BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

Or, Koran Burning For Dummies…

Both work, but I have a fondness for the word idiot.

And, for the record, Koran should actually be Qur’an, however since we here in the United States are so fond of dictating how others should act, believe, and otherwise exist, it stands to reason we would want to dictate how people should spell – even if they created the word and not us. Well, aren’t we special…

Hence, I have used Koran in the title of this post in order to make it easier for the illiterate hate mongers to find via search engines, because they are certainly the folks who will be looking for instructions of the sort.

That said…

Every day, unless I’m on a manuscript deadline, I try to give myself a bit of a break from the “Lackey Do” list E K has for me – not to mention the “Also Gotta Do” list I have for myself. During said break, I eat my lunch. However, instead of consuming it over the sink, I park myself in my rocking chair and watch 15 minutes of The 700 Club / CBN News. Why? Because it amuses me.

Why, just the other day I heard Pat Robertson tell everyone that the Muslims have taken over France, and are coming for us next. Then, they ran a special report on the blight of “gay marriage” and “judicial power grabbing.” You see, it seems that the courts have no business being involved in the laws of the land. Apparently they are just there for traffic tickets and the like, because by doing something as heinous as declaring a clearly unconstitutional law unconstitutional, they have overstepped their authority. In fact, simply by declaring a ban on gay marriage unconstitutional the courts have taken away one of your civil liberties. I’m not entirely sure which one that would be, unless it is now a civil liberty to deny someone else their civil liberties. Thinking about it sort of makes my head hurt, but then “God Logic” has always given me a headache. Doesn’t matter which God(dess) either. Not that I’m an atheist – but I’ve already stated my view on religion vs. spirituality, so I won’t go down that path.

Today, I tuned in Pat, ready for yet another laugh, and wasn’t disappointed. He and his Robertsonites prayed for folks and received divine messages from God – or possibly Jesus… I’m not really sure. You see, sometimes  he uses God/Jesus/Lord interchangeably, and other times he draws clear and distinct lines of delineation between them. Don’t ask me where the ghost comes in. I’m pretty sure he’s over in the corner playing craps with Satan or something. After all, you know they’ve got to talk sometime. But, back to the funny – Pat and his crew basically engaged in psychic divination, something they call the “work of the devil” if a Pagan does it – or anyone else for that matter.

So, see what I mean by amusing?

Anyway, a couple of hours later I jumped in my truck to run and pick up the o-spring from school.  NPR was doing a quick news blurb on a religious zealot. No, it wasn’t Pat Robertson, although, given the things that come out of that man’s mouth, it could just as easily be him. However, in this case it is some preacher out of Florida who has his congregation all fired up, and has announced that they are going to burn copies of the Qur’an (Quran, Koran) on September 11th.

Why?

Because the terrorists who crashed the planes into the World Trade Center Towers on 9/11 were Muslim.

Once again, we have a big ol’ nasty case of “God Logic” going on here, and it’s sitting in a big steaming pile of “God Envy.” By that, I mean, we have ourselves a bunch of people screaming “My God is better than your God.” I saw a quote on Facebook the other day that defined “Holy War” as people arguing over whose imaginary friend is better. I think that pretty much sums it up.

But let’s think about this for a minute. Why stop with burning the Qur’an (Quran, Koran)? I mean, if it’s all about associating terrorists and muderers with religion, we should be able to have ourselves a regular old down home book burning…

Timothy McVeigh – Killed 168, injured 450. 19 of those killed were children – He started out Catholic and claimed to maintain “core beliefs” but then also professed that “Science” was his “religion.”

Okay, then let’s put all books dealing with science on the bonfire too.

John Wayne Gacy – 33 victims – He was a Roman Catholic.

Okay, let’s toss the Catholic Bible on the fire. Oh… While you are at it, take all of your NIV’s, KJV’s, ad nauseum and rip out the New Testament, because – and you might be unaware of this but – it belongs to the Catholics too.

Theodore “Ted” Bundy – Confessed to 30 murders, but it is believed that he was responsible for more than 100 – He was a Mormon.

Toss the Book of Mormon on there… Stoke that baby up!

