The Gaytheist Agenda

This is seriously funny stuff. I nearly spit my coffee all over my keyboard the first time I read it. (Warning, NSFW. Contains adult language and themes.)

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First off, the author creates a main character which is an empty shell. Her appearance isn’t described in detail; that way, any female can slip into it and easily fantasize about being this person. I read 400 pages of that book and barely had any idea of what the main character looked like; as far as I was concerned she was a giant Lego brick. Appearance aside, her personality is portrayed as insecure, fumbling, and awkward - a combination anyone who ever went through puberty can relate to. By creating this “empty shell,” the character becomes less of a person and more of something a female reader can put on and wear. Because I forgot her name (I think it was Barbara or Brando or something like that), I’m going to refer to her as “Pants” from here on out.
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So what about men that like Twilight?
If you’re male and you like Twilight, you’re gay. I don’t mean that in the derogatory sense, I mean it in the “you want to put your testicles against another man’s testicles while gripping handfuls of chesthair” kind of way.
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Beyond that, it’s just a romance novel with the occasional vampire teen drama bullshit peppered here and there. It doesn’t really break any new ground in the realm of vampire fiction, other than portraying vampires as a family of uncomfortable retards who prance around the woods eating deer and bunny rabbits. There’s lots of nervous lip-biting, tender kisses between Pants and Edward, and lengthy descriptions of every feature of Edward’s body. Pants is a static character who never really progresses beyond being an insecure vampire fangirl who obsesses over Edward. Whether her character grows beyond that is unknown to me, I’d stopped reading by then and shifted my attention to an electric butt-massaging chair in Sky Mall.

There’s even a totally hilarious video!

 

While neither death was unexpected they’re both being mourned in this household. I have a very worn copy of The Catcher in the Rye, and a newer, less-worn copy of A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present (P.S.). Both are treasured items in my collection.

Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam and whose books, such as “A People’s History of the United States,” inspired young and old to rethink the way textbooks present the American experience, died today in Santa Monica, Calif, where he was traveling. He was 87.

His daughter, Myla Kabat-Zinn of Lexington, said he suffered a heart attack.
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As he wrote in his autobiography, “You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train” (1994), “From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than ‘objectivity’; I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble.”
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“Howard had a great mind and was one of the great voices in the American political life,” Ben Affleck, also a family friend growing up and Damon’s co-star in “Good Will Hunting,” said in a statement. “He taught me how valuable — how necessary — dissent was to democracy and to America itself. He taught that history was made by the everyman, not the elites. I was lucky enough to know him personally and I will carry with me what I learned from him — and try to impart it to my own children — in his memory.”
…..

 

J.D. Salinger, the famously reclusive author whose 1951 novel, “The Catcher in the Rye,” became a touchstone for generations of readers, has died. He was 91.

The author died Wednesday of natural causes at his home in New Hampshire, according to a family statement that his literary agent, Phyllis Westberg, provided Thursday.
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Jerome David Salinger was born January 1, 1919, in New York City, the son of Sol — a wealthy meat importer — and Miriam Salinger. He attended Valley Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania and spent time at three colleges. He published his first stories in the early 1940s.

In 1942, he joined the U.S. Army. He fought in the D-Day invasion at Normandy as well as the Battle of the Bulge, but suffered a nervous breakdown and checked himself into an Army hospital in Germany in 1945. In December of that year, “I’m Crazy,” the first story featuring Caulfield, was published in Collier’s.
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“Salinger had remarked that he was in this world but not of it. His body is gone but the family hopes that he is still with those he loves, whether they are religious or historical figures, personal friends or fictional characters,” the statement said.
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May they both rest in peace.

 

1984 is a masterpiece on so many levels. My commemorative 1984 copy of the book is well worn and much loved. I highly recommend them both.

 


 

Soylent Green is the classic dystopian movie which was loosely based on Harry Harrison’s Make Room!, Make Room!. I have a copy of the former on DVD and the latter in paperback. While the movie is dark and depressing, the novel is bleaker still. Nonetheless I highly recommend them both.

 
Oh….if you were looking for some nutty diatribe about how national healthcare would lead to us eating the remains of our grandparents you came to the wrong place. Sorry if I disappointed you.

 

James Kirkup died May 10th at the age of 91. He was most famous for his poem The Love That Dares To Speak Its Name, which resulted in the last successful trial for blasphemy (though if some in Ireland have their way there may be more to come).

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Kirkup himself admitted that it was “not aesthetically a successful work” and confessed to feeling “mortified” by all the fuss. In 2002, when a group of gay rights campaigners gathered for a public reading of the poem on the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields church, he complained that he was being used for political ends. It was a pity that the furore overshadowed Kirkup’s other achievements as a poet and writer, which were considerable.

The only son of a carpenter, James Falconer Kirkup was born on April 23 1918 at South Shields, Co Durham. What he described as an “inborn sense of deep solitude and apartness” contributed to his being “decidedly the Odd Boy Out” at South Shields Secondary School.

