7 posts tagged “cult”
Dine and Dash
If you're going to slip out of a restaurant without paying your check, be sure you're not leaving behind your purse with your ID in it. Also, don't leave the marijuana in your purse, either.
That's how you steal an election
Any suggestion that former ACORN employees who used fake names to create voter registration cards were trying to "rig the election" shows a fundamental lack of understanding about how to steal an election. You don't do it by registering fake names of made-up people who aren't going to show up to vote. You do it by getting your brother, the governor of an important swing state, to hire a company, run by one of your biggest campaign donors, to purge his state's voter rolls of anyone who has a name or birthday even similar to a convicted felon. That's how you steal an election.
Caribou Barbie Makeover
What's the big deal? So she spent $150,000 on clothes and stuff. I spend at least that much every 200 years or so. It's the middle class way. We like clothes. I've spent as much $30 in one day at the Goodwill. Seriously, though, this is sexism at work. Male politicians have it easy. A suit is a suit is a suit. For all I can tell, Barack Obama only owns two suits a few ties, so maybe his whole wardrobe only cost $4-5,000. If a female politician showed up wearing the same outfit every day, people would talk. Too bad the McCain campaign doesn't have a time machine, so they could send Palin back 4 years and spend that $150,000 on an education.
It only takes about 2000 years
Evangelist Tony Alamo has been denied bail as he waits to be tried on charges that he took a minor across state lines for sex. A bunch of people in his church have also come forward to describe being kept in conditions that can only be described as cultish. The thing is, the stuff Alamo was doing, it only sounds cultish because he doesn't have more than a few hundred followers. If he had a few million, it wouldn't matter how kooky his behavior was, we'd call it a religion. Give him two thousand years and a hundred million followers, and we'd just call it a social club, like Methodism.
What the hell is happening to this country?
Remember when you were a snotty little kid and you accidentally threw your ball into the yard of the evil old lady next door and she kept it? You were pissed. Maybe you cried to your mom. Or did small little things to get back at the old lady. Or you just sucked it up and got over it. You didn't call the police to have her arrested for keeping your ball, did you?
Remember? Buttercup is soon to marry Prince Humperdink, and she begins having nightmares about her betrayal of Wesley? The old woman screaming, "Bow down to the Queen of Refuse! The Queen of Garbage! Bow down!" Yeah, you remember.
Mine are more like daymares, and they mostly center around this one key fact: I, the unbeliever who hates Christmas, am going to spend Christmas with my Christian in-laws. It's been ten years since I had to do anything that vaguely resembled a family Christmas, and there's a good reason. It makes my flesh crawl. I hate Christmas. I hate gifts. I hate Christmas gifts. I hate Christmas music. Instead, Hubbicula and I celebrate the joy of Cinemas.
And these aren't just any kind of Christians. Oh, yes, my sister-in-law and spouse are fairly regular Christian types. I think they go to church and claim to love Jesus. My father-in-law is also a fairly calm Christian, although he's a substance abuse counselor and he's really into the psychology of letting go and letting God. (I still don't have that one figured out.) So with him, it's like The Twelve Steps of Christmas. These two in-laws only frighten me a little. They'll just be looking for some Christmas-y action--gifts, carols, tree, creche, maybe a late-night trip to church.
My brother-in-law, however, belongs to a cult. As do his wife, son, and daughter. He is a Crazy Superbad Mofo Christian. He's the guy who responds to discussions of climate change with, "Well, with the End Times coming, I'm not worried about global warming." Yeah...that kind of crazy. You know, the kind of crazy that actually begins to think and do the opposite of what their Bible tells them. Screw stewardship, the End Times are coming! Judge not? Turn the other cheek? Fuck that shit.
So, let's do the tally for my holidays here:
4+ hours flying, which I hate
4+ hours in an airport, which I hate
20+ hours driving cross country in the winter, which I hate
3 days celebrating Christmas, which I hate
1 gift exchange, which I hate
If you ever need proof that I love you, Hubbicula, please refer to this list. I'm doing it all to get to spend a few days with you.
Now, to balance out the horror of all this, I've made a few deals with myself.
- I will be pleasant and gracious, no matter what gifts I receive BUT I reserve the right to turn right around and donate said gifts to the nearest thrift store.
- I will not wail or scream if forced to listen to Christmas music BUT I will not sing along or pretend to enjoy it.
- I will bow my head if/when prayers are said BUT I will not pray along or lead any prayers.
