    
  Ah, but you have the scar to prove it, don't you Bonnie? she thought. You know the one you instinctively run your finger alongside when you get anxious? Especially if that anxiety revolves around Bobby.

      Bonnie pushed the thought aside, and held tighter to Bobby as she closed her eyes and willed her nervous system to begin what she thought of as the shutdown routine, which was how she visualized her bodies' preparations for sleep. A computer, shutting down for the night, only to (hopefully) reboot in the morning, refreshed and strong, ready to tackle the day's challenges. She clung tight to Bobby and, feeling the patterns of both his respiration and pulse (both strong and exuding a comforting vitality, even in their sleep slowed states) she slowly plunged downwards into one of Poe's little slices of death; a night's slumber. And, as they often did, the events from the time spent in Pittsburgh revisited her during the night.

      There hadn't been any shouts of “The power of Christ compels you!” There had not been any pea soup vomit; nor had there been any three hundred and sixty degree head revolutions or any walking down stairs in a wholly terrifying upside down crab like shuffle. No “your mother sucks cock!” No masturbation with a crucifix. The events was no less serious; it was much more so, in fact, as the events in Pittsburgh had not been contained to the fantastical realm of the film woven through a movie reel. They may have been less, well, theatrical, but they were much more disconcerting. Much more terrifying.
   
       What preceded the events of that night was a slow but steady change in personality. Bobby's usual cheery demeanour had, in March of 1994, begun to show signs of intermittent slippage, almost like wear and tear on spark plugs resulting in the occasional misfire or hindered turnover. By September, these misfirings had almost become as probable as a normally Bobby day. In December, the mental abuse had begun.

      It had started with an incorrect bill payment. More to the point, Bonnie had accidentally overpayed on the previous months' gas bill, and Bobby had lashed out in a vitriolic stream of shouted curses and insults. Really nasty, horrible things, unwarranted, certainly, but more than that; the were completely and utterly without precedent. Even with his puzzling slow but steady decline in affect, he had never, ever been downright malicious, and in the time Bonnie had come to think of as Before, he would never had come even remotely close to admonishing her with any real expressed anger over something so trivial, let alone actually verbally assaulting her, but on December 4th, of 1994, sitting at the kitchen table, going over the financial records for the previous month and stumbling upon an overpaid gas bill dated November 17th, Bobby had marked a milestone in his After period by verbally abusing his wife Bonnie.
    
    There he was, in vivid detail, again at the kitchen table. His black hair damp against his forehead as he literally poured over the bills, paying excruciatingly close attention to all manner of fine detail; detail so fine it was not exaggeration to refer to it simply as minutia; the sort of stuff the Before Bobby would have skipped over with a wave of his hand, if any outward expression at all. Not this new Bobby, however. And certainly not this month, which seemed to be the worst thus far in a linear progression of a steadily worsening demeanour, slightly noticeable on a day to day basis, very noticeable if you backed up and took a month by month perspective on things. From that angle, you could almost see the trend angling upwards, plotted on a graph in black magic marker, with months listed along the X axis, and 'negativity intrusions upon the affect' on the Y axis. One could even imagine the title of the imaginary plotted figure, if one were so inclined: 'Inverse Relationship Between Positive Affect and the Passage of Time in Unceremoniously and Inexplicably Changed Males.' A word other than 'changed' occurred to Bonnie
    
     (possessed)
    
     but she did not pay it any heed. Even in sleep, the word was one that haunted her, and she would try her damnedest to avoid consciously thinking of it.

      Bonnie had been sitting across from him, watching as he spent several minutes per bill, agonizing over every detail, his brow soaked with sweat and his jet black hair, hair that Bonnie had, innumerable times over the course of their eight year marriage, run her fingers through, both in the throes of passion and outside of that aspect of the marital relationship, dampened with sweat, stuck to hi anyways). He tossed the bill he was currently examining aside and brought the next one to the front of the pile. He began to move his lips as he read the contents of the bill, and Bonnie had time to note two things before the events of the day, acting, unbeknownst to her at the time, as a harbinger of (much worse) things to come, took a turn for the worse.