After taking a degree in Modern Languages at Durham University, Kirkup was granted conscientious objector status and spent the war years working as a labourer on farms and for the Forestry Commission. In 1942 a collection of his poems was included in an anthology.
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In 1956, after spells as visiting poet at Bath Academy of Art and as a teacher in London, he left Britain, eventually settling in Japan, where he became Professor of English Literature at Kyoto University. His exposure to Japanese literature had a powerful effect, and his poetry from this time shows the influence of haiku and tanka. He won the Japan PEN Club Prize for Poetry in 1965 and later, in 1997, was invited by the Japanese emperor and empress to the Imperial New Year Poetry Reading at the Palace in Tokyo.
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Kirkup was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1962 and was awarded the Scott Moncrieff Prize for Translation in 1992. His final volume of poetry was published last year by Red Squirrel Press.

 

This also goes for all of those who voted in any form of anti-gay legislation. Believe it or not there are more than six verses in the Bible. It’s actually a rather large book. I thought I’d expand your minds a bit. Here are some of the verses you may have never read and, at least from what I’ve observed, certainly do not live by.

Matthew 7:1
Do not judge so that you will not be judged.

Matthew 7:9-12
“In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

Matthew 25:40
The King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.’

James 2:4
Have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives?

Romans 13:10
Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

1 John 4:18
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.

Romans 2:1-2
1 Therefore you have no excuse, everyone of you who passes judgment, for in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things. 2 And we know that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who practice such things.

1 Corinthians 4:5
Therefore do not go on passing judgment before the time, but wait until the Lord comes who will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness and disclose the motives of men’s hearts; and then each man’s praise will come to him from God.

1 Thessalonians 4:11
And to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands, just as we commanded you.

 
Now see if you can actually use the Bible to guide your own lives instead of as a weapon against others.

It can be done, you know. I did it for 20 years.

 

Though they really aren’t so small in reality. I’m talking about new books. I just received two from Amazon.com Now I have new stuff to read (not that I didn’t already have a huge pile of books lying around as it was, but humor me here).

 

By Wayne Besen of Truth Wins Out.

 

By Herman Mehta, of The Friendly Atheist

 
Now to brew nice cup of tea (White Peony, perhaps) and curl up for some great reading. I’ll be back to exposing the RRRW Agenda later.

 

If you’re anything like me, the prospect of new books is an exciting one. So here is something to whet your appetite; forthcoming titles in a variety of intriguing genres. Enjoy!

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, CA, on March 26, 1874 and died in Vermont on January 29, 1963. In between he wrote some of the most amazing poetry. In honor of his birthday I’d like to share some of my favorite Frost poems and quotes.

 

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

 

“I turned to speak to God, About the world’s despair; But to make bad matters worse, I found God wasn’t there.”

“I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.”

 

FIRE AND ICE

SOME say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

 

“A person will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body - the wishbone.”

 

The Hotel Preston, located near the Nashville Airport, has decided to do away with the traditional nightstand Bibles. Instead guests will be offered a variety of different texts they can request from a “Spiritual Menu” and have delivered to their rooms.

Oregon-based Provenance Hotels, which owns the Hotel Preston, is breaking away from a longstanding tradition of placing Bibles from Gideons International in its rooms. The goal is to offer variety to travelers who aren’t Christians or to visitors looking to learn about a different faith, Nishioka said.

“Our guests come from different places and they definitely come from different cultures, backgrounds, ethnicities, so we want everyone to feel welcomed and comfortable,” Nishioka said.

Brian Ruf, president of the Travel and Tourism Research Association, said the idea of a spiritual menu is so “leading edge” that the international organization has not done research that would show whether Hotel Preston is on the cusp of a trend. Ruf said he thinks the switch might be politically controversial but said travelers with a more international perspective might appreciate it.

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The laminated spiritual menus will be rolled out in the next three to four weeks.

Gideons International spokesman Steve Smith said the Nashville-based organization had not heard of the change at Hotel Preston, and would not comment on “issues regarding Scripture distributions.” The Gideons organization has been distributing Bibles since 1908.

A team of Provenance managers came up with the spiritual menu’s lineup, Nishioka said, which will feature the King James Version of the Bible and the New American Bible, the Torah, the Quran, the Tao Te Ching, The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, the Book of Mormon, books on Scientology and Bhagavad Gita, a sacred Hindu text.

“We’ve only had positive feedback because we’ve included the Bible and we’ve actually added on to it to have two versions. I think we’ve made everybody happy,” she said.

Joe McInerney, president and CEO of the American Hotel and Lodging Association, said this is the first time he has heard of a spiritual menu, but he thinks Hotel Preston’s managers made a good business decision.

“If they want to be ecumenical, that’s a great way to do it,” McInerney said. “It’s taking a positive look at a thing that has been commonplace. What could be wrong with it if they’re providing an opportunity for all religions to read their scripture?”

I like this idea and I hope it catches on. Diversity and choices are a wonderful idea. Hopefully in the future they may even decide to offer some reading options for non-believers. In the meantime I applaud them for simply recognizing that not all of their guests are Christians, and that they might like a spiritual text other than the Bible.