Albert Fish – Killed and ate children. Possibly 100 or more – Christian. Some would even say fanatical Christian. (But, don’t let a little word like fanatical deter you. After all, someone being a fanatic doesn’t matter, does it? Just their religion.)

Good old Uncle Albert was devout in his beliefs that were driven by the Old Testament.

Hmmm… Looks like we need to round up the rest of the Holy Bibles and chuck them onto the bonfire too…

Adolf Hitler – Let’s just say it was in the high millions and leave it at that. I’m not here to argue the exact numbers. – Depending upon who you ask, Catholic, Christian, Occultist.

Okee-Dokee, we’ve already covered Catholics and Christians, but this bolsters that a bit, don’t you think? But, just to be on the safe side, let’s burn any books dealing with the occult too.

Joel Rifkin – Killed 17 women – Jewish (David Berkowitz too, although he converted to Christianity of all things, right before he started killing.) Doesn’t matter that they were adopted. We’re talking religion here, not lineage.

Well, hmmm… We’ve already tossed the Old Testament onto the flames for all of the dyed-in-the-wool Christians out there, even though it was actually written by Jewish folk (fancy that)… So, guess we need to toss the Talmud, Torah… well… how about the whole shooting match… just toss the Tanakh on there too.

Okay, we haven’t quite cleaned out the religion section of the library just yet, but we’ve made a big dent. Obviously we need to burn any books that have anything to do with any of the aforementioned religious texts. Plus, we’ve cleared out all of the science books.

I’m sure it wouldn’t take much for us to connect all of the other world religions, big and small, to something that is worthy of hatred. That goes for Atheism and Agnosticism too. So why keep screwing around? Just throw all of those onto the fire as well.

There! Are we feeling better now? Turns out nobody’s imaginary friend – or even imaginary void – is all that cool after all.

You know, just the other day when folks were in the thick of the argument over the Islamic Cultural Center plans, I posted a Facebook status update that read something like, “I think everyone needs to get in touch with their inner Atticus Finch…”

If you don’t know who that is, or what that means, pick up a book and read it. Specifically, To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. If you don’t like reading, then go to the library or video store and check out the movie. It’s about as close to the book as a movie can get and still be only two hours long.

A dear friend and mentor told me that the statement would make a good blog topic. I agreed, but by the same token offered it to her because normally I do funny. And, while I find Pat Robertson and his band of purse snatchers amusing in a sad way, there’s nothing at all funny about hatred.

Okay, so now you really need to pay attention, because here are the promised instructions:

Muslims are NOT terrorists/murderers…

Catholics are NOT terrorists/murderers…

Christians are NOT terrorists/murderers…

*Jews are NOT terrorists/murderers…

Pagans are NOT terrorists/murderers…

It’s simple. Don’t burn their book unless you are willing to burn your own. We are individuals and we define ourselves. We don’t define others.

Unfortunately, the people who need to get my point, won’t. And the people who don’t need to get the point already know it without need of this illustration.

Next time I’ll try to find something funny to write about.

More to come…

Murv

* The original version of this blog stated “Jewish” are not terrorists, an intentional grammatical error in order to avoid offending folks who seem to find the word “Jew” to be offensive in and of itself. Since the error has been pointed out I have elected to change it, and we’ll hope that no offense is taken.

My apologies to the B-52’s. I’ll buy y’all a round of drinks next time you’re in town, okay? (Watch ’em all order B-52’s…)

So, anyway, Facebook and Twitter folk know that last weekend we were finally able to get around to re-roofing our shed. Many of you have asked about it… Okay, okay, so none of you have asked about it. Be that way… Sheesh… Tough crowd everywhere I go.

Be that as it may… or as it were… or was… or is… Oh, what the hell. Thing is, it’s too damn hot for me to sit in the office and be funny. I’m much funnier when chilled. Therefore, by way of blog entry I am going to provide you with a few pictures and captions from the Great Shed Re-Roofing of 2010…

To the left we have “Le Shed.” The E K and I built it something on the order of 15 or 17 or maybe even 112 years ago. I can’t really remember. At any rate, it has served us well. However, it lives beneath a black walnut tree that is infested with Tree Rats (aka Skwirlz… not Squirrels, mind you. We have Skwirlz. Trust me… I’m pretty sure McSquizzy is their leader.) Anywho, after umpty-jillion years the asphalt shingled roof gave up the ghost. Once that happened, McSquizzy and his crew began their own demolition work.

