Stupid Commercials

I had the radio on and I heard a commercial that stopped me in my tracks. It was a commercial for some charity called Operation Eyesight. Apparently this dude feels like he’s making a difference because he’s giving money every month to them and they help prevent eye diseases in developing countries, and if he gives so much a month, it’ll pay for one eye operation to help someone see again.

Ok, the first part is cool. If they can get rid of nasty things that cause disease, that’s cool. But I hope this guy knows that eye operations are far from having a perfect success rate. Ask a lot of blind people why they’re blind, and they’ll say it’s due to a failed eye operation. And that’s in developed countries. Imagine what this charity has to contend with in developing countries. I just hope this charity is honest, and tells him about all the ones that they operated on with the help of his money and the operation failed, along with all the ones they apparently healed.

And now I sound like an ungrateful bitch. I’m not saying I’m against the charity per se. I just don’t like all the misinformation I see. This is sorta along the same line as Steve’s post about The United Way. the commercial makes everybody think, oh give a little money and some problem will go away. The last line made me laugh. It said, “Am I making a difference? Well, ask 2-year-old Mahocknabock in Bangladesh. He can see again.” I pictured it if the guy knew the real story. “Am I making a difference? Well, ask 2-year-old Mahocknabock in Bangladesh. They tried to fix his eyes, and now instead of seeing blobs, he sees nothing because his retina disintegrated when they tried to fix it.”

God, the All-Knowing, All-Seeing, All-Powerful Bitch

Sorry for being gone for so long, I really don’t have much of an excuse. For the first part of the week, I just had no inspiration. Then my computer died. Oh it’s very dead and in the shop…I’m so happy I have my old computer still being pretty functional.

Anyway, I got thinking about this the other day, and all the “god loves you” ads just fueled it. I don’t get the two main principles of religion. It just seems that if they were cars and you put them on the road and called it logic, they’d be headed for a head-on collision. But hey, I guess religion is full of those. I shouldn’t be surprised. But here’s my problem.

Principle a. God is all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful. Don’t fuck with God. Notice that a good man is a god-fearing man? Why does he have to be god-fearing?
Principle b. Pray to god and ask him for things and he’ll give them to you. Hand all your worries over to god and let him handle it.

Now, if you were an all-knowing all -powerful being, would you put up with 6 billion children going “I want I want I want gimme gimme gimme waa waa waa” all day? No Sirree Bob! You’d be telling them off, ignoring them, and just plain getting pissed off. Until you can prove to me there is a perfect being, there’s no such thing. Hell if ya read the bible, sure God got mad and said, “fuck mercy, kill ’em all.” I don’t care what you say, that means he has flaws, faults, and the only reason people don’t want to admit that is they would prefer, for the sake of their blind faith, to make up more excuses, and set more cars on a head-on collision course on Logic way.

Also, if he’s all-powerful and you don’t want to fuck with him, why does everyone seem to think he’s their personal bitch? They’re always telling him to bless people, praying to him to save people, asking him for help. I dunno, that sounds more like an errand boy to me than a god. No one would go to a king or the Prime Minister or the President and ask him for guidance in every little thing. Hell, you can’t get near the President, and he’s not even all-powerful! I won’t speak to whether you can get tnear the Prime Minister, because people seem to be able to scale fenses and get into his bedroom and need to be fended off with eskimo carvings, so it seems you can get to him. But if you told your buddies, “Hey, I’m going to go see the Prime Minister and askhim for help on what to do about my marital problems,”your friends would probably think you were out of your mind and call the funny farm. So why is someone who’s supposed to have umpteen million times the power of any human holder of power going to give our trivial problems any time? Hell in the words of religion he’s making the rains come and turning the earth! Does he have time for us? Doubt it. It just makes no sense. Anyone else following this logic? Man, if there is a god, I’m so totally going to hell. Oh well, if he really wanted me to know he was there, he’d do something to prove it. “Oh no, God’s not like that. If you don’t ask him for help, he just goes away.” Wait a minute wait a minute. What about all those people he got pissed at for doubting him? And why did he show himself so often in the old days? I’m sure people didn’t just believe him straight off. Oo, look over on logic way. I see something. Two sets of headlights. *smash!* Oo that was a deadly head-on collision. Wonder if there were any survivers?

Things You’ll Never Hear In A Western Movie

These made me laugh, and the site needs updating, so here they are.

~”I reckon I’ll have me a half-caf double latte with a twist. IN A DIRTY MUG!”

~”Gentlemen, rather than get caught up in mindless reaction, let’s draw upon our feminine selves for a more intuitive solution.”

~”Can we postpone this duel till 12:05? I gotta use the little boys room.”

~”Injuns! Quick, pull the wagons into an irregular dodecagon!”

~”Y’know, Badlands Pete… a roaring campfire, good coffee, nice prairie breeze, just you ‘n’ me… what say we put on the rhinestone gowns and dance a jig or two?”

~”Let’s see… hardtack and pemmican… that’s three grams of fat, seven grams of protein, and two starches.”

~”You ‘n’ Slim round up them strays, and I’ll tell Cookie to get started on the gazpacho and the fondue.”

~”That’s him! That’s the yella-bellied varmint who shot my therapist!”

~”He was a strong man, a good marshal, and I reckon he had a keen eye for interior decoration.”

