A joke for Sunday

Via Effect Measure at ScienceBlogs.

What do you get when you cross a Jehovah's Witness with a Unitarian?

Someone who knocks on your door for no apparent reason.

The post was about a Unitarian church's welcome of non-believers.

In this place that we call church, as I understand it, every day someone is asking 'Is there a God?' 'Where are you God?' ... All of these are religious questions. To me, the atheist with his 'no' answer is every bit as religious ..." They're all asking the same questions.

Um, sorry, but as she said, no means no.

Atheism is a religion as much as not collecting stamps is a hobby.

I don't mean any disrespect for the UU's here, it's just that I think maybe they should take up bowling, or something.

Dubious distinctions

Dirty John Bonny as of right now -

Google Blog Search:
#1 for "lions balls"
#13 for "boys kissing"

Google:
#1 for "bunny robot"
#8 for "lions balls"



Related: kisses, and lions and a robot.

Picture

Toothpaste for dinner

(toothpastefordinner.com)

John: I can't explain why I find these so funny.

Interlocutor: Well, that should tell you something, oughtn't it?

Electrical Outlet

Failed T-Shirt Idea Number 6001

Cardinal

Link

Picture

Bunny time

(Click image for larger.
Credit: the usual suspects)

Bullshit, redux

I liked a basic idea in this post - that a single resource could cut through a lot of logical and factual confusion and emotional misdirection. In it I pointed out that the heavy lifting had already been done about Urban Legends, especially those promoted by "please read an forward" emails.

One can simply look it up, and be easily convinced that the threat, crisis, sob story or medical advice is pure bullshit, passed on by well-meaning people in an incurious or gullible moment.

So here is another resource, in the area of creationism versus science: the Index to Creationist Claims at TalkOrigins.com.

The difference is that it can often take paragraphs to shoot down one short false sentence. Unlike Snopes, the Talk Origins site is more complex and detailed - like science, even. Unlike the assertion "Suzy Creamcheese was kidnapped in Poughkipsee" it takes more prose and citations to debunk "if humans evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?"

The former is rather easily refuted. The latter is so wrong, it's not even wrong. That takes more e'splaining, Lucy.

In another way, the two resources are similar. Chain-mail legends continue to propogate - the "closest approach .. huge planet Mars .. bigger than the moon " email crops up again and again. Including a time when Mars was, in fact, on the other side of the sun, and thus not visually huge, but invisible.

Similarly creationists repeat their claims as if they had never been debunked. This would be ordinarily called lying. But protected by the sacred mantle of religion, they carry on.

So here's your go-to source regarding claims like that there are no transitional fossils.

Purity

If you saw this about Purity Balls - young girls pledging their cooters to jesus, and daddy, and as a neatly-wrapped gift to their future husbands - surely, you wondered: what about the boys?

We are taught that our bodies are Temples of God and are to be clean so that the Holy Ghost may dwell within us.

Young men about Billy's age usually get urges that they might not understand. If you are not of a an age of consent, and you have not made a proper commitment in the Eyes of the Lord, you must resist the temptation ...

YouTube video. About three-and-half minutes.

As the apostle Peter said, Satan is always tempting us ...

Panda pr0n

Bankok (Reuters) -
A Thai zoo, which has hosted a couple of pandas for four years, will play "porn" videos for the male next month to encourage them to breed in captivity, the project manager said on Saturday.

"They don't know how to mate so we need to show the male how, through videos," Prasertsak told Reuters.

It's a good idea that someone in the room knows what they're doing. An obvious idea lost on these people.

He said Chuang Chuang, the six-year-old male, would be shown the videos on a large screen when he might be feeling amorous.

"We'll play the video at the most comfortable and intimate time for him, perhaps after dinner," Prasertsak said ...

How about a little wine, as well? Cue the Barry White music.

About three minutes.

... hoping Chuang Chuang would then use the techniques on Lin Hui, a five-year-old female.

Link

Boyhood crushes

#2: Wally and The Beaver

Jerry Mathers and Tony Dow, Leave it to Beaver, 1957-1963.

I was about Beaver's age, in fact, some kids at school said I looked like him. I was embarrassed to watch the show - I had squirmy feelings about my reaction to looking at cute boys.

I didn't know which one to look at - Wally was so much better looking, but impossibly old. And Wally, what a dorky name, even in the 1960's.

The show revealed that the nickname "Beaver" came from baby Wally's inability to pronounce his brother's name "Theodore." I thought only my family was weird like that: One of my grandmothers was re-christened "Munner" (corrupting "mother") by an idiot cousin, and the name stuck so much that even my parents called her that.

The program gave rise to a couple of urban legends. One has it that Jerry Mathers died in Viet Nam, and another that Leave it to Beaver was the first TV show to show a toilet. The first is false, the second is an "almost." See here if you want to look it up.

(Less than a minute.)


(Less than a minute.)


... As the Beaver. I got over him pretty quick.


(Related: Boyhood crushes #1.)

Lions' balls

Some pictures

I know I said that I had no more on this subject, but that was before I went to clean out the folders. I'm now going for some sort of very dubious Google rank here.

(Credit)

(Credit)

(Credit)

(Credit)

Some themes and memes just happen.

Bullshit

I got one of those "Read and Forward" emails today. The kind that are always alerting to a new threat, opportunity, or little-known "fact."