- I will seek a neutral way out of going to church BUT failing that I will put my foot down.
I am an internet explorer (no, not the software). I cruise around in the obscure corners of the web, looking for oddities. Remember the one about Jesus being Tom Selleck? This one is even weirder:
The folks at Bible Doctrine News would like to present for your consideration, the ways in which Ted Bundy's life is a parallel of the life span of the state of Israel. See? I can't make that kind of thing up. It's too crazy to be fiction.
If you can't quite bring yourself to click on that link, just have a little taste:
Ted Bundy was one of history's most evil domestic terrorists. A psychopathic necrophiliac and rapist who preyed upon college girls from 1973-75, he was a cold-blooded murderer. Born a bastard and rejected by his mother, he became the servant of Bel, the ancient god of Babylon. God sent him as a sign of the diaspora, and his life paralleled the birth and rise of the nation of modern Israel.
I don't want be too harsh on Larry, but I think he's a nutjob of the first degree. Of course, Larry has a ready retort for me:The Florida duck survived two near-death experiences in her rise to fame. Now, with the duck's picture on the weather map, it has become obvious that the angels orchestrated all this. The duck's rise to fame is somewhat analogous to Nancy Pelosi's. She became the first woman Speaker of the House this year after the Democrats won the elections. She was born March 26, 1940, where 26 is for Political Babylon and 40 is for maximum divine discipline. It was Day 86, for the Arab persecution of the Jew. Her dad was Jewish, but she is Roman Catholic. Her trip to the terrorist land of Gad in Asia this weekend corresponded to the Florida duck's picture over the Arizona-New Mexico desert and second near-death experience.
For those who have never made the greatest decision of life to accept the free gift of Eternal Life, please go to the Salvation page. Otherwise, the information presented on this web site will be meaningless. Those who aren't saved do not have a human spirit and cannot understand Spiritual information. What's worse, it is foolishness to them.
Yes, it is, Larry. Yes, it is.
*shit. Censoring myself so people can read at work
You can't make shit like this up, people. As someone who has quite a bit of personal and professional experience with making up unbelievable shit, I'm telling you that what is about to follow could only exist in the non-fiction world. No self-respecting fiction publisher or editor would let a thing like this fly.
A few days ago I happened across a post by Miss Scotch about her exciting days as an English tutor for the child of some Italian yoga Hindu cultists. She posted a picture of their guru that got me started on one of my random internet searches. That random internet search brought me here: Woman Thou Art God, The University of Mother God Church, presented by its one true prophet, Rasa Von Werder.
In detailing her many visions and conversation with Jesus (and several other historic religious figures, this is what the website of Woman Thou Art God has to say:
In 2002 Rasa dreamed about being married. This always means Jesus because Jesus has actually betrothed her with three rings in 1978, and married her in a mystical experience in 1982. In this dream, she's looking at her husband who is standing next to a fireplace. He is dressed in black, and He is Tom Selleck, suddenly she is shocked because she has not really seen her husband so beautiful as if she was blind before. The next scene he is on top of her making love, she knows his penis is inside of her but there is no feeling of grossness...only a feeling a divine love.
That's right, folks, Jesus appeared to her as Tom Selleck.
Here is what Rasa has to say about why Jesus appeared as Tom Selleck:
By the way, Jesus rarely appears rarely looking like the long-haired, robed person in classical art. He appears as we said, as the most handsome, sexiest man that Rasa can conceive of. Handsome and sexy means beauty, and God is beauty. On the other hand, the devil is ugly, and when he appears he is always ugly except in rare cases when he tries to fool you with outward appearance and appears attractive, but there is a sinister feeling to his looks.
Thanks, crazy lady, because regular religions don't already stress the "evil is ugly and ugly is evil" theory. You're really breaking new ground here. Had enough? Me neither, let's read on:
There is a saint named Baba Muktananda that Rasa has had the closest relationship with, next to Jesus. [One] night, [Baba] was on top of her and he was transmitting the lotion of consciousness into her being. She didn't feel anything like sex or penis, but his being on top was a symbol and a sign that he was downloading grace into her. Another time he appeared as Jean Claude Van Damme, one of Rasa's favorite stars and yet another time as the star from "The Highlander" -another super-handsome man.
Or how about Mohamed came to her in a dream as David Hasselhoff, and he was naked, holding two puppies. Like this:
Perhaps the bizarre part is that beyond all the total fruit and nut religious visions and spiritual sex, the website has some interesting articles on women's empowerment issues, like breastfeeding and polygamy.