     The first thing she noted was that for as long as she had known him, she had never witnessed him mouthing along with whatever it was that he was reading, and yet now he had been lightly reading aloud everything that he would normally have tackled silently, since the onset of whatever it was he was currently afflicted with. And this observation was the genesis for the second observation, which, while seemingly undeniable, was something that she wished she could both unsee and especially unhear: Bobby was reading aloud everything that he was reading while he was reading it........except he was reading aloud in a very ancient sounding language, a language that Bonnie was positive that he did not know........and he was reading in someone (or something) else's voice.

      His voice sounded thick, dark, leathery, scratchy, and old. Very, very, very old. It was a voice that conveyed an immense age, an immeasurable amount of power, and, just under the surface, perhaps more perceptible to some than to others, a hint of malicious intent. A malignancy bubbling beneath the surface, like the cancerous cells of a tumour rapidly metastasizing just beneath the surface of the skin; a dangerous process thinly veiled by the faintest of covers.

     The sound of that voice brought a chill to Bonnie's spine.

     Transfixed, Bonnie sat and observed her husband pour over utility bills with a fine toothed comb, until he hit upon something that stopped him dead in his tracks, bringing an end to the sound of that voice, and when he next spoke, at a normal (well, slightly raised), volume, it was with his own voice, and it was in English. Not a trace of any foreign languages or strange voices were to be heard.
     Had she imagined it?
    
    Did I really hear that, she had wondered, or was I imagining it? She knew that her husband's sporadic, often incomprehensible (compared to his norm) behaviour as of late could easily have inspired such an, such a (what? Hallucination? Vision? Aural imagining?), well, such an event . Well, either way, it was a non issue at the moment, because he husband's voice was back to normal, except for one little detail.

     He was shouting and cussing at her, hurling nasty insults like little invisible javelins; javelins that cut through the fabric of relationships that is woven between two individuals. Throw enough of them and that fabric is ripped apart, severing the ties that bind.

     Pulled away from her thoughts, and brought back to the reality of the moment, his voice suddenly swelled and filled her realm of comprehension like sound returning to the world when resurfacing after an underwater dive. Momentary confusion cannibalized by sudden clarity and a return to normal comprehension. Only this time, there was nothing normal to comprehend. Never in his Before period had Bobby acted in such a way.

      A nasty array of words, concocted and issued side by side and simultaneously, all with a singular goal: to hurt. To admonish, to chastise, to rebuke. All because of a simple error: the accidental overpayment of a gas bill (which of course could easily be rectified, with the aid of a simple phone call and perhaps ten to fifteen minutes to reach the proper channels and enter the appropriate information).

     The insults and curses kept coming, but now they were fading, fading away, as the dream shifted (as dreams so often do) forward in time, from December of 1994 to February of 1995, which was about a month shy of the one year anniversary of the beginning of the period Bonnie had come to know as Bobby's After period.

     The February-March 1995 period of their Pittsburgh ordeal played out rather quickly in reality, but in the Wild West that was time constraint in the world of dreams, the ordeal played out in the theatre of Bonnie's mind in mere seconds. As her eyes danced the dance of dreams in their sockets, her dreaming mind replayed the least few significant and terrifying events of the period of their lives known to her as either The Pittsburgh Ordeal, or Bobby's After period.

     Dinner table, sometime in February. Bonnie watching in perplexed horror as Bobby slowly cut a gash into his left wrist using the steak knife which he grasped in his right hand. He started at the palm of his hand, and worked his way up, only stopping after cutting a gash six or seven inches long, at which time he affixed his horrified wife with a gaze that screamed insanity; eyes bug eyed and bloodshot, black hair standing on end, right hand holding onto the knife still digging into the flesh of his left wrist. After staring at the horrified Bonnie for several seconds, seconds which had seemed to her in the moment to be successive eternities, he spoke, and for the first time since December that other voice had returned, but this time it managed to speak a broken sort of English, although said English was couched in random segments of what appeared to be nothing but gibberish.

     “Entah, untah, down the street, ugang, lugang, not across the road, barkah, sparkah, bitch slut hoe, twinkle toe, happah, dappah, that will be $3.99 bitch, you pay, I play, a love lost.” Bobby chanted this strange lullaby of insanity before bursting out into a strangled sounding, screeching sort of laughter.

     Even in the dream, Bonnie felt the ice cold fear grip her chest and run its marble fingers down her spine, in that practised way it had, having of course done it for time immemorial. She sat there, a prisoner in the iron grip of fear, completely at a loss as to what, if any, her next course of action should be.