Between the Skwirlz and weather, tolls were taken, but no receipts given. Problem is, with our schedules, getting out there and re-roofing the thing was proving a challenge. It wasn’t that we didn’t know how. We just didn’t have time.

Finally, this past winter we were able to do a quick tear-off, but the weather turned on us, and with time being a factor once again, a tarp became the interim roof.

Me, being the early riser that I am, got out there and pulled the tarp, then set about the process of replacing the damaged trusses.

Eventually, Loota-Chack and the Mikester showed up, followed by Johnathan “Mentos Rib Fest” Minton. Oh, and E K was there too. Once we managed to get the trusses replaced, E K and the Mikester went up top and set about the process of installing the purlins. These were necessary because we elected to go with a corrugated roofing material this go around.

During the initial installation, we were entertaining ourselves with some tunes. Much to our  dismay followed by delight, we discovered that the Mikester was unfamiliar with Aphrodite’s Child. We made it a point to change that.

This educational interlude, however, seemed to annoy the disembodied voice behind all of the pictured foliage, and he yelled sarcastic silliness at us. He should really leave the sarcasm to the professionals, because he wasn’t any good at it at all.

Here we have the offending radio. It even has its own chair. We allowed it to continue playing in the back yard while we were working so that we could keep an eye on it. However, since it was bad and offended the neighbor so much that he had to yell over the top of his weeds, when we were finished we sent it to its room and took away its power cord. Bad radio. No batteries for you!

It never ceases to amaze me…

No matter how hard I work, no matter what power tools, hand tools, or lumber I happen to be using, cutting, hammering, or otherwise busting my ass with, the only picture of me is where I am in supervisor mode.

I think E K does that to me on purpose, just to make me look bad…

Of course, at least I was supervising.

Loota-chack, on the other hand, was working just as hard as she could holding the ground down so it didn’t float away. I mean, after all, if the back yard had floated away we wouldn’t have any place to put the shed, right?

But, seriously folks, this is just the A-Bomb taking a break. We were all bustin’ arses on this project. Even “Little Miss 57 Languages” here…

Speaking of Luets-es-es… Here we have The Mikester. He’s kind of a trip. Has do-rag, will travel. He even comes with his own tools.

One of the amazing things about The Mikester is that he shows up, tools in hand, then does ANYTHING and EVERYTHING the redhead tells him to do. Seriously. She points and barks orders. Mikester jumps and carries out her commands. Somehow or another she has him even better trained than she has me. Not sure what that’s all about.

And, what’s a shed re-roofing without a gratuitous “Kilroy Was Here” photo.

And, wouldn’t you know it, Johnathan “Mentos Rib Fest” Minton is the culprit.

Unfortunately, this is the best pic we have of the Mentos during the project, which is too bad.  The T-Shirt he wore that day is actually an On The Edge Graphics original from the online store. Any guesses which one? Yeah… “Wearer Property of Evil Kat“… Hmmm… wonder why he selected that particular shirt on that particular day?

And finally, The Evil One herself… She hates having her picture taken so this is pretty much the best I could manage… Not that it isn’t perfectly lovely in its own right…

She actually had to take frequent breaks, because she’s so hot that she was warping the Ondura Roofing Panels. Go figure…

Still, here the roof is almost halfway installed… By the time we were done we were all too tired to take a picture of the finished product – besides which, E K and I had to get cleaned up and rush downtown to MAC for my 30th HS reunion.

Yes. Seriously. We busted our asses on the shed ALL DAY, then went to the reunion dinner… So, if you were there and wondered why we looked a little cooked, there you have it.

Okay… I’ll see if I can come up with something funny for  this coming Wednesday.

Hey! It could happen…

More to come…

Murv