In Tampa, I belonged to a novel writers critique group. One of the members was a secretary like me, and often marveled that I had so many novels in progress. During one of our meetings, she said, "How do you find the time to do so much writing?"
I just smiled and said, "I steal it."
For years, I had plugged along, writing a story here, a story there. I had a couple of novel ideas that I had been chipping away at for years. I also had a job at a non-profit, where I was either overworked and overmanaged or completely ignored. At one magical juncture between micromanagement and indifference, the big boss (we called her Cankles, because her calves transitioned to her feet without any intervening ankles) moved my office. We were tight for office space at the main office, and I was on the bottom rung of the importance ladder. So, with two days notice, they moved my office to the donation warehouse, where the organization had a thrift store.
That first day, alone in my empty office in a back storeroom, with just a computer and a handful of office supplies, I did what I should have done all along. I started stealing time. To begin with, it was out of necessity. The first week, no one had hooked up my office phone or moved my filing cabinets across town. I couldn't even do my job. So, I turned on the computer and took out my journal, which was full of notes on a novel I wanted to write. I wrote about 5,000 words the first day. The second day, I wrote 10,000. By the end of the first month, I had more than half the novel written.
By then, of course, my phone was hooked up and my file cabinets were there. I could have gone back to my job, gone back to doing what I was supposed to do. Except by then, I was so incredibly bitter about my job. I was cut off from everything, and peole just kept trying foist more responsibility onto me, as though my office were some magical blackhole into which work could disappear. Turns out, they were right.
I started hanging out with the warehouse people; in the same way a religious cult will get their claws into you when you're lonely. Luckily, the Warehouse Gospel was the Joy of Slack. They were all minimum wage employees, and as far as upper management was concerned, minimum respect employees. The warehouse people saw it as their duty to steal time. If you do the math, it's hard to disagree. If you make $240 for a 40 hours week, that's $6 an hour. On the other hand, if you only work 30 hours a week, you're making $8 an hour.
So, I finished the novel, although I still haven't found a publisher for it, and I started another one. Eventually, I left that job, when it became clear that at some point there would be a reckoning about the work that I had not been doing for months. I went back to teaching English Composition at a local college. Then, I found the church secretary job, and I finally learned the lesson of the Warehouse Gospel: you can do your job and steal time. I wrote another novel in the two years I was at the church. I figured out early on that I could do my job in about 5 hours a day, leaving me the other 3 hours to write. No one ever even noticed.
Which leads me to my current job. It's not difficult, and it certainly doesn't require 40 hours a week to get the work done. When my work is finished, I siphon a few hours off the top for my writing. Some days, I spend all day working. Some days, I spend all day writing, like today. The next novel is going well.
Still haven't managed to publish any of them. Turns out I'm a better writer than I am a salesperson. I'll work on that, during my stolen time.
MISINFORMED
Okay, I know it's wrong to mock a woman whose son has been killed in Iraq, but trolling the local newspaper I came across this quote: "Two men in uniform came to my door and said your son's been killed in Iraq by an IUD," Barrett said. What I'm saying is, after the initial shock wears off, maybe you should get yourself better informed of what killed your son. I mean, if someone I loved had been killed by a black mamba snake, I wouldn't want to go around saying the cause of a death was the samba. Killed by an IUD. Not saying it doesn't happen. Just saying, it doesn't happen to men in Iraq. Maybe the reason this stuck with me is that I wonder if this woman is also misinformed about why we're over there.
MISGUIDED
A relative of someone who died in the World Trade Center Towers collapse has declared that she will "sleep on the pavement at the side of Ground Zero until the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation agrees to make the changes [to the WTC 9/11 memorial] the families are demanding." She says, "I am going to be here every day and every night. Because this is no way to remember the dead." Because throwing your life away in protest over the designs for a memorial to the dead, that's such a great way to remember the dead. Here's an idea, nutbag: go out and do something useful and meaningful. Volunteer at an organization that will help people, in memory of your loved one. Join the frigging Peace Corps and dedicate your time of service to the memory of the person you lost. Quit taking up space on the sidewalk and using up food and water that could benefit other people.