     The dream, however, decided for her. Flash ahead to later that month.

     The bedroom, night. Bobby and Bonnie were engaged in lovemaking, their bodies draped together, limbs entwined, joined at member and mouth, Bonnie grateful for the break in Bobby's condition. They were far more sporadic now, but they still (fortunately) occurred. Like a break in stormy weather, when the rain would stop and the sun would break through the clouds, casting its exalting glow over the gloomy, rain soaked day, Bobby, the real Bobby, would break through for a while, and Bonnie, often dizzy with gratitude, would come at him with a barrage of questions and ideas, which all boiled down to you need help and we can do this together, both of which would be met with a very mild rebuke, the prevailing sentiment being I'm fine, it's just a bit of stress, it'll pass.

      Of course, Bonnie was never satisfied, and she also knew better; however, she would also be so thrilled (and relieved) to have her Bobby back for the time being that she would drop the matter in favour of conversation, lovemaking, a meal, whatever. Just average, everyday, boring old married couple things that, when they occurred so few and far between, felt more like a honeymoon than they did boring old marital activities. Even something as mundane as cleaning the house together would feel exquisite. Yet, Bobby never seemed to share in her joy, at least not to the same extent she felt it. It was as though he was unaware of the true extent of his condition and therefore was always slightly bemused when he would be met with an absolutely ecstatic wife upon the discovery that he was in one of what she came to think of as his refractory periods, a designation whose subtext was not lost on her.


     And so they were enjoying eachother on an intimate level during one of Bobby's refractory periods when something unprecedented occurred. Up until that point, Bobby's slippage in and out of his condition was preceded by, and took place during, sleep. However, this time he had transitioned during wakefulness, and it happened so suddenly that Bonnie was at first unaware. One moment she was underneath her husband, who was slowly making love to her, rhythmically synching his movements with hers, and the next she was underneath a madman whose thrusts were crazed and desperate. Animalistic and crude, she was being taken as opposed to being enjoyed, and when she looked up into her husband's face, an inquisitive look still forming upon her own, what she saw would haunt her for the rest of her natural life.

     In place of her husband's face was a grinning, gleaming human skull, with a ring of fire for hair, and a crimson mask, likely blood, upon its cheeks. When she glanced up at the dead thing ravaging her from the inside, just as she screamed, it cackled and dropped her a stomach churning wink, as if to say “Is it as good for you as it is for me, baby?”

CONCLUSION

A Moment of Self Indulgence...Please Forgive Me ;)

I'm in the process of writing a new short story (entitled 'Memories Along a Fault Line') and I am re-reading what I have thus far before I continue on with the tale. Anyways, as I was just reading it, I was impressed with a particular passage, so much so that I thought I would indulge in uncharacteristic showmanship and post it here, becase, damn it, I may not be great but I have moments of well, something approaching greatness (or perhaps I am deluded) and this passage exemplifies this:

Pulled away from her thoughts, and brought back to the reality of the moment, his voice suddenly swelled and filled her realm of comprehension like sound returning to the world when resurfacing after an underwater dive. Momentary confusion cannibalized by sudden clarity and a return to normal comprehension.

I like that passage, especially the phrase "momentary confusion cannibalized by sudden clarity."

I'm going to forsake my usual (not phony, either) modesty and allow myself some hubris: FUCK that's a good phrase!

Mometary confusion cannibalized by sudden clarity.

Damn, that's good shit.

...I think :)

The Answers Lie Just Out of Reach (post 2 for the Day!)

The answers lie just out of reach....

He turned to her, and in a rare moment of immodesty and uninhibited vulnerability, he laid his weary head on her bare shoulder, and, taking in the smell of her perfume (he couldn't place the scent, but he knew it was cheap, and this only served to widen his despair) he spoke.

''The truth lies just across the pond, and the water is shallow; however, I have not the energy to wade that chasm, for its depth is deceptive. The answers will take that pond and render it an ocean, one I have not the means, nor the will, to cross. And so, at the risk of remaining ignorant, I must stay on land, and watch as both my feet and my resolve dry up and whither away to a fine dust, which, with the first cool breeze, will be picked up and strewn across that very pond, in the ultimate act of irony. For you see, there is irony in death, and the ironic thig is, I welcome that loathsome state, for with its barreness and melancholoy, it brings the thing I crave least, and most: rest. Rest for the weary head I know rest upon your overburndened and sun kissed shoulder.

