VirusHead

ThinkGeek :: Plush Microbes

"Infectiously Cute Plush Microbes" – cuddly viruses!!! Wow. They are listed under at work goodies for your "cube." I have a cube! It’s just at home. I like the common cold the best.

I want one! I want one! Come on, they are only six bucks, and if you buy it, you’ll get 100 geek points, too.

I’m not plugging the site (although I like it). I’m not an affiliate (although I would be if I could find the info).

I just want the common cold virus to sit on my computer and look cute for me!

NYPress – The Gist – Michelangelo Signorile – Vol. 17, Iss. 2

You remember Rev. Moon of Unification Church "Moonies" fame, right? Well, maybe you already knew that he thinks he’s the Messiah, his goal, not unlike the Jehovah’s Witnesses and others, to create a global theocracy. But did you know he owns the conservative Washington Times? Or that his rantings haven’t stopped conservatives from taking lotsa hard cold cash from him, even after statements such as these:

"There will be a purge on God’s orders, and evil will be eliminated like shadows"

"Gays will be eliminated, the 3 Israels will unite. If not then they will be burned. We do not know what kind of world God will bring but this is what happens. It will be greater than the communist purge but at God’s orders."

"America is the kingdom of extreme individualism, the kingdom of free sex… The country that represents Satan’s harvest is America."

"[Homosexuals and] those who go after free sex [are] less than animals."

"If you stay away from having children, you cannot enter the kingdom of God. You are bound to go to somewhere else—you can call it Hell."

Here’s the part that most caught my eye:

"George H.W. Bush took $100,000 from him in 1996 for a speaking engagement, praising the Washington Times as ‘a paper that in my view brings sanity to Washington, D.C.’ After Bush called Moon ‘the man with the vision,’ the reverend gave him $1 million for his presidential library."

New York Post Online Edition: news

Al, Al – I love yah buddy. But you dignify the Larouche supporters if you throw them to the ground with bear-hug wrestling moves, even at the Dean rally.

Will you and Michael Moore please get a grip? You are both so much more effective as court jesters! We need you! Come back!

I know, the whole Bush thing is enough to make us a little nutso, I feel the same way, but guys…. I mean, really.

I want the Michael Moore of TV Nation, I want the Al Franken of SNL’s Stuart Smalley (Ok, and Big Fat Liars).

Of course, that’s not to say I don’t want to see the film clip.

IRC BIBLE

This is just too funny – the "original IRC logs to the bible." In case you don’t know, IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat, a system to enable people connected on the internet to engage in live discussions.

One example of what you can find is the original chat log of Matthew 13.

They also have a shop full of ironic religion merchandise like the "I hate leaven!" teeshirt.

Worth a read, although it looks like I’m late to this particular party – they’ve already got some top kudos – still, it cracked me up.

Note Added March 10 2005:
 Example text (Matthew 26):

* Elders has joined #Palace<Caiaphas> Ah, gentlemen, you know why we are here!<Priests> yes. let´s deliver the son of man so we can kill him!<Elders> Yes! during the passover!<Caiaphas> Not during the feast, lest there be a tumult among the people.

* Jesus has joined #Bethany<Jesus> lo simon<Simon> hiya, I´m a leper  <Jesus> i know* Woman has joined #Bethany<Woman> hi* Woman pours ointment on Jesus´ head

My God

The real God
the monotheistic God
the God I could believe in
is not the God I hear described
by heartless folk
that love the judging
and throw their judgments
up up up to the sky
to form the ultimate authority.

My God would be
gentle and kind
full of forgiveness
for all the unrealized potential
of my being, and more than that,
in complete understanding of
exactly why that potential
could not be met.

My God would love me
and show me how to be
more like the ultimate spirit –
kind and forgiving,
compassionate and loving,
nestling me in warmth
(not hotness, not chill)
like a baby in the womb.

My God would show me
the meaning of ecstasy
that being outside myself
beyond language
a melding with the cosmos
a vision of the interconnectedness
of all things – and still hold dear
what makes me unique to him
or her, or that beyond gender
that so confounds our imaginations.

If there is an afterlife
I might ask for a moment
to see and understand
all the questions and problems
that so bothered me
as they lay unanswered
through my life
before moving on
to an entirely new way of being.

Having learned and absorbed
all that is possible to know
from the joys and sufferings
of embodiment and materiality
to find a new life in spirit
as the spark that made me
enters the warp and woof
of the cosmos in new form.

My God would be
beyond our human understanding
so that everything we know
about friendship and love
becomes a pale reflection
in comparision,
and yet, these things would
best teach us and train us
for the ultimate unity of
all things.

My God is beyond the
highest thought that we can think.
But my God is also very simple –
the ultimate source and definition
of love, the shadow of God
simply the limits of our
time-space understandings,
like trying to explain the
resonance of poetry
to an ant.

My God is best worshipped
by breathing, by feeling,
by kindness, by smiles,
by forgiveness, by actions,
by refraining from actions,
by the myriad of thoughts
and feelings and behaviours
that all of us already know.
We already know.

And if there is such a God,
(insofar as it is fair to reduce such a God
to the language of being)
such a God of love,
I invite this God to manifest
in my being, in and through me,
and to help raise me up
(and again, the metaphor of
upness is misleading)
to love.

And if there is no such God.
Do not speak to me
of religion.

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