BELATEDLY INDIGNANT
And this week's trifecta of ignorance finishes out with Isaac Hayes, who has finally decided that there's a limit to how far mockery and parody can go. After years of mocking Jews, Christians, and Muslims, the tv show South Park has finally turned it's juvenile turd-centric humor on Scientology. Isaac Hayes, who happens to be an L. Ron Hubbardite, has left the show as a result, citing his relatively new distaste for "intolerance and bigotry toward religious beliefs." Aaaaaw, Isaac got his widdle feewings hurt.
Want some extra fun? Pop on over to the Scientology website. You notice how L. Ron, with his receding neck and ascot tie, looks like a chubby, cheap knock off of Vincent Price?
Scattered around the site are words of wisdom from our leader, like this little gem: The wrong thing to do about any given circumstance or situation is to do nothing. Huh? Aside from the grammatical problems here, I'm not even sure what that's supposed to mean. If some bozo cuts me off in traffic, I have to do something? If I just keep driving, thinking, "Bozo," I'm doing the wrong thing? (Although, granted, my family's motto is Do something, even if it's wrong.)
P.S. Did you know that L. Ron Hubbard was run out of Wichita, Kansas? While there he was accused of "conducting a vicious sexual racket." Want some more interesting dirt on ole Lafayette Ron Hubbard? Check out the divorce filing of his wife Sara.
Or so the subject field of the e-mail I received from the pastor at work would have me believe. Because of things like my previous post, I'm always a little wary of e-mail forwards from my co-workers, even from the pastors. As well-meaning as many of my co-workers are, it doesn't stop them from being boobs, asses, racists, and of course, sentimental cornballs. In fact, the well-meaning genetic trait is probably right next to the cornball trait on the human DNA strand. So, with that warning: A picture is worth a thousand words, I opened the e-mail from the pastor.
Is this picture truly worth a thousand words? Let's see...
A word of warning to parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, nannies, and older siblings. Small children are gullible. They don't yet know that the world is full of lies and purposeful obfuscation and cruel manipulation. Not to mention the fact that the world is full of minor deceptions, accidental misconceptions, and wholly ambivalent manipulation. The average three-year old doesn't know that. He is innocent, trusting, and easily trained. Like a dog. If you so choose, you can teach him to mimic certain celebrities at a young age (Groucho Marx is an easy one.) You can teach him to sing silly songs to accompany his daily hygiene activities. ("Teeths you got to brushy-wushy. After pooping, wipe the tushy-ushy.") You can tell him that he should not poke a toad with a stick, if only because the toad might have a much larger, and very hungry older brother who will not approve of the poking. I did all of these things to the little boy I cared for as a nanny. Probably didn't hurt him.
Or you can train him to fold his little hands and pray to the Cosmic Muffin. You can tell him that Santa brings gifts, the Tooth Fairy pays cash for lost teeth, the Easter Bunny brings chocolate effigies of himself, and that Jesus saves little boys from an eternity in the fiery pits of Hell. He'll probably believe all of that, but does that make it right? Remember, he's a blank slate. He'll probably believe whatever you tell him.
Of course, I get it. The photo is supposed to be cute, because the dog is "praying," too. Except, do you really think the dog is praying? No. The dog has been trained to act like he's praying, and so has the little boy. Now, if the little boy is really praying, does he have any idea what he's praying to? Probably not. He's either been fed some line about a cuddly, fuzzy God, or he's been told about a powerful, vengeful God. Either way, maybe he's praying, "Please, God, take care of my family. Don't let my dog get run over. Or my mom get cancer. Or my dad get laid off from his job."
The sad part? It's wasted effort for the kid. If the dog doesn't get run over, or the mom avoids cancer, or the dad gets to keep his job, well, that's great, but it doesn't have anything to do with little Bobby praying.
The cruel part? If the dog does get run over, or the mom gets cancer, or the dad loses his job, is it because little Bobby didn't pray hard enough? Or because God just doesn't like little Bobby as much as he likes little Janie? Or because God only likes kids named Muhammed and Hareendran. Oh, and he prefers to be called Allah. And if any of these things happen, whose fault is it? Are we going to blame God? Or are we going to blame fate? Or the driver of the car? Or the culture that gave us the careening vehicle through residential neighborhoods? Or the pesticides in the mom's food that turned her breast into a mutant cell replicating hoedown? Or the enormous multi-national corporation that just downsized or off-shored the dad's job? Funny how religion discourages you from looking around to see how cause and effect really works. Ask and you shall receive? Who came up with that one? Ask whom? What will you receive? More e-mail forwards? Probably.
So, it turns out, this picture is only worth about 800 words, to Redzilla anyway. Maybe it's worth more to you.