A skeptical mind and a few seconds with The Google proved that today's missive, was, as I expected, bullshit.

The first thing that should make one suspect that whatever is being promoted is less than it seems is "why email?" If it was unsolicited, and just passed along, the answer is usually "because it's crap."

As Mad-eye Moody always exhorted, "Constant vigilance!"
Be skeptical.
Check it out before you believe, act, or click "forward."

For those of us without a magical eye that can see through the backs of our heads, there's a terrific resource for checking out rumors, urban legends and suspicious emails at Snopes.com. If it's bogus, it's probably cataloged here. From alligators in sewers, to Bill Gates giving away money, to seriously dangerous medical advice, it's all here. There's that story you heard in Junior High about the bloody hook found on the door handle of the car of the necking teenagers.

All bullshit.

For fun, here's a form you can use to check out the next "Read and Forward" email. Just type in a couple key words like "alligator sewer" or "missing girl penny" and click. It will search Snopes and open a new window with the results.

Search Snopes.com 

If you want to bookmark this page, make sure you're on the permanent copy, not the front page that changes with new posts. Click on the time stamp below (in blog-dom this is called a permalink) and then bookmark.


Constant vigilance!

Boyhood crushes

#1: The Tramp

Lady and the Tramp is one of the greatest romantic movies of all time. I loved the cute and skinny, clever street-wise, dangerous and independent Tramp. And the pampered simpy Lady was enough to turn me off to girls for good. Jealous, I hated her.

She was obviously cootie-ridden, and my Tramp still fell for her!

Peggy Lee played the part of Peg, who had some history with him. Here's her song in French, the only I could find - just follow the bouncing ball:

(About one and half mimutes.)

He's a tramp
But I love him
Breaks a new heart
Ev'ry day

He's a tramp
They adore him
And I only hope
He'll stay that way

He's a tramp
He's a scoundrel
He's a rounder
He's a cad

He's a tramp
But I love him
Yes, and even I
Have got it pretty bad

You can never tell
When he'll show up
He gives you
Plenty of trouble

I guess he's just a
No 'count pup
But I wish that he
Were double

He's a tramp
He's a rover
And there's nothing
More to say

If he's a tramp
He's a good one
And I wish that I
Could travel his way

Yeah, it's a cartoon. About dogs. But I was like five seven years old. So Tramp worked fine as my first crush.

The story ends with Tramp being completely pussy-whipped into civilized society. What a letdown.

He's a tramp, but I love him. Yes, and even I have got it pretty bad.

An amateur music video with the band Lighthouse. About three minutes. Sweet.

More k.d.

Via my friend Scout comes this k.d. and Tony Bennett duet: la vie en rose. "Life through rose-coloured glasses" was the signature song of torch singer Edith Piaf. Think of Judy Garland before Judy Garland. So totally queer in so many ways.

Enjoy. About three and half minutes.

I love to sing with k.d. lang. I love it.

Hold me close and hold me fast
The magic spell you cast
This is la vie en rose

When you kiss me heaven sighs
And tho I close my eyes
I see la vie en rose

When you press me to your heart
I’m in a world apart
A world where roses bloom

And when you speak...angels sing from above
Everyday words seem...to turn into love songs

Give your heart and soul to me
And life will always be
La vie en rose

Related: k.d. and Roy Orbison, Scout , and with the Muppets.

Balls

Free associating from lions' balls to Purity Balls.

Christian teens girls who don't need boyfriends because they get everything need from Daddy. They hold these events at the Marriott, girls in prom dresses and Dads in tuxes, where they dance and pledge their virginity to Daddy until the day he gives it away in marriage.

... a teenage girl, sitting in the lap of her father, and she was telling her dad, "You know Dad, all my friends want boyfriends, and they have boyfriends. But I don't have a desire for that." ... She was receiving the affection that she needed from her father. That is why it is so neat to see these fathers showing godly affection to their daughters.

(Via the wonderful bomb-throwing feminist Amanda at Pandagon.)

(And lions' balls are here.)

Trend spotting

Boys in boxes.

Antigo, Wisconsin -
Three-year-old Robert Moore went fishing for a stuffed replica of Sponge Bob and ended up trapped in a vending machine. The toddler's adventure began with a Saturday evening shopping trip ...

...Robert took off his coat and squeezed through an opening in the machine. He landed in the stuffed animal cube.

"He was having a ball in there, hugging all the stuffed animals," ...

Firefighters broke one lock but then spotted two latches inside the plastic cube. They passed a screwdriver to Robert.

"He stacked up all the stuffed animals and used that screwdriver to open the latch," his grandmother said. "You should have seen him go."
Eventually, Robert freed himself.
(Link)

Elkhart, Indiana -
“... he had climbed through the hole, into the chute and pushed the door shut so we couldn’t get him out. He climbed up in the toys and was in there for a good hour.”
(Link)

Abilene, Texas
[You know what happened]
(Link)

Austin, Minnesota

"When we got it open, he didn't want to come out," Fire Chief Dan Wilson said Tuesday. "One of my firefighters had to reach inside and get him. He was happy in there.
(Link)

Sheboygan, Wisconsin -
(Link)

I think some smart company would just start building machines that charged ten bucks, and you get to crawl around inside for an hour.

It's k.d. lang's birthday

Happy birthday Kathryn Dawn.

And a shout-out to my friend Scout.

(Fourteenth birthday, 1979)

More k.d. here and here.