I love you, Melinda, but I also despise you, and you me.

Come with me, if you will.''

And, rasing his weary head, he held out his hand. Without waiting to see if she would grasp it, he waded out into the body of water, and, as she watched, sheltering her eyes from the sun which glistened brightly, almost obscenely, off of its serene surface, the body of water opened up and swalloed him whole. The cavernous maw of irony had taken him, and she knew that it was for the best. Sighing, she waded in after him.

Don't ask. This was just a random, impromptu thing I typed up in the middle of a conversation about finding answers and wading in the dark, stumbling around blind until your way is illuminated by knowledge, and how sometimes the journey is so difficult we don't embark upon it.....or we do, but we do it reluctantly, and sometimes wish we didn't have this passion residing within us. How easy it would be! To just forsake the truth for whatever explanation pampered us.

How easy, indeed.

Oh, speaking of easy.....

Draw Muhammad Day: A Post Hoc Analysis

Note: This is an older post that I had sitting around in draft form. Excuse the slightly belated timing.

Here's a barely literate post from a jackass I unfortunately have to deal with on occasion on an internet forum speaking about Draw Muhammad Day:

I am all for freedom of speech, whether it will insult billions of people or not, since i can tolerate it. i, along with billions others are not stupid enough to start threatening people over it or send death threats over it or even kill a few of it. because we Muslims werent TAUGHT to react like that. but the moment some of you start taking the piss out of us INNOCENT people just because of a bunch of minority dumbasses, then its clearly obvious, that whatever shit your doing, was simply not gonna work. coz like i have been saying all along: you can express freedom of speech, but insulting people is not the RIGHT and FAIR way to do it.

Now, this is the type of sentiment I have seen expressed quite a bit since all of this has come to light. People who claim to be all for free speech (before adding conditions to it; cleary they don't actually grasp the concept of 'free,' but I digress) stating that Draw Muhhamad Day is not an exercise in free speech but rather a day meant to do nothing but insult and enrage.

These people have missed the point entirely.

Granted, I do concede that for many, Draw Muhhamad Day, or DMD, as I will refer to it going forward, was an excuse to insult and enrage. But for the rest, DMD represented exactly what it was purported to: a day dedicated to free speech and the exercise thereof. Well, that, and more. Much more.

See, the people making these sort of claims with respect to DMD don't seem to grasp the other point of the day at all. The day was dedicated to the exercise of free speech, yes, but also, and perhaps just as (even more?) importantly, it was dedicated to consciousness raising, to borrow from Dawkins. The message needed to be sent and reinforced: Non Islamic people do NOT live by Islamic law. We are not bound by it, we do not recognize it, and we are not duty bound to heap upon it any reverence or respect. In fact, we're free to admonish it and heap disdain and insults upon it and its followers if we so desire. The point is, no matter how far one does (or does not) take it, the message was that YOU say drawing this man is verboten. Okay, fine. That applies to you, but you do NOT get to dictate to the rest of the world what we can and cannot do.

They do not consider themselves bound by Christian or Hindu laws, correct? What makes them think an atheist or  a Christian would be bound by the laws of their religion? The point was to drive home this very, well, point (awkward phrasing FTL). Basically, DMD was supposed to:

1. Drive home the idea that we are not bound by Islamic law. 
2. Demonstrate how silly it is to be mortally offended by a drawing. It's completely silly.
3. Exercise our free speech and show those who would like to take it away that we will not allow them to do so. 
4. Show people that free speech means free speech. Free speech is only free if it is not restricted, and so, if you must reign in or attenuate your speech in any way, then it's not free. Sure, self censorship is fine, and perhaps even ideal at times, but note the preface: Self. Being FORCED to censor oneself violates the very idea of free speech.
5. To show all religious practitioners that the days of religion getting a free pass are numbered. Any and all ideas should be up for scrutiny, and any and all religious commands are apt to be disregarded, especially by those who aren't in the religion to begin with.  