~”Hey, Buck, do these chaps make my ass look big?”

~”It’s like I keep tellin’ ya, Earl: men is from Tombstone, women is from Dodge.”

~”HANG HIM HIGH, BOYS!! …Okay, now a little to the left… …Oooh! Stop right there. Perfect!”

No Marley No Film

BBC asks long-dead Bob Marley for interview

LONDON (AFP) – A red-faced BBC apologised for requesting an interview with Bob Marley, the Jamaican reggae legend who died 24 years ago.

BBC Three, one of the public broadcaster’s digital TV channels, sent an e-mail to the Bob Marley Foundation saying it wanted to do a documentary about his hit song “No Woman No Cry”.

It said the project would involve Marley — who died of cancer in May 1981 at the age of 36 — “spending one or two days with us”, and that “it would only work with some participation from Bob Marley himself”.

In a statement, the BBC said: “We are obviously very embarrassed that we didn’t realise that the letter to the Marley Foundation did not acknowledge that Mr Marley is no longer with us.”

Marley would have been 60 last February 6, a date that was celebrated with great fanfare by his legion of fans worldwide.

A BBC press officer, contacted by AFP in London on Friday, confirmed that the gaffe was not an April Fool’s joke.

This Is So Wrong

I wish that I’d known about this sooner. Perhaps if more of us had, this whole sad situation could have been avoided. What am I talking about you ask? Well, it turns out that for the last few months, Terri Schiavo has had her very own
blog,
and that as recently as March 27th, she was posting her thoughts and opinions on anything and everything for all of us to see. How could so many have missed this? It’s so wrong and on behalf of all of us Terri, I’m sorry.

People Are Cute Part 2

Well I couldn’t think of anything better, so there it is. I really don’t know why I’m writing about this, so hopefully I’ll write myself a point eventually. I didn’t do much for Easter, basically because my parents were just down a couple weeks ago to see my brother and I since we’re somewhat close to each other, so they didn’t feel like making the big 6 or so hour drive down again, which is completely understandable.

So I’m sitting here, reading for school for my last paper of my degree, and I hear at my door, “knock knock knock.” So I go to answer it, and it’s my neighbour. He’s just been awesome, you couldn’t ask for a better neighbour. He even shovels a little path when it snows.

Anyway, here he stands at my door with a package of goodies for me, wishing me a happy Easter! I felt like such a shmuck because I didn’t have anything for him. It was all wrapped up cute and there’s a bunny and some hot crossed buns. And here I thought I’d have no Easter treats because I felt like a loser buying them for myself.

And now everyone stares at me as if to say, “and your point is…?” I guess unexpected surprises are cool, provided they aren’t the bad kind of course. I just thought that was the cutest thing ever.

Goodbye Free Speech, Hello Government Controlled Education

Florida Republicans are trying to get a bill through the State’s House of Representatives that would allow students to file suit against university professors who they feel aren’t respecting or giving fair representation to their chosen religious beliefs, and even more frightening than that, their beliefs in general.

Dennis Baxley, the bill’s sponsor, says that the legislation, which is ironically titled The Academic Freedom Bill of Rights, is required because a university education should be more than “one biased view by the professor, who as a dictator controls the
classroom.”

I’m all for balance and fairness, but what’s being proposed here goes way too far. What ever happened to the concept of listening to what somebody is saying, processing it with your own brain power, and then using what you’ve heard and what you already know to formulate your own opinions on the subject and on the world as a whole? The idea that all sides of an issue need to be validated as right headed even when one side has been undoubtedly proven wrong is insane.

And let’s not even start on why, in a day and age where universities claim to be woefully underfunded and students claim to be broke, the State would think it wise to place more of a cost burden on either side over something as ordinary and vital as an academic personal opinion or more than that, a proven fact. What Baxley and his fellow party members are forgetting is that facts are legal and in most cases, so are opinions. I’d like to think that something like this, if it were to pass, would have 0 chance of surviving a constitutional challenge.

And while we’re on the subject of Republicans forgetting things, when did it slip their minds that one of their most dearly held principles is that government shouldn’t be involved in every aspect of the lives of the people? First The patriot Act, then Terri Schiavo, and now the education of future generations. I know I’ve probably missed quite a few along the way but my point is where does it end? I think Michael Moore was right when he wrote that the Republicans and Democrats should merge into 1 big party since it’s hard to tell one from the other anymore.

You can read the article that started all of this by clicking
here.

Something’s Wrong with this Picture

I was lying in bed last night and I had the TV on, and I heard something that kinda freaked me out. An oil of ole commercial came on, and that seemed ordinary enough, until I heard what they were selling. I think everybody knows what Oil of Ole is, right? They make stuff to put on your skin to make it look nicer. But this commercial was talking about how they are now making vitamins! Ya know? Pills? Something to take to give you antioxidents to give you younger-looking skin.

Does this scare anyone else? Should a company that makes creams for the face be making drugs? I know it’s just vitamins, but vitamins are still drugs! You’re still taking it and who knows what’s in it? I don’t know. I just find it kinda creepy that people who don’t specialize in drugs are making them now. Next we’ll have toothpaste companies making vitamins to give us stronger teeth, shampoo companies making vitamins to give us shinier hair, who knows? Stick to what you know, thank you very much!