I'm not advocating that anyone go out of their way to insult a large group of people. At the same time though, sometimes the end justifies the means, and if we must offend a group of people en route to making an important point, then so be it. And, frankly (here comes the insulting part) if a bunch of adults are going to get offended at a stick figure drawing with a man's name above it, they seriously, seriously need to step back and re-evaluate things. They're nothing but irrational, emotive, reactionary morons at that point, especially if they think a death threat is warranted.

And to think the whole ban on drawings came out of the concept of idolatry (yes, just like xianity). How the hell does anyone think idolatry is relevant to someone who disbelieves in god in the first place?

Talk about irrational belief......

Christianity in a Nutshell (Brand NEW, not a copy)

Once upon a time, there was this eternal being named Yahweh (who was also referred to as simply God). This god character existed in an absolute vacuum with respect to time and space; ie, he existed within nothingness. This eternal being who existed in nothingness and would eventually be referred to as the very thing which he was (god) was lonely and decided to create some creatures to keep him company. With his infinite power and imagination, he created finite, fragile, bipedal creatures known as human beings. Of course, before he did this, he had to create a plane of existence in which we could live, and so, god created the universe. In six days.

That's right, god created an inconceivably gigantic universe just for us human beings in six days, although these days were, at least according to some, actually each about a thousand or so years long, as opposed to the 24 hour long periods of time we have since encapsulated and called days. Length of the six days (or “days,” if you prefer) aside, god then planted a bunch of evidence to make it seem as though we are the products of 2 billion years or so of evolution, and the universe in which we exist is 14 billion years old. Why did he do this? I don't know.....*shakes head* but anyways, again, I find myself digressing.

After making this mischievously much-younger-than-the-evidence-seems-to-tell-us universe just for us, he created a paradise within it called the Garden of Eden, and in that garden he placed the very first of us. Two brand spanking new, completely innocent, completely naked humans (foreskin and all), frolicking in this amazing garden called Eden. These humans were named Adam and Eve (not Adam and Steve lololololol aren't we clever!!).

Of course, god, being omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipresent and omnipotent, decided to create a tree of knowledge, which he did not want them to eat from, and which, if they did eat from it, would cast them into eternal disrepute with their creator god who created both their curiosity and the tree on which they could exercise said curiosity. Following this stroke of genius, he then created a talking snake to tell them to eat from the tree. After Eve listened to the snake, and ate from the tree, god got pissed off at them and decided that they and all future generations should be punished for their sins.

After many incest fuelled generations had passed, god decided that things weren't working out, and so he did a do-over (took a mulligan, for you golfers). This do-over, or mulligan, took the form of killing everyone and everything on the Earth, with the exception of 2 of every “kind” of animal, a 600 year old man named Noah, and his family. God instructed Noah to build a gigantic wooden arc, which was designed to house all of the animals as well as Noah and his family, so that they could all survive the giant worldwide flood that god was about to unleash in order to kill everyone and everything (except for his chosen boat friends).

This worldwide flood mysteriously went unnoticed by the ancient civilizations that were well under way during that time, but to be fair, the flood was one of those “blink and you'll miss it” worldwide floods. In fact, the water disappeared afterwards, never to be seen again.

After a number of years of re-population through incest (always a biblical favourite), god selected a small group of Jewish people from Israel, known as Israelites, to be his special group. He then appeared to Moses, a burly Egyptian, in a burning bush, told him to remove his sandals (sense of propriety and what not) and then, once Moses had removed his sandals, he told Moses to travel back to Egypt in order to free god's chosen group of Jews from slavery.

Moses expressed doubt that the Israelites would believe that he was sent by god, and so god turned Moses’ stick into a snake and subjected his skin to leprosy, in order to show him how he would convince the people. God then told Moses that if the Israelites still did not believe him that Moses should give them an encore and take water from the river Nile (fantastic death metal band, btw), and pour it into the sand because it would turn to blood and that should convince them that Moses was legit.

With me so far?

Good, let's continue our tale.

Ocne Moses arrived in Egypt, he encountered Pharaoh and asked for the Israelites to be freed. God, playing double agent for the lulz, hardened Pharaoh’s heart, which resulted in his refusal to let Moses' people go. The fact that god got exactly what god wanted when he hardened Pharaoh's heart pissed god off, as god doesn't like getting exactly what he bargained for. God liked surprises goddamn it. And so, in the spirit of being an incredible asshole, god released a series of 10 plagues upon Egypt.

1)He turned all of the water in Egypt into blood, and killed all of the fish.

2)He unleashed an infestation of Frogs.

3)He sent Lice to crawl over every man, woman and beast that lived in the land.

4)God then sent a cloud of insects to attack the people.

5)He then made a severe pestilence strike the livestock of the Egyptians.

6)God made it so that the Egyptian people were suddenly covered in boils.

7)God dispatched thunder, hail and fire to strike the lands.

8)God then sent Locusts to cover the sky and fields.

9)In a move so terrifying that it made everything prior to it seem like a walk on the beach on a warm, sunny, slightly breezy midsummer afternoon, god worked his evil magic and......made it so that......(are you ready for this?).....darkness then fell for 3 days. Bastard!

10)After the terrifying act of casting darkness for 3 days, resulting in the most stubbed toes to ever to occur in one 3 day period at any time in history, antiquity or otherwise, god decided to be a bit more lenient and for the tenth and final act, went easy on the terrified and toe stubbed Egyptians, this time merely killing their first born children.

After the death of all the first born children, including Pharaoh's own son, Pharaoh is convinced and the Israelites are able to leave Egypt and told about the promised land, which was to be theirs, but only after they were tested and found their faith in god.

And so god had the Israelites wander around the desert for 40 years, until their generation died away.

They weren't able to reach the promised land, because somewhere along the way, they had lost faith in god and built a golden calf, which they had begun to worship. This pissed off Moses, who had gone away to Mount Sinai to have the Ten Commandments dictated to him by god, which he then inscribed onto some tablets, since they didn't have Dictaphones at that time and the first generation PC's were too damn expensive. They cost one bronze coin at that time. Do you know how many concubines Moses could have purchased for that kind of money? Besides, the PC's only had floppy disks for storage at that time, and they were still using 14.4 external modems, which were slow as Molasses.

Anyways, Moses was pissed off about the golden calf, so he threw down the Ten Commandments, shattering them, then got hold of the golden calf that the Israelites had been worshipping, burned it, put the golden ashes in the Israelites water, and made them drink it. Moses then returned to Mount Sinai to get a second copy of The Ten Commandments, and the Jews continued to wander through the desert towards the Promised Land. They ended up dying off without ever being able to step foot in the place.

Moses never got to step foot in there either, but, god, feeling jovial one day, did decide to let Moses cast his eyes at the place, and we can only assume it was love at first sight, but it was doomed forever to be unrequited love, as Moses was NOT allowed in. God then promised the Promised Land to Moses' offspring. The new generation then stormed the Promised Land, which, in line with god's infinite capacity for evil, was already occupied. Well, the slaughter, rape, and enslavement of scores of men, women and children at god's command took care of that little wrinkle, and then the land was theirs.

After this, things sort of stagnated for a while. As the years passed, god's people kept screwing up. Their favourite boo boo was to worship graven images, which god hated, and so for a time there was a cyclical sort of pattern: god's people would worship graven images, thereby fucking up, and then they would get fucked up, as god would visit plagues upon them. God would also have other people conquer and exile his people, and then, invariably, those people, who had become god's new people, would screw up, usually involving graven images, and god would visit upon them plagues, which would conquer and exile them, and other people, which would ravage them with disease.....or maybe it was the other way around, I dunno.

Either way, the cycle repeated, as cycles do. Occasionally, as god's people would fuck up and god would prepare to reign down upon them the wrath of a jealous, anthropomorphic god, a particularly wise prophet or priest would appear and convince god to spare the people. This convincing would take the form of a sacrifice, by these prophets or priests, to god, of an animal with absolutely no defects. Apparently, the slaughter of one of the best designed of god's own creations, to god, by one of his other creatures, made him happy enough to convince him not to kill anyone else for a while.

Of course, they weren't there to convince him not to send a couple of bears to maul 42 children (no, sorry, youths) for making fun of a bald prophet for being bald. But hey, according to god, if you make fun of someone for being hairless, you deserve to be brutally murdered by a creature who is full of hair. And who's going to dispute god? Especially such a loving, merciful one?

Still with me?

Great, because it gets even better. (Believe it or not)

After many generations, god realized that this whole situation really was not ideal, and so, in an effort to save the people from their fate (the very fate he had created the conditions for) god, in his infinite brilliance, flashed on a fantastic idea: he would magically impregnate a virgin who would then give birth to a son Jesus, who was really god, and this son who was really god would be born, have three kings bring him shit, only to have him disappear for a while and reappear at the age of 30, whereupon he would be baptized, preach for a while, perform some miracles, get tortured and killed, resurrect 3 days later and ascend into heaven, thereby giving gods' creations a second chance at the salvation they had thus far been missing.

God then had all of this written down in what became the world's bestselling book of fictio-er.....well, bestselling book.

Now, according to this book, which some people jokingly refer to as “The Bible” (lol), whomever believes that this happened, thinks gays are evil, and is truly sorry for any wrongdoings they may have enacted during their short time on this earth is granted entrance to the eternal amusement park and avoids eternal torture. Even if they kill a bunch of people.....as long as they are very sorry and repent, they are granted an all access pass to eternal bliss at Six Flags Heaven (or, Six Flags: Heeven, as the New Zealanders call it).

Contrary to this, anyone who believes that this, just like all of the other similar stories, is a myth, and/or does NOT think gays are evil, and is truly sorry for any wrongdoings they may have enacted during their short time on this earth is tortured forever in hell, a place replete with things like hot oil being poured down your throat and having hot pokers jabbed into your eyes while your lower body is submerged in liquid hot magma.

According to some interpretations of this omniscient god's notoriously contentious and difficult to grasp book (a book which many people study their whole lives to try to fully understand), after some undisclosed amount of time, god/Jesus will (presumably without this time needing to metaphysically rape a virgin) return to the earth, and bring with him a time of terror and tribulation, followed by a time of peace, some instances of the dead coming back to life, and then the end of the world.......or something like that.

All of the believers who have met the conditions for entry to heaven, save for one (being dead ) will be ascended into heaven (or heeven) while the atheists, believers in the incorrect gods, believers who have NOT met all of the entry requirements, and Christopher Walkin, will be left behind. Satan is in there somewhere, running the show for a while (finally, the poor guy has been biding his time for thousands of years now, resigned to mundane shit like making people cheat on Algebra tests and telling their significant others that “no, those pants don't make you look fat); at least until God/Jesus returns and finally kicks his ass.........or something like that. This part is a bit confusing.

Some people say that this was intended to happen within a generation of the torture killing of god/Jesus, since there were a few lines in his book that well, literally said as much, but, since this book was merely inspired by, as opposed to being directly written by, this omniscient god, some things were said to have been lost in translation (anyone else just suddenly think of Bill Murray?).

Anyways, that's basically the story of christianity. Believe that the world was created by a lonely magical being 6-10 thousand years ago (so, you know, after we built the first houses, created languages, domesticated the dog and other animals, designed jewelry, etc) and that this being, after murdering nearly everything on earth in a scientifically impossible worldwide flood (see THIS blog for details on the impossibility of that particular little tale) metaphysically impregnated a human virgin who then gave birth to a baby boy named Jesus, who was the human manifestation of the god who impregnated her (don't ask) and who, after sacrificing himself to himself in order to allow himself to forgive us for living up to our design, mandated that we believe this happened lest it be for naught and we still end up in the hell that he created, but really, really, really doesn't want us to end up in....you know, because he's infinitely merciful.

*whew*

Psychology: Science? Unscientific? Bullshit? Pt. 1

I've heard it many times before, as I am sure many of us have:

 "Psychology is not a science." I have even heard that "psychology is bullshit."

While the second sentiment is not uncommon (over 700,000 hits on google), the first, "psychology is not a science," is VERY common (over 50 MILLION hits on ze goog). In fact, I just ran into one such comment and engaged in a small conversation regarding it.

An online friend of mine, who is a molecular biology (or was it microbiology?....I can't recall, but something to that effect) major recently made a comment to this end on a blog of mine, in which I had interviewed someone who is going to be majoring in pyschology (which was the discipline in which I attained my BA as well). Here is his comment:

I think a psychology major is so lame.

His response to me after I asked him for an elaboration was as follows:

Well from all of my friend's experiences they say they absolutely got nothing out of psychology so similar to what Lenano is planning on doing they all ended up changing their majors. I just don't like it as a science; at least not compared to sciences such as biology, chemistry, and physics.

Sure psychology incorporates some aspects of biology and chemistry, but for the most part unlike those sciences, it doesn't provide conclusive theories. Since psychology uses a lot of deductive reasoning most psychological theories are in actuality hypotheses. I do however commend psychology for elaborating on stuff like social sciences and stuff, but for the most part I think other sciences could figure that stuff out and I consider psychology to be basically philosophy involving biology and chemistry. I may be stupid for saying that but that's just how I feel towards psychology.

I responded to him with the following:

One problem with this is that many psychological theories are testable, repeatable, and falsifiable. They also, just like theories in other disciplines, are based upon evidence. They are the explanations for the facts, and therefore, they ARE theories as opposed to just hypotheses. I see what you are saying about the nature of deductive reasoning, don't get me wrong, but psychology has changed much in the last 50 or so years.


Biology might point out that x follows from Y, but the manifestation of X will have to be pyschology. So if you think that form and function are good, but the interactions between and processes behind those functions are ''lame,'' well, I'd say you're looking at an incomplete picture. Without psychology, you'd have neurology but no neuropsychology. Without psychology, you'd have evolutionary biology but no evolutionary psychology.

Psyc is sort of like the why to the how. And the why toay is functionally much different than the why's of people like Freud and Jung. Of course, there are still those fanciful pychoanalytical theories (or hell, hypotheses) out there, as you drive at, and I agree. Even back when I was a fresh undergrad, I had issues with that stuff.

And psychology is the reason I am in the career I am in today.

What do you think? Is psychology a science?

Brilliantly Stupid And/Or Ironic Forum Quotes Pt. 1

It's sequel time, baby! This is a sequel to This Blog which was entitled Brilliantly Stupid And/Or Ironic Youtube Quotes.  So, let's gear up, and take on some more Brilliantly Stupid And/Or Ironic Youtube Quotes sent my way by people trying to insult/own/'pwn'/denigrate/disparage or otherwise hurt me for whatever reason. *Whew!!* Try saying that 5 times fast.

God probably got rid of the fossils of those evil giants & the rest of the people that didn't listen to Noah's warning.

But nothing is impossible to God, he can do anything he wants with all his power & wisdom even on specific situations.

Everything needs a start & process in order to appear & continue operating (with the exception of Jehovah cause he always existed and is the Almighty

It wasn't magic it was power. God doesn't use magic.

things that exist in the whole universe. That's all the evidence we need as Christians.

But when was the last time that you read about mankind's extinction caused by volcanoes?

God shrunk all the animals

In response to "So every single human being on the planet sinned enough to deserve eradication? Even infants, small children who haven't done anything whatsoever? Wow, that's one benevolent god!":

Yes. The small children were too busy being sacrificed, raped, or traumatized to do much sinning, though. They would have grown up to be horrible.

(man, the lengths these guys will go. The cognitive dissonance must give them migraines at times)

And now, amidst all of this rampant idiocy and hilarity, I close this particular edition (oh ya, more are coming. PLENTY more, actually. I have so much material just from the same topic.....yes, all of these in this edition were from 1 single forum thread) with this absolute doozy. Is it the worst of the worst? You decide. Like Faux News says, We report, YOU decide. Although, I must draw a line of differentiation between myself and Faux News, as the following statement is not misquoted or misrepresented in any way. Here goes nothing:

Someone made this statement (still talking about the Noah's Ark story): You are also aware, that 2 animals are not enough to start a race, right? It would led to horrific genetic deformities over the generations- no one species can start from just 2 animals. And the response from some moron:

How do you know that those species needed either salty or fresh water?

Since "evolution is a fact", if the salinity of water back then was less than it is now, the fish in the water back then were able to survive in it, otherwise we wouldn't have any fish today.

There's a reason the story is called NOAH'S ark. It's because it's about Noah and his ark. It's not even about plants or aquatic creatures. If God took care of 8 people and some animals, what makes you think he didn't take care of the aquatic life and plants?

Well, I'm sure God found a way to do it. Nothing is impossible for him.

Water produces oxygen & hydrogen. Enough to breath and help them to survive as well.

That's where faith comes into play. It does stand to reason that the deformities wouldn't have been all that bad, considering the planet was only...two thousand years old or something.

WOW. Just fucking WOW.

Oh, and here's a pic to sum up this awesome forum topic (which is going to provide comedy gold for a few more blogs, amazongly):